(DARWINISM) The Ancestor's Tale: A Pilgrimage to the Dawn of Evolution by Richard Dawkins

THEORY

DARWINISM

-It is a theory of biological evolution developed by Charles Darwin and others, stating that all species of organisms arise and develop through the natural selection of small, inherited variations that increase the individual's ability to compete, survive, and reproduce.

-It designates a distinctive form of evolutionary explanation for the history and diversity of life on earth.

TITLE

THE ANCESTOR'S TALE: A PILGRIMAGE TO THE DAWN OF EVOLUTION 

BY RICHARD DAWKINS

SYNOSPSIS

The narrative is structured as a pilgrimage, with all modern animals following their own path through history to the origin of life. Humans meet their evolutionary cousins at rendezvous points along the way, the points at which the lineage diverged. At each point Dawkins attempts to infer, from molecular and fossil evidence, the probable form of the most recent common ancestor and describes the modern animals that join humanity's growing travelling party. This structure is inspired by Geoffrey Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales.

The pilgrimage visits a total of 40 "rendezvous points" from rendezvous zero, the most recent common ancestor of all of humanity, to rendezvous 39, eubacteria, the ancestor of all surviving organisms. Though Dawkins is confident of the essential shape of this phylogenetic taxonomy, he enters caveats on a small number of branch points where a compelling weight of evidence had not been assembled at the time of writing.

At each rendezvous point, Dawkins recounts interesting tales concerning the cousin animals which are about to join the band of pilgrims. Every newly recruited species, genus or family has its own peculiar features, often ones that are relevant to human anatomy or otherwise interesting for humans. For instance, Dawkins discusses why the axolotl never needs to grow up, how newspecies come about, how hard it is to classify animals, and why our fish-like ancestors moved to the land. These peculiar features are studied and analyzed using a newly introduced tool or method from evolutionary biology, carefully woven into a tale to illustrate how the Darwinian theory of evolution explains all diversity in nature.

ANALYSIS

Dawkins didn't give a normal story of evolution but he took a journey backward, from the present time way back to the past to trace our ancestors. He believes that there's a strong need for us to be put in evolutionary perspectives as a humankind and there's got to be real progress as time passes by.

Reading this book is like reading an encyclopedia. It is not intended to convince everyone that evolution is existing yet it assumes that it really exists.

 The fact that the books is about a "reverse" evolution is an exact reason why this falls to Darwinism Theory of Literary Criticism.