Article: Ancient DNA and the Return of a Disgraced Theory
“For a discipline dedicated to the study of the immutable, history is nonetheless ever-changing. Just as there were revolutions in the past, there have been revolutions in our understanding of it, and few have been as dramatic as the one currently engulfing the fields of prehistory and archaeology. The rediscovery of the Indo-Europeans—dubbed by an article in the New Scientist the “most murderous people of all time”—is the story of our ancestors, of technological progress, and of an ongoing academic upheaval. It is a story of some of the greatest findings in modern research, and of the dismal narrow-mindedness and motivated reasoning displayed by scholars who really ought to know better.”
My new article for the Australian magazine Quillette on the aDNA revolution, the discovery of the steppe invasions, and the overturning of the postwar archaeological consensus.