David Reich, Ph.D.
Professor
Department of Genetics
Harvard Medical School
Ancient DNA as a new instrument for studying human biology
Beginning in 2010, it became practical to sequence whole genomes from ancient humans, and to analyze the data to understand changes in biology over time. Since that time, the amount of ancient DNA data has increased at an extraordinary rate, with the number of samples with at least one-fold genome coverage being 5 in 2013, 18 in 2014, and 116 in 2015. I will begin by describing how present-day Europeans derive from a fusion highly divergent ancestral populations as different from each other as Europeans and East Asians. I will then summarize the history of modern humans in Europe over the approximately 45,000 years since they first arrived. I will next describe the spread of farming populations from the Near East over the last twelve thousands years. I will finally conclude by describing some of the insights about human biological change over time that have emerged from ancient DNA analysis.
