Who are we and how we got here. Reich D.

The origin of our species contains many secrets and riddles. And more recently, in our ideas about our own distant past, a real revolution occurred. David Reich, American geneticist, one of the main specialists in the field of studying the ancient DNA, in whose Harvard laboratory, more than half of the world -class data on ancient materials was received about the stunning discoveries regarding the emergence and development of a person. Many have probably heard about the theory of “from Africa”, according to which it was from there that our distant ancestors came, who gave the beginning of the entire species. The latest data obtained by the team of David Reich make significant adjustments to this theory. Moreover, it may turn out that Eurasia was no less bridgehead of human evolution than Africa.

This book is able to break many stereotypes, for example, the attitude to Neanderthals as a cruel semi -revolutionary one. The latest scientific data indicate that Neanderthals had their own unusually interesting culture and even jewelry, and the connection between Neanderthals and Cro-Magnons, the early representatives of modern man, was not something fantastic or exotic. Reich is popular and intelligibly talks about truly incredible discoveries that remained on the pages of specialized magazines in the form of graphs and formulas, and therefore did not reach a wide audience. Now this injustice is corrected.

In 2010, the first five genomes of ancient people were published: three Neanderthals, Denisov man and the Greenlander, who lived about 4 thousand years ago. Over the next few years, data on genomes of five more ancient people were published. And then there was a technological breakthrough, and the score went on thousands, and then for tens of thousands of genomes. A real revolution has occurred in historical genetics. And in the forefront of this revolution there was David Reich, in whose Harvard laboratory more than half of all world common -grade data was received on ancient materials. The usual picture of the world cracked at the seams, and the history of the emergence, development and resettlement of the ancient representatives of our species presented an incredible number of surprises. Alas, in most cases, all this remained in scientific journals and monographs with an incredible number of terms and numbers that are understandable only to a small group of specialists.

Raich’s book is designed to rectify the situation and convey the results of this scientific revolution to the widest audience. < /p>