Who We Are and How We Got Here: Ancient DNA and the new science of the human past

368 Pages·2018·6.23 MB·English

by  David Reich

In just five years the study of ancient DNA has transformed our under-
standing of world prehistory. The geneticist David Reich, one of the
pioneers in this field, here gives the brilliantly lucid first account of the
resulting new view of human origins and of the later dispersals which
went on to shape the modern world.
Colin Renfrew, Emeritus Disney Professor of Archaeology,
University of Cambridge
Reich dramatically revises our understanding of the deep history of our
species in our African homeland and beyond. Reich tells the fascinat-
ing story of ‘ghost populations’ from which today’s human beings are
descended, populations that no longer exist. They were as different
from each other as Europeans are from East Asians today, and their exis-
tence was unknown until they were reconstructed by Reich and his col-
leagues’ cutting-edge work in the new science of ancient DNA. Reich’s
beautifully written book reads like a detective novel and demonstrates a
hard truth that often makes many of us uncomfortable: not only are all
human beings mixed, but our intuitive understanding of the evolution
of the population structure of the world around us is not to be trusted.
Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Professor of Literature, Harvard University,
and Executive Producer of Finding Your Roots
This breathtaking book will blow you away with its rich and astounding
account of where we came from and why that matters. Reich tells the
surprising story of how humans got to every corner of the planet, which
was revealed only after he and other scientists unlocked the secrets
of ancient DNA. The courageous, compassionate and highly personal
climax will transform how you think about the meaning of ancestry
and race.
Daniel E. Lieberman, Professor of Human Evolutionary Biology,
Harvard University and author of
The Story of the Human Body: Evolution, Health and Disease
This book will revolutionize our understanding of human prehistory.
David Reich sheds new light on our past from the vantage of a sparkling
new discipline—the analysis of ancient DNA. He places migration
in the limelight, demonstrating that humans did not just evolve, they
spread, often on dramatic scales.
Peter Bellwood, Professor of Archeology,
Australian National University
Reich’s riveting book gives a stunning account of human pre-history and
history, through the new lens provided by ancient DNA data. The story
of human populations, as he shows, is ever one of widespread, repeated
mixing, debunking the fiction of ‘pure’ populations.
Molly Przeworski, Professor of Biological Sciences,
Columbia University
Powerful writing and extraordinary insights animate this endlessly fasci-
nating account, by a world scientific leader, of who we modern humans
are and how our ancestors arrived in the diverse corners of the world.
I could not put the book down.
Robert Weinberg, Professor of Biology,
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
The breakthrough that all archaeologists have been waiting for; a truly
exciting account of the way in which ancient DNA is making us rethink
prehistory. Essential reading for everyone interested in the past.
Barry Cunliffe
From Neanderthals, to the settlement of the Americas, to the first
explorers of the Pacific, there is virtually no field of archaeology that is
untouched by the immense informative power of archaeo-genomics. A
gripping and authoritative telling of the extraordinary power that is next
generation sequencing and ancient population genomics.
Professor Tom Higham, University of Oxford
Reich’s b ook r eads l ike n otes f rom t he f rontline o f t he ‘Ancient DNA
Revolution’ with all the spellbinding drama and intrigue that comes
with such a huge transformation in our understanding of human history.
Anne Wojcicki, Chief Executive Officer,
and Co-Founder of 23andMe
In this comprehensive and provocative book, David Reich exhumes
and examines fundamental questions about our origin and future using
powerful evidence from human genetics. What does ‘race’ mean in
2018? How alike and how unlike are we? What does identity mean?
Reich’s book is sobering and clear-eyed, and, in equal part, thrilling and
thought provoking. There were times that I had to stand up and clear
my thoughts to continue reading this astonishing and important book.
Siddhartha Mukherjee
Who We Are and How We Got Here

ANCIENT DNA AND THE
NEW SCIENCE OF THE HUMAN PAST
WHO
WE
ARE
AND
HOW
WE
GOT
HERE
DAV I D R E I C H
1
1
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© David Reich and Eugenie Reich 2018
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First Edition published in 2018
Impression: 1
Skull jacket image by Oliver Uberti
Illustrations and endpapers by Oliver Uberti
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Library of Congress Control Number: 2017038165
ISBN 978–0–19–882125–0
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For Seth and Leah

Contents
Acknowledgments xi
Introduction xiii
Part I The Deep History of Our Species
1 How the Genome Explains Who We Are 3
2 Encounters with Neanderthals 25
3 Ancient DNA Opens the Floodgates 53
Part II How We Got to Where We Are Today
4 Humanity’s Ghosts 77
5 The Making of Modern Europe 99
6 The Collision That Formed India 123
7 In Search of Native American Ancestors 155
8 The Genomic Origins of East Asians 187
9 Rejoining Africa to the Human Story 207
Part III The Disruptive Genome
10 The Genomics of Inequality 229
11 The Genomics of Race and Identity 247
12 The Future of Ancient DNA 274
Notes on the Illustrations 287
Notes 291
Index 321