Includes bibliographical references (pages [281]-296) and index.

"In just the last few years an explosion of discoveries - driven by information from the human genome - has empowered researchers to address many long-standing questions about the deep human past. Nicholas Wade has drawn on the new findings to present the first portrait of a special and hitherto mysterious group of human ancestors - the ancestral human population that lived in Africa 50,000 years ago and from whom everyone in the world today is descended." "Wade tells how the human line evolved slowly from African apes until, quite recently in the timescale of human history, it acquired a novel faculty, the gift of language. With this transformation, humans became more innovative and their societies more cohesive. People were at last able to burst out of the African homeland where the stronger Neanderthals had long confined them, and then to inhabit the rest of the world." "The human genome can be used not only to probe the deep past but also to serve as a powerful parallel source to contemporary historical records. The author shows how genetics sheds new light on the population history of Jews and Icelanders, the secrets of Genghis Khan and the dalliances of Thomas Jefferson." "In interweaving many threads of evidence, Before the Dawn draws together a far-reaching new synthesis of knowledge about the human past, one that may arouse controversy because it applies the new evidence to long disputed topics such as the origins of race and the genetic basis of human nature."--JACKET.