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Comment by stolenmerch | Hacker News Reader

That is fascinating. Can you suggest readings in "population genomics" that have challenged the established historical record? I'm tolerant of divergent opinions yet like to stay grounded in somewhat rigorous methods.

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I believe the techniques being referred to generally fall under the "ancient DNA" camp, and from what I believe they haven't "shaken" up the field. Don't get me wrong, the results have been absolutely amazing, providing concrete genetic evidence for conjectures stemming from linguistic, anthropological, and archaeological evidence, but haven't, to my knowledge, changed our broad-strokes understanding of (pre-)history

There's a reason it's called the aDNA revolution. Archaeogenetics has transformed our understanding of the past on every level and opened up entirely new types of research.

The kinds of stuff Hancock advocates like globespanning ancient civilizations obviously don't show up in the genetic record, but some ideas that used to be pretty far out like "widespread admixture between AMH and neanderthals" are widely accepted today on the strength of the genetic evidence and other research that was done to back them up.

Hancock does not posit globespanning civilizations, but rather far-flung refugees. Any actual globe-spanning civilization would have left plentiful traces where they could still be seen, so that seems ruled out.

Washing up in Iraq, India, Mexico, and Peru would be more consistent with a single origin in southeast Asia than in the Atlantic, but a global cataclysm ought to produce refugees from multiple places.

Any genetic signal of scattered refugees would be faint.

I mostly follow Razib Khan's reporting on this work. It is really dense and uses domain lingo, so it can be rather hard to parse. But, here are some narratives that are changing:

1. Genetic findings among South-East Asians indicate that the maritime powers of India (and mostly south India) were of greater significance at their peak than the Delhi sultanate or the Delhi centric view held by most historians. [1][2]

2. We are expecting huge changes to our understanding of ancient humans in Africa [3]

3. The most famous co-evolution fact of milk-and-lactose-tolerance might not be true [4][5]

4. The so-called-indo-aryans might not have brought the caste system or "Indian culture" with them. The Dravidians are almost just as "indo-aryan" as their non-Dravidian counter parts and the Aryan-Invasion-Theory, might not have had an invasion to speak of at all. [6][7]

These are extreme simplifications of the interesting stuff I found that was relevant to my country. I'm sure there is just as much about every other culture and it's just as spicy. Also, emphasis on 'might' & 'probably'. These fields are mid-disruption, and facts on the ground are changing as we speak.

[1] https://www.gnxp.com/WordPress/2018/10/06/likely-male-mediat...

[2] https://www.gnxp.com/WordPress/2018/09/20/indic-civilization...

[3] https://www.gnxp.com/WordPress/2021/02/03/so-many-assumption...

[4] https://www.gnxp.com/WordPress/2021/01/28/got-milk-long-befo...

[5] https://www.science.org/content/article/humans-were-drinking...

[6] https://www.gnxp.com/WordPress/2019/09/12/the-aryan-integrat...

[7] https://www.gnxp.com/WordPress/2022/08/15/indra-is-absolved-...

4 and 5 make so much sense. We would not have these genes without the selective pressure to keep them in the population.

search academia.edu for paleogenetics

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