The Ancestor's Tale: A Pilgrimage to the Dawn of Life

The Ancestor's Tale: A Pilgrimage to the Dawn of Life is a popular science book by Richard Dawkins and Yan Wong in which the history of life is retraced in reverse chronological order. A growing band of species meet their most recent common ancestors (concestors). First published in 2004, it was updated in 2016 to reflect recent discoveries. In 2005, during a pilgrimage to the Galápagos, Dawkins wrote three new tales. The third is reprinted in the second edition. The phylogenetic trees in the second edition are based on OneZoom. The book is patterned on Geoffrey Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales, in which pilgrims on the road to Canterbury converge with other groups of pilgrims. Here, species convene with concestors, and "Canterbury" is the origin of life. Dawkins dedicated the book to John Maynard Smith: "He saw a draft and graciously accepted the dedication, which now, sadly, must become In Memoriam.