Acknowledgments
First thing first. This book emerged out of a year of intense collaboration with my wife, Eugenie Reich. We researched the book together, prepared the first drafts of the chapters together, and talked about the book incessantly as it matured. This book would not have come into being without her.
I am grateful to Bridget Alex, Peter Bellwood, Samuel Fenton-Whittet, Henry Louis Gates Jr., Yonatan Grad, Iosif Lazaridis, Daniel Lieberman, Shop Mallick, Erroll McDonald, Latha Menon, Nick Patterson, Molly Przeworski, Juliet Samuel, Clifford Tabin, Daniel Reich, Tova Reich, Walter Reich, Robert Weinberg, and Matthew Spriggs for close critical readings of the entire book.
I thank David Anthony, Ofer Bar-Yosef, Caroline Bearsted, Deborah Bolnick, Dorcas Brown, Katherine Brunson, Qiaomei Fu, David Goldstein, Alexander Kim, Carles Lalueza-Fox, Iain Mathieson, Eric Lander, Mark Lipson, Scott MacEachern, Richard Meadow, David Meltzer, Priya Moorjani, John Novembre, Svante Pääbo, Pier Palamara, Eleftheria Palkopoulou, Mary Prendergast, Rebecca Reich, Colin Renfrew, Nadin Rohland, Daniel Rozas, Pontus Skoglund, Chuanchao Wang, and Michael Witzel for critiques of individual chapters. I also thank Stanley Ambrose, Graham Coop, Dorian Fuller, Éadaion Harney, Linda Heywood, Yousuke Kaifu, Kristian Kristiansen, Michelle Lee, Daniel Lieberman, Michael McCormick, Michael Petraglia, Joseph Pickrell, Stephen Schiffels, Beth Shapiro, and Bence Viola for reviewing sections of the book for accuracy.
I am grateful to Harvard Medical School, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, and the National Science Foundation, all of which generously supported my science while I was working on this project, and viewed it as complementary to my primary research.
I finally thank several people who repeatedly encouraged me to write this book. I resisted the idea for years because I did not want to distract myself from my science, and because for geneticists papers are the currency, not books. But my mind changed as my colleagues grew to include archaeologists, anthropologists, historians, linguists, and others eager to come to grips with the ancient DNA revolution. There are many papers I did not write, and many analyses I did not complete, because of the time I needed to write this book. I hope that those who read the book will emerge with a new perspective on who we are.