What Happens When You Trace Human Ancestry Back 1 Million Years?

Human genetic research has advanced dramatically over the last two decades. We have generated massive amounts of data by sequencing thousands of genomes from both prehistoric and modern humans. However, combining the genomes from various databases and developing algorithms to deal with the massive amounts of data has proven to be a significant challenge.

In a new study from the David Reich Labs at Harvard University, titled "A unified genealogy of modern and ancient genomes", Scientists developed a new method to accomplish this, using "tree sequences" to accommodate millions of genome sequences. The new tree's branches contain a staggering 231 million ancestral lineages. Its foundation is a network of roots represented by eight ancient, highly detailed human genome sequences, with thousands of smaller snippets used to confirm their deep historical significance.

CHAPTERS:
0:00 HUMAN FAMILY TREE
7:00 HUMAN GENETICS

SOURCES:
A unified genealogy of modern and ancient genomes
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/s...