Who We Are and How We Got Here: Ancient DNA and the New Science of the Human Past By David Reich

Written and narrated by Leigh Martinuzzi

In this book Geneticist David Reich takes us on a tour of ancient DNA with hopes to highlight a scientific perspective of who we are and how we got here. He does this by using the advances of science and research in the field of genomics, biological insight and the evolutionary mapping of human genomes.

At times his research complements what the studies of archaeology, linguistics and writing records have been able to provide in mapping out the evolution of humankind. At the same time, he reveals that the reasons for differences among races, sexes and individuals are not what we commonly believe. What they are calling a genomic revolution is transforming the way we understand modern humans.

The science, research and complexities of this work at times were a little over my head. It took me time to gain an understanding of the intricacies of genomes and DNA and how it all fits together. However, the format and flow allowed me to follow the journey of humankind from the early encounters with Neanderthals to genomic origins of East Asians. For the majority, I was left feeling amazed by the incredible history of humankind and how far we’ve come.

Beyond the science behind how genomes and DNA work I thoroughly enjoyed the journey and great migrations of our past ancestors. The breakthrough technology has allowed David and his team to examine hundreds of genomes from ancient humans. The study of ancient fossils has assisted them to map out when great migrations and splits of ancient groups occurred. For example, a 200,000-year-old fossil of a Neanderthal has been used to indicate a split from our ancient ancestry 600,000 years ago.

They have also discovered a previously unknown and extinct lineage of humans called the Denisovans who separated from Neanderthals over 400,000 years ago and lived somewhere between 48,000 and 60,000 years ago. The Denisovan fossils were found in the Denisova caves located to the south-west of Siberia. There is much more to the story covered in Reich’s book.

While it is fascinating to read about the great migrations and how the evolution of modern humans played out over hundreds of thousands of years, I think there is a deeper and more important message that results from Reich’s work. And that is that there is no racial purity or superiority of modern humans. The ability to analyse ancient and modern DNA has allowed the likes of Reich’s research to prove that we are all a mix of ancient ancestry with evidence of this being found in our DNA.

If you are interested in learning about where we’ve come from and how we got here – Reich’s work does a good job of that.

If this book sounds of interest you can purchase Who We Are and How We Got Here: Ancient DNA and the New Science of the Human Past here.

Please leave your thoughts, comments & questions below.

Peace, passion and purpose…

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