Spencer Wells
His latest book, Pandora’s Seed, looks at how much of our DNA has
adapted to our ‘new’ agricultural lifestyle and the large amount that hasn’t – leading to an increasingly unhealthy
population. He talks to Olivia Edward about the rush to collect the
world’s unmixed DNA before it’s too late and why we’re not as healthy as
our hunter-gatherer forebears.
My day job is running something called the Genographic Project. DNA studies suggest that everyone on the planet today descended from a group of Africans who began to spread out around the world about 60,000 years ago. We’re trying to discover new knowledge about these migratory journeys by analysing the DNA contributed by hundreds of thousands of people from all over the world.
DNA is our own history book, providing a ‘written’ record of our history going right back to ancient times. As it’s copied from generation to generation, occasionally a ‘typo’ or mutation occurs. Sometimes these changes in genetic code give people an evolutionary advantage, meaning they are more likely to survive and pass on their DNA. Studying these patterns allows us to peer back in time and see how our genomes have been moulded by past events.
DNA testing makes a lot of sense to traditional peoples. They often have a clear sense of connection to their ancestors. In some cases, they feel they’re actually carrying a piece of those ancestors inside of them. And we can say, ‘Yes you are – that’s your DNA.’
The footprints of our ancestors are being brushed away. We’re moving around and mixing more than we ever have before. That’s a good thing socially, but biologically, it’s mixing up the gene pool. The ancient patterns that allow us to trace human migrations of the past 60,000 years are being shuffled. If we don’t capture a genetic snapshot now, we’re going to lose track of them. Essentially, we have this one chance to piece together our story.
We’ve probably been through more genetic adaptations in the past 10,000 years than in the previous 100,000 years. That’s because around 10,000 years ago, the first human being planted a seed and agriculture rapidly swept across the planet. As a result, our DNA adapted to new food sources that contained higher levels of starch and dairy products.
Agriculture didn’t make people healthier. In fact, the opposite is true. After the dawn of agriculture, people became shorter, they began dying earlier and they began dying sicker. As archaeological evidence shows, people suddenly moved from hunting and gathering a wide variety of animals and plants to subsisting on a narrow diet that was largely starch-based. As a result, people were consuming fewer nutrients and dental cavities increased.
Even today, we’re not as healthy as hunter-gatherer communities were. We might live longer, but that’s largely down to modern medicine, particularly vaccinations and antibiotics. Up until the 1800s, the average lifespan for men and women (33.9 and 28.5 years) was less than the average lifespan of Paleolithic humans (35.4 and 30 years)
Our biology is mismatched to the culture that we’ve created since the development of agriculture. Depression, the obesity epidemic and other non-infectious diseases found in Westernised societies are signs of this. In many ways, human beings are still adapting to this sedentary lifestyle and a sugar- and fat-rich diet. For example, type 2 diabetes used to be called adult-onset diabetes, but now children as young as eight or nine are acquiring this disease. If these children are unable to go on to have children of their own, this may have some sort of long-term selective effect.
To save ourselves, we need to accept human nature, not suppress it. Human culture may have changed enormously, but we will always be defined by our biology. I think we need to reassess our cultural emphasis on expansion, acquisition and trying to create perfect human beings through genetic engineering. Instead, as an evolutionary biologist, I would argue that a better solution would be for us to adapt to the biology that has evolved over tens of millions of years. And one way we could begin to do this is by learning from traditional communities that retain a link back to the way we lived for nearly all of our evolutionary history.
I called the book Pandora’s Seed because I’m hopeful. I think we’re capable of innovating our way out of some of the issues that face us. We’re a very intelligent, clever species. We just need to have the right kind of consequence laid out before us. We don’t act until we have to, which makes sense in terms of our evolution: why anticipate something that’s not here yet? But I think we will come up with solutions. That’s why I put Pandora’s myth at the front of the book. She tipped out all sorts of unimaginable evils onto the world, but the one thing she saved was hope.
Curriculum vitae
1969 Born in Marietta, Atlanta, Georgia, USA
1982–85 Attended Lubbock High School, Texas
1988 Graduated from University of Texas with a BSc in molecular biology
1989–94 Studied for a PhD in population genetics at Harvard University
1994–98 Postdoctoral research fellow at Stanford University
1998–2000 Director of the Population Genetics Research Group of the Wellcome Trust Centre for Human Genetics at the University of Oxford
2005–present Explorer in residence at the National Geographic Society
September 2010
My day job is running something called the Genographic Project. DNA studies suggest that everyone on the planet today descended from a group of Africans who began to spread out around the world about 60,000 years ago. We’re trying to discover new knowledge about these migratory journeys by analysing the DNA contributed by hundreds of thousands of people from all over the world.
DNA is our own history book, providing a ‘written’ record of our history going right back to ancient times. As it’s copied from generation to generation, occasionally a ‘typo’ or mutation occurs. Sometimes these changes in genetic code give people an evolutionary advantage, meaning they are more likely to survive and pass on their DNA. Studying these patterns allows us to peer back in time and see how our genomes have been moulded by past events.
DNA testing makes a lot of sense to traditional peoples. They often have a clear sense of connection to their ancestors. In some cases, they feel they’re actually carrying a piece of those ancestors inside of them. And we can say, ‘Yes you are – that’s your DNA.’
The footprints of our ancestors are being brushed away. We’re moving around and mixing more than we ever have before. That’s a good thing socially, but biologically, it’s mixing up the gene pool. The ancient patterns that allow us to trace human migrations of the past 60,000 years are being shuffled. If we don’t capture a genetic snapshot now, we’re going to lose track of them. Essentially, we have this one chance to piece together our story.
We’ve probably been through more genetic adaptations in the past 10,000 years than in the previous 100,000 years. That’s because around 10,000 years ago, the first human being planted a seed and agriculture rapidly swept across the planet. As a result, our DNA adapted to new food sources that contained higher levels of starch and dairy products.
Agriculture didn’t make people healthier. In fact, the opposite is true. After the dawn of agriculture, people became shorter, they began dying earlier and they began dying sicker. As archaeological evidence shows, people suddenly moved from hunting and gathering a wide variety of animals and plants to subsisting on a narrow diet that was largely starch-based. As a result, people were consuming fewer nutrients and dental cavities increased.
Even today, we’re not as healthy as hunter-gatherer communities were. We might live longer, but that’s largely down to modern medicine, particularly vaccinations and antibiotics. Up until the 1800s, the average lifespan for men and women (33.9 and 28.5 years) was less than the average lifespan of Paleolithic humans (35.4 and 30 years)
Our biology is mismatched to the culture that we’ve created since the development of agriculture. Depression, the obesity epidemic and other non-infectious diseases found in Westernised societies are signs of this. In many ways, human beings are still adapting to this sedentary lifestyle and a sugar- and fat-rich diet. For example, type 2 diabetes used to be called adult-onset diabetes, but now children as young as eight or nine are acquiring this disease. If these children are unable to go on to have children of their own, this may have some sort of long-term selective effect.
To save ourselves, we need to accept human nature, not suppress it. Human culture may have changed enormously, but we will always be defined by our biology. I think we need to reassess our cultural emphasis on expansion, acquisition and trying to create perfect human beings through genetic engineering. Instead, as an evolutionary biologist, I would argue that a better solution would be for us to adapt to the biology that has evolved over tens of millions of years. And one way we could begin to do this is by learning from traditional communities that retain a link back to the way we lived for nearly all of our evolutionary history.
I called the book Pandora’s Seed because I’m hopeful. I think we’re capable of innovating our way out of some of the issues that face us. We’re a very intelligent, clever species. We just need to have the right kind of consequence laid out before us. We don’t act until we have to, which makes sense in terms of our evolution: why anticipate something that’s not here yet? But I think we will come up with solutions. That’s why I put Pandora’s myth at the front of the book. She tipped out all sorts of unimaginable evils onto the world, but the one thing she saved was hope.
Curriculum vitae
1969 Born in Marietta, Atlanta, Georgia, USA
1982–85 Attended Lubbock High School, Texas
1988 Graduated from University of Texas with a BSc in molecular biology
1989–94 Studied for a PhD in population genetics at Harvard University
1994–98 Postdoctoral research fellow at Stanford University
1998–2000 Director of the Population Genetics Research Group of the Wellcome Trust Centre for Human Genetics at the University of Oxford
2005–present Explorer in residence at the National Geographic Society
September 2010
