Migration and miscegenation

The ancient history of India's population

In his 1994 magnum opus, The History and Geography of Human Genes, the great Italian geneticist Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza synthesised what was known about humanity’s deep past, and argued that the genetic differences amongst present day populations would allow a reconstruction of the great historical migrations. But beginning in 2009, the study of ancient DNA from hundreds of thousands of year old skeletons, using techniques pioneered by Svante Paabo at the Max Planck Institute in Germany, and extended by David Reich at Harvard, led to what has been labelled the “ancient DNA genetic revolution”. This has overturned many of Cavalli-Sforza’s