David Reich

As ancient-DNA samples grow beyond the current ~16,000 individuals, many more positions under selection will be detected; today's findings are only what's visible at this scale.

The model that Neanderthals are genetically-swamped modern humans sharing a ~300,000-year-old Middle Stone Age origin will prove more parsimonious than the current sister-lineage consensus.

Applying the same methodology beyond Europe and the Middle East will reveal comparable or stronger selection signals, making cross-region comparison a major near-term frontier.

Natural selection isn't quiescent in recent human evolution, it's pervasive; apparent quiescence was an artifact of small samples that couldn't separate the ~2% selection signal from drift and migration.

The Bronze Age, not the Neolithic farming transition, was the true biological inflection point: dense urban living and pathogen exposure drove a qualitatively stronger evolutionary response.

For strong selection coefficients, population size above a few thousand is irrelevant; the binding constraint is time, not population size, contrary to a widespread misconception.

The standard Neanderthal-Denisovan-modern-human model has accumulated epicycle-like patches; a single population inventing Middle Stone Age tech ~300k years ago and expanding, then being swamped, unifies the cultural, genomic and timing evidence.

At a 99% confidence threshold, at least 479 independent genome positions show real directional selection over the last 18,000 years in Europe and the Middle East.

A genetic predictor of cognitive performance rose ~1 standard deviation over the last 10,000 years, strongest 5,000-2,000 years ago (the Bronze Age), with essentially none in the last 2,000.

With ~8 billion people and ~30 new mutations each per generation, every possible point mutation arises ~100 times per generation, so modern populations are not mutation-limited.

Neanderthal mtDNA and Y chromosome share a common ancestor with modern humans only ~300-450k years ago, far more recent than the ~700-800k-year nuclear split, implying gene flow replaced both.

Agriculture was independently invented in multiple regions only within the last ~12,000 years, despite modern humans existing 200-300k years, coinciding with the unusually stable Holocene climate.