In the late 80s, hot on the heels of the discovery of the polymerase chain reaction (PCR), Science and Nature were involved in heavy competition chasing the oldest DNA molecule that would still give a PCR product and a reliable sequence. While I was struggling to get a simple PCR working, others seemed to be breaking record after record—3,000 years old, 10,000 years, 15 million years, 200 million years—as if it were the Ancient DNA Olympics. If you want to know the ins and outs of this race and the major players, this is the book for you! I consider it a must for every scientist with some interest in ancient DNA. Every young student in this field should start with this book, if only to get acquainted with future friends and potential enemies. Finally, every teacher should have this book to check the facts.
As a major player on the field of bioarchaeology himself, Martin Jones explains, in an easily accessible way, most of the complex science behind the various methods used in this field. Even today, the extraction of ancient DNA from archaeological remains is exciting and very often heavily debated among the major players in this field of science. The scientific careers of Svante Pääbo, Mark Stoneking, Brian Sykes (yes, the same one who claims to be on speaking terms with Eve's daughters), Erica Hagelberg (at that time, together with Sykes, still forming a strong team), and Hendrik Poinar are followed and described in detail, which makes good reading.
Do not expect a book with a lot of instructive illustrations. To be more precise, there are none. That is the great missed opportunity of this book. Martin Jones uses a lot of space explaining with words what could have been explained in much more detail with a single illustration. As a good example, compare the discussion of the morphological differences that distinguish wild from domesticated cereals (starting on page 82) with the single illustration, box 2, in “Genetics and Geography of Wild Cereal Domestication in the Near East,” by Salamini et al. (Nat Rev Genet 3:429–441). There are many more items discussed in the book that simply shout for a good instructive illustration. Large parts of many pages read like figure legends without the corresponding figures. Admittedly, I might be severely biased in my opinion, considering that I find Asterix and Obelix the best introduction to classical European history and Lucky Luke their equally instructive American counterpart. Therefore, I do not wish to imply that this is a bad book. On the contrary, it is a very good book, but it could have been much better, perhaps close to the best tutorial to bioarchaeology, with only a bit more editorial attention and courage.
So what to expect? First and foremost, it gives a very detailed summary of the rise of ancient DNA in the context of reconstructing human evolution. The rapid succession of reliable attempts to isolate mtDNA from archaeological remains—culminating in the first Neanderthal sequence—is intertwined with the now-classic first mtDNA-based genealogy of our maternal ancestors, in chapters such as “Our Curious Cousins,” “Final Traces of Life,” and “Great Journeys.” In this respect, the book is very much up to date. The book is simply packed with little anecdotes describing the many failures and almost all the major successes.
I find the penultimate chapter, “Enemies Within,” as breathtaking (and, at times, as gruesome) as classic Stephen King. Here, Jones describes the use of ancient DNA techniques to reconstruct the destructive effects of Yersinia pestis, Mycobacterium tuberculosis, Treponema pallidum, and Clostridium, culminating in the recent claims of successfully growing bacteria, found trapped in amber, out of 30-million-year-old bacterial spores.
With this chapter, Jones closes the circle, as in any good classic novel, and takes us back to the time when I was struggling with my first PCRs. The entire books reads well, feels good, and is most engaging. I know no better book than this one to recommend for a recent unbiased introduction to this very diverse and exciting field of science. I will certainly pick it up many more times.