This was a good article. Its insights into the interlocked structure of scientific arbiters is most revealing. He mentions the subject of sample representativeness but does not examine it further.
There is over a century of intensive work in the mathematical theory of inductive statistics, which includes sampling. It is applied routinely in industrial quality control and in polling.
A representative sample is one in which every unit of the population being assessed has an equal probability of inclusion. This is what enables us to estimate the "margin of error" the probability that the sample is not representative of the population.
Treating whatever few bones or three skulls in this case, that survive as a true "representative sample" is fallacious. Underlying methodological problems are manifested in the great instability of conclusions drawn from the 1960s (ABO Blood group studies) until the present.
12
I happened to own and read David Reich's book, and I am familiar with his and other scientists' finding. Human genomes are compared to other genomes of domesticated plants and animal species acquired.
There is anxiety to publish because more data begets better science. Dr. Reich made his conclusions based on his data. For more nuanced picture, one needs to review more than one study. Furthermore, no data is analyzed in a vacuum but compared to all other available data, both published and unpublished.
As mentioned, Denisova genome was based on a single high quality sample. The published papers supplement each other and the story presented to the public emerges out of work of different labs.
None of this data even existed few years ago. Scientists are allowed to publish their findings, even if there are just a part of the whole picture.
P.S. CARTA Center for the Research and Training in Anthropogeny for updates from most up to date research.
.
6
Rather fascinating that we can deduce or origins going back hundreds of thousands of years. The same genomic analysis is used to deduce how the three great apes, humans, chimpanzees and bonobos split because of the Congo river, and became different species.
Oddly, the main difference is while the chimps are patriarchal, the males being in charge, the females run the family among bonobos. Another finding is that that humans have about 4% common DNA with each of the less advanced species, they have only about 3% in common.
The basic emotions and social dynamics of we three species are similar, but only humans have developed the conviction that it was supernatural powers, often called God, as in "In God We Trust" that has defined humans, and seems to put a cap on their common intellectual quest for understanding the amazing complexity of our origin.
7
Humans: one interbreeding species that produces fertile offspring.
2
I read Reich's latest book. I was excited by it, but then left uncomfortable for reasons I could not pin down. This article helped me pin down things that troubled me.
It is an excellent start, but claimed as too near a finish.
My own impression from much reading in the area is that complexity increases as we learn more. Anything that sweeps away complexity leaves me uneasy. We must have more respect for the people who came before, and lived whole complete lives for tens of thousands of years, going back thousands of generations to the beginning.
16
@Mark Thomason,
I second. Even if modern humans 'replaced' Neanderthals, it seemed to have taken tens of thousands of years from the first time they met until the last Neanderthal passed away. We easily forget how rare interaction must have been in their sparsely populated world. The arrival of one may not necessarily have caused the other's demise.
8
"He showed, for example, on the basis of contemporary genetic data, that modern Indians are in fact a product of two highly distinct groups, one that had been on the subcontinent for thousands of years and another that formed more recently."
This has been known to anyone who knows a history of South Asia - the admixture of Dravidians (in South India) and Aryans (migrated from Persian region 3-5 thousand years ago and now in North India). Of course, there's been huge internal migration, blurring the boundaries.
10
The academic world is full of bright, energetic people but they're not immune to pettiness or arrogance. Competition among research groups is healthy and productive, but ethics can be strained by scarce funding and the drive to publish.
It's also important to note that new, powerful investigative techniques can take over a particular research niche and upend disciplines where they suddenly have application. Ancient DNA analysis relies on sophisticated chemistry and statistical modeling, methods often beyond the ken of those reviewing its applied results.
Also, precision DNA analysis of old specimens still operates in a world where only rare serendipitous findings can be studied. Each specimen's context in terms of age and culture are integral to its interpretation, and the degree to which it is representative is often highly subjective.
Published findings from the current top DNA analysis labs are best considered precise but somewhat limited truths. The degree to which one sample can change or reinforce a paper speaks to this. With more study current results might generalize and become established on their own, or they may be substantially updated with further work.
All in all, it's still an exciting time. With these powerful techniques it feels like we can get much closer to the truth of how and when humans populations interacted, evolved, and migrated.
10
Congratulations, Gideon, on one of the best written and researched investigative science story I've seen in a long time, or maybe ever. As a fellow journalist, I stand it awe. Great work. Thank you.
26
This is an extraordinarily well researched and written story. A very complex subject! The article illustrates that "academics" is never just academics. Yes, a map would be helpful. I'd never thought about the implications of the Poly/Micro/Melanesian division that was taken for granted, at least 30 years ago, in museums like the Bishop in Honolulu.
20
You don't have to be an expert archaeologist to know that using 4 skulls to justify an entire new migration theory doesn't work. It may be correct but the conclusions are pre-mature just from a statistical perspective. Reich's aggressiveness to push it and dismiss everyone else sounds like someone in it for the publicity
20
The way I read this, it is stated as fact that the Aboriginal Taiwanese Lapita people did not resemble the present day ni Vanuatu in appearance. In other words, the Lapita people were not black people. what evidence supports this assertion? Some aboriginal/indigenous populations all over Asia to this present day (see Negritos/Aeta/Andamanese/Jarawa/Sentinelese, etc.) are black people. In Taiwan, oral history points, at the very least, to interactions, with black people. A Taipei Times article (http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/feat/archives/2004/11/27/2003212815) even states, regarding black people in East Asia, that “Chinese historians called them "black dwarfs" in the Three Kingdoms period (AD 220 to AD 280) and they were still to be found in China during the Qing dynasty (1644 to 1911). In Taiwan they were called the "Little Black People" and, apart from being diminutive, they were also said to be broad-nosed and dark-skinned with curly hair.”
12
Following up on my prior comment:
Another example of a lack in clarity arising the article's superficiality: "[T]he objecting reviewers noted that Reich’s inferences could have been skewed by what one of them called 'bias in the method' — the set of assumptions necessitated by his complex statistical models."
That's skating-rink writing. *What* assumptions? *How* did the statistical models require these assumptions?
No, we don't need to get into a level of depth or granularity that would require college-level courses in calculus and statistics. Just a sentence or two that summarized the relationship in lay terms.
16
Last follow-up re superficiality:
Reviewer 2 seems to me to have raised compelling arguments: That the 3 skulls whose DNA was tested "do not fit the bodies"; that they may have been buried much later; that one of the skulls was found inside a jar and others were "arrayed like a shield" over another skeleton's chest; and that they "were special in some way."
That strikes me as devastating. The criticism is essentially that Reich had based his conclusions on a skewed sample.
But Reich's response, as presented in the article, is just a series of conclusory statements: "We answered absolutely every question very robustly"; "This was a case where the reviewers were making egregious errors"; "These were problematic reviews."
What, specifically, were Reich's answers to the reviewers' questions? What were the alleged errors and what made the reviews "problematic"?
More specifically, how did Reich answer the argument that "skulls do not fit the bodies"?
In the next section, the article belatedly adds that "In Reich’s view, quibbles about which skull did or did not fit which skeleton in an ancient tropical cemetery in a land he had never visited were entirely beside the point. He was doing large-scale, broad-brush work, and it was up to the archaeologists to add their fine filigree of detail."
But that response still doesn't address Reviewer 2's point that Reich had based his conclusions on a skewed sample.
18
Last follow-up re superficiality:
Reviewer 2 seems to me to have raised compelling arguments: That the 3 skulls whose DNA was tested "do not fit the bodies"; that they may have been buried much later; that one of the skulls was found inside a jar and others were "arrayed like a shield" over another skeleton's chest; and that they "were special in some way."
That strikes me as devastating. The criticism is essentially that Reich had based his conclusions on a skewed sample.
But Reich's response, as presented in the article, is just a series of conclusory statements: "We answered absolutely every question very robustly"; "This was a case where the reviewers were making egregious errors"; "These were problematic reviews."
What, specifically, were Reich's answers to the reviewers' questions? What were the alleged errors? What made the reviews "problematic"?
More specifically, how did Reich answer the argument that "skulls do not fit the bodies"?
In the next section, the article belatedly adds that "In Reich’s view, quibbles about which skull did or did not fit which skeleton in an ancient tropical cemetery in a land he had never visited were entirely beside the point. He was doing large-scale, broad-brush work, and it was up to the archaeologists to add their fine filigree of detail."
But that response still doesn't address Reviewer 2's point that Reich had based his conclusions on a skewed sample.
5
Aa accompanying, simple map would have been a nice addition to this fine story.
28
Science has long established that people have an in-group/out group bias. Its why people discriminate. It is evolutionary psychology, genetically based biased. Humans are tribal. The environment has a very limited capacity to feed hunter gatherer groups, so they often engage in tribal conflict over scarce resources. Even chimps engage in tribal conflict. Its one reason the politically correct diversity ideology is flawed.
3
@steve "It's one reason the politically correct diversity ideology is flawed."
Tsk tsk
Exclusive behavior, superiority-striving, and predatory behavior may all be genetically mediated, but so is curiosity, care-giving and altruism.
As sentient animals, we are responsible for identifying pre-conscious, innate behaviors and modifying them rationally to encourage individual and group resilience, cooperation and health.
Conscientious inclusiveness is creatively cooperative, therefore humane, constructive,ethical. Reactionary exclusiveness is competitive, divisive, relatively destructive and can be ruthlessly inhumane. Why be unconsciously enslaved to the latter? Are you justifying racial, ethnic discrimination? Condemning universal human rights, peaceful coexistence? These ideals are frequently thwarted by our cognitive flaws, but they are a dignified and longed-for human potential.
12
@steve "It's one reason the politically correct diversity ideology is flawed."
Heaven help us!
Exclusive behavior, superiority-striving, and predatory behavior may all be genetically mediated, but so is curiosity, care-giving and altruism.
As sentient animals, we are responsible for identifying pre-conscious, innate behaviors and modifying them rationally to encourage individual and group resilience, cooperation and health.
Conscientious inclusiveness is creatively cooperative, therefore humane, constructive,ethical. Reactionary exclusiveness is competitive, divisive, relatively destructive and can be ruthlessly inhumane. Why be unconsciously enslaved to the latter? Are you justifying racial, ethnic discrimination? Condemning universal human rights, peaceful coexistence? These ideals are frequently thwarted by our cognitive flaws, but they are a dignified and longed-for human potential.
2
@steve
Or maybe humans WERE tribal, and those who prefer to cling to primitive tribalism and chimp-like behavior, rationalizing their choices and attempting to gaslight the rest of us by issuing self-serving declarations that "that's just the way it is," should not be in positions of power or decision-making.
13
I think the author is missing something in the response from Nature. I'm an academic, and to me the response
> “In the light of these various comments,” an editor wrote to the reviewers, “we have declined publication of this study.”
does not, in fact, indicate rejection of the paper for publication; instead it indicates that the paper will not be published as is, but leaves open the possibility of revision.
I have often seen this form of words in cases where the decision is "revise and resubmit". A typical response I have see would be something like
"I am rejecting this manuscript [because reasons...][. If you can address these concerns in a revision, I will consider that revision for publication".
11
Humans are an apex predator and predators being territorial - We are where we are because we displaced those who were here before. We stay where we are because nobody has displaced us, not that they haven't tried a time or two...with the minutia 'of being human' providing many shades of gray to it all.
8
Not only was this article fascinating and thorough, the writer has a beautiful turn of phrase and writing voice, a rare find these days.
16
The only consideration that should ever be given to scientific studies, is if they are accurate or not. The social ramifications, or essentially, whoever’s feelings are hurt, shouldn’t matter or in any way influence the findings.
My issue with this article, is that it more worried about a new method proving something that isn’t politically correct to believe.
We live in a time where the truth is attacked in the name of social justice. Eventually the truth will win. But you’re going to have a lot of people who are wholly unprepared for it.
17
@Vinny if only "accuracy" was a straight-forward as you make it sound. Can their DNA analysis be accurate but their conclusions not be? Yes. And that is what is up for debate.
24
As a geologist who was part of the new generation taught the field under the plate tectonics theory, I saw firsthand how difficult it was for some scientists to give up cherished models that they had built and defended as their life's work. Even as late as 1975 one UVA professor was interspersing "Alice in Wonderland" illustrations with his plate tectonics lectures. In graduate school I worked closely with an archaeologist. I learned that this softer (and less well-funded) science had even more bitter disagreements, which inevitability led to ugly personal attacks in reviews. Scientists, being people, are not quick to accept changing paradigms, especially of the type that threaten to overturn their body of work and, by extension, their livelihoods.
21
@Susang Especially when the new theories are flimsy and unreplicated by other researchers. In 40 years when meta studies show us more robust patterns, we'll know. Until then, the new scientists will take it on faith, and the old ones will shake their heads and rend their garments. Oh, the humanity.
3
This article sums up every problem that archaeology has as a discipline. The researchers drew sweeping conclusions from a convenience sample of three skulls. No technology makes it acceptable to trample on the basic principles of sampling. They might be right, they might be wrong, but they should be considerably more humble about their data. Moreover, the idea that a paper is "unrejectable," and Reich's apparent ability to persuade the editors of Nature that his paper is so, makes a mockery of peer review, the backbone of any science. It's ironic that no journal in any of the "softer" social sciences would have published a piece that made such claims based on obviously exploratory evidence.
45
Wait, I'm no expert on archaeology or genetics, but I thought it has been known or at least hypothesized for a long time a) that India was populated in two main stages (the Dravidians in the south were there first, the Indo-Aryans in the north came later) and b) that the original Indo-Europeans came out of the Central Asian steppe. Am I missing something?
13
Well the latest genetic, linguistic and textual research shows a much more complex picture. Genetic research shows that even Dravidians are a mix of Iranian agriculturists and original Indian natives called AASI (who also arrived from Africa somehow, their path is not clear), this mix is ASI (ancestral South Indian). The Indo-Aryans or Aryans (they referred to themselves as arya in their scriptures) came from Central Asia / Europe and mixed with the existing ASI mix to form ANI (ancestral North Indian). Indians today, including South indians such as myself or North Indians, are varying mixes of ASI and ANI. Genetically the point is, versus what was previously believed, no one is 'pure' anything. Culturally too, based on textual evidence as well, even religious beliefs and language originally brought by the aryans have been heavily influenced / modified / transformed by interaction and admixture with the local peoples. Finally, what is still not clear is the level of the role played by the people of the Indus Valley Civilization which had already declined (for reasons unknown) by the time the Indo-Aryans arrived but the latest research is starting to uncover that they, unsurprisingly, may have also had a heavy influence on aryan beliefs and culture.
23
@Sachin
However, we should not forget that modern humans emerged in East Africa. There may have been admixtures of other related populations after early humans left Africa.
But everyone outside Africa ultimately came from there -- question is only of timing.
3
Konstantinos, I am so in agreement with your assessment of this article. I for one am not interested in whether or what the researcher uses to draw on his office wall, and as for eating a "sweating neon papaya"... I felt I was lured into this article with a promise of novel information and little was forthcoming in the end. Far too much unnecessary detail to be useful and very unscientific.
19
The article is a great read. While reading this article a nagging question kept coming back to me.
It appears to me that the very basis of the results published by these labs is some source of ancient DNA. These things are rare. So is there an independent way to verify that the raw data that comes from genetic analysis is indeed correct? p-hacking isn't new and in the absence of independent data perhaps makes it easier.
Since there are papers getting published in Nature which use 4 independent data points (as cited in the article) I would assume reproducibility of the results should be of some interest.
14
Journals like Nature are interested in publishing original findings and discoveries that will dramatically influence our thinking.
Providing evidence for a finding of new quality may take only one sample. For example, providing evidence for a hitherto unknown human species took only one bone. By contrast, providing evidence of new quantities, like displacement of one people by another, demands results from more than one location.
What if other expeditions find burial sites on adjacent islands the bones from which provide genomes that don't fit Dr. Reich's theory of displacement?
When do we call evidence sufficient to prove one or the other hypothesis? Displacement might have happened on some islands and admixture on others.
The answers when to call it one or the other may remain probabilistic - which is never as reassuring as certainty - and in the eye of the beholder. We may hope that Dr. Reich's claims will stimulate more research into the matter, and perhaps that is exactly what Nature intended.
16
Have watched dozens of documentaries an read books to date on this topic and this article still made it confusing for me. Simple things are explained in an overly complicated way.
What I find even more weird about it is how it kind of presents the notion that hindoeuropeans originated from the Caucasus area was first shown in Reich’s work. Hasn’t that theory been around for many decades, if not a century, and Reich’s findings just validate it? Isn’t that why people of white European descent have as far as I personally can remember referred to as Caucasian?
What is so new in this article and why do super simple things have to be made more complex and so floral. Jeez.
26
@Konstantinos the term 'Caucasian' was invented by Blumenbach who wrote "Caucasian variety – I have taken the name of this variety from Mount Caucasus, both because its neighborhood, and especially its southern slope, produces the most beautiful race of men." Just google Caucasian. All European languages except two are part of the IndoEuropean language family. Regardless of the claims of this article/s, IndoEuropean demonstrates a language connection between a large segment of humans from prehistoric times. Rather than demonstrate 'whiteness,' IndoEuropean demonstrates 'brownness' in the sense that the Indian subcontinent shares language roots with Central Europe. If modern Europeans descended from migrations westwards out of Central Asia, their languages represent this clearly. I fail to understand why the Times article mentions linguists but does not reference any of their findings.
As for the science described in this article, there seem to be many different ethical transgressions involving these new 'findings.' So we should take note but reserve our conclusions while more science is done.
7
Thank you, Mr. Lewis-Kraus, and NYT, for this excellent, well-written piece. In this new era, when facts are dismissed as “fake news,” it’s critical that the public can trust that leading scientific journals, e.g. “Nature,” adhere to the principles of the scientific method, stringent research methods, and strict peer-review standards. Far more important than any scientific article’s conclusion, our very democratic institutions are at stake.
9
This was an absolute great read! one of the best articles I've read in quite a while.
The style and form of writing itself was engaging and fit well with the entire piece.
WELL DONE!!
7
While some did not have the patience to finish (or had other issues) I enjoyed the over the writer shoulder perspective and when needed bird’s eye view of this fascinating topic(s). The writer was not asked to do a scholarly article (as far as I know) but to find out the what how who why when and where, with the depth and breadth as possible. I felt like I was with the writer.
I think it is important to understand the human dimension of science research, including the sometimes questionable motives. It is also important to consider the ethics of research, and I am glad an effort was made to talk with people who live there.
I should note that my daughter is a scientist, has been published and assists with scientific writing. I have some awareness of the political aspects of publishing and for that matter research. Not a pretty sight.
[Not that anyone gives a darn but I wish I had grown up to be a writer for NYT, what a privilege to use skills to witness, learn and share with others, I hope the staff and contributors rememberer that).
18
Articles in scientific journals are for practicing scientists, none of whom will be surprised that a Letter to Nature turned out to be too simple and claimed too much. Nature and Science are short-format journals. This prohibits the space needed for thorough presentation and interpretation of strengths, weaknesses, and alternate interpretations. Publication in those journals means that the topic is important and the reported results are potentially important, but little more. That a follow-up study yielded a more complex result is completely normal, but it may not have been attempted without the earlier Nature paper to shoot at.
11
@Milo,
I must say to their defense that today both journals require the submission of substantial supplemental background material providing detailed in-depth information on what precisely was done.
6
@Milo True, the modern formats of Science and Nature preclude materials and methods, full synthesis and analysis and sometimes, alternative explanations. However that's true only in the printed versions, to condense and make possible publication in a reasonable number of pages. This is a reasonable concession enabling the broad coverage of science.
The online versions, however, include all of the above left out of the paper editions, all of which is available for those who seek to delve more deeply into an article. The paper editions also note how to access the "supplemental" information, charts, and details not shown in print.
The compromises in todays print versions of these two venerable publications is a fair trade off in leaving technical detail to be found online, but enhances greatly the number and variety of topics that they are enabled to bring to the public's attention. I applaud this compromise in the name of general scientific literacy, which is sorely lacking in much of the modern, and not so modern worlds.
Finally, both of these journals publish a litany of sister journals much more specific to the various scientific disciplines. Science, the American follower of the UK's, Nature, publishes five other related journals such as Science Immunology, plus two "Partner Journals," and is seeking more partners. In these subject-specific publications one will find more the expanded and elaborated types of articles of the more narrowly targeted journals.
3
I rather enjoyed this cautious interplay between the so-called hard science (genomics) and the hard-to-do science of anthropology. I was largely trained in the hard sciences myself. I think the genomics offers a very powerful tool where it can be applied, but the anthropologists are right in arguing for caution and rigor in the kinds of questions that are asked -- and I thought they raised some valid objections.
There are also the unmistakeable forces of industrialized science that present difficulties to those of us who would like to carve out our own niche outside the gargantuan machine.
19
A map or three with colored arrows explaining the proposed migrations with attached dates would have been immensely helpful.
Also for such a lengthy article, a few paragraphs explaining how the DNA was used to reach conclusions would have been nice. Did they compare genetic drift in a few well-studied proteins like hemoglobin, compare sequences that don't seem to encode data and thus have more variability than vital proteins, contrast the entire genomes?
If they could determine what antibodies these folks were producing then tracing the viruses, bacteria, and parasites they were exposed to might help improve our knowledge of these migrations.
24
"Backward ran the sentences until reeled the mind." Really, a simpler style would have served this editorial better. (Yes, it's an editorial.)
And a better film to cite here than Jurrassic Park would be Moneyball: Mathematical sophisticates using powerful algorithms crunch huge data sets to learn more, thereby eating the lunch of the theoreticians.
Let us hope that in the coming decades this process is repeated across the social sciences, which seem ripe for a more empirical, 'real science' correction.
12
@James Hair, Reich used a sample of three skulls. Sorry, that's exploratory data, regardless of whether genetic analysis is more "real" than social science.
10
THANK YOU.
Interesting subject. However the writing is just distracting. Yes it’s well written. It’s also overdone. Cut 1000 words and avoid sentences like “A faint aura of destiny seems to hover over Teouma Bay. It’s not so much the landscape, with its ravishing if boilerplate tropical splendor — banana and mango trees, coconut and pandanus palms, bougainvillea, the apprehensive trill of the gray-eared honeyeater — as it is the shape of the harbor itself, which betrays, in the midst of such organic profusion, an aspect of the unnatural”
Well written, yes. But distracting and not especially engrossing. Leave the artful wordplay to Conrad.
5
@BENNY B You are calling for a different article. This is the one presented to us. You either read the whole article, or abandon the effort if it is not your cup of tea. Your personal reactions to style and your opinion as to literary merit are not to the point of these comments.
I really don't need to know what these people look like. Totally irrelevant.
6
long, and interesting read.
if I had to do it all over again I might wait for the movie.
i'm thinking brad pitt and morgan freeman as the stars.....
4
so i've read this piece twice now. still a bit puzzled. let me see if i get this right - paleogenomics (which i thought was paleogenetics btw) is somewhat hampered in its current softer conclusions, for example south pacific paleoarchealogy?
one of the most profound / new deep spurs in current scientific enquiry is being deep-sixed in this august forum by dint of an early maybe tiny squabble?
i have to say i'm rather shocked at this meaningless attack. has the nyt become so topsy turvy? it seems, yes ...
mssrs svaabo reich hurst et al are revealing heretofore utterly hidden hundreds of thousands of yrs old hominid / homo sapien explanation, more and more precisley where & how we came. and the nyt would sit around & assail them?
do wonders never cease - ?
8
I enjoyed the article and the quibbles it covered. I would lean to favor the gradualist interpretation of migration in the Pacific since the artifacts and linguistic evidence seems to weigh in. Also, the responses of the locals seem relaxed; they may have created a stamp but I doubt if there’ll be any secondary education texts citing any of the competing narratives. Frankly, see a lot of this as much ado about nothing at this point except for its impact on careers and notoriety. Can we be both killers and bonobos?
4
The appeal of Reich's simple, migration and replacement vision of human history is made clear by the multitude of comments on this article that are critical of its length and complexity. Simplify it for me! This is too much!
Bah. I enjoy the Magazine exactly because it continues to offer excellent long-form journalism in a media swamp of click bait and top ten lists. I have my own criticisms of the article - its depiction of the people of Vanuatu is a bit patronizing; its characterization of processual archaeology is flatly inaccurate - but as an archaeologist, I appreciate the author's look behind the scenes of ancient DNA labs and academic publishing. I happen to be reading Reich's book right now, and I have been a bit skeptical of some of his claims. But as Reich points out in the beginning of his book, Ancient DNA is still new science, and we can expect many of the fantastic findings of today to be re-written, revised, or over-turned with further research. History is always much more complicated (and interesting!) than it looks at first blush. Unfortunately, revisions to the simple, compelling narratives spun by pioneers like Reich rarely receive the attention heaped upon the original claims.
I see that the Times has offered a list of "five-takeaways" for readers who don't have the patience to work through the full story. Please, don't dumb it down for us. Some subjects require the narrative breadth and complexity of long-form journalism. That's why I read the Magazine.
22
There is a difference between complexity and prolixity.
Great writers illuminate material by choosing the most important information, and do not drown it in a sea of purple prose and needless verbiage. I for one do not ask the writer to dumb the material down -- I merely ask the writer to curate the material and not waste my time with frankly ludicrous descriptions like the one Gerry McAree quotes just below. "...perpetual squint of someone in perpetual communion..." indeed !
14
@Mac You make a reasonable stylistic request, and one that would make the article more appealing to me. As the comments show there are also those who appreciate the floral stylistics as sugar to help the medicine go down.
As I assume you appreciated, Jeremias's comment was not about stylistics. It was about the comments preferring a simpler version history. One that distorts through its simplicity.
2
@Jeremias Pink
Well, I confess to appreciating the "five takeaways" piece as it allowed me to get some idea of the points of the main piece without making the time commitment to reading the entire lengthy article at this point. (Maybe I will later, when I have completed a few of my more pressing "to dos.")
Anyhow, I may not be the most committed or sophisticated reader, but the "five takeaways" likely did not lower the level of my intelligence. It is an option or supplement that does no harm, in my opinion.
"He is tall and friendly, with a square head, short brown hair, a rancher’s open gait and the incessant squint of someone in perpetual communion with the near-hopeless complication of human affairs." I tried to get through this article, I really tried. My wife said that I had the incessant squint of someone in perpetual communion with the near-hopeless over use of adjectives.
28
@Gerry McAree If you couldn't finish it why submit a comment? Those who had interest in the subject matter to sustain them had the reward of a fascinating overview of both the data and the politics in the field. The article is a good illustration of the Popper dictum: "Science is sciencing."
1
"The people of contemporary Vanuatu are black" injects a jarring note of 19th century racism into this article.
6
A brilliant and ,delightfully, captivating verbose article by Mr Lewis -Krause on a very complex themed subject.
He turned the dry and statistical, egoic, explorations of the genetic researchers into a suspense filled, anthropological ,sleuth and mystery filled tale !
However,evaluating the success and accomplishments of human cultures and civilizations on their genetic makeup......is like evaluating Michalangelos statue of David.......on the quality of the marble he used to carve it !
6
I wonder how many people will stop reading this article about halfway through, and thus miss the actual most important part of the article? The writer seems to be employing something similar to the well-known literary device of "unreliable narrator" -- in which the reader is led astray by thinking someone is a hero and then discovering that is not the case. The writer should have employed much more of another literary device -- foreshadowing.
And as many have commented, this material could have been presented much more compactly.
11
Let’s be very careful here. It appears conclusions are being drawn based on DNA data that is likely statistically insignificant. How many samples? From where? What quality? What about control samples? Might there be sample reclassification?
Remember, we are only at the beginning of incorporating ancient DNA into our understanding of Homo sapiens evolution, let alone our homo cousins. This is tricky business. Only time and honest application of scientific methods will lead us to a more comprehensive understanding.
I now stand down from my soapbox.
17
Great article! I would just like to add that the Swedish scientist mentioned is not named Paabo. His name is Svante Pääbo.
9
An interesting and well-reasoned article, which has important things to say about the practice of archaeology today. But I must admit I cringed when I read references to «Svante Paabo» ; the good professor's surname is rather «Pääbo», taken from that of his Finnish mother. Surely the New York Times has the resources to allow article authors to utilse fonts which includes such variants of the Roman alphabet - after all it does print (translations of) articles in Chinese ?...
Henri
14
Science may be self-correcting. Scientific theory always remains mutable. Time will tell the validity of the claims Reich et al. made in their Nature paper. Unfortunately, this hope provides little consolation when the existential role of federal government research funding is considered. Neither Dr. Reich's laboratory nor the institute of his affiliation would exist without the federal government, notably the National Institutes of Health. Elite research universities spin off faculty to serve as NIH directors. A turnstile seems in action. Funders and funded trade chairs over the years. Take Dr. Varmus as one example. President Eisenhower's lament in his farewell address seems to have come to pass. No wonder grabbing the NIH directorates attention plays a supersized role in modern US research. Press releases and media interviews are now listed on CVs. Any principal investigator hoping for funding wishes the directors of the funding agencies know who they are and smile upon them which may explain the self-aggrandizement on display in this story.
8
The claims made by Reich should not be treated as a new paradigm shift even though he would very much like you to see it that way. If anything, his data should just be added to heap of other data acquired through field sampling and oral histories recorded by historians and linguists. Yes, we all share very similar DNA but, DNA acquired from a handful of individuals should not be used to extrapolate behaviors of entire populations composed of thousands of moving working individuals. There exists a possibility that these people were societal anomalies; extra special VIP travelers who may have perished on the island. The fact that we are not given a clear cut itinerary of these people means were should at the least be skeptical of the findings.
That being said, genomics research has turned up interesting findings. I recommend googling "genomics research lice ancient humans scholar". Ancient humans skull research is so boring so get to the meat of the hamburger already. Other more important genomics research is being done without the controversial tinge of racism and imperialism: the buzz topics of our day.
8
Science may be self-correcting. Scientific theory always remains mutable. Time will tell the validity of the claim's Reich et al. made in their Nature paper.
Unfortunately, this hope provides little consolation when the existential role of federal government research funding is considered. Neither Dr. Reich's laboratory nor the institute of his affiliation would exist without the federal government, notably the National Institutes of Health. Elite research universities spin off faculty to serve as NIH directors. A turnstile seems in action. Funders and funded trade chairs over the years. Take Dr. Varmus as one example. President Eisenhower's lament in his farewell address seems to have come to pass.
No wonder grabbing the NIH directorates attention plays a supersized role in modern US research. Press releases and media interviews are now listed on CVs. Any principal investigator hoping for funding wishes the directors of the funding agencies know who they are and smile upon them which may explain the self-aggrandizement on display in this story.
1
Generally, a good piece. This article about a scholarly topic would not get a passing grade in an academic setting. While very interesting, the digressions and the opinions of the author, especially concerning describing the physical characteristics of the subjects and intimating dastardly deeds afoot are unhelpful and bias the reader directly or subtly. I've read some of the comments, and many people were 'out' of the article before it concluded due to the writing, not the topic. A message without an effective messenger is unheard (and unread). It's a reminder for me that all authors consider if their voice is greater than the voice of the overall message. If so, edit until it is less biased, more intriguing and leaves the reader hungry for more. Doubting the author will read this, maybe I'm shouting into the wind to remind myself about my scholarly (and otherwise) writing going forward.
9
It’s not an academic article, though, so it shouldn’t be graded by those standards.
The act of unravelling the past (near to distant) of a group or groups of humans must utilize all viable disciplines available to resolve the question(s) applicable to the problem. That people doing the research can fall into camps of thought where they prioritize their methodology as the most revealing is not new to science (or many other human endeavors). That the economics of scientific funding and recognition is skewed towards established "well respected" institutions and labs is nothing new. This has lead to bizarre hoaxes. Like the effort to place the origin of humanity in white Western Europe because it was unimaginable to the people of the time to accept anything other than a white origin answer. Hence, Piltdown Man and the disappointment some felt with his demise At least with science there has been the ability to alter course based upon new information and newly established methods of measurement and comparison.
3
The beginning of the world in 4004 BC is not the calculation of a British scholar, it's an ancient Jewish tradition. All over Israel on historical markers are dates in the Jewish calendar, which puts year zero then.
2
@lgm. I thought it was Newton's calculation.
1
I liked very much the article which is long, almost a piece of literature on the field ready to be published in a book. The information is good enough to understand better the matter on litigation. Clearly migrations at that time (thousands of years past) was not like today's Syrian refugees moving to Europa (1 million right away in Germany creating some havoc). Furthermore, in those Islands... I wonder how many survived the travel to Easter Island. In Vanuatu there was the cultural attraction for sure, showing in the adoption of the language, plus the unavoidable search for commercial exchanges always strong among humans of any 'race'... a true motor to move around.
1
An interesting but somewhat inflated journalistic treatment of a new but exciting field. Academics, like all other social activities is plagued by ego-interference and political ambitions. The old "Publish or Perish," dictum still holds and does so in emerging fields where areas of controversy exit on steroids. Using a pernicious capitalist model as Lewis-Kraus does here confuses the issues in my view because the end result of scientific inquiry is always a better understanding of our surrounding cosmos. And, BTW, Svante Pääbo is Estonian, not Swedish.
3
I want to hear more about these 'proprietary' reagents. A few other readers of commented on this, but as a working biologist I'm a bit baffled by this. It's generally accepted that you have to share ANYTHING that goes into a peer reviewed study like these and by publishing an many journals you make a legally binding promise to do so. Failure to share these reagents should be grounds for blacklisting from any future publication.
Indeed see the following from Nature's editorial policies:
"An inherent principle of publication is that others should be able to replicate and build upon the authors' published claims. A condition of publication in a Nature Research journal is that authors are required to make materials, data, code, and associated protocols promptly available to readers without undue qualifications. Any restrictions on the availability of materials or information must be disclosed to the editors at the time of submission. Any restrictions must also be disclosed in the submitted manuscript.
After publication, readers who encounter refusal by the authors to comply with these policies should contact the chief editor of the journal. In cases where editors are unable to resolve a complaint, the journal may refer the matter to the authors' funding institution and/or publish a formal statement of correction, attached online to the publication, stating that readers have been unable to obtain necessary materials to replicate the findings."
8
@Sam,
I wondered about that, too. Who is the proprietor? Are reagents protected by patents? Are they forbiddingly costly for others to obtain? Does exclusion from access infringe on federal government rules if the research is funded by federal agencies?
3
@Sam... the problem here is the rather scarcity of the material to study, and also the rarity on the number of truly qualified people working in this extremely sharp field. Adventurous authors are not allowed.
3
@José Ramón Herrera,
how then do you find competent, somewhat impartial reviewers in such narrow field?
3
These days, there is huge pressure for scientists to publish articles and books that make sweeping claims (their best hope for fame and funding), and science journals like Nature are their more-or-less witting collaborators. This weakens the whole scientific enterprise, leading some researchers to oversimplify and overreach.
Is that what's happening here? The suspiciously fast review cycle at one journal, and the decision by another to overrule 2 of its 3 peer reviewers, suggest it might well be. Certainly, the dominance of 1 or 2 institutions over an entire field of research is unhealthy for sound science.
6
The account presented here is but a subset of a much older debate concerning the legitimacy of evidence of human history. Whether in the form of ancient texts copied from clay tablets, parchment or papyrus, cave paintings, recovered artifacts and remains, and oral histories, our quest for understanding of human history on earth is made through inferences of these bits of evidence. When people presume to paint a complete history of our time on earth, they are invariably conflicting with conclusions reached by other means. Try arguing with a fundamentalist about our origins to see what I mean.
9
All this comes to the essence of the who were are, our ego. That is based on our DNA and the former on our cultural anthropology. If we seek to define our ego, who are are, based on DNA and anthropogenetics, we make a fundamental error. Because, at least with today's technology, we can't define most of our personality traits, either collectively or individually with our genetic composition. The polygenic nature or our personalities defy current genetics. That is the domain of the anthropologist i.e. the what (is a human) is the geneticist, the why and who are the anthropologist.
4
The supposition that later migrations replaced or overtook older populations seems to be have credence among many scientists. It is unfortunate that David Reich, the author of "Who We Are and How We Got Here" was chosen to represent that view. His book says that ancient genome research supports the theory of races and has come under much criticism from the scientific community and others, and with good reason. I guess it was easier to interview him than doing the hard work to dig into the scientific debate.
1
@Larryp What? No migrations replacing earlier populations? How do you think the Indo-Europeans got to Europe, the Magyars to Hungary, the Turks to Turkey, the British to Australians?
4
Awesome. Thank you. Much more like this please. Less scolding about weight gains, bad household budgeting and pretty much everything in the "Smarter Living" Section, which reads like recycled Ann Landers columns.
10
At its roots, this story is as much about the gatekeepers as about the producers and their methodologies. Nature, Science, and other premier journals have been in an arms race over the last few decades to publish cutting-edge, paradigm rearranging studies, and one of the consequences has been an ever growing list of over-inflated claims and, sadly, retracted papers.
18
Agreed
2
What a great story it is! I think science itself also has to be recognized and conceptualized by human being.
2
Wow Gideon, What a great piece, I throughly enjoyed it. Thank you very much. Cheers, Simon.
5
This story chimes in so well with today's reality of big egos, fake news and facts.
I have reviewed manuscripts submitted to a number of scientific journals in the past. Some were proud to insist on a two-week turnaround. I have never heard of one week.
The publication of Dr. Reich's study as described in this story seems highly suspicious. Did lead author and journal editor trade favors or was there - in the words of our time - "no collusion"?
15
Science is not always carried out in an ivory tower, as I learned about 50 years ago in James Watson’s book, “The Double Helix”. But it is our best friend. It is far superior to mythology. Jesus presented us with a wonderful message regarding universal respect and compassion for all. How did it turn out? Religious wars, slavery, bigotry, and nonsense like creationism.
6
don't know if it was from DNA analysis - but I liked reading that a whole lot of Pacific Islander peoples - including New Zealand maori - could be traced back to origins in Taiwan !
2
Really into the weeds here. Perfect for professional researchers in this area, but a synopsis or summary would help at least this reader - who enjoys most science articles, but is not a professional in this arena.
5
For such an important, complex, and rapidly developing topic the New York Times could have selected any number of better qualified writers to interact with David Reich and to present this subject to its readership. Gideon Lewis-Kraus does a workmanlike job (but it could have been much better), particularly regarding (1) sample size and (2) the limitations and weaknesses of the peer review process that currently sometimes happens with many professional journals, particularly in medicine. Time will quickly address the former and the latter is not Reich's responsibility. However, Lewis-Kraus does a disservice to Reich and to the topic and to we readers by unnecessarily injecting some unwarranted dark overtones into this article. I vaguely sensed that Lewis-Kraus did not easily connect with Reich on a personal level and that Reich made little effort to take him by the hand and help him along the intellectual trail here, and all of that somewhat tinged Lewis-Kraus's presentation which. if true, is unfortunate all around.
Many excellent reader-comments have been submitted in response to this article, reflecting widespread and knowledgable interest. Rather than rely on Lewis-Kraus's reporting, I suggest that those keenly interested read Reich's excellent book (of course) and before doing so listen to his talk at the Seattle Town Hall last October 17th which is excellent and is available on YouTube.
9
@Kenneth E. MacWilliams To your claims that (a) time will tell on sample size and (b) Reich bears no responsibility for the peer review process, your viewpoint effectively absolves influential authors of almost any need to exercise self control in seeking to publicize potentially inflated claims and ram them through journals eager to publish scoops. Which is, perhaps, how they become influential in the first place.
6
I am fascinated by the topic but couldn't get through this loquacious article. There were way too many digressions, details and pedantic descriptions of scenery. Trim the fat and make it more readable to a general audience.
25
@Freddy I fear we have lost the patience for long articles that take delightful detours which enrich our understanding of complex topics. For me, this is the type of article that makes me continue subscribing.
8
It's NEVER as simple as one group "displacing" another group. If there's one thing we've learned over and over and over again, it's that our ancestors (a) got around, and (b) had sex, and (c) traded, and (d) fought. If anyone tries to suggest that human beings anywhere or anyplace ever eschewed any of the above, they're full of it.
18
I get the main points of it, but better editing and simplification of key points are needed for this article, as it is very complicated and not easy to follow.
12
Interesting that Reich's "new" vision of abrupt replacement by genetically unadmixed populations - he does not wish to call them races - mirrors a long Harvard tradition of championing racial formalism. There is no sense of variation or overlap, just "types." He might want to study the racial geography schemes of some of his illustrious Harvard forebearers like EA Hooton, Carlton Coon, and Stanley Garn. Must be something in the Charles River.
4
I think, reading the breadth of commentary, the multiple identified issues present there, and are a round 300 strong as I type, that we can answer the question the author posits in his title:
Yes. Old traps abound.
3
Wow, a well written story. I actually read the entire article. I still believe that we are shaped to a major extent by our DNA. Of course "humanity" is multifactorial. I would never think it is solely determined by DNA. In fact, even if a mix through a prolonged period of time is true, we still don't know how peaceful the transition was? Judged by human nature, I doubt it was peaceful at all. I wonder whether they celebrate "Thanksgiving" or not?
3
There needs to be a “metoo” movement for science and against these powerful labs, institutions, who control resources, people, ideas, and hinder scientific research because of their ego, selfish hidden agendas. Free thought and ideas need to flourish. we need to not let these powerful institutions destroy careers, black mail junior scientists, new employees, there is clearly some unethnical things going on, maybe more than that, intellectual theft from people who have to give up their findings to further science. It looks lik, there is a huge monopoly, cartel which is stiffling science, ideas. We need a metoo movement for this. Cheers
8
I don't know if it's my mood or it's the writer but I had to give up after reading only part one. When telling complex stories, go Hemingway or go home.
7
Typo extra word in ( ) "For example, it was (a) still a mystery that secondary Papuan migrants had replaced the original settlers but somehow adopted their Austronesian language."
1
Is it really necessary to report the Stuart Bedford has, ‘a square head?’ This is a nonsense detail that needlessly extends the length of an interesting article, and causes people like me, with limited concentration skills, to stop reading and watch re-runs of ‘Let’s Make a deal!’ I thank you...
10
@Armand Catenaro A whole lot of words to criticize the use of three words you deem excessive. Go watch Let's Make a Deal and leave the commenting to those with sufficiently extensive concentration skills actually to have read that on which we are commenting.
This simple...
Your individual genome – nature’s and humanity’s gift to you...
What you learn and discover and teach and inspire – your gift to humanity and nature...
Don’t ever think nature – or its genome – can’t learn from you or yours...
Though it often seems humanity is utterly incapable of such learning...
1
This article is so long-winded, that despite my keen interest in reading it and adding to my knowledge, I gave up on it half-way through.
11
@Larry N. Your loss.
1
Thanks you for this article although there are too much digressions which are perhaps intended to encourage a wider readership.
The only message here is pretty classic: science evolves together with the rest of society.
In this particular case of Vanuatu (I have only been to New Caledonia and Fiji), the point made by one Nature reviewer tells the truth: without knowing how the communities existed, the value of those specimen always remain as an estimate. In fact, the situation seems to me something like a contrast between the population notion of "random" (arbitrary) and the statistical notion of "random" (free of know biases). The first basic message that today's residents of Vanuatu (and other Pacific Islands) are not the first settlers was a big finding. More details are needed to relate that fact to the history of those islands. But we know they have no history in the form of written records of the past.
2
Science is a byproduct of a society engaged in capital production despite its seemingly autonomous role.
2
If we had scientists honest and humble enough to study "the spirits", we wouldn't have to dig up all these bodies and fight over who is right and who isn't.
The very fact that we feel compelled to do all this proves that the spirits are indeed not with us at all.
Thanks to the NYT and Mr. Lewis-Kraus for a great job of science reporting about a complicated issue and its meta aspects.
Compliments especially for some wonderful phrasing: "cutting- edge wounds", about the effect of new technology on weapons and corpses, is just one example.
6
David Reich seems to have some ego on him...”an unrejectable paper”...wow, really?!
27
He is only the head of a team that relies on the work of many and uses methods and processes already existent. Knowledge production is social in nature despite being privately appropriated
8
As I was reading Reich's comments on the negative Nature paper peer-review* and compared them to his opinion about the Current Biology reviews**, I couldn't help but notice that he reminded me of someone. In fact, when I run those quotes below in mind, I hear them spoken in that someone's voice.
*"there was not a single point in those Reviewer Two and Three comments that had any validity [...]. I felt that those reviews were not compelling reviews, didn’t make sense, didn’t take into account the actual evidence" [...]"
**“It was the fastest review we ever had,” he told me, “but it was actually a very high-quality review. It was better than most reviews we got. It was actually a serious review, a very serious review.”
25
@TLM Oh good, I'm not the only one. It's just a better-educated version of how the other someone speaks. But I do have to wonder if Lewis-Kraus did that on purpose to turn us against Reich.
3
@TLM Yes it sort of reminded me of Trump; which is doubtless very unfair to Reich.
3
Lewis-Kraus is a nice writer but in way over his head on this subject and his biases are not subtle. It is painfully obvious from the discussion of the revised paper which Nature accepted despite reservations from peer reviewers that Lewis-Kraus is not equipped to assess or explain, let alone referee, the dispute himself. The reportage is all innuendo, not a bit of substance. And reporting allegations such as "multiple researchers told me that it wasn't unusual for junior authors to be given just days to review a finished manuscript," without even referring to any specific instance or corroborative evidence, in the face of denials from Reich, Krause, and Paabo (who collectively, it's worth noting, also constitute "multiple researchers") gives away what the project is here. It's a sad one -- the depressingly pedestrian retort of the outmatched academic, whose last gasp is to try to connect his or her nemeses in some flimsy way to unsavory racists of the past. In the end, it's just an ad hominem argument, and an indirect and unfounded one at that.
If Reich is overconfident at times, that's to be expected of someone ambitious and successful. It creates opportunities for other scientists to come along and revise his findings and conclusions. But at least he's working with data and processes that can be retried and revised and verified or falsified. The whining from interpretive theorists whose own suppositions have been or are to be tossed is also to be expected.
34
@Philly Spartan,
"multiple researchers told me that it wasn't unusual for junior authors to be given just days to review a finished manuscript,"
II was glad the author did not claim that they were asked to just sign the copyright release form.
I gave my co-authors all time they wished to review our manuscripts before submission. I was happy to incorporate their input. When an authors' list reaches more than ten, I wonder how much each actually contributed to warrant co-authorship.
Moreover, when studies are as multidisciplinary as Reich's, how can he vouch for the accurate determination of the samples' origin, how can the anthropologists vouch for the accuracy of Reich's DNA methods? The results reported must be based on mutual trust. If they fall in dispute, there will be plenty finger pointing.
2
Progress in science thrives on diversity, pluralism and competition. If only three interdependent laboratories in this world can master the reconstruction and comparative analysis of ancient human genomes, more must be opened to widen the playing field on which results can be reproduced and new hypothesis can be tested.
I can't help to note in this compelling story that the laboratory rushing to publication on limited material appears the one on soft money.
Max Planck laboratories were originally modeled on the Rockefeller Institute in Manhattan. Perhaps this country needs more Rockefeller Institutes. Solid science needs secure funding.
17
Diversity, pluralism, and competition are features of capital and its development. Science only reflects it because it is byproduct
1
A rich and beautiful article. Thank you!
7
What an excellent discussion all these comments are! I would just like to add that we should beware of conflating studies in aDNA with our politics. To the angry people out there I say that these studies don’t say that some ancient people were crude (your ancestors) and others were smart (my ancestors). Now that is dangerous stuff! What we all should agree on is that the development of the knot, say, shows that there was immense intelligence long ago — no matter what particular DNA produced that knot.
11
Neo-Colonialism at it's finest. Western imperialism can even find its way into the study of ancient genetics? Also, let's not forget financial concerns, as I am sure that everyone has reasons to want to be associated with Harvard, a popular published author, and the cutting edge of technology, to the point that a paper can be reviewed and accepted in a week.
I think I'll join with the chief who said, "They're making it up."
9
If they make it up, it is not a conscious and deliberate process. Remember humans are only personifications of social relations. Even the so called imperialism is an expression of that social relation of production at a global level (objectified labor and living labor with the former, which includes science, dominating the latter)
2
A superbly informative article.
How sad that today's leftist, radical, militant, politically correct Democrats twist the scientific facts to fmake human history conform with their political views.
3
"He showed ... that modern Indians are in fact a product of two highly distinct groups, one that had been on the subcontinent for thousands of years and another that formed more recently."
Funny, I remember reading that very same thing a very long time ago in an already very old book. A book written by an Indian on the history of India. Nice to see that we're catching up.
12
Great piece to read intellectually and objectively in contrast to the quagmire in the First Brat WH and Madam Pelosi's House. The South Pacific are riddled with islands and great waters which prevent a genetic soup and population genetic interbreeding. Galapagos Island, Australia and New Zealand have distinct species, a classic Darwinian textbook. In my opinion, the peoples of China , Southeast Asia and the South Pacific Islands are descendants of the Denisovans. Population genetics would be worthwhile tool to prove it. This piece brings me back to the inhabitants of Andaman Islands. They must have unique genetic signature. A population genetic study at its best. If Darwin were alive today, he would be elated to describe and observe this people with his power of observation without our modern tools. He would observe and describe without political, religious agenda or a priori hypothesis. He had this mind set when the Beagle landed along the shore of Tierra Del Fuego of South America that described the apparent primitive Fuegians in December 17, 1832 (his first book "The Voyage of the Beagle" a prelude to "The Origins" of 1859).Take note, the inhabitant of the Andaman Island survived the great Indian Ocean tsunami of 2004 which devastated East Africa, India and Southeast Asia.
2
A serious problem with the Harvard group led by Prof. Reich stems from his willingness to make explicit racist generalizations that are unsupported by data.
I suggest he takes Charles Darwin's observation to heart, "It may be doubted whether any character can be named which is distinctive of a race and is constant" (The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex, John Murray, London, 1871).
8
“It was the fastest review we ever had,” he told me, “but it was actually a very high-quality review. It was better than most reviews we got. It was actually a serious review, a very serious review.” I would like to point to the structure of this statement and ask where else we presently seen this.
12
To Mr. Lewis-Kraus, thank you for this look into the process (sausage making). You are a very talented writer and researcher.
I would like to add a possible reason to the extinction of the original Taiwanese aboriginals/settlers demise: disease brought by the newer settlers. (I don't know if anyone else has brought this up, as I have not read all the comments.)
Or, could environmental factors, like drought, typhoons, some disaster cleared islands before the others arrived?
4
Should it not be concerning that so very much work is coming from one, two and maybe 3 labs? And the samples - a single finger bone, for example - are few, and the preparation cannot be redone.
I look forward to reading more, to see if any damaged DNA is reconstructed from (presumed) molecular residuals.
At the same time, the sensitivity of today's DNA analysis is positively mind boggling, and interpretation of the data is ingenious. Very nicely written. Thank you.
11
The production of knowledge irremediable reflects the underlying social structure whose needs it is subordinated to. Thus the monopolies of institutions that have accumulated means of knowledge production like the ones described in this article. Independent of the relative validity of this knowledge thus produced, the meaning it conveys follows a master signifier that rearranges retroactively the signifying chain (in our own era the genetic narrative displacing the socio historical one). However unconscious, this knowledge production has limitations and biases that need to recognized. We still live in a world of superpowers that reflect the world in their own image and needs. Those of the subjects they examine and who personify the subordinate are by need obliterated even though they make sense to them. Coconuts as means of subsistence, after all, are not illogical factors in the make up of their culture whatever their genetic ancestry. We cannot conceive modern humans apart from means of production and subsistence and their labor to procure them and make use of them.
3
The burning question I've had for decades is, HOW? Yes, all this ancestry stuff is interesting in it's own way, but I want to know HOW people set off from safe haven in small open boats to just head east, (why not north or south?) until they bumped into a dot of land with adequate water and food. And brought breeding pairs, obviously. WHY would anyone do such a thing, almost certain suicide? How many never made it to land?
I've read of mid nineteenth century sailors in the Pacific that arrived at a latitude that they knew had islands with water, but no idea of the longitude, navigation lacking that ability to determine it. They would sail back and forth at a given latitude until they bumped into the land. And that's with men many feet above the deck on the mast.
An aside: No mention was made that the oceans were, IIRC, correctly, some 400' feet lower than today due to the glaciers. So distances would have been less, and probably a lot of islands not in existence today for way stations.
Would this answer my question?
20
@Jus' Me, NYT -- There has been a lot of work done on how those navigator's did it. There is much data we no longer use, but that is quite available in a sailing canoe: wave patterns, cloud patterns, birds observed, even fish. In the right weather, an island is visible long before land is seen, as from the clouds that form over it or react to it. Land can also be smelled from the deep sea, if the wind is right.
Scientists have ridden with living navigators using these methods, and seen them work among those islands.
2
Culture v. the gene as a human determinative. Where in all this is epigenetics? I thought those genetic ‘switches’ were the confluence of nature and nurture- environment, culture, social, influence on gene expression, change.
Surely in this archeological v. geneticist battle for bones, the epigeneticists should weigh in?
6
Wow! What a great writer. The storytelling (beginning sections specifically) just sings with rich vivid language that is both interesting, evocative, and extraordinarily clear. I would go so far as to call it a delight! The academic and scientific sections don't maintain that same clarity or excitement and so the meaning of the main finding of this particular episode of ancient DNA research doesn't come into sharp focus the way the earlier passages do, but slowly dawns on the reader after we've worked our way through the academic dramas of publishing and research.
Side note: I did wonder why no one interviewed mentioned known practices from ancient times that might better explain why skulls which didn't belong to the bodies were buried with them. War trophies springs to mind. Claiming spiritual power (of the spirit of the deceased former owner of the skull) is another. It would tell a very different story than the one proposed by Reich and his colleagues.
Thanks for the great article!
17
@KM You are so right. Could have been lost and uninvited travelers/invaders who were killed by the "natives" and then included in a newly created fictional narrative. In this fictional narrative, they may have been immortalized as trophies and their inclusion in the resting place seen as some good omen or sign of the killers' supremacy in some fashion. Or maybe the writing in the article sent my imagination into overdrive to make sense of it at times.
It is fascinating how ideas exist and permeate societies and academic thought for decades or even centuries, and then some well-heeled "hero" or supposed "genius"comes along, plants a flag, and claims credit for "discovering" something that most of us suspected all along (but perhaps culturally we weren't prepared to accept as a society). Presumably because of an elite academic pedigree, where the best dogs in the show should manifest, accumulating Nature papers like gun notches. In this article the hero comes from the predictable Harvard-Oxford-MIT sphere (yawn) and cut his teeth fretting about how unrigorous was the social sciences (come on, seriously?). Fortunately I stuck through this chowder and got back to the good stuff later on. Over all the story is great, and excellently written, I just wish we could tell a science story without these kinds of fables sprinkled on top.
11
@John,
the somewhat reclusive, towering 'hero' in this story may be Svante Pääbo, from whom our local Harvard matador learned his mettle and who seemed to have held himself above the fray. I bet Dr. Pääbo will be the one nominated for the Prize one day.
5
This article has attempted to explore the findings of human DNA by elaborating on the fact that a significant majority of the world’s human ancient DNA has been produced by a small number of laboratories through finding cultural artifacts to analyze and exploring cultural landscapes to salvage any ancient remains. This also enhances the study of ethnobiology through scientific and laboratory-based studies of the intricate and dynamic relationships that define people through their ancient history. This is also a great opportunity to learn about native species and the role which they played in their respective ecosystems. Lastly, this article also opens the doors for taxonomy to continue providing accurate classifications of organisms/species that are either sill living or went extinct.
4
When working with Pacific people on human genetic studies, whether ancient or modern, it is very important for researchers to engage directly with the communities and listen to and understand the perspectives. This 'rounds out' the research, allowing the researcher to nuance conclusions and ultimately enhances research, leading to better outcomes both for the researcher and community.
10
@Tony Merriman
Would like to recommend the books of James C. Scott. "better outcomes for both researcher and community" - Scott is the go-to anthropologist and historian. He is over the moon brilliant and has changed my thinking in many ways.
6
The down side of paleontology is that only a tiny amount of remains become fossilized and it was then tempting to make sweeping generalizations from a few specimens. Even though the nature of DNA evidence naturally is more broad that a few bones, I cannot help but wonder what the inferences would be if there a thousand specimens instead only examples?
15
Nature basically blocked the french researcher who had the same information, theory before Harvard affliated Reich, then they gave him a never seen preferencial treatment, this should have been a huge scandal in itself. Potential intellectual theft also. But censorship is the way. Hope nyt is not part of this. Cheers.
21
Excellent article. Just want to flag a peripheral factual error. The Neanderthals did not vanish 40,000 years ago. They vanished around 30,000 years ago from most of Europe; the last of them stuck around in Spain until 28,000 years ago.
20
@Anusar Farooqui
Neanderthals didn't completely vanish, as many Europeans/Euro descent have a small percentage of Neanderthal genes. I have 2.5% myself. But pure Neanderthal does not exist anymore. Of course, these amazing genetic findings are not the last word. No one should make sweeping claims, as new information is always coming down the pike. Adjustments in theories and thinking will have to be made.
3
There is no such thing as the “final word” in science. Any scientific theory is subject to new data or new interpretations. That is what makes science superior to religious mythology.
6
This headline is stupid. There was and will be racist interpretations. There's also, hidden in the DNA, a lot that will inform our knowledge of humanity's prehistoric past. Let's not stick our heads in the ground, but when racism does rear it's ugly head (Nicholas Wade, James Watson...) let's call it out for the pseudo-science hocus pocus it is. But don't throw the baby out with the bath water.
10
Wonderful article. Not too long ago, human history was very short lived. Today, through DNA and other discoveries, we’re learning that human history goes back a very long time, and many very different human species.
On October 12th, 1955 the Urantia Book was released. This TOME talkes not about the history of humans, back in fact to the first 2 humans one million years ago, but also about the Universe itself. It deals with Science and Religion. Who we are, why we’re here and where we’re going. It’s an amazing book. You can download it for free by going to UrantiaFoundation.com, Truthbook.com and several other sites. Enjoy!
1
@Eric, There is only one human species; which is defined by our capability to interbreed with each other and produce little specimens that look and function like us, but hopefully better.
5
@Eric Cosh
Right................................. Another superstitious 4004 BC explanation. How can any modern person actually think there are answers to life in such word salad? (I've read snippets a friend has sent from time to time.)
3
Insightful, well written piece, and I appreciated the perfect ending words given by Sanhambath in the cave to sum it all up, "...spirits." I feel just as disappointed as those defunct on field work at this point, and see the ramifications of Reich's highly inconclusive paper places on those living on what is their homeland in threat to be overtaken by Asian commercial interests.
10
Oh pul-leeze! We're just barely headed into the dawn of investigating our genetic (blood) ties to ancient ancestors that 19th century (mostly) German scholars classified as sub-human beings. Give me a break. At least now we're beginning the journey and struggle of breaking free of those old stereotypes that so conveniently classified us into genres and "races." It's about darn time the Steve King way of thinking about the story of humans is eradicated once and for all from the face of the earth.
5
Jan N . This letter depresses me, in its bizarre irony.
The writers claims that "We're beginning the journey...of breaking free of these old stereotypes that so conveniently classified us into genres and races." .
-- Yet, Jan N is compelled to mention the nationality of "(mostly) German scholars." 'Mostly German' is not true, and beyond, that bigotry and hate have unfortunately been a part of the human experience forever.
NONE of the scientists described and quoted here could deny that conquest is found in our burial grounds and often marked in our genes
No reason to demonize Germans or anyone else.
-- I'm Jewish, btw.
3
I can't quite decipher the tone of this article ... is it lamenting that hard science is supplanting some theoretical knowledge that was more politically correct?
20
@John I believe the point is that the hard scientists are acting like the soft ones used to, by trying to put overly simplistic interpretations on their unquestionably much better data. I worry more about these very smart folks ego-driven-publish-first bickering and the commercial emphasis than I do about a resurgence of eugenics. Let's hope that as data accumulates, more educated conjectures will arise because it is mindblowingly interesting. We already know the bottom line and it's kind of boring: we are all the same.
29
Lovely response. Thank you.
@AMGOMG
We are all the same? Politically, it's a noble and convenient fiction. Scientifically, it's obvious poppycock. How could humans have evolved in the first place if they were all the same?
1
Apprehensive wheateater? Well really, this where I get off. How does the writer know that the bird was apprehensive, or even a wheateater? Maybe it was an attentive thrush, or a reluctant nuthatch, who knows? This is just another small example of the parlous state of poetry, and of literary criticism. Aprehensive, forsooth.
5
The verbosity of this article beggars belief, more than do any of its "conclusions." It should all be reduced to outline form. In other words, this article is written by someone on the inside, for readers on the inside.
But thank you for the introduction to the principle players in the game, anyway.
15
Lewis-Kraut's account of Reich's "discoveries" ignores what historians and linguists have known since the late-19th and early-20th centuries. When linguists discovered that Celtic, Germanic, Slavic, and Indo-Iranian languages were related, and formed a language family they named "Indo-European," the great quest to reconstruct and locate the origin of the mother tongue, "Proto-Indo-European, " took off. Finding cognates for birch trees and steppes in multiple languages, they eventually decided upon Ukraine, the steppes of Russia, and the valleys of the Caucasian mts. as the source of the language famiy--Reich simply confirms what we knew by the mid-20th century (hence the term "Caucasian" for whites). Historians and linguists also knew about the two major groups in the Indian Subcontinent: those who spoke languages of the Dravidian family in the south, and those who spoke languages of the Indo-Aryan subgroup of Indo-European in the north. Historians claimed that Sanskrit was the oldest written Indo-European language, leading the Nazis to claim to be "Aryans," the people who invaded and then "civilized" India; thus Hitler adopted the ancient Indian swastika as the Nazi symbol. Therefore, much of this knowledge is not new--shouldn't the Times have an historian on staff? The best new evidence learned from DNA is that the Melanesians, Micronesians, and Polynesians all began their voyages from the shores of Taiwan and south China, ending the speculation that led to Kon-Tiki, etc.
41
@Richard Romero - Surely you are joking right? This is exactly the type of "historical" nonsense the article is speaking *against.*
3
@Richard Romero, while on the Big Island 3 years ago, I asked a man "where were you told your people originated from?" He said China.
3
Interesting topic but incredibly long-winded telling of it. I'd bet an editor could have cut this article in half and kept the same content.
37
Short attention span? It was actually well written, although a little flowery in parts.
9
I thought this article was going to be illuminating about some new discovery. Alas, it was a looong convoluted story about scientific semantics.
Total bummer...
20
All profound truths began as blasphemy.
7
@Kurt C Workmaster: But not all blasphemy ends up as profound truth.
10
Another Brian Wansink in the making?....
2
If the populations had mixed prior to migration, then the samples at the heart of the study would also have been mixed. Since they weren't, it follows that there was at least two migrations, one earlier, Austronesian/Lapithan, and the other later, Melanesian/Papuan. That doesn't mean they had no prior admixture events, as they clearly had prior contact, but not wide-scale interbreeding.
9
This is a bit of a tropical storm in a coconut shell full of kava.
The article is long and wrong to focus almost exclusively on the drama of overly zealous scientist bent on bending the methodology in order to prove himself right - but then again that is where the drama is.
This is of course an oversimplification, but we really DO NOT learn from this long article what are the various other conclusions from other disciplines involved - archeology, paleontology, anthropology, everything and anything - that support or dispute the theory, other than just DNA testing.
But such is the state of humanity - the shiny new toy always gets the preferential treatment.
Did I say I’m disappointed to read this whole article only to learn about some bloated egos? Don’t we have enough of this in life as is?
41
@Dejan Kovacevic did you read the article? Nature blocked the french researcher’s paper which had the almost the same theory and data in it as this harvard reich person, and they allowed reich to publish with objections of peers. It is unheard of. This is a huge scandal but they cencored it till this time. Potential intellectual theft might be involved also. On top of that, she helped save his research with her contribution to his resarch. This kight even be since she is a woman, they feel, they can stral her ideas.. interesting. All you saw is a coconut? :)
9
Tropes and traps of the racist variety will someday be denatured by wisdom, common sense and science.
Hopefully it won’t be so far in the future that we’ll need dna from an earbone to confirm it.
6
This article seems to peg Reich as someone preaching racial purity and conquest, but I've read his book and there at least the argument is entirely the opposite. Every continent is waves of immigration and intermarriage. Perhaps in a particular paper, for a particular group, he published different results. But to paint Reich as some kind of closet racist preaching the Indo-European myths in a new scientific jargon, is deeply unfair. He's both Jewish, and... isn't the story of Jews endogamous marriage and some degree of cultural/linguistic continuity within mixed populations? So it seems populations have multiple trajectories, and Reich has tracked both in his research. Lewis-Kraus has perhaps relied on a faulty sampling method of his own and come to unrepresentative results.
27
"National coherence remains a work in progress." Boy, you could say THAT again!
2
It looks like the true summary of the article should be not "Archeologists worry that the papers are trafficking in some old, discredited ideas", but rather that they worry that the said ideas, which were "discredited" in large part for ideological reasons, turned out to be correct. Afterall, it's one thing to dismiss papers that claim Asian origins based on anthropological skull measurements - a process that itself invokes uneasy memories of Nazi quest for Aryan race - but it's a whole different situation when you deal with relatively well-understood scientific process that can be replicated and reanalized.
11
Neanderthal were white, blue eyed, blonde?
1
@northlander Most likely yes. And black, and olive skinned; definitely red hair. Over thousands of years, they adapted to conditions like we do.
1
Neanderthals came in a variety of colors to the same degree humans do. They did have light skin but the genetics weren’t the same as current Europeans and we didn’t get it from them. (We got straight hair, a locally adapted immune system, and several mental health issues.)
Europeans also didn’t evolve any of light skin, blue eyes and blonde hair at the same time - the eyes came first.
3
An excellent article which I'll be sharing with the research students I work with and anyone else who'll listen to try to demonstrate that politics is alive and well in the mythical Land of Academe!!
Useful on so many levels. Thanks again.
9
"Some archaeologists who had collaborated on the 2015 paper about Indo-European invasions withdrew their names to protest conclusions they saw as echoes of Kossinna..."
Translation: they saw results as contradicting their beliefs and ideologies, which meant that the results had to be wrong. In other words, science is religion to "some archeologists".
12
Please don't mistake me for someone supporting the Condo Salesman's efforts to build a wall, but I'm glad the Times is sharing Dr. Reich's findings with those of you who haven't read his book. Maybe the future will be different, but we now know that not only throughout history, but also throughout prehistory, population transfer leads to population change.
Lately our culture has been inundated with pronouncements that it is not legitimate, that it is nothing more than "White Supremacy." European accomplishments in the sciences, the arts, and in the establishment of more just and inclusive societies seem to indicate a different interpretation of our customs and values is easily justified.
Immigration is still a healthy component of an evolving system. But mass immigration is not, as the Lapita would have been able to tell us if only any of them still remained.
15
“European accomplishment in the sciences...” is to a significant degree built on the work of others, many of whom were non-European.
The sack of Baghdad by the Mongols and the destruction of the Library of Alexandria are several examples of where the aggregate level of human understanding/knowledge was substantially diminished in a very short period of time. In the case of the Mongol conquest of the Muslim world, this facilitated an accelerated degree of technical and artistic advancement in Europe relative to other societies.
An accurate understanding of European advancement and/or current status relative to their neighbors isn’t possible without also taking such matters into consideration.
5
@Green Tea:What does mass immigration/population transfer look like? Central american caravans? Refugee ships in the Mediterranean?
When you say it leads to population change, is that a bad or good thing? Is my Jewish Chinese daughter marrying an Irish potato famine survivor's grandson a population change?
I get (and greatly appreciate) that you are not a trump type bigot but I'm not sure what you are trying to say.
5
Hm.There is an interesting angle presented by one of the reviewers, that the Teouma skulls yielding DNA had received "special" burial treatment suggesting that they might have represented a minority.
If you have a highly stratified society (socially and genetically, say a ruling conqueror caste and a substratum class stemming from a vanquished indigenous population) where members of the two strata are buried in radically different ways that in turn strongly influence the degree to which the remains are preserved – then that might create the illusion that only one of these subpopulations actually existed at that specific time and place, if only paleogenetic data were relied upon.
30
@DanB: that is an interesting speculation, and it makes sense. I think trying to reconcile the German interpretation with Reichs' may end up with something like your idea.
1
Kava can be less mild if no eating is done for three hours both before and after consuming it.
4
A good review of an emerging science. Reich has used the results of ancient DNA to suggest a human history that is so thought provoking, to cause us all to think harder about the evolution and migration of our ancient ancestors.
5
It may be that Reich has overreached, or enjoys simplistic answers. And small sample sizes do undermine conclusions. But I've read his book, and his main message is the surprising mixtures of peoples in the deep past. And it sounds as though he's he's always looking for more samples to improve his ideas.
Is Jena's lab more thoughtful, circumspect, and therefore better? Maybe. But frankly if a little overreach brings a shake-up in prehistory studies, it will do some good. Reading about the past, you see writers contorting themselves to deny that changed cultures represent new peoples. It has the flavor of a ritual incantation.
That part of the past that is recorded demonstrates pretty clearly that people prefer killing over cooperating. And so, sadly, war and massacres are always good explanations of cultural change. Evidence to the contrary is welcome, sure, but without it, we are simply playing ostrich.
That hardly makes the replacing culture "better" though, and this part of the controversy boggles me. The replacing culture isn't better, it's simply more murderous!
Am I proud that my Euro-ancestors killed their way to world domination? No! Why would I be? Am I pleased that my far-distant farming ancestors may have killed others to steal their land? Let's hope I'm not a psycho like that. Or you.
Sigh. I hope only that people remember that big ideas can be necessary correctives, but they tend to have many mistakes, and only time will tell.
14
This article puts one more nail in the 'equivalence of all cultures' coffin which leftwing Social Science and Humanities academics and the MSM have been parroting for several decades. The very real differences between the races has been confirmed by medical research and is no longer a subject for debate.
5
So then you believe Watson has been wrongly maligned?
3
@George Klingbeil: Certainly James Watson was, and remains, wrongly maligned! He is not guilty of being wrong, but for having the audacity to speak the uncomfortable truth in an age of growing ignorance.
4
@John. I respect James Watson, but he has not produced truth when it comes to differences in intelligence. He has merely expressed doubt, as scientists often do. He should not be vilified, as Galileo was by the Catholic hierarchy. An important issue remains the definition of intelligence and how to measure it.
2
How are proprietary reagents allowed in a materials list in a peer reviewed journal? Oh wait, modern science is about as corrupt as modern politics. Those who have clout get published, those that don’t are rarely heard from. By clout I meant money, which begets clout, which begets more money. And the migration and conquer cycle goes on....
16
This is probably the best article I have seen on the topic. I was aware of the tensions in archeogenetics and the fast pace of discovery but was not of the extent of the divisions.
“Ancient DNA Reveals Massive Population Turnovers in the Humanities,” she suggested as a title, and proposed this as an abstract: “The aristocratic lab scientists arrived with their superior technology and displaced the pre-existing researchers and their primitive truth-implements and overcomplicated belief systems.”
10
I want to know what the ancient DNA revealed, how the work was done, why it changed existing ideas and what the critics have to say. It was difficult to find the answers to these questions in this article which seemed to me to be chock full of irrelevant information.
31
@Elizabeth Robinson
I would go to the journal Nature for those answers. This article is about the "sausage making": how these different disciplines (archeology, paleontology and newer scientific approaches) are butting up against each other. And some are not playing nice. It seems that the journal Nature is mesmerized by the new, sparkly genetics field. But, it is "early goings" in this new field. It is in its infancy. There is a great section on "Prehistory: A History" that explains how scholars were confronted by new information. Now, it seems too many are jumping on the genomics bandwagon to the exclusion of other disciplines, who have been banging away at these questions for many decades using the remnants of tools, pottery shards, and language.
As the DNA technology advances, there will be refinements to the "old data". I've already seen it in my DNA test results in just 2 years.
There are a couple of links in the article. Follow them and see if that answers your questions.
But, please, remember that these are just a few of the puzzle pieces that have been found so far. Next year, it could all change again.
9
@Elizabeth Robinson
Then read Reich's book - it's far superior to this muddled and overly long article.
3
The great thing about genetic data is that it is not subject to the whims of political correctness or the vanity of nationalism. It just IS what it IS. People will spin it of course, but it still gets us closer to the truth than archaeology alone ever could.
6
It was actually a geologist, James Hutton, who proved the antiquity of the world in the mid 1700s almost a hundred years earlier than the date given in the article.
8
@John Stroughair I never understood why creationeers got all excited about evolution when geology proves their stories just as impossible.
@AMGOMG
Also, Darwin gets a lot of flack from creationists for evolution when it was actually quite well established at the time, with others including Cuvier, Lamarck, Lyell, and of course Alfred Russel Wallace puzzling over it. Darwin's great contribution was natural selection, not evolution itself. With a credible theoretical mechanism established, the notion of evolution itself then exploded into public consciousness. Darwin's been taking the heat ever since.
1
The fundamental political point underlying this piece -- succinctly phrased in the summary as, "Does the country need to reimagine its origin story...?" -- is of a piece with the contemporary liberal obsession with the supposed conflict between narrative and scientific description. The author of this piece implicitly sides with the narrative woven by the people out of the fabric of their experience (contra the scientific account put forth by the scientists, and constructed from the same), and with good reason; to make clear the power imbalance between the subjects of modern rationality, and those who are forced to serve as its objects of inquiry. But this is a rather reductive argument, and one which places one in the unfortunate position of choosing between imperialistic neo-ethnography, and a mythological myopia, as expressed by the final quote in the piece. Science is not carried out in a vacuum; but that the project of science is fraught by the manifold historical horrors carried out in its name, does not necessarily imply that the proper route is to abandon reason and to fall back on ancient tropes. "Myth is already enlightenment, and enlightenment reverts to mythology." -- Adorno and Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment. The point being, let us not accept the 'objectivity' of swashbuckling archaeologists-cum-oppressors, nor the 'subjective experience' against which they are typically counterposed. Both are insufficient for a proper understanding of our world.
9
I found this article deeply disappointing and more than a little ridiculous. Scientists are people and people can disagree. This is especially true when scientists are trained differently or come to a shared problem from differing backgrounds. To paint such disagreements as a vague conspiracy with racist overtones does science a disservice.
The section about journal publication was especially off the mark. Peer review is often amateurish, performed by junior scientists with time on their hands, and peer reviews can be influenced by professional jealousy. Journal editors are free to ignore a peer reviewer and some editors actually know more than the reviewer does. Papers are often published over the objection of a reviewer, if a review is seen as biased or bungled.
There is a fascinating story here, but it was not told well.
18
@R. Grant Steen unbelivable, nature blocked french researcher’s paper which was supposed to be published before reich and then they allowe him to publish wothput peer review, actually against the peers, so potentially there might be a theft of intellectual data here. And she is the one whi saved one of his research paper. So it looks like she has better knowledge than him and she does not get the credit since nature and harvard lab are doing some unethical things, maybe more.. it is so funny how two can read the same thing and people ignore the facts. That is convenient for them. No wonder civil right did not come sooner.
3
All academia is rife with journals wielding outsized power and, as one professor recently remarked, long threads of nepotism, favoritism, ego massaging and insider politicking. But the smoke-filled rooms are precisely the point of this piece: science (in many ways functioning like a modern branch of theology) may be marketed as Truth, but it is fabricated by humans, just as the gods were - and via personal incentives for the makings and breakings of personal career trajectories. Us recently minted PhDs are a dime a dozen in all fields and advancement requires Faustian bargains. It's not merely about Vanuatu or prehistory or the modern academic version of Silicon Valley's 'move fast and break things' -ethos (paleogenomics): it's about how real people are simultaneously products and changers of their environments, especially when such environments are teeming with perverse incentives and insider politics masquerading as Truth. And good journalism demonstrates these ancient foibles alive and well in 'the-here-and-now,' even as they purport to inform us solely about 'the-there-and-then.'
21
I'm always weary of scientists making prescriptions before his/her conclusion is clearly established. Such prescriptions are not only irresponsible, such conclusions almost invariably turns out to be wrong for whatever reasons. And here we have, Reich making a sweeping conclusion from his tiny sample size, and at the same time writing the NYT op-ed piece prescribing how to deal with genetic inequalities.
4
Nature (the journal) is notorious in many fields of science for publishing splashy results with little regard to their validity. If it appears likely to attract press attention, it is likely to be published; if less newsworthy, regardless of intrinsic merit, it likely won't even be sent out for review.
I know nothing about anthropology or genetics, but in my own field of astronomy it recently published a paper claiming that the interstellar asteroid `Oumuamua is actually a gas-emitting comet rather than a rocky asteroid. There are at least three independent lines of argument, one published in a leading journal and the other two submitted, that this result is evidently suspect and likely wrong.
12
I am a scientist with a strong liberal arts undergrad (Columbia) education. Nevertheless, I find this super round about scientific reporting super annoying even thought the topic is very interesting. Is it supposed to make the story more accessible?
11
When a pathologist follows in detail the processes whereby a cancer spreads and ultimately kills its host, the justification is that this knowledge will eventually help other patients. Not so with anthropology. There is but one patient, the Earth, and the human cancer has spread and begun to destroy all tissues in the biosphere. Our energies and funds would be better spent combating overpopulation, wasteful consumption, short-termism and callous official disregard for the environment. After all, as a cancer we have one special feature: we know that in killing the host we kill ourselves.
6
Found the Cliff Notes version on the West Hunter blog:
"Taiwanese were the original settlers, while Melanesians invaded later, conquered, and killed off most of the local men. Confirmed by ancient DNA."
12
there is some irony that the genetic theory of migrating and displacing hoards is behaving toward anthropologists exactly as the genetic theory predicts.
the peer review issues described are an unavoidable problem in scientific work. the remedy is to interpret all claims with care and evidence. but if control of your samples is an issue, there's a legal instrument called a contractual agreement that can sort out all disputes in advance.
as for history: invasion and enslavement versus gradual immigration and trade relations are different mechanisms, not incompatible theories. even invaders bring with them black market merchants.
ancient european texts are clear that their history was warfare -- and warfare meant you kill the men, rape the women, enslave the children. that produces genetic mixture. that also explains 18th century slavery of africans, and the genetic mixing of white and black genetic histories -- and perhaps why the most recent nation founded by conquering invaders is also the nation most involved, over the last two centuries, in warfare both domestic and foreign. that doesn't seem a merely "cultural" influence, but rooted in something more stubborn.
[style notes: put "millenniums" alongside "datums" and "datas" in your list of solecisms; also, you accuse someone of being wrong, not of being right.]
8
Am impressed by the author's work in the article, which is interesting on several levels. What is flagged - but missed in most of the commentary - is a key point going to the core of this particular story. Frederique Valentin came to similar (the same?) conclusions earlier using a presumably larger data set from the same dig. Science (their reviewers?) rejected it, but the dazzle of the DNA clinched publication for the later submission despite real methodological questions. What accounts for the difference is a gee-whiz infatuation with DNA lab science - not the evidentiary value, nor its theoretical significance for understanding Pacific prehistory.
9
As a former science teacher I always find it interesting when criticism of scientific work is made through the reading of an article by a reporter. It happens so much on FB that I am compelled to admonish the post. The reporter is interpreting their works through his/her own filter. No one has even mentioned that they have read David Reich's book. I did read it last summer and found his ideas and explanations compelling. Is it the last word on the subject? Of course not.
10
Amazing article that reminds me of why I'm a Times subscriber. Thus said, in the last paragraphs the author seems to imply that maybe we shouldn't know and publish the historical truth because it can be misused. I'm sorry, but hiding information for fear of manipulation never has been a good idea.
5
Science is supposed to be the pursuit of truth. Although the hateful or unscrupulous may spin science to suit their agendas, we must not only accept science, but value it as 'a candle in the dark.' Without it, or even worse, to censor it would be short-sighted and dangerous to all.
2
@Jon. Fortunately, science is self correcting, unlike religion.
3
Parsimony in scientific method as gold standard for explanation is overrated, especially outside the narrow field of physical sciences.
1
I’m thinking ancient bones must be hard to come by, but 3 skulls from the same location does seem quite a small sample size to characterize the entire prehistory of a whole region.
Imagine sampling the DNA of 3 nearby people (perhaps a family) in the United States and then using that to characterize the whole country... it doesn’t make sense to me, but maybe I’m missing something?
17
@A. Professional Statistician
No, you're not missing anything; you've pointed directly to the problem as I see it. If the new science of genomics wants to operate within the field of archaeology, it cannot ignore the extremely fragmented nature of the data. The discipline of archaeology has consumed years, generations in fact, in accumulating sparse pieces of bone, flakes of stone, and shards of pottery in an effort to organize and catalog them, and ultimately interpret human behavior from them. In this effort, the context of the data is all-important; the mere fact of a bone's existence means little without considering where it was found (a fact,) and how it came to be there (an interpretation.) Genomics is just a new layer of interpretation, and it must give due weight to prior, and more fundamental, archaeological and historic results. Those results, despite the dedication of years and years of work, still represent a very small percentage of the past. Genomics cannot overcome that fact.
17
Science produces results which seem non-PC, humanities scholars grumble about science they do not understand. What was the point of this article?
6
“It was the fastest review we ever had,” he told me, “but it was actually a very high-quality review. It was better than most reviews we got. It was actually a serious review, a very serious review.”
Gee, that statement sounds like it came from another cultural revisionist who is in the news a lot these days.
Also: three to four Nature pubs per year? That would be a red flag in most academic departments I've worked in.
17
A welcome article. Having read Reich's book and this article I come away with the opinion that Reich and others are elitists pillaging process and ethics in their race to be first. At times, Reich sounds narcissistic and familiar: “It was the fastest review we ever had,” he told me, “but it was actually a very high-quality review. It was better than most reviews we got. It was actually a serious review, a very serious review.” Who does that sound like? Reich and his ilk are taking us down a new path that is no more regulated, thoughtful, or scientifically scaleable than an previous one. Reich seems not to understand the point of archeology, and doesn't care about social and cultural history.
16
As an academic myself, I’m generally highly suspicious of those celebrity scholars who make sweeping claims and try to authoritatively brand their genius as part of some paradigm shift. Scholars are specialists in what we *don’t* know. When grand “disruptive” claims also coincide with very large sums of (private) institutional investments, the skepticism is especially warranted.
And for those that think there is some separation between science and politics, I’m sorry to break it to you: there is none.
Of course, comments like mine and articles like these can be weaponized (as they often are) to critique academe for being too conservative and hegemonic (if you’re a lefty), too out of touch and radical (if you’re a rightwinger) but ultimately such critiques underscore the political nature and politicization of science. It has always been this way.
13
Fascinating stuff. It's disheartening that Archeologists and Anthropologists with big egos and colonial attitudes eating their own is an old story. Look up Frank Hibben and Sandia Man. Maybe they should start by carefully listening to the people they're studying.
1
Interesting article. I've picked up Reich's book and it is nearing the top of my reading pile. Some thoughts:
The idea that modern Europe's ancestors poured of out the Caucasus may seem like a new idea, but it's a very old one. It's the reason we are called Caucasians.
Having Indigenous family members, I find the idea that groups successively displace older ones is an historical norm a sad one.
And, if you're doing 'large-scale, broad-brush work,' then you're likely missing a lot of subtler details that might lead to better informed results.
11
As humans, our attempts to legitimize our claims to a piece of land or island reminds me so much of an ant's scent trail: it's real and left by the preceding ant, but ultimately it fades. What is left is the landscape that supported those ants and all ants that preceded and followed that one and all other ants that ever were.
In our scramble for newer and newer technologies, all too often used to establish and legitimize our standing as individuals and peoples, we are wise to remember that we, like the ant, depend on and have evolved from the landscapes where we live, and whether it is a scent trail or a technology, the way we treat the land and life around us will determine our ultimate standing and our allegiances should honor that ultimate truth regardless of our economic, cultural, ethnic and genetic pedigrees.
6
I have eagerly followed the riveting findings of Paabo, Krause and Reich in journals and in countless youtube videos of their lectures. My graduate degrees are not in archaeology or genetics, however, so I haven't been able to be such a critical reviewer of their work as I should have been. I am grateful to this author for presenting such a coherent, incisive piece as this with all its complex moving parts and participants. Excellent work and good reminder to look carefully before jumping on the fan-wagon.
19
As the article points out, in our sociable and hierarchical species, reason and justice often take the back seat when faced with prestige, power and possibly old friendships.
I wish the article had presented better portraits of the citizens of Vanuatu. Two Western researchers had well-lit carefully done photographic portraits, but the citizens of Vanuatu were never shown in close shots with skillful lighting that revealed their features. This strategy made the researchers seem so immensely much more powerful and important. Granted, it is an article mostly about the research, but since the article touched on sensitivities to race and ethnicity, it seems thoughtless at best.
22
As a linguist at UT Austin ten years ago, I painfully learned how much anthropological and linguistic research continues operating under the colonialist and uniquely unethical mindsets of some white Anglo US academics. For instance, the star linguistic anthropology students coerced indigenous people into providing data by preventing the distribution of vaccines in communities threatened by outside diseases; I can only imagine that those students held to the US notion that health care is a privilege of the wealthy rather than a human right. If the review boards had known, these students would not have been awarded PhDs for their heartless greed.
The few indigenous students in my department repeatedly pointed out that even when the results of research are shared with indigenous communities, the research is often conducted on them rather than with or by them. This way, an academic can keep the professional profits to himself, without sharing any benefits with the community and without sharing any of the power to direct the research performed on indigenous people.
17
@A Hammick Denying vaccines sounds like a serious crime to me. Have you told the police? How exactly did they do that?
3
@A Hammick great points. I noticed that too. Some of them are selfish, secretive, do not share, and always have hidden agendas. Is it in their genes? Or nurture? Parents neglect them and pushed them to study hard while they were kids? Maybe scientists (ironic)should do a research into why some phd, some ivy school kids are like this, maybe schools should treat them, nurture them. Besides that, notice the politicians, they have the same characteristics, most anyway, is it because to get on top, you have to be this, or is it in the dna? :))
2
A one-week turnaround for a peer-reviewed journal - and on a topic of this complexity - is unheard of. There was something else going on here, there is no doubt. As in Nature's decision to force its peer reviewers to accept revisions. When researchers become ego-driven in a system obsessed with 'stars' and sphashly findings, the entire field suffers, as this excellent piece of investigative journalism amply demonstrates. I work in an academic setting in Europe, and slow, incremental, fact-based research is valued here. The American star system hurts the entire field with its predictable emphasis on the 'Golden Boys' who inevitably scoop up all the headlines, attention, grant money, etc etc etc., with hard-working younger or lesser-known researchers left out in the cold.
100
@person
Well said. Unfortunately the American academic research culture has been bastardized to a degree by its winner-take-all economic culture in which "stars" get rich and everyone else sucks the hind. No wonder the rest of the civilized world loathes the current popular culture in the US.
7
person: No star system in EU? Kind of surprising. How do you keep them out? I (not an academic) thought human ego and greed were widely distributed geographically, culturally and professionally. Maybe you are formulating a theory based on limited evidence.
2
@AMGOMG,
European academic salaries are commonly not paid from research grants. Therefore success in Nature and Science is no prerequisite to their salaries and thus less existential.
9
I truly feel for the independant researchers and museums. This seems somehow like the academic equivalent of trying to hold out against Amazon.
20
I cant figure out from the article what the fuss is about. If the lapita made epic journeys to settle the islands and were replaced by a people of a different DNA at a later stage, doesnt that mean the second wave of people made similarly epic journeys? It doesnt seem to belittle the achievements of the ancestors of the island's current inhabitants one bit. This was something that nagged me throughout the reading of this article.
35
@Dave
I had the exact same thought. I wish this had been addressed. It would have made following this whole saga a bit easier. From what I can suss out from the article and the comments, it's the idea of conquest being the agent of population change (Reich's hypothesis) rather than gradual replacement, with the implication being that the later Papuan ancestors were violent conquerors. That's one interpretation of the limited DNA evidence. Isn't another that the island was completely depopulated at some point, and then later repopulated peacefully by the Papuans? Lots to chew on.
1
@Dave
Most people only know the names of the Apollo 11 crew, even though the other missions were just as dangerous. It's our nature?
1
Very interesting and in depth report that I really enjoyed. I can't really add to the comments below but I would say that I think that there may be a problem in the process of publication of research and publication bias in a general way. Especially in my view the difficulty of getting negative results published.
8
Great journalism. The author works hard -- perhaps too hard -- to put a contemporary human face on the science by featuring rivalries, jealousies, and fears that all of us can understand regardless of our scientific background. His impressive grasp of the context and methods of scientific research in the area, however, is exactly what is needed in reporting on many important issues of our day.
18
I have followed the story of analysis of first ancient mitochondrial DNA and then nuclear DNA from the early reports of Wilson.
I see no conflict between classical descriptive archeology with radioactive carbon and now other isotopes to determine the approximate age of the specimens and the analysis of DNA to determine ancestry. They complement one another.
The rigor of the labs to prevent contamination of DNA and the sophistication of the math to make judgements is inspiring as are the advances in technology of the analytic process.
I guess I can understand how chemical analysis may have overturned some theories of linguists and archeologists about who we are and how we got there but that is the function of science.
And if nothing else it proved the falsehood that any of us our"pure blooded" anything. We are all mixtures.
21
This was a very long, detailed and interesting article and a credit to the author, but as soon as I read, early in the piece, that the sample on which Reich based his findings was from three skulls from the same site, I kept waiting for this to be commented on. The peer reviewers who objected to this were of course correct. To think that Reich has used data from only three individuals from the same burial site in the original article and extrapolated that to formulate a theory to cover the whole region is ludicrous, but to hear that he assumes superiority over others because his approach is "scientific" beggars belief. If an article was presented to any respected medical journal that had such a flawed methodology, it would never see the light of day. It doesn't matter how good the technology is if the premise is flawed.
I think that the board of Nature needs to have a look at the effectiveness of its peer review process under pressure, or its credibility will suffer.
201
Call me a critic of the critics. Perhaps this critic is correct, but does not the publication of this material in and by Nature follow the scientific process, however loosely? Placing a theory or a body evidence in the public arena for consumption and digestion by experts and laymen alike should elicit both praise for work done to date, and constructive criticism to encourage and guide future investigations. Denigrating Nature for publishing this material I view as unfair
24
@Chris: As a scientist, Ph.D Organic Chemistry, who during my doctoral studies tried to understand the latest findings then, about 1970, in Nature, I never could make sense of their reports. At the same time my doctoral professor, took a large bunch of us aside and taught us how to read the Journal of the American Chemical Society. His first recommendation was to read the intro and then the conclusions and finally carefully examine the experiment data section. In each issue of JACS, the premier journal of the ACS, he pointed out that about 5 of the authors had failed to make their case. The process of editorial review is complicated by the problem to find reviewers that would take a professional view of an article they had agreed to review. Scientific inquiry is a long and difficult process which depends on real critical review over time. One must read regularly and thoroughly in ones field of interest and in some cases devise laboratory experiments to confirm someone else findings. From that point one can then carry out studies to extend previous work in a new direction. There are many examples in the chemical literature of experiments that were poorly described and not repeatable. Scientific studies are process of continuing thoughtful review and thorough attention to details.
53
@Jerry Sullivan
Well said! Publication is not proof; it is proposing an idea. If ideas are not published they cannot be discussed. Exciting ideas (with evidence) should be published in top journals.
27
There are times when a story is best told in first person, and this is one of them. This is a fascinating story, told by an exceptionally good writer. Thank you.
35
The true villains here are not the scientists, but the "prestigious journals" like Nature (or as I like to call them "the tabloids"). That is the journals which perpetuate the sensationalist approach to communication of scientific knowledge at the expense of rigour, integrity and fairness. Those journals hold a huge amount of power and they often wield that power in an arbitrary manner, as is evidenced by the outrageous examples of clear peer review abuses given in this article. When (not) getting into Nature can make or break anyone's whole career, the scientists are well attuned to what requisites a potential Nature paper must possess, with a sensational claim being the most desired attribute. That skews their approach to the whole scientific endeavour - they focus on looking for such sensational results and may subconsciously (and as we know often even purposefully) tailor their results and evidence to fit Nature-worthy conclusions. The journals enable them by publishing half-baked results even over reasonable objections by reviewers. So the high number of retracted papers in Nature or Science should not surprise anyone.
65
One thing that has been a thorn in my side for decades is the practice of archeologists to speculate wildly on origins and migrations based on each new discovery. Is it possible though that we may be falling victim to the same temptations with this new approach? Is it possible now to discard the speculation because of the DNA evidence? I can imagine two groups working independently in the archipelago and the earlier people leaving the new people alone based on agreements or defeat or religious belief but can a few bones really tell the whole story? So many years bring so many changes- I like a bit of mystery in my history.
10
@Jonathan Swenekaf
DNA evidence can tell you not that 'Livingston was here' but that he died here. Why he came, what he did, where else he went you will never know at least not from his DNA sample. So while path braking and a new toy this is not a DNA-acea. Its just a tool. We will need HG Wells to solve the final mysteries. What conclusions will future 'archaeologists draw from finding Amelia Earhart's DNA in the Pacific?
3
@robert brusca -- We'll know more if we find his wife and children. In some cases, we already have.
This is an excellent article that explains a complex series of events, one that has repeated itself in one form or another in archaeology and other cross-disciplinary science very likely since the beginning of time.
I enjoyed the layman's perspective. It is very difficult to explain to people how even "hard science" such as DNA extraction, "enrichment" (the author should have asked how that works), and analysis - is as beholden to funding, fame, and what certain people want to hear, as any other academy-based discipline. In general, it is fair to say that a wide range of hard science reports on archaeological material do not conform to expectations. It is also fair to say that in archaeology we do not collect anything like a lab-worthy statistical sample of charcoal or bone or residual organic material. The remains are too limited, the condition too poor, and, were it not archaeology doing the asking, no lab would attempt interpretations on this level from such a poor collection material.
The analysis - which includes heavy manipulation of both the samples themselves and the statistical data - is therefore everything. And it is ultimately shown to be false, if not falsified, as a result.
But archaeologists need the hard scientists. Hard science gets funded, archaeology and ethnography, so-called "soft sciences," do not. Likewise, the hard scientists need archaeology to provide the arena for what would otherwise be poor and uninteresting results.
30
I haven't gotten very far in yet but already found 3 erroneous or misleading descriptions of the scientific results, suggesting that the author is not really trying to be careful.
1. None of the data says that the steppe people "almost completely replaced" the previous hunter-gatherers and farmers of Europe. That claim doesn't even come close to being true outside northern Europe. As Reich describes in his book, a lot of current European ancestry goes back to the earlier groups. Has the author even read the book?
2. The claim that relatively recent groups such as the ANE were "utterly unlike" modern populations is at best misleading. There aren't any pure descendants of the ANE now, but there's no hint that if there were some they would strike us as outside the range of modern populations, some of whom diverged far earlier than the ANE dates.
3. The claim that the long history of peoples moving and merging makes claims of, e.g., biological Spanish heritage meaningless doesn't make sense. People can be biologically closely related to the people who now live in Spain. What needs to be thrown out are only the mystical ideas connecting that relation to some timeless connection with the land or imagined purity of descent.
I suspect more sloppiness awaits.
81
@Michael Weissman, looking at the spread of Indo-European languages across Europe, it does appear that the claim is generally true. Languages from Old German to Greek originated from the language of the Steppe.
2
@Michael Weissman Good points. Better editing was needed for laypersons such as myself.
1
@Michael Weissman I took issue with the exact same points you outline in your comment. Also egregious was the claim that "the ni-Vanuatu’s ancestors were not Lapita after all, but latecomers to an archipelago first settled by purely Asian expeditions."
My understanding is the average ni-Vanuatu individual derives 50% of their ancestry from Lapita-like populations. It seems like the author also is implying that Polynesians were light skinned and East Asian in appearance, when they more likely resemble aboriginal Taiwanese.
https://www.google.com/search?q=aboriginal+taiwanese&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjSndWyivffAhU-HTQIHbEGAT4Q_AUIDigB&biw=1136&bih=520&dpr=1.69
What a wonderful article. My thanks to the author.
As an older academic archaeologist, I welcome the aDNA revolution to help us resolve the issue of migrations, population admixtures, and the histories of people that I study. This new technology does add to our understanding of the human past. And I do find the enthusiasm of this new generation to be charmingly quaint as embodied in the line: "[we] can now answer a previously unresolvable question about the deep past: the question of what happened.”.
Yes, aDNA can answer questions about human migrations. What it can't answer are many more questions about what happened in the deep past like diet, population size, anthropogenic effects on the landscape, political structure, architectural techniques, mortality/morbidity, social collapse, demographics, ancient disease and pathogen evolution, climate and ecological shifts, plant and animal domestication, nature of conflict/peace, agricultural systems ... and the list goes on. For these topics, you need traditional scientific archaeology. This does not even include all that we learn from humanistic archaeology.
To suggest that migrations and genetic composition are the only thing that mattered in human history is the problem. Such a stance raises some troubling issues as mentioned in the article. These scientific questions of human genetics are indeed important, but not to the exclusion of everything else that makes of so marvelously human.
80
For generations the dominate academic culture told a just-so story about the past. Millions of people learned this story in Anthro 101 just like new Earth creationists learned their origin story in Sunday School.
This "pots not people", cultural exchange blah blah blah was more an artifact of political preferences in the Western academy than any knowledge of the past. If you are old enough I am sure you could remember the researchers who were pilloried for pointing out cannibalism among Southwest native Americans, except they were right.
The evidence of movement of peoples was manifest but denied due to fear of agreeing with a Nazi. It was dumb then but only ironclad proof could change peoples mind - and the academy will never forgive the people who proved them wrong.
Yet science marches on. One funeral at a time, as the saying goes.
2
@Ylem -- It does tell us about population size. I has suggestions about diet. It tells us some things about demographics.
It is not the one and only answer, but it has unique data that modifies what else we know, and adds a lot.
@Confusapitamus
But the point of the scientific process you describe, as I understand it, is that it does eventually lead to conclusions which we can be something very close to certain of.
This article seems to make a case for the dangers of declaring such certainties in the field of genetics, prematurely— as Reich may be inclined to do.
However, the author also seems to have a fundamental ambivalence about whether arriving at truly verifiable conclusions on this subject would be beneficial— as suggested by the conclusion of the article.
It is worth considering the concerns of all those depicted in this well written piece in a generous way.
10
Something seems to have happened 5 or 6 thousand years ago that made it possible for civilization to flourish. Writing, art, complex systems of political, cultural and economic organization, etc. And a human population that has grown to 7 billion from what, a few hundred thousand, before this all began. This makes me think that the possibility of of our civilization on this planet, where most people are living well beyond a subsistence level, is rare and fragile. We should try to prolong it.
18
One thing that bothered me in this article was the implication that aDNA is the single biggest breakthrough withing archaeology in the past few decades. Most archaeologists would agree that while the aDNA material might be a new avenue to walk along it is part of an increased ability to do big data analysis to come to new conclusions. Mostly fueled by the increase of computing power and an increased reliance of the archaeological community to share their findings.
The impulse to share seems to be one unfortunately absent within dr. Reich and the other labs. The mentioning of proprietary techniques and inaccessible databases while pushing for data retrieved by other researchers seems to imply a larger focus on the enrichment of self than that of human knowledge.
This presumption and avarice remind me that a Classicist once made to me: 'While Archaeology is wonderful to look at with all the newfangled ways, it'll take at least a century before I trust it'. This used to irritate me but I here see a clear example for what he meant. I won't see any real clear knowledge coming out of this research as long as personal investment is as high as it is now. Maybe after the passage of time has led to some democratization of the methodology, openness to share data and the retreat of some individuals will we be able to use the data with any certainty. Mr. Reich seems to have taken his restlessness into his research. Archaeologists have the patience to withstand that.
28
Hear, hear.
@Too Battered to Dig It seems like a completely unwarranted claim that Reich lab doesn't share data. AFAIK they normally put the data online for anyone to access once they publish. Random genetics bloggers commonly use Reich's data and Reich's analytics tools if you look around.
In part 2. of this article is stated that the challenges to the 4004 B.C. date for creation based on biblical interpretations were in 1859 from a geologist and Darwin. But this ignores the later 1892 calculation of Sir William Thomson (later Lord Kelvin) that the Earth was around 20-100 million years old. Thomson based his calculations on the assumption that the Earth started out as a molten ball of iron that had been cooling ever since. Based his temperature measurements made in mines, Thomson used mathematical based heat loss equations to come up with his Earth age estimate. It was after the discovery of radioactive decay in the early 20th century that it was determined that the age of the Earth was actually billions of years old. The best estimate today is 4.54±0.05 billion years old. Humans are only a mere speck in the Earth's history.
21
Fantastic read! What a marvelous overview of a complex and evolving science! I learned so much. Thanks NYT.
28
Fantastically useful and interesting overview of one of the most transformative methodological revolutions in the study of the past, aside from the author mistaking post-processual approaches to archaeology (which focus on particular inquiries into very local and culturally specific social dynamics, with a focus on individual interpretation and sensitivity to contemporary perspective) for "processual" approaches (which have focused since the rise of the "New Archaeology" on broad-scale, cross-cultural, comparative examinations of "big picture" issues such as the origins of agriculture on a global scale, the rise of the state, the dynamics of empires and social collapse). The implications of the aDNA revolution are profound and yet, as archaeologists, we have seen many great new methods create transformative, paradigm-shifting changes in the way we could explain patterns in the past...only to see those first fruits of new methods rot as the methods themselves became more refined over time and the complexities of the patterns underlying seemingly simple early answers became clear and their conclusions identified as "beginners' mistakes" by researchers who hadn't taken the holistic complexity of all the evidence available, not only their own (read aDNA), into account when building their models of the past.
19
There are known knowns, then there are known unknowns, finally there are the unknown unknowns. Those words once used to start a war are absolutely applicable to science. The excitement in science comes from discovering the unknown unknowns. Along the way they may be known unknowns, but once they are discovered they become known knowns until the whole theory is revised because of new technology. What it ultimately means is that there is no practical end so far to science and discovery and theories today may be gone tomorrow. Thats as it should be.
17
I love the Nytimes, but I despise popular science. I studied Anthropology in the early 1950s and almost everything I learned has been disputed or refuted. Please don't jump to conclusions. I continue to study genetics, historical linguistics, and paleo anthropology. I more I read, the fewer definite generalizations, I can make. Keep learning!
45
People migrated and mixed. That’s commonsense. The findings that there are two distinctive groups in India has been the understanding of majority of Indians for long. There were natives and others who looked different. Simple. In practical terms, it made no useful difference.
Creating a niche, delving in to it and deriving voluminous information is a pattern in the academic world. Lots of it useful and others where you wonder about value of all this information.
You can put any thing under an expensive electron microscope and describe it as long as you want. The question is, what’s the perspective?
12
@Vijay Pillai
Unfortunately it wasnt that simple in India. The differences in peoples was the basis of the caste system.
The original enslavement. Both mind and body. Still persists today.
Imagine if the original Polynesians were still living on Vanuatu when the Melanesians decide to stop by?
Or maybe they were. And aren't anymore for a very obvious reason.
I wonder what these scientists can infer about that possibility from those three skulls
1
I read Reich's book about 6 months ago and was struck by how new the field is (only 10 years) and how far-reaching his claims were. The book deals with many regions, mostly Europe and South Asia, and seeks to explain all that happened there. He tries to emphasize the need for biologists and archeologists to collaborate and respect each other and to avoid racist traps, so he is aware of the upset his work can cause. Nevertheless I suspect that in 10 more years the story will be much different.
The dissenting reviewers of the big Nature paper were making a statistical argument (big conclusions can't be drawn from small samples) but ancient DNA will probably always come in small samples so the field will have to develop other ways of arriving at an acceptable level of certainty.
54
@danarlington
Indeed, Dr. Reich's sample universe is small.
So was that of Luis and Walter alvarez when they discovered the Cretaceous–Paleogene boundary which defined the megafauna extinction.
So was that of the discovery of the Clovis point in NM which (erroneously) defined the population of the Americas through Beringia.
So was the discovery of the first Black Hole that Hawking predicted from Einstein's TOR.
In essence, all scientific discoveries are born from a small sample universe.
42
@Texexnv "So was the discovery of the first Black Hole that Hawking predicted from Einstein's TOR."
Nope. Black holes were predicted by Karl Schwarzschild from Einstein's general relativity, and the first one reasonably conclusively discovered was Cyg X-1 (and then it took over a dozen years of further observation and analysis to nail it down). What Hawking predicted about black holes has not been observed.
7
@Texexnv again, none sense. One theory deals with math, physics where a formula is a for,ula, you can prove it with calculations etc and it takes longer time to do that. other one, dna, humanity, society, (via statistics etc, so you need a big sample)
2
There are no pure 'people'. There probably never were. Humans came in multiple species and migration can never have been one way.
Static populations would be static for a long time. Until the rivers ran dry or the herds moved on. For that period, it is only natural that might have occassionally reached back to their previous point of origin.
What is missing in this article is the lot more interesting passage of the 'Melanesians' from possibly Africa. They have left traces of their people (and living people today) all the way from Madagascar to India to the Andamans to the Phillipines to Australia and Papua New Guinea, Fiji etc.
They have probably been sea-borne with no destination in mind since the early migrations out of Africa began. One of the original threads out of Africa. In a boat.
Europeans are as mixed as Americans are. More recent adaptations aside.
25
@banzai
I heartily agree that there are no pure people nor are there any pure species living now.
Stephen Jay Gould wrote extensively on what he called "punctuated equilibrium" wherein species (and people I suppose) went through eras, even epochs without any noticeable changes in the fossilized remains.
Then some cause would bring about rapid change over a very short time. The new species would then lapse from change until the process repeated itself.
9
@Texexnv
True. Until we came along with our caravans.
I have yet to see however, and no doubt there is some literature out there, about how adaptations make us different. Maybe not on the level of a species yet.
But logic suggests adaption marks the onset of the beginning of a new species.
What if humans never got civilized (and co-mingled as we have become now), how different would we become in a million years?
Interesting to think about.
5
These studies are important in understanding who we are, and how we evolved, but who we are today may be best summed up (and appropriate for the upcoming holiday) by Dr. King.
"We may have all come in different ships, but we are in the same boat now."
92
Very nice :)
2
This article reminds me that narrative is not solely the Petri dish of the humanities; that stories we tell ourselves to make sense of the observable world are not just tools of historians and priests and chroniclers of culture. Scientists tell stories too, sometimes with tidbits of data and evidence, interpreted and shaped, like stars in the night sky, into compelling figures that have meaning.
But in science, existing and revered stories can, eventually, be refuted and falsified. It takes time. No one likes to abandon a good story. But it can be done. And I suspect it will be done to these latest stories of human history. I've learned from my many decades as a scientist that I, and we as an intellectual species, really don't know as much about our world as we pretend to.
45
Among the things being illustrated by the work, this article, and the discussion here is the wondrous ability of people to find support for what they want to believe.
68
Ancient DNA has revealed so many things nobody could have imagined from Denisovian populations to Ancestrial North Eurasians, to Basal Europeans to the complex mixture of population in Europe and India as examples
Some of these were not even concepts 10 years ago
2
One could get prickly and note that the only thing that really matters regarding the human species is the reality of NOW.
What happened many years ago might be fascinating, but it does not mean anything for TODAY (other than "it" produced us).
Disclaimer: I am an MD, worship at the altar of modern science and its findings, and stand in awe of its practitioners and techniques.
15
@Bob, you express a perspective that is particularly valuable to people, perhaps like us, who live with the daily privilege of being at the top of the current status quo. For many peoples and communities around the world (and in our own neighborhoods) the ways that knowledge of the past – their own past – is produced and disseminated has direct importance in the present, whether by reaffirming political and legal rights to land, resources and sovereignty; by confirming, extending, and bringing to light stories of oppression or subjugation that dominant cultures or classes have tried to suppress; or (conversely) by having new visions of the past forced on them by others that may allow others to strip them of resources, rights, or identity. The altar of modern science has many shiny things to honor, but extending a love of the modern to a view that only the present matters is not only an unnecessary but also an anomalous philosophy. Understanding the past (the how, what, where, and when behind our current situation) is a necessary and important component of understanding who we are in the present...how the present has come to be...and how the ways we describe the present world may be just a "just-so" story that we tell for the benefit of our own privilege by ignoring, or sweeping aside, the truth of the past for our own benefit and convenience.
23
@Kevin Smith
Nicely said, albeit nebulous. For most humans understanding, much less knowing about, the past is irrelevant and totally out of thier ken. They are, by definition and by physics, involved with "the now", not "the then".
1
@Bob, I don't think so – you are wrong in every way when it comes to our identities. Every Jew knows about his or her past. Every Christian bases faith on 2,000-5,000 year old texts. Every Muslim on 1,300-5,000 year old texts. Every Buddhist on 2,500 year philosophies and texts; every Hindu on 3,500-2,500 year old texts. Every American lives and responds to a national identity 240 years old, set within a narrative that extends back nearly 400. Every African-American confronts aspects of identity that relate to families brought in bondage 360-150 years ago, and to a history of oppression that extends from that and to narratives that have tried to erase that through media and attempts to forget. Every Native American I have met has an identity and understanding of having had this continent as his or her home and birthright before European settlers arrived 500 years ago and fought to eliminate or remove them for the next 450. None of these people live in a world or identity that is entirely present, and they have all fought and died over injuries and memories and stories based on these past histories that define who they are today. We all do. Alaskan Inupiat, Yup'it, and Athabaskan communities were only allowed to keep those parcels of "their own land", after the 1970s, if they could show that there were archaeological sites of their ancestors on those specific parcels. The past matters and it matters in how we treat each other in the TODAY.
19
I had dna testing done. I received results that made sense. Then my sample was compared to a different population base. Completely different results came back. This tells me that dna studies should not be reported as fact, as it is constantly evolving, and dependent on comparisons.
31
@Grittenhouse
Data from consumer DNA testing is entirely different from what's described in this article. SNP-chips are not the same as sequencing.
27
@Grittenhouse don't compare commercial products with science. They are just there to get your money
3
@Grittenhouse The tests sold on the market are quite a different beast than the tests used for ancient DNA.
3
@Andrew,
We'll each be the judge of what we find interesting, thank you. I agree that the cognitive biases of previous centuries must be acknowledged, so they can be more easily avoided. This article offers a glimpse of how international scientific culture has managed such sources of error. IMHO it's up to David Reich's specialist peers not to let him get away with fooling himself. I'm pretty sure we haven't heard the last on this issue, which is really about differing time scales as much as anything. Like all of us,"Austronesian" and "Papuan" people have a shared ancestry, however many tens of thousands of years ago. There are lots of papers to be published filling in the details!
In any case, a great many people seem to want to know who their ancestors were, including those they share with everyone else. Their DNA can't always illuminate their unique historical circumstances, however. As we've seen, interpretations are open to challenge, especially as new data arrives. I'm for letting all disciplined scholarship proceed. It's better to know.
28
I'm curious if Reich would stand by his statement as emended, and if not why.
"Reich believes he has proved, to the contrary, that human history is marked not by stasis and purity but by movement and cross-pollination. People who live in a place today often bear no genetic resemblance to people who lived there thousands of years ago, so the idea that something in your blood makes you meaningfully Jewish is absurd."
20
@Christopher Buczek
Good point as we know that certain "ethnicities" are prone to certain diseases.
Many years ago already I was "taught" that the Egyptians who built the pyramids were not related to the Egyptians of today. That might well be an overstatement or not-- consider the poor Neanderthals.
@Christopher Buczek
You happened to choose one of the cultures (note, not necessarily a “country” or “region” as mentioned in the article, though) that has historically looked down upon any mixed marriages, even during the many exile events throughout history, so technically, Jewish DNA is far more homogenous than many other cultures or countries when analyzed on average. Therefore the genomes of those of Jewish descent likely match far more closely to the Jewish peoples of 3000 years ago than, for example, the genomes of those of Scottish or Irish descent match those of the residents of Scotland or Ireland 3000 years ago. This would hold true for any culture that has had a long history of actively discouraging intermarriage and has not been forced to interbreed. (Note however this is somewhat comparing apples and oranges because it’s a culture instead of a country/region, but just for discussion-sake)
But choose any country that exists today that is not relatively isolated, and you can be fairly certain that various migration events across borders (which have also fluctuated throughout history anyways) has been a common fact of history and that either “cross-pollinating” or total wipeout of prior peoples has occurred multiple times in the last 3000 years. It wasn’t anything new, just look at the “barbarian” migrations that attributes to the fall of the Roman Empire, it’s just that we now have hard science (genomic data) to back up these assertions.
3
Mr. Buczek, I think your revised statement would prove one of Mr Reich’s points. The Jews are a people that have migrated and brought their culture with them. They are not of a place. Mr. Reich is saying that this may be more true of all of our ancestors than we knew before.
3
"The further possibilities suggested by ancient DNA were awarded a special place in the public imagination by the 1993 release of Steven Spielberg’s “Jurassic Park.”
-Please, credit where due... Michael Crichton wrote the book
274
That’s fair, but this author chose the film. It likely had a wider audience, and therefore, a greater influence on “the public imagination.” So both choices are tenable. If it were not by Spielberg, would it have had that impact? Maybe, “Steven Spielberg’s film, Jurassic Park, based on Michael Crichton’s book,” would have been better, but it also belabors a minor point.
13
Yes, but the movie probably did more to put the idea into common discourse than the book.
3
Good article, interesting and well written, but author’s conspiratorial/political angel is unnecessary.
Simple story: A) First paper (Reich et al) makes important finding: Australasian came first, Melanesians likely replaced them. B) Second paper (Jena et al) confirms first paper and refines it: Australasian and Melanesians likely overlapped for several hundred years. C) Third papers quibbles with second. D) That’s how science works. Further work will figure out details. The rest is inside baseball/office politics.
Author’s effort to make into a big moral/political issue is somewhat interesting, but ultimately unnecessary and distracting.
310
@Bertram Braun distracting? This is about ethics and right and wrong, these 3 labs basically hindering scientific research and reich most likely used other people’ ideas more than he is admiting. I would like to speak to french researcher and hear her and also others who were discarded and used by these ‘top ‘ labs. It is huge scandal that nature also did not follow regular protocols about publishing and gave reich a free pass. While they rejected french researcher’s original paper, which was most likely written before reich’s paper. It was almost the same ideas presented.
17
Thank you for laying out the scientific narrative. That’s helpful. I also appreciate the author’s work, but I don’t find much of it distracting. Like Reich’s work, the author’s broader narrative makes this story accessible to a larger audience.
If the author followed early advice, essentially, “Technologists descend on field archaeologists and replace them and their primitive truth finding tools,” it might be “office politics or inside baseball.” The publication narrative leaves out the gravity of the dispute for people that place meaning in their inherited identity, like most of us.
Vanuatuans are not the only ones with vulnerable origin stories. What if we stole the Americas from relatives?
Suppose Native remains in America lack genetic distinction from European settlers. If it happened in Brazil, Bolsonoro could call natives squatters with scientific support.
More to the point, the author’s work addresses a basic problem of group identity. Can it survive a genetic test?
If scientists agree we came from Africa, paler folks mixed with Neanderthals, and Asian populations explored Oceania and the Americas first, should we put less stock in genetics when scrutinizing group identity? Can a tribe exist without being genetically distinct? Should a group have autonomy rights, even if it’s not genetically homogeneous?
I like how this article presents this tech but also the imperative of field work and knowing local people. The history reveals lessons. Thanks for publishing.
10
@Bertram Braun
This is not how science or the normal peer review process works. The article reveals that:
A) David Reich's lab and two others which share an academic pedigree are dominating the field of archaeology through proprietary control of cutting edge genomic techniques. Researchers often have to give up control over their work in order to get their samples analyzed. # this situation is creating a number of perverse incentives and conflicts of interest
B) Reich's Lab managed to get the Nature paper 'Genomic insights into the peopling of the Southwest Pacific' published despite it being rejected by 2 of 3 reviewers. #the peer review process failed here
C) Another paper 'Population Turnover in Remote Oceania Shortly after Initial Settlement' (2018) was accepted after a review period of just 1 week # another instance were the peer review process failed
I'll admit that much of this is inside baseball/office politics, but it also exemplifies a problematic trend. The specialized knowledge and capital costs of certain technologies and research techniques have resulted in a few labs having an enormous influence on their respective fields. And, the peer review process can be compromised.
40
The history of archaeology and paleontology is actually quite uniform, and highly instructive.
A new find is made. Large conclusions are drawn. When the next find is made, those conclusions are thrown out, and replaced with a new set. Which are thrown out with the next find.
This happens repeatedly, and is rather disturbing to anyone with actual training in statistics. Three skulls? You can honestly suggest we now understand the scenarios?
I must side, very strongly, with the reviewer who pointed out major problems in even claiming that these 3 skulls were representative of the others in the cemetery. The fact that they were the ones still containing workable DNA in itself suggests they were NOT like the majority, which did not.
Repeatedly we have grand conclusions drawn from utterly inadequate data. To some extent the "public" is responsible, since they do indeed love the grand news; to some extent the journalists, who know they are pandering to the public, and their publishers.
To some extent- it's the editors; who let this all happen. They are the individuals who have the power- not to shut down nifty news; but to seriously provide the counter arguments with real coverage. "The Papers" used to provide, in the days of Darwin, grand public debates on this sort of thing. It would be grand to have that happen again.
133
@Greenpa
That three skulls contained usable DNA and other did not suggests the workings of chance and probability, not that those three were essentially different. It doesn't rule out a difference, but chance normally produced that kind of result.
3
@Thomas Zaslavsky
Wouldn’t “the workings of chance and probability” also support the argument that those three skulls were different from all the other skulls and were not part of the original burial ground, especially since, unlike the others, there appeared to be no skeletons to which they belonged?
5
@Greenpa
What we see form time to time in academia in politics in policy-making is that a few are knighted by the 'profession' and allowed to draw conclusions under a different set of rules. Eventually this stops but only after harm has been done, In economics we listened to 'advice' on how our past system was 'close enough' to free trade' and now you almost NEVER hear that anymore. This is an all-too common approach - the designation of an all-knowing fair-haired 'boy'. It is a shameful expedient.
7
I suggest readers look up a documentary series by John Romer and his wife "The Story of Archaeology" it is a book and a 6 part series that explains the origins and development of modern archaeology up to the date it was completed in 2000.
he does a very good job of explaining the intricacies of how personal prejudices and desires first steered thought down dead ended alleys and eventually came to the current model being disrupted here by new tech and good ol human ego. :)
The man is a gem who should be more well known that Attenborough who is also a gem.
10
"With each new generation, random mutations, like misspellings, are introduced into a population"
The true story isn't that much more complicated and really should be understood in this age where it's entered into the art of political misinformation. Individual mutations are a small part of tracing genealogies. What matters is the tracks of differences across a single chromosome. This is a haplotype. Rare cross overs between chromosome pairs of egg and sperm mix these haplotypes and mark that moment in time. It's the haplotypes that are most often being traced, not individual base pairs.
Science writing matters. I'm available for hire. Actually desperate for a job.
50
@Mike Holloway
I'm afraid the author now appears even less well informed.
2
Consider my comment a letter of recommendation.
4
Information on developments in history, migration, DNA findings, humankind -- fascinating. Information on academic squabbling -- boring.
14
@Henry Kissinger's statement: "Academic quarrels are so vicious because the stakes are so small."
5
Traditional archaeologists have constantly put their own desires and biases into these so called established timelines. They look at remarkable feats of engineering (Pyramids, Tiwanaku to name a few) and ascribe their construction to primitive peoples without the ability to use metals just to preserve the narrative of technological progression. This is madness. The engineering required to build the Pyramids is so advanced that we could not build them today. Find a single civil engineer that would even attempt that. Rather than say that advanced humans (civilizations) have been around longer (say, prior to the last ice age) and had significant technology in the past, the answer we are given is that they just did it. And literate, scientific people accept this. It boggles my mind. Now that more structures are being found off coasts and in Turkey (Goebecki Tepi) that predate the current timeline, we might get some better answers. The very idea that we have been around as a modern species for 50-100k years and only decided in the past 6000-10000 years to suddenly stop being hunters and start building magnificent cities in the middle east (literally the simplified explanation from archaeologists) is farcical. I can only hope that all of these "misplaced" artifacts (the term exists because they don't fit the "accepted" model) will eventually force a new conclusion. Much of this DNA work appears to be supporting a new conclusion as well.
13
@Steve
I don't know why you think that estimates of the chronological sequence between human adaptations to the Pleistocene and the following spread of agriculture in the early Holocene is "farcical." There are thousands of radiocarbon samples and much other evidence to support the short interval between the two. Moreover, the rapid transition to agriculture has been confirmed in both the Old and New Worlds, as well as in other independent cases. Nor do I see why you think that evidence from Turkey (at Gobekli Tepe, Çatalhöyük, et al.) is evidence of some major but unknown dynamic. The late Stephen Jay Gould and other scholars made a persuasive case for the sudden appearance and rapid spread of both cultural elements and physical traits in plants and animals, including humans. The "standard model' of domestication and agriculture and the subsequent formation of culturally complex societies seems to account for that segment of the archaeological record quite well, despite some interesting outliers and unresolved issues.
42
@Steve Nice fantasy. Let's try a little reality. Old Kingdom Egypt when the pyramids were built used bronze. They were civilized: lived in cities, had written language, a government. Not "primitive". No one but you thinks they were primitive.
Yes it's true, it's only been about 10,000 years that humans have farmed. The archeology on this is quite definitive.
I'm quite certain you will continue to enjoy your fantasy but readers beware.
BTW if you're going to make a sweeping claim, "we couldn't build the pyramids today", you might want to cite some references. I don't doubt that a cvil engineer might find such a project daunting since it's not the kind of thing we do these days. Probably because there's no good reason to do so.
8
@SPQR
Are the pyramids Machu Pichu and many other ancient achievements simply 'interesting outliers' to you? I'd consider them major gaps in our knowledge that top-level professionals cannot explain so they ignore them or let them lie with an extremely poor and laughable explanation. What kind of science is that??
The author of this article, Gideon Lewis-Kraus, has overblown the controversies that do exist in this new science, and has recycled the plot line of a B- movie that involves villainous scientists (in white lab coats!) vs. sensitive humanists, who really care about feelings. If Reich had spent more time drinking Kava and playing tour-guide to this journalist, maybe he wouldn't have been painted as the villain in this piece. No matter, Svante Paabo, his trainees, and his contemporaries are providing immensely valuable new tools and data. We know a great deal more more about human prehistory than we did 10 years ago, owing to this work. Surely they won't get everything right on first pass. Why is that surprising? Why is that news? Academia is competitive. Peer review is adversarial. New methods and data create disruptions. This article provides some interesting historical and biographical context to these frictions and disruptions. But there is so much self-important posturing on display here. I can clearly understand why geneticists loathe to open their doors to journalists. Better to spend time on PCA analyses than being PC.
193
@D'nada None sense, he has shown us the facts and what is really going on here. Most likely these 3 labs are hindering science by stealing, suprssing, and blocking other scientists. Reich even used french researchers ideas to save hai research. Nature blocked her research paper so reich can publish his paper. This is a huge scandal and most likely a theft of intellectual data. Her research was almost the same.
7
@D'nada To 'know a great deal more about human prehistory', or more precisely about some sampled genomics, is not to say that the conclusions drawn from that data are correct.
I personally found the part on the reviewers at Nature and how one paper there got published, if not more, than at least as interesting as any other part of this piece.
10
I would like to add the the author apparently did not spent much time with Reich book, and based the premise of the article ( old tropes ) on an error clarified in the clarification.
The political agenda is not necessary, nor is a conspiracy theory. Sone citations are also useful when criticizing science.
1
Absurd is a strong word, and a great wine I hear.
1
"It wasn’t long before a series of scientific interventions pried open human prehistory to methodical study. Two great advances of 1859 helped cement the view that 4004 B.C. was not, in fact, the starting point of all human activity."
Oh, my. Just visit the Creation Museum in Kentucky to see how very mistaken these men were. Humans rode dinosaurs!
12
Great stuff. I read Reich’s book but this long article does a better job of contextualizing recent achievements and how important ancient dna has become for archeology, anthropology and history.
7
I'm fascinated by what genomics of ancient bones has to tell us. The demographic history of Oceania is of special interest to me. From the information in this article, I too hesitate to draw the Nature paper's sweeping conclusions, for the reasons the two reviewers offered.It's unfortunate there there aren't more samples of the Teouma skeleton's source population.
It's also a little disturbing that the lead author is so dismissive of the reviewers' criticisms, and I'd like to know more about the Nature editors' decision to publish it in the flagship international scientific journal. Science is successful to the extent it helps scientists avoid fooling themselves ("The first principle is you must not fool yourself - and you are the easiest person to fool." -R Feynman). That's the very rationale for "peer review" broadly defined: your equally well-trained and disciplined specialist peers can see the mistakes you can't. Even the most rigorous empirical methods can't protect a scientist from fatal arrogance, which is nothing more than a refusal to consider that one might be fooling oneself. Yes, it's possible the reviewers' objections were simply unfounded, and it may be that only other archaeogenetic specialists can understand why. On the other hand, it might well be Prof. Reich's arrogance that's unfounded. Fortunately, his peers won't let the matter rest here, but will conduct further research as long as there are unanswered questions.
21
hard to quite realize what I'm reading about in the welter of "descriptive" writing.
25
@cherry elliott
Agree! There may be some plausible argument here, but the author is not going to give it up easily. Too much travelogue, character sketches, and authorial intrusions.
15
@cherry elliott
I honestly couldn't get past the second paragraph. The prose is so intolerably overwrought,,,
3
Just mans latest so called "educated guess". There is a time coming that they will be very accurate with their knowledge. But will not use their guess for that education.
Fun to watch and see that they have coming full circle to the point that they are contradicting them selves instead of GOD. Makes me sad for them ..
Seems to me that indigenous communities should be more forthcoming into submitting DNA for research. It helps science and it helps progress.
Why do we indulge Luddites and superstitions here? To coddle their fantasies?
14
Evangeline,
What would be your solution ... That they be forced to provide their DNA?
Indigenous groups have had historically tragic experiences in the name of science: forced removal, forced sterilization, exposure to disease, torture disguised as experiments, etc. And these transgressions are not isolated to the deep past either.
This issue has nothing to do with superstition or being a luddite. Indigenous peoples have more than collectively earned the right to be wary of science. It is the responsibility of modern-day scientists to earn their trust through transparency and respect... And this will take time, understandably so.
It is this very lack of understanding and respect hinted at in your comment that reenforces my point: they absolutely have the right to have their trust earned first. That responsibility lies with scientists, not them.
4
@Erin
"That they be forced to provide their DNA?"
to my mind, yes absolutely! Make a viable DNA sample the price for non-indigenous goods. If indigenous people want non-indigenous wheat, meat, weapons, technologies, education, or medicine, they have to contribute to the advancement of the science that, ultimately, grants all of these things. Basic exchange, really.
1
@dsundepp So, are YOU ready to submit to the same, extremely invasive, search and seizure of your very essense, your DNA? AND have it publicized, with no control over who sees it, who utilizes it, with no fiscal renumeration should some discovery asrise from it?
Henrietta Lacks, the person behind the HeLA cell line, from which sprang the ENTIRE body of genetic research we have today, gave no consent to have her cells stolen, and her decendents languish in poverty in Baltimore today.
Think about what you demand, for if you allow it for one person, you allow it for all, including yourself.
3
"presumably crossing the narrow channels they encountered on crude watercraft"
Ok, THERE is the problem; right there.
Exactly what evidence do you have that their watercraft were "crude?"
I'll tell you the evidence - zero; except we know us Western Civ guys are WAY more advanced, and they must have been crude because- these poor savages couldn't have been smarter than a rock. We know that, right?
Actually; what we KNOW is- they managed to move populations across the Pacific. Um; there is NO mystery about how- they KNEW WHAT THEY WERE DOING.
Are we just jealous; that we keep having these dumb conversations? These people were smart and competent; few artifacts survive because they were made of wood recycled until they disappeared entirely.
"Crude??" Yes, our analyses are very crude.
71
@Greenpa
Well, we do know they didn't move those populations on cruise ships or airliners. Obviously whatever they had was sufficient to the task, since the task was accomplished. And no, THEY KNEW WHAT THEY WERE DOING is not an answer to the question of how they did it.
26
@SqueakyRat
First half: silly. Second half: true.
1
@SqueakyRat No, it's not an "answer"; rather obviously; but it is an objurgation that we should pay attention to what we already know- before claiming "nobody knows."
Do you know when Iceland was first settled? I would bet a fair amount you do not. This was another instance of utterly astounding oceanic voyaging and discovery, by persons without the compass, though they may have had "sunstones" - in vessels we would uniformly call "crude". Except manifestly, they were not crude to those skilled in their use. Neither you nor I would survive an attempt to "sail" a curragh to Iceland- but they did it repeatedly. They knew what they were doing.
4
It's always been odd to me that people talk about race in the context of Ancient DNA. A massive part of the race/biology debate enters stage left roughly 10,000 years ago, and is only relevant in discussion about human remains since then: the domestication and utilization of livestock animals. All human ancestors lived in the same state of relative misery, whether you were a dark-skinned Homo Erectus digging in sands of Africa for your next meager meal, or a light-skinned Neanderthal freezing half to death in Europe. There were population differences, of course (this is where the current science lives), but no one was better off than anyone else. It was only with the domestication of cattle (in Anatolia), horses (in Central Asia), sheep (in the Levant), and pigs (in Europe and Asia), that different groups of humans could consistently feed themselves and "take off" ahead of other groups in developing sophisticated technologies, arts, and social structures. If you take human race to mean not just "different than", but "better than", you're confined to post-10k years ago, where the inhabitants of Europe, the Levant, Asia Minor, India, and Asia bridled their horses, yoked their oxen, and pulled ahead of everyone else. It was with this "pulling ahead" that "European" began to mean "better", or "Asian" began to mean "more intelligent". The roots of this are in the animals, not the ancient human ancestors.
8
This rambling article could have been shortened by 90% without losing gist.
I did find interesting the evidence of favoritism and collusion amongst top scientific journals (Nature, Current Biology), woth editorial fiat overruling reviewers while rejecting identical papers from less "privileged" authors.
67
@Kai
The papers weren't at all identical. The two papers that were published use much more powerful genetic techniques. They may have reached similar conclusions, but the DNA analyses were far more convincing.
The article does not make this clear. And the notion that favoritism or collusion were involved is almost certainly incorrect. It looks more like a new guard/old guard conflict that occurs after a scientific paradigm shift. The new guard always wins.
12
@Kai
I take it, then, that you were not interested to learn that Dr. Reich is a man "with a lithe, almost balletic figure, and he wore a closefitting pullover and fading coral chinos."
:-)
7
@Kai French researcher wrote her paper before reich and submitted to nature, it was almost identical data, theory and they rejected it and then they accepted Reich paper within days with peer reviewers objections, which is not normal. Ot is called peer review for a reason for scientific research. What if nature passed her paper to reich or his lab? Hence the almost identical theories etc.
2
Reich’s work is groundbreaking, and it’s reasonable to be dazzled by what his numerical approach suggests...right up until the next gee-wiz tech upends this batch of observations/conclusions.
If Science teaches anything, it is that it takes a good number of years of peer review before we can safely assign probabilistic certainty to a conclusion.
The volume of his publications, coming out of the sequencers, is a bit alarming. I’m not saying the lab is wrong, but I am saying “be careful” for two reasons: 1) such a volume of publication out of the discipline’s norm should ring Harvard’s-and Nature’s readership’s-alarm bells. Its a major deviation in and of itself. 2) Let peer review catch up. We can wait 5 years for expanded confirmation. Spend some money, put equivalent tech into other hands, and get other teams verifying the work before freaking out about this. It’s more important to be certain here than be fast. He’s already been first to publish. Timestamp the new work, but let others verify.
24
@Benjamin Treuhaft
Actually, it's very important to be as fast as possible. Publication is the principal way new hypotheses become available for testing and criticism. Keeping it all a secret until every detail is nailed down is simply to restrict the access needed for scientific progress.
27
@SqueakyRat as patents restrict scientific progress but we still allow them
1
@SqueakyRat
two words:
"proprietary reagants."
2
"We make progress one funeral at a time" was a remark, ironically by nuclear physicist Max Planck back in the early 20th century as modern physics displaced Newtonian physics. Ancient DNA work requires extremely expensive labs and protocols. If the Max Planck Institute's funders in Germany hadn't provided Paabo with what, relative to regular DNA labs, is a huge amount of money, he wouldn't have been able to make the progress that he did with ancient DNA and ultimately sequence the Neanderthal genome. It's a similar situation to particle physics which requires tools that are too expensive for the average university lab. It's also a similar situation in that as people who've spent their careers working with incorrect assumptions die off, the field will advance. This is not to say that the big labs are always right, only that they might be right, so archaeologists can't just dismiss them like they would dearly love to.
38
@roseberry
Planck was only partly correct. Many physicists accepted Einstein's work on relativity very quickly. Planck's and Einstein's work on quantum theory took longer, partly because the theory was not well worked out until later, but then it was widely accepted. There were some who refused to accept either theory, relativity because Einstein was Jewish and quantum theory because it made no sense (and it still does not, philosophically, even though it works).
6
I just love the following sentence, with the double use of "cutting-edge).
These newcomers were known to exploit many of the cutting-edge technologies of the time: the domestication of horses, the wheel and, perhaps most salient, axes and spearheads of copper. (Their corpses sometimes featured cutting-edge wounds.)
25
@Larry Israel
Glad you loved it. For me, triviality of this sort simply further obfuscates what was intended (or was it?) as a serious article.
I would like to have known what the background color on the cave walls was?? Probably white as other colors are clearly identified. (esp. and here I go off-topic, as the people who run the subways think black is a good color for the interior of these" caves." They should be painted white!! for the sake of visibility.)
2
The irony is that for all the technical sophistication, ancient DNA research boils down to grafting a 21st century technology onto an 19th century obsession with race, biology and origins as identity. The more interesting archaeologists address how ancient people lived, manipulated environments, invented technology and built communities--not from whence they came.
15
@Andrew
Disagree. Human migration and adaptation is essential to understanding our evolution and what we're capable of. That means having to reconstruct a history from random clues.
74
Tracing human migration with DNA testing isn't a "19th century obsession" with race. It's just another tool like radiometric dating.
88
@Andrew
The irony is that repeatedly saying things that are not true does not make them true. It does help form cults.
7
This report clearly demonstrates the uncertainty of "science", especially when it comes to explaining the origins of man, which is unfortunate since the Book of Genesis provides an immutable explanation for origin of man. Thank you.
1
You're right to not to look to "science" as you call it, for certainty. If scientific thinking has a core element it's uncertainty. Uncertainty leads to questioning, curiosity and inquiry.
Science isn't a thing, organization or movement. There's no leadership, .org chart or followers, just some people making observations and the occasional useful conclusion always subject to revision.
75
@Southern Boy Prescientific creation stories (e.g., those of aboriginal Australians) come a dime a dozen; the Genesis account is just one of them.
60
@Southern Boy
It's that very immutability that distinguishes religious teaching from objective observation and the scientific method. Stop thinking of one as superior to the other. They are apples and oranges. It is the strength of science that it changes, which makes it worthless for immutable truth. It is the strength of religion that (at least some parts) are immutable, which makes it worthless of science.
15
"Two great advances of 1859"
Ahhhhh, no. In fact, geologists in the late 18th and early 19th centuries were beginning to articulate what some no doubt feared speaking of for some time. Stratification and fossils clearly showed a much more ancient Earth. This was, in fact, one of the foundations leading to evolution.
And you're also falling into the trap of comparing post-Enlightment science with old Western philosophy and religious dogma. That's a two edged sword. It compares apples and oranges, and it ignores the fact that older science becomes almost as antiquated as religious dogma when new data is discovered.
51
@Mike Holloway
Thank you. I was put off early in the article by this gross misrepresentation of the history of prehistorical chronology and geological time. I assumed the author is simply ignorant rather than distorting for effect. Either way, it is not encouraging.
5
I read Reich's book last week and enjoyed it and learned from it. I could sense a defensiveness in it, which this article explains to some extent.
16
Clearly the geneticists will be the subject of future intellectual studies in the field of psychology focusing on the deleterious effect of arrogance on science.
34
I disagree. I think future generations will be more concerned with the rise of anti-science and fear of knowledge on both the far right and the far left.
14
@Doug: Hopefully including the arrogance of soft sciences & ALL man made religions.
kon-tiki?
8
@cherry Elliott
I think the current thinking on KonTiki is that is may have been possible but not likely. OTOH there are alwys outliers/exceptions.
7
An interesting read. One thing that strikes me is the larger "publication bias" issue that affects this story -- studies show that papers tend to get published if they are seen as revolutionary -- upsetting the current set of beliefs -- and are less likely to get published if they propose moderate or tentative findings.
Reich's work seems tremendously valuable on its own, but the interpretation of it should be a lot more slow and careful than what is demonstrated here. His study traced convincingly a movement of people out of Asia, but labelling those people -- who they were and what they did -- is the tricky part. I hope that people continue to ask thoughtful questions, and that the interpretation of the data is an ongoing debate.
143
It’s the opposite: there is a very strong bias against publishing papers that present revolutionary findings. Read Kuhn.
13
@Rachel C. Indeed. But Nature publishes only revolutionary sexy science (and not too rarely afterwards retracted).
17
@Tam Hunt
Reading Kuhn is not as good as reading the literature. I doubt Kuhn said revolutionary papers were hard to publish (but I haven't yet read his book, so I might be mistaken). He did say it was hard for established scientists to accept their findings. And that was only partly true; there are ample counterexamples. Kuhn was simply wrong in his judgement about typical scientific revolutions.
3
There is only one biological DNA genetic evolutionary fit modern human race species that began in Africa 300, 000+ years ago.
What we call race aka color aka ethnicity aka national origin is primarily related to producing Vitamin D and protecting genes from damaging mutations arising in isolated human populations at altitudes and latitudes over time related to differing levels of solar radiation.
On average about 2-5% of Asian and European DNA is extinct Denovisan and Neanderthal. None of that DNA exists in the most ancient and diverse humans in Sub-Saharan Africa.
There is more genetic diversity in one African village or ethnic group than the rest of humanity combined. Indeed the rest of humanity carries the genetic bottleneck markers of a small inbred population that nearly became extinct before leaving Africa.
What we call race aka color is a malign socioeconomic political educational demographic historical white supremacist nationalist American myth meant to legally and morally justify black African enslavement and separate and unequal black African Jim Crow.
We are African primate apes by nature and nurture programmed to crave fat, salt, sugar, habitat, water, sex and kin by any means necessary including conflict and cooperation.
See " The Race Myth" ; " The Emperors New Clothes" Joseph L. Graves.
85
Thank you for this. Agree 100%
4
@Blackmamba
I believe that most people today who are actually concerned make a distinction between ethnicity, which is defined by haplotype, has real genetic and medical consequences, and has no sharp borders, and race, which is an artificial cultural distinction.
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@Blackmamba
This is not total nonsense, but it is grossly oversimplified... and with the very clear addition of what I can only describe as a comical vomit of jargon in a belated attempt to sound academic ("malign socioeconomic political educational demographic historical white supremacist nationalist American myth") it is clear that this is just someone using a sliver of data after the fact to justify a political point.
So not total nonsense, but a degree removed from it.
I actually sequence genes. I'll be isolating RNA later today from homogenized samples in trizol. I'm not going to make sweeping political claims like this guy, but the facts are that there are a large number of genes that can be used to determine types (and in-common descent) and to accurately predict populations. Most are not genes that anyone will recognize or think to associate with "races" because race is a social construct and not a result of rigorous scientific categorization. The result is that genetic studies work sort of in reverse: there are existing "races" that people want markers for, and so out of the various scatterplots, geneticists find a dozen or so markers intrinsic to those races. This all works well enough, it isn't optimal and it isn't what we would do if we were dealing with things ex novo.
But there's also a lot more to all this than just melanin. That is a gross and inaccurate afro-centrist oversimplification that does little to help debate or discussion.
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With a tiny sample size and usual burial arrangements it might be possible the burial site was for invaders/colonizers/outsiders? Local tradition could have been to float the bodies out to sea, leave them for wildlife (like tibetans), cremation, etc.
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This magazine article comes on the heels of the recent story about scientists working to understand the origins of beauty and color in animals. Excellent! It's great to both learn new science as well as also see the personalities and debates behind it all. Plus it's nice to get a break from the oppressive politics coverage. Keep it up NYT!
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Ancient DNA clues appear truly groundbreaking. But the conclusions from such small sample sizes should of course be questioned. I read Reich´s book. Fascinating. But where´s the researchers humility? I´m not surprised indigenous communities question intent.
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@Joseph: Do you realize that most people who are truely humble in all things never deceminate new knowledge? They can’t, humans don’t listen to, ‘um, ah, maybe, but, maybe not, no way to really tell, but, this is different’. But to ‘we found this, with most certainly that result’. That is humanities failing, not the failing of the unhumble.
@White Wolf, I'll just say, citation needed for this claim you made.
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