A crash course in the latest theories of human evolution, drawing on fossil and genetic evidence to explain the emergence of modern humans out of Africa less than 100,000 years ago, and showing that the apparent racial distinctions of modern humans are merely geographical variants. Stringer, a paleoanthropologist at the Natural History Museum in London, is the primary architect of the Out of Africa model of human evolution. For general readers. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR