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