Who We Are and How We Got Here: Ancient DNA and the New Science of the Human Past Kindle Edition

Human beings have always felt a need to understand our origins. In premodern times we had to rely upon myths and traditions handed down by our ancestors. In the West, we are mostly familiar with the stories in the Bible but of course other peoples and cultures had their own myths about the creation of the universe and humanity.

Beginning around the time of the French and American revolutions, archaeology started to assist in explaining the distant past. Ancient languages were deciphered, literatures were compared and scholars were able to speculate on the nature of human cultures both before and after the invention of writing.

However, the technologies which allow ancient human genomes to reveal the origins and migrations of peoples are, as Dr. Reich describes, comparable to the invention of the microscope in the amount of light that can be shed on human history and prehistory. While still in its infancy as a science, the genomic research performed by Dr. Reich and his colleagues has already upended theories of human origins from Europe to India with scientifically grounded accounts.

The emphasis here is on scientific, in that, unlike debates over literary composition of ancient texts, the accounts of history derived from the genome are falsifiable. One could always sequence the genome of another ancient human and provide evidence that, say, Dr. Reich’s account of a population from the Eurasian steppe invading India around the time of the Vedic writings is not supported.

One can read this book simply for its insights into prehistory as it supplies theories, some provisional, to account for all the major peoples of the world: European, South Asian, East Asian, Polynesian, African and Native Americans from North and South America.

But one can also read the book for the excitement at the birth of a new science that promises to be as revelatory as the observations from satellites scanning distant galaxies for the origins of dark matter. Not since reading The Double Helix by James Watson, one of the discovers of DNA, have I been so captivated by the story of a new branch of knowledge coming into being.

The book is written with a minimum of jargon and is accessible to the scientific laymen. Because of its captivating story and style I would strongly recommend this book to all mature readers. Just as understanding Darwinian evolution is essential to understanding human nature, so too understanding the prehistory of humanity as revealed by our genome will become an essential part of our global modern civilization’s self understanding.

Here is a book that captures the breath-taking changes in genomics and the effect on our understanding of the human past, by a pioneer in the subject. "Who We Are And How We Got Here" provides an explanation of the rapidly evolving technology in layman's terms. Author David Reich then walks the reader through the new theories on how modern human populations came to inhabit various portions of the world. The changes are stunning, with the promise of more to come.

For this former anthropology student, the discussion of the populating of Europe and the Americas was particularly fascinating. That process was far more complex than could be taught a generation ago. Genomics is providing levels of detail that simply weren't available to earlier researchers. The author sketches the roles played by various populations of modern humans, Neanderthals, and Denisovans, and their sometimes surprising contributions to the current populations of those regions. The maps and charts are particularly helpful in illustrating the discussion, which can get a little dense.

In later chapters, the author "goes there" and warns that future study may reveal differences in human populations that go beyond physical appearance. He is properly nervous about the impact of that information and how it might be misused, but determined to embrace the progress in science. Highly recommended to the general reader.

David Reich's book is generating some controversy for reasons I don't really understand. It is a fascinating exploration of some of the most exciting current research in human genetics. If your ears have perked up when you've heard about DNA being extracted from Neanderthal fossils (or older), this book will satisfy many of your questions. If I had known this was coming when I dipped my toes in genetics in college, would have jumped in rather run for the hills.

Another significant point about the e-book.... The Kindle version of this book is the _first_ that I have personally seen where the e-book is noticeably _better_ than the paper. In particular, charts and images that are often produced terribly badly in e-books are particularly good here.

I enjoy and read a lot of history. Until recently, I thought the best we could do in determining things about early human history was to speculate based on the bones and pots found by archeologists. Now Dr. Reich and a growing number of geneticists who are specializing in early (deep) human history are working out the details of early human history in a way that I would have thought impossible even a decade ago. Using human genomes from both modern and from ancient bones they are able to provide details information about human populations and migrations.

For example, they can not only tell us that European hunters and gathers were invaded by farmers from Antolia around 9000 ybp, but can also tell us that these early hunters/gathers and farmers were themselves wiped out by later pastorial migrants from the caucaus who spoke endo-european. This isn't speculation, as we are used to in history texts, but based on facts generated by new techniques that let us analyze the genomes of modern and ancient bones. Many fascinating historical questions that I would have thought could never be answered and now answered.

This is a must read book for anyone interested in early human history. It's well written and reasonably clear as to techniques involved, etc. For moe detail you would need to read scientific papers being published.