Genes of the Past

A novel

by Christer Jansson

Biochemist Christer Jansson's debut novel treats a fictional 550,000-year-old hominin fossil from central Morocco as the physical evidence of a sensory ability our ancestors may have lost when spoken language began replacing mental images. Told in documentary style from the point of view of a biochemist at a US national lab, the novel uses real molecular biology to build a plausible case for a lost human sense, threaded through a mystery that crosses continents and centuries.