The splendid tapestry How DNA reveals truths ancient lasting

on the screen in front of you is just a

scrap of perhaps humanity’s oldest and

most inclusive and most preciously

meaningful work of collaborative art

it’s much much older than the works of

art in caves say blombos or lasco that

you may have heard of or altamira or

sulawesi

in many ways

it resembles them though it was buried

in some sense from us from our site for

eons and we’ve only recently gotten a

glimpse of it

and it reflects much of our history in

ways that we’ll talk about and that are

very revealing and it’s actually a self

portrait it’s a group self portrait of

humanity itself

we remake it every generation it’s like

a graffiti wall that gets constantly

remade repainted

and it’s never finished in that sense so

it’s a work of art that’s at once the

oldest and the newest every day of our

lives

if we sweep across here what we’ve done

is we’ve asked the computer to reveal

this art to us we’ve read the dna of

many thousands of people from all over

this planet we feed those dna letters to

a computer and we say computer if we

give you a palette of k colors let’s say

10 colors look at each person’s genome

and they’re a thin thread in this

tapestry look at each person’s genome

look for patterns clusters of genetic

spellings that match up between that

person and others in the group and pick

a color

and color in the mix for that person the

likeliest mix of their

ten in this case ancestral pools

each of those ancestral pools being one

of the colors one of the hues and if we

scan across from left to right

we go from

southern and central africa where we

have people who are the most genetically

diverse on the planet san people

central african foragers

scanning across within africa there’s a

lot more diversity it’s it’s here just

shown as

really as pink we didn’t give the

computer enough colors to fill in all

the splendid diversity that we find in

our most diverse long settled place

but scanning further across into eurasia

we see other other colors coming in and

you’ll notice there’s a lot of spatial

kind of structure here

so it’s not a random hodgepodge

it’s also not simple bars of 10

different colors everyone is a mix

one of the take-homes please to remember

today from genetics and you may know it

already is that every one of us

has ancestors from all over the planet

who pooled their lot and in many ways

you are their living dream of many

thousands of people from all over the

planet this is a picture of that in one

snapshot of a bunch of people

i want to focus today on one part of the

picture because i think it tells us

about how looking into the past and

seeing this beauty

there’s as always truth in the beauty

and the truth is actually vitally

important for us to know about today and

to think about in our lives so let’s

focus today first on the people within

this tapestry who happen to be arabic

speakers it’s one of the most widely

spoken languages i think about 420

million people are on the planet speak

arabic and here is a look at some of

them across

the wide regions in which that language

family is spoken starting on the left

here are some moroccans look at the

colors that we see in their mix they’re

fairly consistent from person to person

they vary of course because everyone is

unique but we see

a little bit of gold at the bottom a

little bit of green but a lot of this

bright bright lemon yellow and at the

top we see some of the pink that we saw

earlier in west africa

that’s the mix that comes together in

morocco if we move across to other

arabic speakers say in the arabian

peninsula so yemeni and saudi folk their

genomes look very different they have a

lot more of the light gold and those

folks

have a lot of variation that you can see

and then let’s move to a third group so

here we have folks in a very small patch

of the planet and actually not that far

from the european peninsula itself it’s

you know sort of a coast of it but

within that region actually folks look

very different from the way that that

many folks look on

the the peninsula itself so these are 17

people so for example if we look here we

see egyptians they have some of the

lemon yellow near the top that we saw in

morocco we could think of that as maybe

a north african ancestral pool of some

kind they have a lot of this green that

we’ll talk about and they have some of

the gold that we saw in the urami

a lot less of it moving across to say

syrians we see less of the yellow less

of the north african some more mixed in

of red that we’ll talk about and if we

move across to lebanese muslims we see a

little bit more of that red again we

look across to lebanese christians and

druze similar mix a little bit less of

the red a little bit less of the brown

the top and a little bit less of the

west african pink but everybody in this

whole region of the levant

regardless of religion their mixes look

fairly similar so we could ask a

question what if we look at what’s

common to these different levantine

groups the gold at the bottom the big

green in the middle the brown at the top

and the sort of laced lemon throughout

you know the folks in the southern part

have more west african pink the folks in

the north have less but what if we tried

to ask what are those ancestral pools

coming together what does that represent

about history although the computer

didn’t know any of this history it just

guessed based on the patterns

we can actually see when we look at

other populations neighbors of these

folk

what the likely history is here and i

want to liken it to a recipe for food

so let’s look at the green for example

that green shows up in other eastern

mediterranean populations and

mediterranean populations think of it as

olive oil think of it as grease think of

it as turkey those those parts the world

where olives grow and flourish

that

ancestral pool has been part of this mix

for a long time now let’s talk about the

brown at the top think of that as say

chickpeas so this might be sort of more

arid farming people in the distant past

coming from the iranian plateau from the

inner steps of southwest asia

from the fertile crescent and then third

we have the gold coming in from the

bottom and you could think of that as

maybe the sesame of the arabian

peninsula that we saw earlier think of

those three things coming together and

then a spritz of lemon as we saw coming

from north africa

if we put those together we can

basically say well the levantine mix is

pretty consistent and it’s basically

like hummus

right it’s not a bad recipe for hummus

you probably want to add some garlic

if we think of this as sort of like it’s

been it’s been mixed together like

hummus for such a long time that it

becomes its own discernible singular

thing in a way and this is sort of a

levantine mix genetically so how old we

could ask is this recipe for for hummus

how when did these ingredients come

together in the human past and it turns

out that when we look at other ancient

dna and archaeological evidence etc a

fairly consistent picture a story comes

together and especially for example if

we look at ancient levantines who are

this is the actual bodies of people who

were found preserved well in sidon in

the levant about 3 700 years ago their

genomes can be read now and this is what

they look like the hummus is there folks

the hummus is already there 3 700 years

ago it’s basically a nice blend of the

same much of the same ingredients we saw

quite a spiced but it’s much of the same

ingredients and if we look today at

their neighbors 60 miles away modern

palestinians the mix the hummus looks

very similar there’s about 3 700 years

worth of added spice

that’s come in from various parts of the

world but basically modern palestinians

genomes look a lot like ancient

levantine genomes 3 700 years ago

now why does this matter it matters for

several reasons first as we know now

truth matters a lot truth matters in all

contexts medical contexts

uh all kinds of social contexts but it

matters in science too in genetics and

so we we need to get our truth out about

what we know about the past from from

genetics to pool together with what’s

known otherwise but it matters for more

personal and poignant reasons too

because

as an ashkenazi jew as a jew

i’ve come to see people in my own part

of that tapestry

the ones whose mixes are most close to

mine the threads i can reach out and

pull by a phone call

i’ve started to see misinformation

spread

in ways that really really

pain me and hurt others

this is time to set the record straight

genetically to try to get that truth out

for that vital reason so let’s talk

about that one of the fun things about

science is that it’s interesting and you

never know who might weigh in on a given

new genetics paper in this case we have

a tweet from benjamin netanyahu i guess

has a lot of time on his hands now

he’s tweeting that a new study of dna

recovered from an ancient philistine

site near ashkelon in israel confirms

what we know from the bible that the

origin of the philistines is in southern

europe now this has a lot of of dog

whistle

meaning because people know that

philistine in arabic comes from a roman

word that was taken from an earlier

people called the philistines

and it became our word palestine so bibi

here is letting you think

that a dna study has found that

palestinian people are european

which would have political implications

for you know land rights and things like

that well let’s look at the actual study

that he’s talking about so ancient dna

has light in the genetic origins of

early iron age philistines now we’re

talking about 3 300 years ago so later

than 3 700 and they looked at the dna

and here’s what the study says verbatim

we find that all three ashkelon

populations derive most of their

ancestry from the local levantine gene

pool i don’t know if bibi missed that

sentence

but he may have so let’s hopefully he’ll

watch the talk

but um in any case that’s the truth

you’ve seen it already 3700 years ago it

was already true 3 300 years ago what

the paper found was that there was a

little pulse of immigration or maybe

even refugees we don’t know who they

were

families in ashkelon for a brief period

of time some of the individuals were

like part european part levantine and

they mixed into the fold they stirred

into the hummus

more spice

that’s the story of that paper that bibi

is trying to spin into a much bigger

story that would actually

disenfranchise

and and really leave without a homeland

a whole people so let’s talk about that

canard because it recurs not just

through bibi we hear it from many

quarters now

so the australian jewish association

weighing in on history as they are want

to do the term philistine means invaders

well actually the term hebrews

originally meant outsiders as well so

lots of ancient terms and for peoples

that get dubbed by somebody else happen

to meet something like outsider right

this happens a lot in human history and

bibi goes on to say well this is all

well and good but palestinians whose

ancestors came from the arabian

peninsula to the land of israel

thousands of years later well we just

saw that’s absolutely not true

palestinian kingdoms look very levantine

and very different from saudi genomes

from yemeni genomes from peninsular arab

genomes

so the facts are palestinian dna shows

consistently

deep and thick local roots by thick i

mean that most of the ancestry is from

right there there’s a little spice but

it’s mostly just levantine with very

little new ancestry from elsewhere

netanyahu’s son weighed in on on

palestinian surnames noting that you

know hellaby means coming from aleppo

and therefore they’re not they’re

foreigners lots of surnames in palestine

attested this as well as kalani is from

ashkelon the same town in that paper

kudzi means from jerusalem safadi from

safed studi from ashdod right lots of

palestinian surnames attest to that

locality surnames change and they

reflect power more than consistently

reflecting dna my own surname pearson is

not an ashkenazi surname it was taken in

canada in 1910 to assimilate does that

make me norse

you know is denzel washington

english

because after all most american

washingtons are black americans

likewise does netanyahu whose surname

and familially was milikowski from a

village in poland called milikov does

that make him polish

here’s the next stretch of our tapestry

so here we have folks who look like

hummus but with some red some major

major red added who are these people

these are european jews european jews

and levantines you see the hummus-like

mix but with a lot more of this red and

we’ll see where this red is coming from

in a moment let’s look at their other

neighbors these are other non-jewish

europeans so here we have the jews there

we have french non-jews so you can see

the peninsula arab gold is gone

basically

and much of the north african ancestry

is even gone among non-jewish french

folk here hungarians a very similar mix

a little bit more of the gold and a

little bit more of this dark blue coming

in and when we look at russians we see

much of that dark blue so we can think

of that as like an arctic blueberry

north asian blue

stirring into their mix so everybody’s

got recipes and and they’re actually

quite consistent from person to person

across a population which is really cool

right but european jews like this

interesting mix of like hummus and beets

maybe

a slice of beet and some hummus that’s a

pretty tasty treat let’s talk about

canard number two which is the one we

also hear from other quarters so here’s

joseph massad a political and

intellectual historian at columbia who

frankly should know better because

there’s been plenty of research out

there about this now and i’m happy to

talk with him and as are others

assad claims research has established

for many decades that european

christians and jews were native european

converts to palestinian religions and

not descendants of the of their original

adherents

well we just saw in the mix we saw some

pretty clear hummus

in the european jewish mix the european

jews that we looked at in that mix those

include both safari and ashkenazi jews

so spanish and iberian jews and central

european german-speaking jews

historically

both of them show the same mix pretty

much and they both

belie this claim

that uh that they are not descendants of

likely original adherents in the levant

okay we see this elsewhere too this

story has been ricocheting around the

internet for a while some very very

poorly done science trying to meld dna

with linguistics about yiddish and

claiming that yiddish is a persian

language that was then relexified into a

slavic language that was relexified with

turkic and then relexified into german

all to be done as a secret trading

language

that any german can understand

it makes no sense and it does not and

and most importantly from the dna

evidence it would it would imply that

safari jews who spoke judeo spanish have

exactly the same history that’s not

lebantine so in any case the data that

are really really consistent at this

point suggests that ashkenazi and safari

jews like many other jewish groups have

clear consistent levantine roots from

person to person and though as deep as

palestinians levantine roots they go

back likewise the same period of time

when those three groups came together

and by the way we think they came

together when there was climate change

in the peninsula and it dried up around

6 000 years ago that’s when the sesame

came into the mix those roots go as deep

in european and other jews but they’re

thinner

they’re far thinner

because of admixture elsewhere in exile

as we saw here in european jews with

european folk so once again the dna

reveals a lot more than say my surname

or netanyahu’s surname would reveal this

matters for each of you you may not you

may or may not be as close to this kind

of quest and question as i am as a

geneticist and someone who has family

with deep interests in this region there

are other regions that have similar

histories that dna can inform

but we’ve seen time and time again an

urge in human history

to segregate

separate peoples to claim one homeland

and and bar others from it

majority by group x would mean our

disappearance and we will not commit

national suicide the only alternative is

separate development the germ of this

policy is inherent in almost all of our

history implanted for self-preservation

this quote is from ao guyer from the

founding text of apartheid

he was speaking here about the history

of boers of dutch south africans who had

been oppressed by the british but not

nearly as much as others their neighbors

and were in turn oppressing

this story recurs all too often in our

history

here’s another quote to separate group y

from us is not only liberal but generous

because

he will not mingle we kindly offer him a

new home

that’s andrew jackson

banishing cherokee creek and choctaw

people from their home in southeast u.s

in georgia

to oklahoma where they were

forcibly displacing others

nothing about the story

of the trail of tears

was anything but tears

everyone involved were slave holders

people got dragged along of african

ancestry as well

it was a horrific example of people

excluding native people from their land

and we happily don’t do this today we

georgia does not bar choctaw people from

resettling

last we have in the 30s in the u.s to

maintain our civilization there’s one

solution segregation or deportation

again spatial segregation of the peoples

being the goal well that led us to 1948

and we’ve seen this recur time and again

in 1948 we had partition but we’d seen

it before we jews had seen the ghettos

the mellows the pale we’d seen indian

removal we’d seen segregation separate

but equal everything’s restricted

covenants and housing in the u.s through

1968 and of course we saw apartheid from

1953 to 1990 all of them displacing

people forcibly from land

in order to not have to share it not

have to live together democratically

today we have one left the only country

the only place on the planet where the

families with the deepest roots the

thickest roots on the land in question

are barred from settling there all while

people like me are welcomed to settle

there because our ancestors were

banished 80 generations ago

that no longer seems fair at all to me

much as i may have grown up with dogma

about it

and i hope that you will take time to

think about this tapestry this is our

social fabric it’s a story of mixing

it’s ongoing and it depends on each of

us to make it a pluralist

ongoing palette that we that we swirl

together

so think today if you don’t know enough

people from a group

that you fear that you that you think

may want to to disappear you

please just meet five of them

get to know them individually as artists

scientists

activists whatever they may do they may

have all different

human paths like you’ve heard today

get to know them as people and as

families before

as monolithic

words like invaders

and thanks very much for listening