David Reich is a Harvard educated geneticist with a keen interest in ancient DNA and how it relates to human migrations and the mixing of populations.

Reich may write with the authority of an Ivy League intellectual, but he projects the enthusiasm of a child at christmas. It is that enthusiasm that propels Reich’s narrative of human evolution, population dispersal, integration and (sometimes) looping reintegration.

“Now that the genome revolution has arrived, with its power to reject longstanding theories, we need to abandon the practice of approaching questions about the human past with strong expectations. To understand who we are, we need to approach the past with humility and with an open mind, and to be ready to change our minds out of respect to the power of hard data.”

Reich has the intestinal fortitude to go where the hard data leads him, even when that data disproves his own theories, because that is how science (real science) works. This is not a fluff piece of conjecture and speculation (if it’s conjecture you’re craving, Reich suggests A Troublesome Inheritance by journalist Nicholas Wade). ‘Archaeogenetics’ is a science still in its infancy, but it is building a database that has already brought new and unexpected perspectives to anthropology and archeology. Old paradigms are being challenged, new ones are being formulated, change is inevitable. Even this book, first published in 2018, is already in need of revision. If you’re a science nerd like me, these are exciting times.