How Ancient DNA Changed Everything We Thought We Knew About Human History. With David Reich Ashley Mcbryde [dHdAkUVNfRK]

Science & Cocktails is proud to announce an episode with David Emil Reich, Professor at Harvard University and an Investigator of the Howard Hughes damson idris Medical Institute, award-winning superstar scientist of Ancient DNA who has uncovered the roots of modern humans, their history and language, and author of the book "Who We Are and How We Got Here". He will tell us how to look at our human past and how that can help us improve human health for the future.

How is it that we can obtain whole genome DNA data of similar quality to what you get from sending your spit to a direct-to-consumer ancestry testing companies, from people who lived thousands of year ago? How did we discover that humans interbred with Neanderthals? How did we discover the Denisovans, an entirely new archaic human group revealed by ancient DNA? How did ancient DNA solve the more than 200-year-old mystery of Indo-European language origins? How did ancient DNA disprove the widespread assumption that natural selection has been quiescent over the last tens of thousands of years?

In this talk, David Reich will discuss the revolution wrought by the creation, 15 years ago, of a new tool for studying the human past: ancient DNA sequencing. The invention of the microscope around 400 years ago made possible the discovery of the world of previously invisible microorganisms. In the same way, when we obtain DNA from past cultures today, we find surprise after surprise, often in tension with what we thought we knew, based on archaeology, linguistics, and history. Reich will explore how these new discoveries help us better appreciate our shared, and complicated, genetic past, and how they might be used to improve human health today.

David epl fixtures Reich is a Professor at Harvard University and an Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. He led the studies from 2010-2014 that analyzed the newly sequenced archaic Neanderthal and Denisovan genomes to show that they interbred with modern humans. Since then, his lab has produced more than half the ancient human DNA data reported to date, documenting the population movements that spread Indo-European languages. He received the 2017 claude for small business Dan David Prize, the 2019 Wiley Prize, the 2020 Darwin-Wallace Award, and the 2021 Massry Prize (all joint with Svante Pbo). He also received the 2019 National Academy of Sciences Award in Molecular Biology.

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