Before the Dawn: Recovering the Lost History of Our Ancestors is a non-fiction book by Nicholas Wade, a science reporter for The New York Times.

Thus, Wade argues, human evolution did not end with behavioural modernity, but continued to be shaped by the different environments and lifestyles of each continent.

The book received generally positive reviews, with the main criticisms centering on the work's use of the value-laden terminology of "race" over other, more neutral alternatives.

Some of them, due to a global climate change between 5 and 10 million years ago, left the shrinking forests and moved to open woodland, and this new ecological niche gave rise to the human lineage.

[7] Wade cites a number of evolutionary psychologists for an explanation, including Robin Dunbar, who argues that language evolved because it was a more efficient way of establishing social bonds than grooming; Geoffrey Miller, who suggests that speech was a signal of intelligence and thus evolved through sexual selection; and Steven Pinker, who thinks that the ecological niche of humans required the sharing of knowledge.

[8] Wade writes that the genetic basis of language is linked to the FOXP2 gene, as it shows signs of significant change in humans but not in chimpanzees, and that mutations of it cause severe speech disorders.

To understand the nature of the ancestral population, Donald Brown's theory of "universal people" is raised; that is, the shared behaviours of all modern human societies.

[11] A small minority of this ancestral population, Wade continues in chapter five, Exodus, crossed the Gate of Grief and left Africa 50,000 years ago, following the coasts of India and the former continents of Sunda and Sahul.

[13] The wide dispersal of humans across varying environments with different evolutionary pressures, Wade contends, began to give rise to regional differentiation.

He gives examples of variation in two genes related to brain development: an allele of microcephalin that appeared about 37,000 years ago and is common in Europeans and East Asians, but rare in sub-Saharan Africans; and an allele of ASPM that appeared about 6,000 years ago and is common in Europeans, Middle Easterners and to a lesser extent East Asians, but is nearly non-existent in sub-Saharan Africans.

[17] Chapter seven, Settlement, concerns sedentism – the transition from a nomadic lifestyle to a society which remains in one place permanently – which began to rise in the Near East at the end of the Last Glacial Maximum.

It required new ways of thought and social organisation; Wade thinks that an evolutionary adaptation for less aggressiveness allowed this change, noting how the skeletons of the ancestral population were less gracile than those of today.

The domestication of cattle in northern Europe and parts of Africa facilitated the spread of a genetic mutation that allowed lactose tolerance, and Wade believes this is evidence of culture and evolution interacting.

[19] The following chapter, Sociality, focuses on the common dynamics of human societies, including warfare, religion, trade, and a division of roles between the sexes.

[23] Citing Neil Risch, Wade puts forth that there are five continental races – Africans, Caucasians, Asians, Pacific Islanders and Native Americans[nb 1] – which are made up of smaller subdivisions called ethnicities.

Markers in these Y chromosomes can be linked to the Basques, and he suggests that the British and Irish descend from a refuge in Spain they shared during the Last Glacial Maximum.

Citing Gregory Cochran and Henry Harpending, Wade argues that Ashkenazi Jews were historically forced into intellectually demanding occupations by their European hosts, and these selective pressures favoured genes that raised their intelligence.

Wade speculates where evolution will lead humans in the future, suggesting further skeletal gracilisation, increases in intelligence, adaptations to the changing climate, and even the possibility of speciation.

[31] Wade has written for The New York Times since 1981 as an editorial writer, science editor and a reporter,[32] including articles supporting the idea of recent human evolution and racial differentiation.

[42] In an interview with American Scientist in 2006, Wade recognised the resistance against this idea in the fields of anthropology and archaeology, but thought that as "genetic evidence [forces a] reevaluation of the view that evolution stopped in the distant past", it would ease over time.

"[44] Lionel Tiger, Professor of Anthropology at Rutgers University, stated that "Wade has delivered an impeccable, fearless, responsible and absorbing account" and that the book is "[b]ound to be the gold standard in the field for a very long time.

"[48] In addition, they criticize the social and political implications Wade draws from this foundation: But why not just enjoy the sport of fanciful speculation, even if the arguments leak like sieves?

But we should never become casual about how comparable ‘slopular’ science and very similar speculative evolutionary reasoning by leading scientists fed a venomous kind of darkness not too many decades ago.

Wade's post-hoc tales often put him in step with a long march of social darwinists who, with comfortable detachment from the (currently) dominant culture, insist that we look starkly at life in the raw and not blink at what we see.