In Pandora's Seed: Why the Hunter-Gatherer Holds the Key to Our Survival Spencer Wells takes us on a globe-trotting journey through human history, showing how we can learn from our ancestors in order to survive and thrive in the future. We have better and more comfortable lives in the Western world than we did a few generations ago. So why aren't we happier, or healthier? The problem is that humans were designed to hunt in the wild, not for crowded, urbanized living. The latest research reveals that when we settled and developed agriculture 10,000 years ago we may have created modern civilization, but we also opened a Pandora's box of problems - becoming sedentary, overpopulated, disease-prone and selfish. In this provocative and fascinating book, Spencer Wells reveals how everything from our sweet tooth and stress disorders to environmental damage and even terrorism can be traced back to this mismatch between our genes and lifestyle - and how the solution to these problems lies in our hunter-gatherer roots. 'Civilization is the problem, not the solution ... Wells combines a cogent account of human evolution with an urgent call for global cultural reform' The Times 'Spencer Wells - exporer, geneticist, geographer and author - takes us on an exciting tour of the last 10,000 years of our history in order to forewarn us of what we shall have to deal with in the next 50 years' Jared Diamond, author of Guns, Germs and Steel and Collapse 'Stimulating and enjoyable' Financial Times Spencer Wells is a leading population geneticist, documentary filmmaker and author of The Journey of Man and Deep Ancestry. He was previously director of the Population Genetics Research Group at the Wellcome Trust Centre for Human Genetics at Oxford and was recently appointed Frank H.T. Rhodes Visiting Professor at Cornell University. Wells is currently National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence and spearheads the Genographic Project.