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

by REICH, DAVID

• ISBN13: 9781101870327
• ISBN10: 110187032X
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2018-03-27
• Publisher: Pantheon

Summary

A groundbreaking book about how ancient DNA has profoundly changed our understanding of human history.
 
Geneticists like David Reich have made astounding advances in the field of genomics, which is proving to be as important as archeology, linguistics, and written records as a means to understand our ancestry. 
 
In Who We Are and How We Got Here, Reich allows readers to discover how the human genome provides not only all the information a human embryo needs to develop but also the hidden story of our species. Reich delves into how the genomic revolution is transforming our understanding of modern humans and how DNA studies reveal deep inequalities among different populations, between the sexes, and among individuals. Provocatively, Reich’s book suggests that there might very well be biological differences among human populations but that these differences are unlikely to conform to common stereotypes.
 
Drawing upon revolutionary findings and unparalleled scientific studies, Who We Are and How We Got Here is a captivating glimpse into humankind—where we came from and what that says about our lives today.

Author Biography

DAVID REICH, Professor of Genetics at Harvard Medical School, and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator, is one of the world’s leading pioneers in analyzing ancient human DNA. In a 2015 article in Nature, he was named one of ten people who matter in all of the sciences for his contribution to transforming ancient DNA data "from niche pursuit to industrial process." Awards he has received include the Newcomb Cleveland Prize from the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the Dan David Prize in the Archaeological and Natural Sciences for his computational discovery of intermixing between Neanderthals and Homo sapiens.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments ix
Introduction xi
 
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