Mindscape 179 | David Reich on Genetics and Ancient Humanity

I'm currently re-reading Dr. Reich's book 'Who We Are And How We Got Here" for the fourth time and taking detailed notes - it's my favourite book and is surprisingly readable. My only hope is that he writes a follow-up book, either providing more resolution for Africa, or any other fascinating discoveries he's been working on...can't recommend it enough. ✌

Prof. Carroll works so very hard for us & I’m so very appreciative. 💙

This topic is so amazing! Fantastic guest

this is what mindscape is about for me, constant stream of info = just a pleasure to listen !

Fascinating. I'd love to see an interactive visualizer of population movements and mixing based on our current best understanding.

"thats a philosophical question" im gonna start using this copout

wow, so much information, and still so many questions, wish it was longer, will definitely watch again !

His book also had some interesting analysis about population bottlenecks (the example being endogamy in India) ... Some revisionist historians have suggested that the caste system hasn't stood for that long and it was British that strengthened the segregation. When the author and his colleagues tested to see what is the genetic differentiation between jatis, they found that the differentiation was at least 3 times greater than among European groups separated by similar geographic distances. Famous population bottlenecks in the European ancestry include the Finnish people (around two thousand years ago), Ashkenazi Jews (around six hundred years ago), and religious dissenters like Amish and Hutterites. The genetic data told a clear story: around a third of Indian groups experienced population bottlenecks as strong or stronger than the ones that occurred among Finns or Ashkenazi Jews. Many of the bottlenecks in India are also exceedingly old. For example one middle class caste Vysya (that includes 5 million people) in Indian state of Andhra Pradesh the bottleneck timing was 3500-2000 years old. This means that this caste had maintained strict endogamy and allowed essentially no genetic mixing for thousands of years. Even an average rate of 1% mixing would have erased the genetic signal of the bottleneck. Vysya did not live in geographic isolation. Instead they lived in densely populated part of India. Despite proximity the genetic migration was essentially nil. People tend to think India as a single population mass. In reality the genetic differentiation among Indian jati groups living side by side in the same village is typically 2 to 3 times higher than the genetic differentiation between northern and southern Europeans. The truth is that India is composed of a large number of small populations. In comparison Han Chinese are is truly a large population that has been freely mixing for thousands of years.

Read his book last month. Lots of interesting info and shows how archaeological methods are often misleading when trying to infer how the populations have mixed and migrated. For example: Prior to the spread of Beaker culture into Britain, not a single ancient DNA sample from among the many dozens of samples contained steppe ancestry. After the point of ~4500 years ago, all the British samples contained strong steppe ancestry (indistinguishable from the DNA that is found across the channel in European mainland). Skeletons from the bronze age that followed the Beaker period had at most 10 percent ancestry from the first farmers. Drastic population replacement. Bell Beaker culture was very different from the Corded War culture, which in turn was very different from the Yamnaya culture. But they shared the same steppe ancestry. Prior to the genetic findings, any claim that a new way of seeing the world could have been shared across cultures as archeologically different from one another as the Yamnaya, Corded Ware, and Bell Beaker were dismissed as fanciful. ... A great lesson of the ancient DNA revolution is that its account of migrations are very different from pre-existing models, showing ho little we knew about human migration and population formation. The farmers who lived about 8800-4500 years ago in Germany, Spain, Hungary, and Anatolia. Ancient farmers from all these places were genetically similar to present-day sardinians showing that a pioneer farmer population had landed in Greece probably from Anatolia, and then spread to Iberia in the west and Germany in the north, retaining at least 90 percent of their DNA from that immigrant source, which meant that they mixed minimally with the hunter-gatherers they encountered along the way.

Davud Reich does some superb work. YThis is real cutting edge and will change our understanding of our own evolution dramaticallyt and accurately. This is also SO clear!

Thank you Sean and David

In the thumbnail I thought it was Juan Maldacena. Can't see that he has been on the mindscape. Anyway almost everything Prof Carroll talks about is interesting so looking forward to listening to this.

Such high octane conversation. The back and forth is so crisp, and the intellectual exchange at not just a high level but sheer rate of efficiency--far less bullshitty hemming and hawing you get on other frankly pseudo-intellectual podcasts.

For David Reich: "That would be a philosophical question" appears to be his version of Father's Ted's: "That would be an ecumenical matter". :-)

Excellent. Thank you.

I've come to admire Dr Reich for his Authentic Academic Standard, ie: fully adheres to the "Standards of Science and Research" which prohibits using a Theory as Fact. He has exhibited the urmost in Ethics, through his research, correcting presumed ideas/theories, and noting the greater facts, through Peer Reviewed Science. Truly desirable Science Quality. Note: I find the value of Dr Reich's Undergrad a "fortunate value" to his subsequent choice in Professional works. Although he notes his lack if 8nterestv8n Philosophy, it is of vast importance that he 8s able to engage both lobes in his work, despite the resistance of the 20th Century influenced by "Mainstream Academia's Paradigm". A subject that will be seen as fading, now that we are entered inti a Lab Based Science Foundation of Humanity. Beth Bartlett Sociologist/Behavioralist and Historian

If ever there was a book that deserved a Folio Society edition, this is it...

The way this guy responds and articulates reminds me very much of Steven Pinker.

Apparently Reich includes people from the Andaman Islands in with Southern Indians. This greatly exaggerates the genetic differences between people from the Northern and Southern sections of the Indian Subcontinent

the adds should be kept to the beginning of the podcast. PS: love the podcast. thanks so much really