David Reich

In fact, it's the weight of evidence now suggests that, in fact, demographic transformation did come from the steppe.

It's kind of amazing it did.

Maybe it's from disease.

Maybe it's from something else.

Who knows what it is?

That's a very interesting topic.

But we adapt.

We learn.

So I think that this is incredibly inspiring to be able to change one's opinion.

I think I don't know.

So the discovery of the ability to extract DNA from ancient human remains was such a shock that we could even do this.

We just didn't think we could do this.

There's a section in the introduction of my book, which was sort of my impression of what it was like.

I had a...

conversation with my PhD supervisor about what it would be like if one somehow could open a cave or a room that was echoing still with languages that don't exist anymore, that are not yet spoken.

And you could hear the words still echoing somehow after thousands and thousands of years and record that down.

That's what ancient DNA is like.

It's an unexpected gift from the past that this, what we thought was an incredibly delicate biological molecule, in fact is intact.

And there must be other such things, just it's hard to imagine what they are.

In ancient DNA, there is an extraordinary amount still to do.