Identity: What DNA Can Tell Us About Ourselves

Identity: What DNA Can Tell Us About Ourselves

How genetics can provide novel, fascinating, and objective data on human identity–when identity has never been more important. Our identity, both personal and collective, is a fluid and complex narrative often rooted in the past. This past can now be explored with new technological developments; in the last few years, more than 12,000 ancient human genomes have been retrieved. At the same time, ancestry test companies are building conceptions on our identity based on genetic data from literally tens of millions of customers. Computational approaches are now able to generate pedigrees with literally millions of people across tens of generations. In Identity , Carles Lalueza-Fox explores how the unprecedented amount of genetic information generated in the last ten years can provide meaningful and fascinating evidence about our identity, starting at the individual level and ending at the species level. As genetics take center stage as a social transformative tool in the twenty-first century, this book helps explain the tremendous impact it will have on our concept of identity. “Modern genetics, Lalueza-Fox shows us, is changing what is possible and knowable. But it is also changing our understanding of who we are—what it means to be a human and, more precisely, to be you. Read this terrific book if you want to understand yourself and the future in light of the language and murmuring of genes.” —Robert Dunn, William Neal Reynolds Distinguished Professor, North Carolina State University “If you want to understand how ancient DNA is forcing our hand—causing pre-genomic views of how each of us relates to the world around us to be untenable—this fascinating book by Carles Lalueza-Fox is for you.” —David Reich, Professor, Harvard University; author of Who We Are and How We Got Here Carles Lalueza-Fox is a leading research expert on the retrieval and analysis of ancient genomes, including extinct hominins, past human populations and pathogens. He is Director of the Natural Sciences Museum of Barcelona and the author of Inequality (MIT Press).