The Genetic Book of the Dead: A Darwinian Reverie Dawkins Richard (2024)

Richard Dawkins explores the deepest principles of evolutionary history, showing how the body, behaviour and genes of every living creature can be read as a book or archive of its ancestors worlds. A perfectly camouflaged desert lizard, for example, carries on its back a landscape of sand and stones that records the ancient deserts where its ancestors survived, as well as the worlds of their more distant predecessors. Darwinian natural selection shapes not only the surface of the body but also every biochemical detail and every cell. Given an unknown animal, a future zoologist could reconstruct the worlds that shaped its ancestors by reading its unique genetic book of the dead. Through fascinating examples, Dawkins examines how natural selection produces exquisite perfection alongside apparent blunders, and challenges influential criticisms of the genes-eye view of life. He also asks whether all our own genes can be understood as a vast colony of cooperating viruses. Richly illustrated, this book offers a new way to look into the ancient past.