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A Brief History of Everyone who Ever Lived

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 planetmarshall 19 Sep 2016
Been really enjoying this - particularly how the actual science of genetics sits opposed to our own preconceived notions of ancestry and race.

A quote -

"...it’s compelling to see named individuals on documented family trees that date all the way back to the middle ages. But we know, via maths and genetics, that your ancestors were also settled in Italy in the tenth century as well, regardless of whether you’re Tom Conti, Eddie Izzard, President Obama, Richard Dawkins, Taylor Swift, Adolf Hitler, Pope Francis, Queen Elizabeth II, Madonna, Maradonna, Rabbi Jonathan Sachs, all four members of ABBA, my butcher or Charles Darwin."


Guardian Review -
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/sep/17/a-brief-history-of-everyone-w...
abseil 19 Sep 2016
In reply to planetmarshall:

> Been really enjoying this - particularly how the actual science of genetics sits opposed to our own preconceived notions of ancestry and race....

I enjoyed it too - thanks for posting.

Here's a related 2006 article, which I enjoyed, called "So you think you're English?" from the Telegraph:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/expat/expatfeedback/4201967/So-you-think-youre-E...
In reply to abseil:

I've felt this intuitively for a long time, which why - although the Stainforth family seems about as Anglo-Saxon as they come - I've always regarded myself (to use a Nietzschean term) as 'a good European' rather than (purely, mythically) English.
In reply to malk:

> any mention of the aquatic ape?

Not directly - but he does discredit the idea of an evolutionary 'tree', or that our evolutionary history was in any way 'linear' (eg, the popular image of modern humans passing through several stages of primate before reaching its modern state). For example, our genome shows that Homo Sapiens interbred with Homo Neanderthalis - and other human species - on multiple occasions throughout its early history.

 malk 19 Sep 2016
In reply to planetmarshall:

and similarly why not both trees->savannah and trees->water?
haven't read what Prof Roberts has to say yet mind..
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