Anonymousabout 3 hours ago
A landmark study of 15,836 ancient genomes from West Eurasia, published in Nature in April 2026 by Ali Akbari, David Reich, and colleagues, found an order of magnitude more signals of natural selection than previously detected — 479 gene variants shaped by directional selection over the past 14,000 years. The findings, which implicate traits from immune function to pigmentation to disease susceptibility, have sparked debate about geographic bias in ancient DNA research, the line between refinement and revision in evolutionary biology, and the ethical risks of publicizing findings about ongoing human evolution.