The great revelation of anthropology is the realisation that there are other ways of being, Wade Davis writes in the introduction, a colourful, fascinating, and respectful panorama of ethnic diversity. From the Inuit of the Arctic to the Zulu of southern Africa, from the Ainu of Japan to the Fuegians of Patagonia, the world's most compelling ethnic groups are here - some as small as the Kallawaya of the Peruvian Andes, others as numerous as the Bengalis of India. Small or large, little known or thoroughly familiar, more than 200 ethnic groups from around the world fill the pages of this book with their beliefs and customs, traditions and challenges.Rare times of special celebration, ordinary times of work and play - both find their place in this book about the varieties, and the universality, of the human experience. Threaded through the book as well are the extraordinary findings of the National Geographic's Genographic Project, a research initiative to collect and catalog DNA from around the world, discovering the story of human migration embedded in our genetic material.At once a celebration of glorious diversity, a comprehensive reference, and a thoughtful look at the universal human instinct to belong and identify.