The Incredible Human Journey by Alice Roberts

The Incredible Human Journey Reviews

• 
  Rian

  So this took my a while to get into, but when I did it was very fascinating and helped me to feel more human. It feels fresh to read this after having read sapiens by Nohari, which provides a very black and white view. I feel Alice Roberts provides a more nuanced picture of the history of modern man, setting out what we theorise, but also giving space to opposing views.
• 
  Iset

  I have to confess, I thoroughly enjoyed the television programme of the same name produced by the BBC and presented by Alice Roberts. It was all fairly basic stuff, but seeing as how I’m no specialist in Palaeolithic migration it was also chock full of little titbits here and there that I had simply never picked up on before, the filmography was gorgeous, and all in all it was a really enjoyable, interesting and engaging programme. So, naturally, I had my eye on this book for a while before I finally got my hands on it over Christmas.
  
  Some scenes from the programme don’t appear in the book, but we get many more that didn’t make it into the programme. The book is told in episodic format, a series of anecdotes from Alice Roberts that reveal behind-the-scenes moments, illustrate the points that were being made in the series, and a few juicy little stories about encounters with experts in the field that we never got to see on television. There’s some science-y stuff, which Alice does her best to make as clear and simplified as possible, but the book is also part travelogue as well, and the use of Alice’s own illustrations throughout the text really do give it a diary feel. This might sound wishy-washy, and there’s no denying that this is "popular history" rather than a scholarly, academic work, but I found that the episodes neatly illustrated the points Alice was making, and that and the conversational writing style and use of pictures made this a very easy read and rather fun and engaging. In terms of actual information and educational content soaked up, the book barely scratches the surface of the issues at hand, but it provides a taster and whets the appetite for more – after finishing this book, I plunged straight into Stephen Oppenheimer’s Out of Eden, which The Incredible Human Journey mentions as an authoritative work on several occasions and whose author Alice meets in the course of her journey.
  
  7 out of 10. The book would be absolutely perfect for the layman or a complete beginner with no prior knowledge about the subject but wanting to start to learn more, as it delivers the absolute basics and is an easy and interesting read.
  
• 
  Frank Ryan

  
  This book, by anatomist and television personality, Alice Roberts tells the story of our human journey from our evolutionary origins in east Africa, roughly 200,000 years ago, to our global diversity today. Roberts is unsparing on herself, travelling to a huge variety of actual locations where the various chapters of exploration take place, from the African and Australian bush, to the freezing reindeer territory of Siberia, living with the people she describes, sharing their food and habitation. Her bubbly sense of humour is here on the printed page, much as we find it in her television series. I was particularly impressed with her ability to cover quite complex ideas, ranging from genetics, palaeontology, anthropology, and medicine, all with effortless simplicity and ease. I was also impressed with her ability to bring the story alive, diving into interesting diversions of anecdote, or curious ways of making a living, all the while weaving a fascinating and informative narrative.
  
  The illustrations are beautiful, including maps, colour photographs and - a delightful discovery - pencil drawings by Roberts herself of interesting little observational vignettes. She's quite a decent artist.
  
  I would recommend this book without reservations for any reader who is interested in our human story.
  
• 
  Kane Green

  This was fascinating in many ways, hugely frustrating in others.
  Some incredible stories and evidence of how humans spread across the globe. I particularly enjoyed Prof. Roberts' stays with indigenous peoples and her musings on how our ancestors in those areas made their living, relating them to modern day humans.
  One of my frustrations arose from the repetitive nature of the book. There is an awful lot of detail that to the non-academic seems to be told in the same way time after time (descriptions of tools, climate etc.). The second is the constant reference to geological time periods by name (early Neolithic, Last Glacial, Early Bronze Age etc) which the non-academic will need to constantly refer back to as they are given different names on different continents.
  These are in no way criticisms of Alice Roberts, who I am a huge fan of. I just feel the book may aim more towards the academic or undergraduate actually studying this subject rather than the casual, educated reader.
• 
  Johanne

  This would have been four stars but sadly despite being only published in 2010 it has been overtaken by discoveries; much discussion about no genetic link between modern humans and Neanderthals but current research shows we are around 2% Neanderthal.
  Otherwise good, Roberts traveled the world for 6 months meeting experts in paleoanthropology and related fields, looking at human migration patterns and what we know about our progress out of Africa drawing together what we know about that distant set of journeys. Nice line illustrations too and some surprising nuggets of information particularly on human impact; who new that Hippos and lions were common in the UK even when the climate was much as it is today. I assumed they were warm climate animals but but no its because they were driven out by human activity - look around for details about hippo fossils found under Trafalgar Sq.
  Still worth a read and a reminder that theories shift and change sometimes very quickly.
• 
  Michael

  ელის რობერტსი ამავე სახელწოდების BBC-ის დოკუმენტური სერიებით გავიცანი. როგორც დოკუმენტური ფილმის ისე წიგნის სათაური აბსოლიტურად დამაკმაყოფილებლად ხსნის შინაარსს. ეს არის ჩვენი წინაპრების არაჩვეულებრივი "მოგზაურობა" მსოფლიოს დასასახლებლად. თუმცა აქ მოგზაურობა არ უნდა გავიგოთ ისე თითქოს უძველეს წინაპრებს რამე მიმართულება და მიზანი ქონდათ. ისინი უბრალოდ მომთაბარეობდნენ, მიყვებოდნენ ცხოველების ჯოგებს და ეძებდნენ უკეთეს ადგილებს. ელისი თავადაც მოგზაურობს, სტუმრობს არქეოლოგიური არტეფაქტების აღმიჩენის ადგილებს ხვდება მეცნიერებს და ათვალიერებს ნამარხებს. ეცნობა სხვადასხვა ხალხის ტრადიციებს და ცხოვრებას, ის ამ ყველაფრით ცდილობს გამოარკვიოს ადამიანთა გავრცელების და დასახლების პრეისტორია აფრიკის კონტინენტიდან მთელ მსოფლიოში. ეს მართლაც არაჩვეულებრივი მოგზაურობაა წარსულსა და აწმყოში. გირჩევთ როგორც დოკ. ფილმს ასევე წიგნს.
• 
  Jamie Rhodes

  Alice Roberts takes us along on her journey from hunting with the Bushmen of Africa to tracking wild reindeer with the Evenki in the harsh cold of Siberia, all in search of clues to the journey our ancestors took when spreading out across the planet tens of thousands of years ago.
  
  The way the book was written, an almost diary-like style chronicling her visits to various archaeological sites and other places linked to ancient humans, was very engaging and added an extra dimension to the narrative on the journey of our ancestors.
  
  I would have given the book five stars but I felt that the last third or so of this book was not as engrossing as the first two thirds. However, I throughly recommend this book to any other laymen interested in paleoanthropology and ancient history.
• 
  Tasneem

  Fabulous. I loved it. Like Oppenheimer's work, her writing is extremely enlightening and interesting.
• 
  Jordan Gerlach

  Easily one of the best books I've ever read. If you have any interest at all in anthropology, you need to read this epic journey.
• 
  Persian Phoenix

  An incredible, informative book that could act as a spotlight on the Homo sapiens’ migration out of Africa throughout the world. This journey supports the out-of-Africa theory (OOA), proposing a single origin of Homo-sapiens that most likely developed in the East of Africa (Horn of Africa) between 200,000 years ago.
  According to the book, there were several dispersal migrations out of Africa. The main one via northern Africa and Arabian Peninsula about 120,000 years ago. Nevertheless, the main migration and recent wave out of Africa happened around 70,000 years ago via Southern Route (or Coastal Migration) along the coast of Asia, from the Arabian peninsula via Persia and India to Southeast Asia and Oceania. Spreading quickly in Asia, they reached Australia by around 65,000–50,000 years ago.
  I watched simultaneously the five-episode, BBC TWO documentary film presented by the author, Dr. Alice Roberts, based on her book. After each chapter, seeing the corresponding episode was one of the best illuminating book reading experiences and helping me to visualize all the descriptive and narrative contexts of the book.
• 
  Neil Aplin

  Wow - I know I am biased as this is my favourite subject; paleoanthropology, and Doctor Roberts is such a lovely person, but this book was stunning; a journey across the planet following in the footprints of our earliest ancestors.
  
  This is an area of research that is changing literally ever day as new discoveries are made, and as new technologies let us make assessments on existing evidence in more accurate ways. Doctor Roberts weaves her way through all the evidence guiding us through the most likely narrative for the journey. But she doesn't dismiss out of hand some of the more way-out theories, she puts them into context, explains why they are not mainstream, and generously includes them in the story.
  
  An exciting and excellent book - thanks Doctor Roberts!
• 
  Lee Skinner

  This book negates any need to search for a Creator or a meaning to life, not because it refutes religion or explicitly presents facts that are contrary to belief systems, but because of how it presents a beautiful collective purpose for the human race. We have our place in the human 'journey', an incredible story that explains out culture, place, nature and purpose.
  The book clearly defines the science alongside Alice's journeys across the continents, presenting current cultures and customs that are linked to our distant ancestors.
• 
  Ogi Ogas

  My ratings of books on Goodreads are solely a crude ranking of their utility to me, and not an evaluation of literary merit, entertainment value, social importance, humor, insightfulness, scientific accuracy, creative vigor, suspensefulness of plot, depth of characters, vitality of theme, excitement of climax, satisfaction of ending, or any other combination of dimensions of value which we are expected to boil down through some fabulous alchemy into a single digit.
• 
  Terra

  Said it before and will say it again: I'll give pretty much whatever Alice Roberts writes a shot. As I've come to expect from her, this was clearly written, accessible, and full of enthusiasm. Some of the information in it is now a bit out of date, as one might expect from a 13-year-old book in a field where new discoveries are popping up on the regular (she says with all the authority of a frequent history podcast listener...), but that doesn't really detract, since Roberts always makes clear that she's describing what's known at the time of writing, with a very excited eye on the horizon of future developments. My one complaint about this particular book is that it's focused entirely on the dispersal of modern humans, i.e. homo sapiens. I would have liked some background - maybe just one initial chapter - catching us up on the prior journey of archaic humans (homo erectus, Neanderthals, etc), since there are references in the book to them having been in various places before homo sapiens replaced them, but nothing really on how the archaic humans got there.
• 
  Chris Jones

  Fabulous and easy read - a bit travelogue, a bit science. Parts of it read like the accompaniment to one of those dreadful ITV celebrity travel shows, but in the main Roberts is a really engaging writer who has the credentials of a solid scientific background. I loved the bits about Homo floresiensis (the hobbit people) and marvelled at the richness of the Australian Aboriginal story.
• 
  Simon Farrell

  Excellent book to read which gives a good overview of early human history. The only downside id this science is ever uncovering new evidence, so this book is outdated in some respects, but still offers a fascinating read.
• 
  Violet

  It's outdated now - partly - since we now know that Neanderthals did not completely disappeared and that we do share some DNA with them. But Alice Roberts couldn't know at the time of writing, and the book is beautifully written - I loved the travel journal format and her enthusiasm is contagious.
• 
  Yaser ِAlAzm

  Really incredible!
• 
  Caity

  An easy 5 star read. This really is Alice Robert's magnum opus. Truly wonderful.
• 
  M.G. Mason

  You can't help but like Dr Alice Roberts. Though best known as a co-presenter on the BBC series "Coast", she has been involved in a number of other TV projects of which this was the most noteworthy. We appreciate her for the passion for her subject, her infectious smile and childlike excitement as well as a reluctant sex symbol for men who like nerdy, intelligent women with an inner child for anthropology. It must be noted that she is no mere eye candy or real life Dana Scully, but an accomplished academic, a qualified Medical Doctor and much respected contributor to engaging the public in science.
  
  The book is written atypically for a popular science book, like a travelogue. Roberts wants us to take an interest in the people, the places and the journey she takes before she imparts her knowledge of genetics and human migration. Because of this the prose is colourful and engaging. The only other book I can think of written in this style is Jared Diamond's "Collapse: Why Complex Societies Choose to Fail or Survive". It worked well for that book too.
  
  Note: This book is about the migration of anatomically modern humans and not other hominid species but it does touch very briefly to compare how our anatomy differs from ancestor species and other modern apes. In the section on Europe there is a good summary of the history of research into Neanderthals because the two species would undoubtedly have had contact.
  
  It is broken down into five lengthy chapters based around each episode from the series: 1) Out of Africa 2) Australasia 3) Asia 4) Europe and last but not least, 5) The Americas. This is a slightly different order from the broadcast but the same information is there. Most books released as a companion to a documentary series are normally a superficial recap with glossy production, an abundance of high res images with a high price tag and little of substance. Even the better examples rarely stray beyond recapping what we had already seen. I'm pleased to say that this is not the case here though. If anything, Roberts has taken the opportunity to expand on the themes that time did not permit in a six hour documentary, or perhaps it was felt was inappropriate detail TV.
  
  There are a number of illustrations and a generous dose of colour plates that seem obligatory in popular science books to give welcome relief from the text. It is known from Coast that Roberts is a keen artist and she relishes the opportunity to show off her skills here with sketches littered throughout. It adds the personal touch that is sadly sometimes lacking in popular science books (notable exception is Richard Dawkins who loves to drop in anecdotes about his family and his time as a student or lectures he has delivered). Roberts is undoubtedly a great writer who loves her subject and that goes a long way to inspiring people to learn more.
  
  As somebody who has studied the subject at university, I sometimes felt the need to skip forward through all-too familiar territory. This is not a criticism but readers with an academic interest will probably feel the need to do the same several times, passing over several pages of familiar territory at a time. It also suffers for a lack of chapter by chapter conclusion that we have come to expect from popular science. A few bullet points at the end of each would have really helped to re-cap the main points before moving onto the next.
  
  Personally, I can think of no better introduction to the theory of the migration of early humanity for the layman.
  
  
  See more book reviews at my blog