[Music]
[Applause]
who among us has not gazed up into the
Stars and wondered Who am I where do I
come from how did I get here how long
have we been gazing up at the stars and
wondering where we came from how we got
here where we’re going
fifty thousand years ago the ancestors
of many of us left Africa and headed out
across the globe in different directions
some went one way some went another
others had preceded them others would
follow have you ever wondered about your
mother and father what they were like
when they were your age what did they do
what did they eat what were the
successes how did they deal with the
challenges that life dealt them or your
grandmother and grandfather or their
grandmothers and grandfathers what would
it be like to meet them to talk to them
to learn from them let’s do some deep
stargazing and look forward look back
fifty thousand years not over three
generations but two thousand generations
what would it be like to meet your
great-grandmother a thousand times
removed what was it like for her when
she was living in ancient Rome what was
it like for her when she lived in
ancient Egypt what was it like for her
when she lived in ancient China
what did she experience let’s stare gaze
even deeper in to the human past
back 600 generations to a grandmother
600 times removed who visited the
fantastic cave art the paintings and
sculptures of the grottoes and shelters
of southwestern France as the Ice Age
began to draw to its close doesn’t that
sound like magic but it’s not magic its
science it’s the new science of the
human past which is doing very nearly
exactly this at this very moment we all
know about the Scientific Revolution of
our own time but it’s being accompanied
by a scientific revolution in our
understanding of the human past we’re
familiar with the extraordinary
technological and scientific changes
that are sweeping through our world in
this 21st century we know how the
molecules of DNA are beginning to allow
us to identify to predict to detect
maybe even to cure diseases we know how
the molecules of DNA are solving crimes
we know how
satellites are combining with climate
scientists and supercomputers to
understand the structure the scale the
timing of extreme climate events we may
even know how the digital humanities are
collecting connecting and displaying
analyzing data from past civilizations
these things are bringing us closer to
that grandmother 600 times removed
because all this is now affecting our
understanding of the human past we may
not realize it but that same Scientific
Revolution that affects our everyday
life is transforming what we can know
about the human past it is important to
know where we come from if we want to
know who we are and so historians for
the last 200 years have been moving
mountains of paper and parchment trying
to understand what happened from the
faith frail and narrow record of the
humor
past but that written record covers only
slivers of what was going on where it
was going on and only covers the last
5,000 years and so archaeologists know
too that it is important to know where
we’re coming from if we want to know who
we are and where we’re going
and they’ve been moving mountains of
dirt using pickaxes and trials and
toothbrushes to discover things from the
human past to push our knowledge of the
human past past that boundary of 5,000
years and into areas that we can’t see
from the slender and frail written
sources and while they’re doing this
they’re not they’re missing the great
advances that are emerging from the
Scientific Revolution of our aren’t our
own time the disciplines are operating
in their own silos the historians are
not talking to the biologists the
archaeologists are not talking to the
earth scientists the linguists are not
talking to the Jenners geneticist and so
we don’t know the fantastic things that
may be going on in the office next door
specialization gets more done if we
specialize we can concentrate on one
thing and do it more efficiently rather
than growing your own food and writing
computer software it’s better to let
someone else grow the food and you
concentrate on designing the computer
software better food better software
specialization is one of the things that
has allowed us to see new things in the
science of the human past whether it’s
from ancient movements from ancient
genomes from ancient skeletons or modern
DNA whether it’s ancient air trapped in
ice cores or whether it’s ancient
pathways buried beneath modern highways
right now ancient DNA is revealing
amazing things about our human past that
we did not know we have learned recently
that amazingly human beings
testers of our species of Homo sapiens
mated with Neanderthals we don’t know
this many of us most of us in this room
are descended from a mixture of Homo
sapiens and Neanderthals the Scientific
Revolution of our time is transforming
our understanding of the human past with
powerful consequences for understanding
our human present and where we’re going
today when we break down the silos we
can work together and discover amazing
new aspects to the deep history of our
common lived experience on this planet
let me try and illustrate that for you
with four examples taken from recent
discoveries for examples that will take
us around the globe and around the
realms of the human experience
I’ll start where we all started in
Africa and move on to the great story of
the indo-european migration and the
origins of the language that I’m
speaking right now I’ll follow with an
extraordinary economic study of the
connection between Roman roads and
economic development and I’ll conclude
with the very sobering story of plague
and ancient pollution we all came from
Africa analysis of our modern genomes
and of the ancient DNA has shown this
very clearly from the moment that
paleontologists have working with
ancient human fossils have begun to work
with geneticists working with modern and
ancient human DNA we can see that right
from the beginning
we’re among migrants Wanderers refugees
in search of better opportunities we can
now detect the different pulses of
migration Out of Africa and across the
globe pulses which may have been
connected to ancient climate events
every week brings new pieces of the
extraordinary ancient puzzle of our past
reaching back to our origins
in Africa so the first example shows us
what geneticists and paleontologists can
reveal to us when they work together my
second example shows the power of
linguists talking to geneticists talking
to archaeologists linguist observed
across western Eurasia a vast family of
languages which through the common
features that they share they have been
able to demonstrate descended from a
mother tongue the family of languages is
the family of indo-european languages
and they have spread over the globe to
places as distant as Ireland and India
by comparing their similar features
linguists have been able to show that
the mother tongue of the indo-european
speakers proto-indo-european probably
existed about 5000 years ago
archaeologists have looked at the
vocabulary of the indo-european
languages and figured out what the
ecology was like of the place where they
were living and deduced that the first
indo-european speakers probably lived on
the borders of Asia and Europe maybe
about five thousand years ago the
biggest breakthrough came a couple years
ago with work in a genetics laboratory
that is part of our science of the human
past network the laboratory of David
Reich in the Harvard Medical School in
the department of genetics working with
colleagues around the look around the
globe their work studying the DNA of
ancient skeletons was able to
demonstrate that the people in that area
on the borders of Asia and Europe were
the same people who migrated into Europe
4,500 years ago in all probability the
bearers of the indo-european languages
into Western Eurasia the origins of the
modern languages of English French
German Greek and so forth this is what
happens when linguists team up with
geneticists team up with archaeologists
my third example brings together
archaeologists economist satellite
technology and the digital humanities it
refers to a study done in a German
Business School which was seeking to
understand what were the things that
explain the different economic vitality
of different regions in Germany today in
the 21st century
so the ingenious scholar in question
figured out that by using satellite
technology nighttime satellite
photographs he could determine which
areas were the most economically
development developed in today’s Germany
he took that picture and compared the
intensity of luminosity to something
else to a digital humanities file that
he downloaded from an atlas of ancient
civilization freely available on the on
the web created by Harvard
undergraduates a digital humanities file
with a map of the roads of the Roman
Empire when he brought them together he
discovered that the areas in Germany
which are economically the most highly
developed and vibrant today are the
areas where the Romans built roads 2,000
years ago that’s some bang for a 2,000
year old buck so this is what happens if
you can bring together economists
computer scientists satellite technology
and digital humanities my final example
shows the power of bringing together
earth scientists archaeologists
historians and specialists in public
health I have the privilege of
co-directing an amazing project with my
friend and colleague Paul Mazursky
the director of the climate change
Institute at the University of Maine our
team has recovered an ice core from a
Swiss glacier and with an amazing new
technology that Professor Majewski slab
has developed
we are able to analyze the chemical
composition of the air trapped in that
ancient ice at a higher resolution that
has ever been done before and with this
we have just reconstructed measurements
detailed measurements of the atmospheric
lead pollution of Europe for the last
1,000 years now we all know that lead is
a very bad thing even tiny amounts of it
are dangerous that’s why we banned it
from paint that’s why we took it out of
our gasoline that’s why fishermen no
longer used lead sinkers we were
astonished when we saw our measurements
everyone has believed that the poisoning
of the European population through lead
pollution began with the Industrial
Revolution when factories covered Europe
mines turned out huge amounts of metals
our records show that that poisoning of
the population of Europe has been going
on at least for the last thousand years
the lead pollution in the air from
European industry in the 12th century is
entirely comparable to that of the 17th
and even 18th centuries you can see from
this graph to our further astonishment
particularly of the historians who knew
immediately what these dates meant
there’s only one period one four year
period in that thousand years when lead
pollution drops down to its natural
level those are the four years from
thirteen forty nine to thirteen fifty
three we recognize the historians and
archaeologists immediately that these
were the years of the Black Death that
devastated the population of Europe
killed the miners and the the workers
and the mills and abated LED pollution
because all economic activity came to a
standstill
for four years now we know for the first
time ever what’s the natural level of
lead deposits from the atmosphere
in Europe and they are much lower than
anything we’ve seen in the last thousand
years now the problem for scientists for
public health specialists for the people
working in the life sciences will begin
to understand what was the impact on the
millions of Europeans who live downwind
of those mines and metal production how
did it affect their IQ their general
health
how did affect their genetic legacy the
genetic legacy that they have bequeathed
to many of us these are the new
questions that emerge for today from the
science of the human past so there you
have four examples four examples of
humanists working with scientists of
archaeologists working with earth
scientists of historians working with
computer scientists a biologist working
with linguists when we bring together
people from the different disciplines we
make discoveries we make new
observations of important realities that
are spread between the silos of our dish
disciplinary specialization by working
together we can create the situation
where the science of the human past will
allow us to stargaze into the past and
discover what it was like for that
grandmother of ours 600 times removed
and illuminate for us what it may be
like in the future the power of the
science of the human past is to be able
to use the Magnificent new tools of
Technology and science and the
humanities and to use them to discover
and to tell new stories true stories a
thousand new and true stories about
where we’re coming from and where we’re
going thank you
[Applause]
[Music]
[Music]
[Applause]
who among us has not gazed up into the
Stars and wondered Who am I where do I
come from how did I get here how long
have we been gazing up at the stars and
wondering where we came from how we got
here where we’re going
fifty thousand years ago the ancestors
of many of us left Africa and headed out
across the globe in different directions
some went one way some went another
others had preceded them others would
follow have you ever wondered about your
mother and father what they were like
when they were your age what did they do
what did they eat what were the
successes how did they deal with the
challenges that life dealt them or your
grandmother and grandfather or their
grandmothers and grandfathers what would
it be like to meet them to talk to them
to learn from them let’s do some deep
stargazing and look forward look back
fifty thousand years not over three
generations but two thousand generations
what would it be like to meet your
great-grandmother a thousand times
removed what was it like for her when
she was living in ancient Rome what was
it like for her when she lived in
ancient Egypt what was it like for her
when she lived in ancient China
what did she experience let’s stare gaze
even deeper in to the human past
back 600 generations to a grandmother
600 times removed who visited the
fantastic cave art the paintings and
sculptures of the grottoes and shelters
of southwestern France as the Ice Age
began to draw to its close doesn’t that
sound like magic but it’s not magic its
science it’s the new science of the
human past which is doing very nearly
exactly this at this very moment we all
know about the Scientific Revolution of
our own time but it’s being accompanied
by a scientific revolution in our
understanding of the human past we’re
familiar with the extraordinary
technological and scientific changes
that are sweeping through our world in
this 21st century we know how the
molecules of DNA are beginning to allow
us to identify to predict to detect
maybe even to cure diseases we know how
the molecules of DNA are solving crimes
we know how
satellites are combining with climate
scientists and supercomputers to
understand the structure the scale the
timing of extreme climate events we may
even know how the digital humanities are
collecting connecting and displaying
analyzing data from past civilizations
these things are bringing us closer to
that grandmother 600 times removed
because all this is now affecting our
understanding of the human past we may
not realize it but that same Scientific
Revolution that affects our everyday
life is transforming what we can know
about the human past it is important to
know where we come from if we want to
know who we are and so historians for
the last 200 years have been moving
mountains of paper and parchment trying
to understand what happened from the
faith frail and narrow record of the
humor
past but that written record covers only
slivers of what was going on where it
was going on and only covers the last
5,000 years and so archaeologists know
too that it is important to know where
we’re coming from if we want to know who
we are and where we’re going
and they’ve been moving mountains of
dirt using pickaxes and trials and
toothbrushes to discover things from the
human past to push our knowledge of the
human past past that boundary of 5,000
years and into areas that we can’t see
from the slender and frail written
sources and while they’re doing this
they’re not they’re missing the great
advances that are emerging from the
Scientific Revolution of our aren’t our
own time the disciplines are operating
in their own silos the historians are
not talking to the biologists the
archaeologists are not talking to the
earth scientists the linguists are not
talking to the Jenners geneticist and so
we don’t know the fantastic things that
may be going on in the office next door
specialization gets more done if we
specialize we can concentrate on one
thing and do it more efficiently rather
than growing your own food and writing
computer software it’s better to let
someone else grow the food and you
concentrate on designing the computer
software better food better software
specialization is one of the things that
has allowed us to see new things in the
science of the human past whether it’s
from ancient movements from ancient
genomes from ancient skeletons or modern
DNA whether it’s ancient air trapped in
ice cores or whether it’s ancient
pathways buried beneath modern highways
right now ancient DNA is revealing
amazing things about our human past that
we did not know we have learned recently
that amazingly human beings
testers of our species of Homo sapiens
mated with Neanderthals we don’t know
this many of us most of us in this room
are descended from a mixture of Homo
sapiens and Neanderthals the Scientific
Revolution of our time is transforming
our understanding of the human past with
powerful consequences for understanding
our human present and where we’re going
today when we break down the silos we
can work together and discover amazing
new aspects to the deep history of our
common lived experience on this planet
let me try and illustrate that for you
with four examples taken from recent
discoveries for examples that will take
us around the globe and around the
realms of the human experience
I’ll start where we all started in
Africa and move on to the great story of
the indo-european migration and the
origins of the language that I’m
speaking right now I’ll follow with an
extraordinary economic study of the
connection between Roman roads and
economic development and I’ll conclude
with the very sobering story of plague
and ancient pollution we all came from
Africa analysis of our modern genomes
and of the ancient DNA has shown this
very clearly from the moment that
paleontologists have working with
ancient human fossils have begun to work
with geneticists working with modern and
ancient human DNA we can see that right
from the beginning
we’re among migrants Wanderers refugees
in search of better opportunities we can
now detect the different pulses of
migration Out of Africa and across the
globe pulses which may have been
connected to ancient climate events
every week brings new pieces of the
extraordinary ancient puzzle of our past
reaching back to our origins
in Africa so the first example shows us
what geneticists and paleontologists can
reveal to us when they work together my
second example shows the power of
linguists talking to geneticists talking
to archaeologists linguist observed
across western Eurasia a vast family of
languages which through the common
features that they share they have been
able to demonstrate descended from a
mother tongue the family of languages is
the family of indo-european languages
and they have spread over the globe to
places as distant as Ireland and India
by comparing their similar features
linguists have been able to show that
the mother tongue of the indo-european
speakers proto-indo-european probably
existed about 5000 years ago
archaeologists have looked at the
vocabulary of the indo-european
languages and figured out what the
ecology was like of the place where they
were living and deduced that the first
indo-european speakers probably lived on
the borders of Asia and Europe maybe
about five thousand years ago the
biggest breakthrough came a couple years
ago with work in a genetics laboratory
that is part of our science of the human
past network the laboratory of David
Reich in the Harvard Medical School in
the department of genetics working with
colleagues around the look around the
globe their work studying the DNA of
ancient skeletons was able to
demonstrate that the people in that area
on the borders of Asia and Europe were
the same people who migrated into Europe
4,500 years ago in all probability the
bearers of the indo-european languages
into Western Eurasia the origins of the
modern languages of English French
German Greek and so forth this is what
happens when linguists team up with
geneticists team up with archaeologists
my third example brings together
archaeologists economist satellite
technology and the digital humanities it
refers to a study done in a German
Business School which was seeking to
understand what were the things that
explain the different economic vitality
of different regions in Germany today in
the 21st century
so the ingenious scholar in question
figured out that by using satellite
technology nighttime satellite
photographs he could determine which
areas were the most economically
development developed in today’s Germany
he took that picture and compared the
intensity of luminosity to something
else to a digital humanities file that
he downloaded from an atlas of ancient
civilization freely available on the on
the web created by Harvard
undergraduates a digital humanities file
with a map of the roads of the Roman
Empire when he brought them together he
discovered that the areas in Germany
which are economically the most highly
developed and vibrant today are the
areas where the Romans built roads 2,000
years ago that’s some bang for a 2,000
year old buck so this is what happens if
you can bring together economists
computer scientists satellite technology
and digital humanities my final example
shows the power of bringing together
earth scientists archaeologists
historians and specialists in public
health I have the privilege of
co-directing an amazing project with my
friend and colleague Paul Mazursky
the director of the climate change
Institute at the University of Maine our
team has recovered an ice core from a
Swiss glacier and with an amazing new
technology that Professor Majewski slab
has developed
we are able to analyze the chemical
composition of the air trapped in that
ancient ice at a higher resolution that
has ever been done before and with this
we have just reconstructed measurements
detailed measurements of the atmospheric
lead pollution of Europe for the last
1,000 years now we all know that lead is
a very bad thing even tiny amounts of it
are dangerous that’s why we banned it
from paint that’s why we took it out of
our gasoline that’s why fishermen no
longer used lead sinkers we were
astonished when we saw our measurements
everyone has believed that the poisoning
of the European population through lead
pollution began with the Industrial
Revolution when factories covered Europe
mines turned out huge amounts of metals
our records show that that poisoning of
the population of Europe has been going
on at least for the last thousand years
the lead pollution in the air from
European industry in the 12th century is
entirely comparable to that of the 17th
and even 18th centuries you can see from
this graph to our further astonishment
particularly of the historians who knew
immediately what these dates meant
there’s only one period one four year
period in that thousand years when lead
pollution drops down to its natural
level those are the four years from
thirteen forty nine to thirteen fifty
three we recognize the historians and
archaeologists immediately that these
were the years of the Black Death that
devastated the population of Europe
killed the miners and the the workers
and the mills and abated LED pollution
because all economic activity came to a
standstill
for four years now we know for the first
time ever what’s the natural level of
lead deposits from the atmosphere
in Europe and they are much lower than
anything we’ve seen in the last thousand
years now the problem for scientists for
public health specialists for the people
working in the life sciences will begin
to understand what was the impact on the
millions of Europeans who live downwind
of those mines and metal production how
did it affect their IQ their general
health
how did affect their genetic legacy the
genetic legacy that they have bequeathed
to many of us these are the new
questions that emerge for today from the
science of the human past so there you
have four examples four examples of
humanists working with scientists of
archaeologists working with earth
scientists of historians working with
computer scientists a biologist working
with linguists when we bring together
people from the different disciplines we
make discoveries we make new
observations of important realities that
are spread between the silos of our dish
disciplinary specialization by working
together we can create the situation
where the science of the human past will
allow us to stargaze into the past and
discover what it was like for that
grandmother of ours 600 times removed
and illuminate for us what it may be
like in the future the power of the
science of the human past is to be able
to use the Magnificent new tools of
Technology and science and the
humanities and to use them to discover
and to tell new stories true stories a
thousand new and true stories about
where we’re coming from and where we’re
going thank you
[Applause]
[Music]
[Music]
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