Claims of Pure Bloodlines? Ancestral Homelands?
Published in the Harvard Gazette, by Alvin Powell - September 18, 2025
A geneticist explains analyses made possible by tech advances show human history to be one of mixing, movement, displacement.
Human history is rife with contentions about the purity (and superiority) of the bloodlines of one group over another and claims over ancestral homelands.
More than a decade of work on ancient human DNA has upended it all.
Instead, Harvard geneticist David Reich said on Monday, increasingly sophisticated analysis of genetic material made possible by technological advances shows that virtually everyone came from somewhere else, and everyone’s genetic background shows a mix from different waves of migration that washed over the globe.
“Ancient DNA is able to peer into the past and to understand how people are related to each other and to people living today,” Reich said during a talk at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. “And what it shows is worlds we hadn’t imagined before. It’s very surprising.”