PositiveThe Wall Street JournalWho We Are and How We Got Here chronicles Mr. Reich’s work in five regions of the world. The stories are varied ... Understandably, a few details in Mr. Reich’s book are already out of date. In such a novel area of science, individual research results are unlikely to persist for long. What will endure are the larger themes: People in many parts of the world today have little DNA from the first peoples who lived in the same region. Most living groups are mixtures of ancient groups, which used to be much more genetically different from one another. Modern human ancestry is checkered with the traces of archaic ghosts ... for the great human story to matter to us, we must each see our own place in it. The dead cannot speak, but science can help us to see their humanity nonetheless. Doing so helps us maintain the humanity of our science.
