Who We are and How we Got Here explores the history of the species by analyzing ancient DNA. The tools and statistical techniques are all new and as a consequence, this is quite a cutting edge book. The author is a professor of genetics at Harvard, and over the last decade has been working with applied mathematician Nick Patterson to analyze ancient DNA to understand our species ancient migrations as well as how genetic mixes occurred. The book introduces effectively revolutionary ideas to the fields of archaeology and anthropology which have historically had to rely on weaker more subjective inferences that, with new evidence, are seen to be more error prone. The author explores both human origins as well as the last 15k years where there is more substantial skeletal evidence to analyze. It is an impressive work with impressive breadth.
The book is split into three major sections, with the second being the most substantial/ The author starts with some quick biology and discusses the genome and the way in which it can be used to understand various relationships. The author also brings up the somewhat common knowledge notion of humanity coming from Africa to start the discussion of the human genome's origin. The author then spends the rest of the first part on the most ancient DNA samples that has been analyzed namely Neanderthal and Denisovan DNA and how traces of both of those pre-modern human species are partially embedded in large parts of today's population. The author then analyses many various cultures DNA today to infer the migratory patterns of various cultures as potential explanations for the current distribution of genome's proportion of various proto-human species. There is a lot of material in not a huge amount of pages so things are reasonably compactly outlined. The author then gets into the most substantiated parts of the book which are inspections of various ethnic groups DNA alongside ancestral sampled DNA. The author discusses India, various native American cultures with chapters on East Asia and Africa as well. The analysis is more complete for India and Native American populations as there has been better access to DNA samples but one learns that the caste system has preserved ancient DNA lines such that they are visible to analysis today. Furthermore there were effective two distinct people who made up most of the DNA mix of today and the proportions can be seen in caste divisions with Indo-European being of higher caste. For Native Americans one learns that there was an earlier crossing by early humans before the land bridge was fully formed and thus there were two ancient people who compose all of native North and South American people. Due to restrictions on exporting biological material in China, the techniques developed by the author and in the West have not been used and in Africa there has not been enough material to analyze yet to get as clear a picture as the author would like but one learns of the genetic diversity of Africa as well as the abundance of different sub-populations. The author finishes with an overview of the work and its repercussions. He spends a lot of time discussing the ethical implications of understanding our origins as well as the hesitancies of many academics to stomach the reality that the genome can highlight racial differences. This part of the book is readable but somewhat irrelevant to the major core which is to better understand human migration and mixing of the past rather than the ethical spillovers of reading the genome as a general exercise.
This is an impressive new field and the author communicates his results well. That being said each of the sections could be a several hundred page book so this being condensed leaves a lot of material out. There are many areas where the author states a statistical inference from some new test they have developed where the result does not follow directly from the previous statement so one has to just take it at face value. That is to the benefit of the reader but just indicative of much having to be left out to cover the ground. One can understand from reading this how the authors work is groundbreaking and will re-shape our understanding of ourselves over time.
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Reviews with images
Secrets of our species unlocked
An eye-opening read on the history of our species through ancient DNA.
Top reviews from other countries
Eric Burgess
Currently the best book on Ancient DNA, a fascinating read.
Reviewed in Canada on November 18, 2019Joaquin Carral Cuevas
Who We Are an How We Got Here
Reviewed in Mexico on October 10, 2018