THE UNICITY OF MANKIND - What the Evidence Says About Where We Came From

The Unicity of Mankind: What the Evidence Says About Where We Came From is an evidence-driven examination of one of humanity's oldest and most consequential questions: Are the divisions we call race rooted deeply in human biology-or did history build categories that genetics does not support? Drawing on archaeology, population genetics, ancient DNA, anthropology, and the history of racial classification, Nakel Nikiema follows the evidence from the earliest known Homo sapiens fossils in Africa to the genomes of people living today. The book examines discoveries at Jebel Irhoud, Omo Kibish, Herto, and other major sites; the movement of human populations out of Africa; Neanderthal and Denisovan admixture; the evolution of skin pigmentation; and what modern genetics actually reveals about human variation. Rather than presenting human origins as a simple story emerging from a single point, the evidence increasingly describes interconnected African populations that separated, reconnected, and exchanged genes over immense spans of time. Unicity-of-Mankind-PRINT-6x9 Along the way, the book confronts some of the most persistent assumptions about race. If humans can be visually different, why do genetic studies show such shallow differentiation? Why can ancestry sometimes be estimated from skeletal remains without proving that biological races exist? What does ancient DNA really tell us about the skin color of early Europeans? And do Neanderthal and Denisovan ancestry challenge the common African origin of modern humanity? Nikiema does not avoid evidence that complicates the argument. The book examines competing interpretations, disputed fossil classifications, changing archaeological dates, the limitations of ancestry models, and cases in which scientific claims were…