The rise and fall of empires, the march of armies, the flow of trade routes, the practice of slavery — all these events have led to a mixing of populations around the world. Such episodes have left a record in the human genome, but one that has so far been too complex to decipher on a global scale.
Now, geneticists applying new statistical approaches have taken a first shot at both identifying and dating the major population mixture events of the last 4,000 years, with the goal of providing a new source of information for historians.
Some of the hundred or so major mixing events they describe have plausible historical explanations, while many others remain to be accounted for.
Read the full, original story: Tracing Ancestry, Researchers Produce a Genetic Atlas of Human Mixing Events
Additional Resources:
- Human admixture common in human history, Dienekes’ Anthropology Blog
- A family affair: How genetic mixing has affected us all, Independent
- How your DNA can reconstruct history, CNN
- Genome Analysis Reveals Origins Of Genetic Adaptations For High Altitude In Tibetans, RedOrbit
