The Trouble with Ancient DNA:
Telling Stories of the Past with Genomic Science
by Anna Källén (University of Chicago Press)
The comedic highlight of the book is a story from the social scientist Roos Hopman about a colleague of hers, who feels it relevant enough to interrupt her introduction to point out that race is a social construct, only for that same colleague to use racial concepts in describing their own work.
The book is about the use of ancient DNA in telling historical stories. The author’s aim is not to debunk as much as to temper. With examples such as the Human Genome Project, the DNA ancestry services, and “paleopersonalities” like Cheddar Man, the book explores the ways in which gene analysis gets out over its skis in terms of what it can and cannot represent.
Like Mismeasure of Man, the book has a sort of dual thesis, overt and thematic. Overtly, the book explains the weaknesses in studies that use ancient DNA, particularly in the interest of proving facts about human culture, including race and ethnicity. Science uses a lot of misleading nomenclature, or language that has a tendency to mislead. And while archaeology has grown to move away from solid cultural blocks inflicting invasions on other cultures, which came about more as a byproduct of Nationalistic and Whiggish ideas and often exist in wholly speculative formats, the studies in ancient DNA often do not. And even when they do, they have a tendency to get out over their skis in terms of what sort of probalisitc assessments they are making.
Culture does not work like the stories people tell about it, because often the stories reflect more of their own culture. Overall, it is a more credible version of the “no culture” hypothesis of works like How the World Made the West, and suggests a humility and recognition of the limitations of what we are looking at when we look at genetic evidence. Part of this gets into the underlying science of ancient DNA, and how most of the headline-worthy revelations it gives are much more probabilistic than factual and deeply frustrated by the wormy concept that is race and people.
The thematic thesis is a warning about how people treat scientific results. Genetics research is privileged, treated as “hard” evidence. But ancient DNA is not ispo facto more probative than any other research. Fact always requires narrative to function, and the persuasiveness of the fact is related to how it relates to that narrative, as opposed to some preexisting hierarchy of what kind of facts are most fact-y.
Rephrased, we all have a bad track record in distinguishing between the sorts of things that DNA can tell us about contemporary people and what ancient DNA can tell us about historical populations. That is not a one-off but a sort of CSI effect affecting some types of scientific fact. The position is well-described, and fans of both-sideism will appreciate that the author does takedowns of both traditionally left and right uses of the science.
The book is short, concise, and well-organized. Each chapter functions on its own to prove its point, but they also come together in the conclusion. Maybe the only weak point here is, much like Mismeasure again, it represents a sort of null hypothesis, not a counter-narrative in itself but a reminder to reflect on narratives in general. I worry about people walking away, feeling either not persuaded or not edified because, in effect, the author was honest about human cognitive errors, rather than a feel-good grift. But it is a great read, short and to the point, on a relevant topic.
My thanks to the author, Anna Källén, for writing the book, and to the publisher, University of Chicago Press, for making the ARC available to me.
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