Who We Are and How We Got Here : David Reich
New technologies in science are enabling us to unravel the secrets in the ancient DNA, this book a dense introduction to latest research in mapping our origin’s story. According to a Hindu legend, ‘Bramha’ is the creator, and each of us originated from various parts of his body. If you don’t believe in that and care for a more scientific approach towards explaining our origin, this book precisely serves that purpose.
If there is a central theme in this book, it would be that there is no “pure” race in our entire history. It has been mixtures all the way along. It would been nice if David kept at explaining the science, but an entirely unnecessary last quarter of the book about ethics / race were extremely underwhelming.
My favourite part of the book is the chapter about India. I have since read it twice. A very fascinating story indeed. Nehru, in his book, “The Discovery of India” discusses the deep relationship between Iranian farmers and India. Analysing ancient DNA proved that there is a lot of merit to this idea.
Science, at last is in a position to set the genetics & race debate to an end. It has been misused and misinterpreted for so long, caused so much of agony in the second world war, sterilised a lot of people for belonging to “inferior” race. We still need to think about these issues, the authors ideas are compelling but also controversial.