Journalist and author, Elizabeth Kolbert, in her book, The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History, argues that we are living in the midst of a man-made sixth extinction. Kolbert’s purpose is to illustrate the ways humans are provoking the sixth extinction. She creates an informative tone in order to appeal to her adult reader’s logical thinking. Kolbert relies massively on the persuasive appeals, Logos and Ethos, to create the argument that man has, in fact, evolved over time. By employing this technique, Kolbert successfully argues that man’s evolution is possible and combats the primitive ideology that man, never has, or will, evolve. Kolbert opens her chapter “The Madness Gene” from The Sixth Extinction by describing the discovery of
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Kolbert establishes the credibility of the testing and researched performed by spending time with researcher and paleontologist, Svante Pääbo, where she explained the results of an extensive genome mapping project that Pääbo led using “twenty-one Neanderthal bones which had been found in a cave in Croatia”(245). Kolbert relies on the results of published scientific products in order to give weight to their conclusions. By referencing prestigious University results and citing the journal Science, Kolbert encourages the reader to relax and trust the conclusions presented. Likewise with research from David Reich, a geneticist at Harvard Medical School and a member of Pääbo’s team, Kolbert appealed to our reasoning by disclosing the results of the “leaky replacement” theory that the sequencing of “Europeans and Asians shared more DNA with Neanderthals than did Africans” as a result of crossbreeding (247). Although it has not been proven, the “leaky replacement” hypothesis “provides the strongest possible evidence for the closeness of Neanderthals and modern humans” (247). The research presented was displayed in a format that conveys a credible view of the conclusions drawn from the research which helps the reader to make the evolutionary leap from Neanderthal to human with the
Kolbert establishes the credibility of the testing and researched performed by spending time with researcher and paleontologist, Svante Pääbo, where she explained the results of an extensive genome mapping project that Pääbo led using “twenty-one Neanderthal bones which had been found in a cave in Croatia”(245). Kolbert relies on the results of published scientific products in order to give weight to their conclusions. By referencing prestigious University results and citing the journal Science, Kolbert encourages the reader to relax and trust the conclusions presented. Likewise with research from David Reich, a geneticist at Harvard Medical School and a member of Pääbo’s team, Kolbert appealed to our reasoning by disclosing the results of the “leaky replacement” theory that the sequencing of “Europeans and Asians shared more DNA with Neanderthals than did Africans” as a result of crossbreeding (247). Although it has not been proven, the “leaky replacement” hypothesis “provides the strongest possible evidence for the closeness of Neanderthals and modern humans” (247). The research presented was displayed in a format that conveys a credible view of the conclusions drawn from the research which helps the reader to make the evolutionary leap from Neanderthal to human with the