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Scientists Ranked Every Race on Earth by DNA Age — The Oldest Shocked Everyone — Transcript

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0:00There's a question that has haunted
0:01science for over two centuries. A
0:03question so dangerous, so destabilizing
0:05that even when the answer was finally
0:07found, almost nobody reported it
0:09honestly. Who were the first humans? Not
0:11just the first to build cities or write
0:13laws or forge weapons, but the first,
0:16the absolute genetic biological origin
0:18point of every person alive on this
0:20planet. Scientists finally ran the
0:22numbers. They sequenced the DNA of
0:24populations from every corner of the
0:26Earth. They built a ranking and the
0:28population that came out on top, the
0:30oldest, the deepest, the most ancient,
0:32was not who anyone expected, not even
0:34close. There is something deeply
0:36uncomfortable about the truth of human
0:37origins. Not because it is violent or
0:39shameful, though history has made it so,
0:42but because it completely destroys the
0:44story that most of the modern world has
0:45told itself for centuries. The story of
0:48progress. The story that civilization
0:50flows in one direction, from primitive
0:51to advanced, from ancient to modern,
0:54from forgotten to celebrated. That
0:56story, it turns out, has the entire
0:58thing backwards. And the DNA doesn't
1:00lie. In 2019, a team of geneticists
1:03completed one of the most ambitious
1:04projects in the history of biological
1:06science. They analyzed the DNA of over
1:09250,000 people from every continent on
1:11Earth with a single goal. To rank every
1:13major human population by the genetic
1:15age of their lineage. Not their culture,
1:17not their civilization, not the age of
1:19their monuments or their kingdoms, their
1:21actual biological molecular age. the age
1:24encoded inside their cells inside the
1:27very structure of who they are. The
1:29results rearranged everything and the
1:31population sitting at the very top of
1:32that ranking. The group with the oldest
1:35DNA on the planet was not found in
1:36Europe, not in Asia, not in the ancient
1:39river valleys of Mesopotamia where
1:41scholars once insisted human complexity
1:43was born. Think about what that means
1:45for a moment before we go further. The
1:47entire western framework of history
1:48places civilization's crown on certain
1:50populations. Ancient Greece, Rome,
1:53Egypt, the Fertile Crescent. These are
1:55the names embedded in school textbooks,
1:57in museum exhibits, in the cultural
1:59imagination of what it means to be old,
2:01to be significant, to be the origin of
2:03something important. But DNA does not
2:05care about textbooks. And what the DNA
2:08revealed is that the oldest human
2:09lineage on Earth belongs to a people who
2:11were not building empires. They were
2:13doing something far more extraordinary.
2:15They were surviving continuously without
2:17interruption for longer than any other
2:19group of humans in existence. But here's
2:21where it gets complicated and where most
2:24people stop paying attention because the
2:25complexity is what gets buried. Hloid
2:27genetic studies analysis of both the Y
2:30chromosome and mitochondrial DNA
2:32routinely recognized the koisen speaking
2:34Jew bushman groups of southern Africa as
2:37the most divergent population in the
2:38world. The deepest splits in the entire
2:40human family tree. The oldest branches
2:42that broke away from the common trunk of
2:44our shared ancestry traced directly to
2:46them. These are the sand people. The
2:48Koisan, a group of huntergatherers who
2:50live in the Kalahari Desert, spanning
2:52Batswana, Namibia, and Northern South
2:54Africa. A group whose numbers have been
2:56shrinking for generations. A group
2:58pushed to the margins of society, living
3:00at what the world would call the edge of
3:02civilization. And yet, genetically, they
3:05are civilization. They are the root.
3:07Every human being on Earth, when you
3:09follow the chain of DNA far enough back,
3:11arrives at a lineage that connects to
3:13theirs. And this is where everything
3:14changes. A team of Stanford University
3:17scientists using the largest genetic
3:18analysis of remote tribal people ever
3:20conducted at the time determined that
3:22the human family tree is rooted in one
3:24of the world's most marginal and
3:25seemingly primitive people, the Bushmen
3:28of Southern Africa. This startling
3:30conclusion challenged the long-held
3:32assumption that human origins lay in the
3:34East African highlands of Ethiopia and
3:36Sudan, as suggested by fossil and
3:38archaeological evidence. The stones and
3:40bones had pointed one way. The DNA
3:42pointed somewhere else entirely. And the
3:44DNA, as any geneticist will tell you, is
3:46a more faithful record of time than any
3:48fossil ever discovered. Because fossils
3:50are accidents of preservation. The DNA
3:53is a direct inheritance. A biological
3:55letter passed from parent to child,
3:57unbroken, for hundreds of thousands of
3:59years. Specifically, the DNA of the
4:01Bushmen showed four times more diversity
4:03in regions governing immune function
4:04than other populations. Based on this
4:06genetic analysis, the team calculated
4:08that these first human populations of
4:11Homo sapiens bushmen date back
4:12approximately 200,000 years. 200,000
4:15years. Let that number sit. The Egyptian
4:17pyramids are roughly 4,500 years old.
4:20The Roman Empire lasted about 500 years
4:22at its peak. The oldest known writing is
4:24about 5,000 years old. And here is a
4:26population whose genetic lineage traces
4:28back not thousands but hundreds of
4:30thousands of years. continuous,
4:32unbroken, ancestral to every single
4:34person who has ever walked this earth.
4:36But here's where it gets worse, or
4:38rather where the story becomes something
4:40far more disturbing than a simple
4:42scientific discovery. The Sand people
4:44today are not celebrated. They are not
4:45studied in most history curricula. Their
4:47languages,
4:49extraordinary clickbased tonal systems
4:51that represent some of the oldest spoken
4:53languages in human existence, are
4:55disappearing. Their numbers have
4:56dwindled over time, and they languish at
4:58the bottom of Africa's social system,
5:00speaking in an extraordinary language of
5:02tonal clicks. The people with the oldest
5:04DNA on the planet, the people who carry
5:06within their cells the deepest memory of
5:08what it means to be human, are among the
5:10most marginalized populations in the
5:11modern world. That is not a coincidence.
5:14That is the result of centuries of
5:15misidentification, of colonial violence,
5:18of a world that decided to rank human
5:20worth by wealth and military power
5:22rather than by the truth of biological
5:24heritage. What most people are not
5:26seeing is the full depth of what this
5:28genetic data actually tells us. The
5:30concept used in this research is called
5:31genetic diversity. And it works like
5:34this. A population that has existed for
5:36a very long time accumulates a vast
5:38range of small genetic variations across
5:40generations. Think of it like a tree.
5:42The older a branch, the more subbranches
5:44it grows. The newer a branch, the fewer
5:47variations it has had time to develop.
5:49When scientists compare the genetic
5:51diversity of the sand bushman to the
5:52genetic diversity of say Europeans or
5:54East Asians, they find something
5:56extraordinary. The Bushmen seem more
5:58different from each other in terms of
5:59nucleotide substitutions than typical
6:01Asians and Europeans are from each
6:03other. Read that again. Two individuals
6:06from the same small tribe in the
6:07Kalahari Desert carry more genetic
6:09variation between themselves than exists
6:11between the entire population of Europe
6:14and the entire population of East Asia
6:16combined. That is not a marginal
6:18finding. That is a seismic one. It means
6:20the genetic history contained within the
6:22single group of people dwarfs the
6:24combined genetic history of billions of
6:26modern humans on other continents.
6:28Analyses of the men's genomes confirm
6:30that the Bushmen, also known as San or
6:32Koison, are among the most genetically
6:34diverse people in the world. And genetic
6:36diversity in the language of
6:38evolutionary biology is not just
6:40interesting trivia. It is the closest
6:42thing science has to a time stamp. High
6:44diversity means deep time. It means long
6:47survival. It means this population has
6:49been human, fully, biologically
6:51completely human for longer than almost
6:53any other group on Earth. Now, here is
6:55where the story expands beyond Africa
6:57entirely. Because this is not just about
6:59one population. This is about the entire
7:02journey of the human species across the
7:04globe. An unprecedented DNA study found
7:06evidence of a single human migration out
7:08of Africa and confirmed that Aboriginal
7:10Australians are the world's oldest
7:12civilization outside of Africa. What
7:14this means is that while the sand people
7:16of southern Africa hold the oldest
7:18genetic lineage within Africa, the
7:20Aboriginal Australians hold the most
7:22extraordinary record of what happened
7:23after humanity began to move. The
7:26question scientists had debated for
7:27decades was simple on its surface and
7:29devastating in its complexity. When did
7:31modern humans first leave Africa, and
7:33where did they go first? The DNA
7:35answered both. While European and Asian
7:38ancestral groups became distinct in the
7:40genetic record around 42,000 years ago,
7:43the precursors to today's indigenous
7:44Australians and Papwins diverged
7:46approximately 58,000 years ago as they
7:49ventured eastward. 58,000 years. For
7:53context, at that point in time, there
7:55were no cities anywhere on Earth. There
7:56was no agriculture. There was no
7:58pottery. There was no written language.
8:00And yet, a group of human beings made a
8:02journey so extraordinary that even
8:03modern scientists describing it reach
8:05for words that sound more like poetry
8:07than research papers. According to
8:09informed sources within the genetic
8:10research community, what happened next
8:12is almost impossible to process in its
8:14implications. These early humans didn't
8:16just walk across flat land. Professor SK
8:19Willers of the University of Copenhagen,
8:21who led the study, stated that
8:23Aboriginal Australians were the first
8:25modern humans to traverse unknown
8:26territory in Asia and Australia, saying
8:29it was a truly amazing journey that
8:30demanded exceptional survival skills and
8:32bravery to reach what is now Australia
8:34at that time, even accounting for lower
8:36sea levels. These people crossed open
8:38ocean. They built or found watercraft.
8:41They sailed into the unknown 58,000
8:43years before the first European explorer
8:45claimed to have discovered anything. And
8:47here's where it gets worse still.
8:49Because the story is not just about who
8:51came first. It's about what happened to
8:53them afterward. The study based on
8:55analysis of 83 indigenous Australians
8:57and 25 pop ones found that the group
9:00remained largely isolated until about
9:024,000 years ago when they encountered
9:04populations from Asia and then Europe.
9:064,000 years ago. Which means that for
9:08over 50,000 years, the Aboriginal
9:10Australians developed their culture,
9:12their knowledge systems, their
9:13languages, their understanding of the
9:15land and the stars and the seasons
9:17entirely independently without
9:19interruption, without outside influence.
9:21The result was something so deep and so
9:23sophisticated that its full complexity
9:25is still not understood by the
9:26scientists attempting to study it.
9:28Consider this. Aboriginal Australians
9:31Murius developed one of the most
9:33intricate systems of ecological land
9:34management in human history. Their fish
9:36traps, some thought to be up to 40,000
9:39years old, may be among the oldest
9:40surviving human-made structures anywhere
9:42on the planet. Their medicinal knowledge
9:44involved tannins to treat inflammation,
9:46alkyoids to relieve pain, and
9:48antiseptics like tea tree oil to fight
9:50infection. This was not primitive
9:53knowledge. This was accumulated
9:54scientific observation across tens of
9:56thousands of years of unbroken
9:58experimentation, and it was nearly
10:00destroyed in two centuries. But pull
10:02back even further because there's a
10:03third layer to this story and it may be
10:05the most important of all. Researchers
10:07discovered L7, an eighth mitochondrial
10:09HLA group estimated to be approximately
10:12100,000 years old, a maternal human
10:14lineage that had been previously
10:16mclassified in genetic databases for
10:18nearly two decades. This discovery
10:20published in 2022 means that scientists
10:23had been working with incomplete
10:24information. A lineage 100,000 years old
10:27carried by human beings alive today had
10:29been sitting misidentified in genetic
10:31databases for two decades. Which raises
10:33a question that the mainstream coverage
10:35of human genetics almost never asks.
10:37What else have we missed? The real story
10:39is not just about who is oldest. The
10:41real story is about the architecture of
10:43human time itself. When scientists plot
10:46the mitochondrial family tree, the
10:48inheritance traced through the maternal
10:49line passed from mother to child for
10:51hundreds of thousands of generations,
10:54they find that the tree has a root. All
10:56modern humans can trace their
10:57mitochondrial DNA to a single population
10:59in Africa. Sometimes misleadingly called
11:02mitochondrial Eve, though this was a
11:04population, not an individual. There was
11:06no single woman at the beginning of
11:07humanity. There was a group of women
11:09living in Africa whose maternal lineages
11:12survived while others went extinct. Not
11:14because they were special, but because
11:16the randomness of survival and
11:17reproduction over hundreds of thousands
11:19of years happened to preserve their
11:21lines while erasing others. Every person
11:23reading this in every country from every
11:26background traces their mitochondrial
11:28inheritance to that African population.
11:30Every human being on Earth shares that
11:32common maternal root. Think about what
11:34that means for every framework we have
11:36ever used to separate people from each
11:38other. All mtDNA HLA groups outside of
11:40Africa can be attributed to either the M
11:42or N HLA groups which arose around 60 to
11:4665,000 years ago in South Asia and are
11:48thought to descend from the L3 HLA group
11:50which arose in East Africa around 80,000
11:53years ago. What this means in plain
11:55language is that every person alive
11:56outside of Africa, every European, every
11:59East Asian, every indigenous American,
12:01every person in South Asia or the Middle
12:03East or the Pacific Islands carries a
12:05genetic signature that marks the moment
12:07their ancestors left Africa. It is
12:09written into their cells. It cannot be
12:10argued with. It cannot be revised. The
12:13exit from Africa is not a theory. It is
12:15a molecular fact recorded in the DNA of
12:17every non-African human being on Earth.
12:19And yet, here is where the data becomes
12:21even more unnerving. Genetic data
12:24provide insight into the migratory
12:25history and geographic structuring of
12:27modern human populations. The oldest
12:29divergence event evident from analysis
12:31of why DNA hapla groupoups and
12:33autotosomal markers is approximately
12:35140,000 years ago. 140,000 years of
12:38divergence. That is when the first
12:41branches of the human family tree began
12:42to split before the exodus from Africa.
12:45before the great migrations, before any
12:47of the civilizations that fill our
12:48history books even existed as a concept.
12:51And the people carrying the deepest
12:52versions of those branches, the ones
12:54whose DNA reflects that oldest moment of
12:56divergence are not the people at the top
12:58of the modern world social hierarchy.
13:01They are the people at the bottom. This
13:03is not chaos. This is a pattern. And the
13:06pattern has a name, the systematic
13:08eraser of genetic memory through
13:10colonial power. Here is something that
13:12the mainstream coverage of human origins
13:14consistently fails to explain with full
13:16honesty. The populations that dominate
13:18global culture, global economics, and
13:20global political power today are not the
13:22oldest. They are, genetically speaking,
13:24among the youngest. Modern humans
13:26outside Africa carry less genetic
13:27diversity than Africans. Less diversity,
13:30which means shorter time, which means
13:33younger lineages. The populations that
13:35colonized the world, that built empires
13:37and rewrote history in their own image,
13:39did so with genomes that are measurably
13:41younger than the people they colonized.
13:43This is not an argument about
13:45superiority or inferiority. It is simply
13:47what the data shows. And the data has
13:50been sitting in scientific journals for
13:52decades, largely unexamined in public
13:54discourse. According to informed sources
13:56within the field of population genetics,
13:58the implications of this ranking extend
14:00far beyond questions of ancestry. They
14:02reach into medicine, into disease
14:04vulnerability, into how drugs are
14:06developed, and into who benefits from
14:07scientific research. The current
14:09knowledge base of how genes affect our
14:11health and risk of disease is incredibly
14:13biased towards western societies. And
14:15the results of studies in such
14:16populations don't always translate to
14:18other continents. This is a quiet
14:20catastrophe. Most of the genetic
14:22databases used to develop pharmaceutical
14:24treatments, to identify disease markers,
14:26to predict health outcomes, they are
14:28built overwhelmingly on European genetic
14:30data. The populations with the deepest,
14:32oldest, most genetically diverse
14:34lineages on Earth are the least
14:36represented in the databases that
14:37determine how medicine is practiced
14:39globally, which means the people who
14:41carry the most genetic information about
14:43what it means to be human are receiving
14:45the least tailored medical care. Read
14:48that again slowly because it is one of
14:49the most significant structural failures
14:51in modern science. Now, let's go back to
14:53the ranking itself because what makes it
14:55genuinely shocking is not just who came
14:57first, but how the list unfolds below
15:00the top position. The Koisan of Southern
15:02Africa carry the oldest lineages. The
15:04Aboriginal Australians carry the oldest
15:06lineages outside Africa. But what about
15:08everyone else? What does the rest of the
15:10ranking reveal? At least 19 ancestries
15:12arose as humans migrated across the
15:14continents, reflecting shared history at
15:16a level higher than populations, tribes,
15:18or ethnic groups. As the migration wave
15:20spread out of Africa roughly 65,000 to
15:2372,000 years ago, it splintered. Groups
15:27broke off. Some moved east toward what
15:29is now South Asia. Others pushed further
15:31into what would become Southeast Asia
15:33and East Asia. Some crossed into Europe.
15:35Others followed coastal routes into the
15:37Pacific. And each time a group broke off
15:39from the main wave, something happened
15:41that geneticists call a founder effect.
15:43The new population took only a fraction
15:45of the genetic diversity of the group it
15:47split from. Each branching meant less
15:49diversity. Each migration meant younger
15:51lineages. This is why when scientists
15:53rank populations by DNA age, the
15:55gradient flows in a specific direction.
15:57The deeper into Africa you go, the older
15:59the DNA, the further from Africa
16:02geographically, the younger the genetic
16:04lineage. Indigenous Australians, despite
16:06being among the furthest from Africa
16:07geographically, paradoxically, carry
16:10extremely ancient lineages because they
16:12were among the first to leave, not the
16:14last. The populations that arrived in
16:16Europe and East Asia, did so later
16:17through subsequent waves, carrying
16:19genetic signatures that are measurably
16:21younger, and the populations that
16:23populated the Americas, arriving via
16:25Siberia across what was then the Bearing
16:27Land Bridge, carry some of the youngest
16:29non-African lineages of all. But here's
16:31where the escalation becomes genuinely
16:33difficult to absorb. The genetic
16:35analysis also showed that the ancestors
16:37of indigenous Australians and Papawans
16:39may have mated with a previously unknown
16:41human species. Just as ancient Europeans
16:44interbred with Neanderthalss,
16:46Neanderthalss were not the only other
16:47human-like species our ancestors
16:49encountered during their journeys. In
16:51Southeast Asia and the Pacific, the
16:53early migrants encountered beings whose
16:54DNA has left a fingerprint in living
16:56populations today, beings we have not
16:58yet fully identified or understood. The
17:01Dennisovvens, known from a fingerbone
17:02found in a Siberian cave, contributed
17:05DNA to Aboriginal Australians, to
17:07poppins, and to various Southeast Asian
17:09populations. There may be others still
17:11undiscovered, other ancient species
17:12whose genetic legacy is hiding in the
17:14genomes of populations we have not yet
17:16fully sequenced. Research adds to
17:18growing evidence that modern humans
17:19mixed regularly with Neanderthalss and
17:21other extinct relatives, with one
17:23paleogeneticist noting that it happened
17:26at different times, different places,
17:28again and again. We were never a single
17:31clean species moving across a blank
17:32world. We were a complex, mixing,
17:35interbreeding, adapting network of human
17:37and near human populations. And the
17:39record of all of that complexity is
17:41written in our DNA. The ranking that
17:43scientists produced is not just a list
17:44of ages. It is a map of encounters, of
17:47separations, of survival against
17:49catastrophic odds, of small groups of
17:51human beings making decisions or being
17:53forced into decisions that would shape
17:55the genetic composition of every person
17:56alive today. And what most people are
17:58not seeing is that this map has been
18:00partially hidden. Not through
18:02conspiracy, but through something more
18:03mundane and more devastating. The simple
18:06fact that the populations most important
18:07to understanding human history have been
18:09the least studied, the least funded, and
18:12the least represented in the databases
18:13that define what science knows about
18:15human beings. It forced researchers to
18:17confront the possibility that their
18:18entire framework for interpreting
18:20genetic variants had been calibrated on
18:22the wrong populations. The reference
18:24genome of humanity had been built
18:26largely on European DNA. And European
18:28DNA in the context of the full human
18:30family is a relatively young, relatively
18:33narrow slice of a story that goes back
18:35hundreds of thousands of years. The
18:36consequences of this are still
18:38unfolding.
18:39Every genetic test marketed to consumers
18:41today, the ancestry kits, the health
18:43screening tools, the disease risk
18:45assessments operate on databases
18:46weighted toward populations that are
18:48genetically younger and less diverse.
18:50When a sand bushman's DNA is run through
18:52one of those databases, the algorithm
18:54may not even know what it is looking at.
18:56Ancient lineages fall outside the
18:58reference frame. The oldest human DNA on
19:00Earth is in a very real sense invisible
19:02to the tools we built to understand
19:04human DNA. Now, widen the lens one final
19:06time because what this ranking
19:08ultimately reveals is not just a fact
19:10about the past. It is a warning about
19:12the future. This research validates the
19:14profound antiquity of Aboriginal
19:15Australian and tourist straight islander
19:17cultures which represents some of the
19:19world's oldest continuous civilizations.
19:22The study also underscores the
19:23remarkable adaptability and
19:24technological sophistication of these
19:26early maritime pioneers who successfully
19:28crossed significant ocean barriers and
19:30established thriving communities across
19:32an entire continent. 58,000 years of
19:35continuous adaptation. 58,000 years of
19:37ecological knowledge of climate response
19:40of crisis management. The Aboriginal
19:42Australians survived ice ages. They
19:44survived sea level changes that drowned
19:46entire coastlines. They survived
19:48volcanic events, droughts, megapona
19:50extinctions. The sand people of southern
19:52Africa survived climate shifts that
19:54turned the Sahara into a desert and back
19:56again. These populations contain encoded
19:59in their cultures and their DNA a kind
20:01of deep survival knowledge that the
20:02modern world has not even begun to
20:04properly catalog, let alone learn from,
20:06and we are running out of time to do so.
20:08Languages disappear at a rate of roughly
20:10one every two weeks globally. Many of
20:13the languages spoken by the oldest human
20:15populations on Earth, the click
20:16languages of the San, the dozens of
20:18Aboriginal Australian linguistic
20:20families are critically endangered. When
20:22those languages die, they take with them
20:24accumulated knowledge that was never
20:25written down. Ecological observations,
20:28astronomical knowledge, medical
20:30understanding, survival strategies
20:32tested across 50,000 years of lived
20:34experience. The oldest genetic lineages
20:36on Earth are also carrying the oldest
20:38bodies of human knowledge. And that
20:40knowledge is vanishing faster than
20:41scientists can document it. What the DNA
20:44ranking ultimately shows us is not just
20:46who is oldest. It shows us the shape of
20:48a loss that humanity is currently in the
20:51middle of inflicting on itself. The
20:53populations at the top of the genetic
20:54age ranking are among the most
20:56endangered culturally in the modern
20:57world. The populations at the bottom of
20:59the genetic age ranking, the youngest
21:01lineages, the most recent branches, have
21:04spent the last 500 years reshaping the
21:06world in ways that have systematically
21:08dismantled the conditions that allow the
21:10oldest lineages to survive for hundreds
21:12of millennia. This is not a comfortable
21:15conclusion, but it is what the data
21:17shows. And here is where the real
21:19uncertainty begins. Because scientists
21:21are still sequencing, still discovering
21:24the identification of a HLA group L7, a
21:27100,000-year-old maternal lineage that
21:29had been mclassified for two decades, is
21:31a reminder that the picture is
21:32incomplete. New DNA analysis
21:35consistently brings these two lines of
21:36evidence, genetics and archaeology,
21:38closer together, resolving disparities
21:40that once seemed irreconcilable. With
21:43every new genome sequenced, with every
21:45new ancient DNA sample extracted from a
21:47recovered skeleton, the map of human
21:49time gets redrawn. And each redrawing
21:51tends to push the story further back,
21:53deeper, more complex, more ancient than
21:55previously estimated. What else is
21:56hidden in the databases we have not yet
21:58built? What genetic lineages exist in
22:00isolated populations that science has
22:03not yet had the resources or the
22:05permission to sequence? What is waiting
22:07in the DNA of communities whose elders
22:08are dying? Whose languages are dying?
22:11Whose connection to the land that formed
22:12their genetic identity is being severed
22:14in real time? And when those communities
22:16are gone, when the last speaker of a
22:18click language closes their eyes for the
22:20final time, when the last practicing
22:22custodian of a 50,000-year-old land
22:24management tradition passes without a
22:25student, what exactly will science
22:27discover that it has permanently lost?
22:30The DNA ranking is real. The science is
22:32solid. The sand bushmen are genetically
22:35the oldest human population on Earth.
22:37The Aboriginal Australians are the
22:38oldest continuous civilization outside
22:40of Africa. Every human being alive today
22:42descends from an African origin. Every
22:45person outside Africa carries the
22:46genetic mark of a departure, a
22:48branching, a founder effect that made
22:50their lineage younger with each
22:51migration wave. But here is the question
22:54that no ranking can answer. Here is what
22:56the data for all its precision cannot
22:58resolve. Now that we know who came
23:00first, now that the molecular record has
23:02settled what centuries of politics and
23:04prejudice obscured, what are we going to
23:06do about it? Are we going to let the
23:08oldest human story on Earth finish its
23:10final chapter while the world looks
23:11away? Or is there something in that
23:13200,000-year-old DNA, some whisper of
23:16survival encoded in those ancient
23:18lineages that still has something to
23:20teach us about what it takes to keep
23:21going? The scientists have ranked every
23:23population by the age of their DNA. They
23:25have done their part. The oldest shocked
23:27everyone. The real question now is
23:29whether what shocked us will change us.

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