Sub-title: A New History of Old Europe
Krause is an archaeogeneticist, an archaeologist who focuses on the ancient DNA discovered in archeological digs. His co-author, Thomas Trappe is a German health journalist. The book re-visits previously recovered remains from ancient origins to apply the latest DNA technical analysis tools. Using this updated information, some discoveries are reaffirmed, and others updated or revised entirely. As explained in recent articles where ancient (13th-14th century) remains are analyzed, in some cases, entirely new discoveries are made. The book can get a bit technical on the science used. I was fascinated with the process and how our understanding of ancient migration patterns, languages, and diseases can be tracked using DNA.
Quotes:
p 27 "A mutation reliably appears in mtDNA only every 3,000 years on average...this means that for 3,000 years, the mtDNA passed down along a female line is identical."
p 27 "The mtDNA of all living modern human beings can be traced back to a single female ancestor...she lived around 160,000 years ago...mitochondrial Eve. A male counterpart, chromosomal Adam, lived almost 200,000 years before mitochondrial Eve however, so we can say with certainty that they weren't a couple."
p 41 "Some Europeans and many South Asians, inherited a gene that causes a much stronger immune reaction to a COVID-19 virus infection. Carriers of the Neanderthal gene are three times more likely to die from this newly emerged virus."
p. 144 "Using DNA analysis, we were able to identify men from five consecutive generations in some family graves, but we did not find a single adult female descendant, confirming that the daughters of the families were likely sent away before they became adults. Evidently sons, instead, inherited the farmsteads from their fathers. ..In all, this genetic data reveals patriarchal and hierarchical structures that became widespread during the Bronze Age and continue to shape some familial and social conventions even today."
p. 167..." in 2012, the US Dept. of Defense launch the Defense Threat Reduction Agency's Algorithm Challenge...to develop a computer algorithm that would quickly discover and identify bacterial and viral DNA. Daniel Huson, a specialist in bioinformatics, developed a related algorithm that could match a billion DNA sequences to their organism of origin within 24 hours..instead of weeks.
Published: 2021 Read: December 2022 Genre: History, Science
