We are embedded in the past and the past is embedded in us. If you dont believe it, stay tuned. Welcome to another standing room. Only meeting. The initiative for the science of the human passed at harvard periodically. We hold Public Events and were just beginning to come back to life, really. After the pandemic that share the results of the Different Research groups and laboratories and seminars that participate in this network. At harvard and farther afield. To present to you the learned and general public cultivated public what our findings are and to open them for discussion with all of you. Today we have a really special treat for all of us about a subject that is filled with pain and joy and wrecking mission of the challenges of the human past and of assuming our responsibility as historians, as archeologists and as archaeal scientists to understand the past. However unpleasant it may be, this event is close, sponsored by various departments and programs at harvard, the department of african and African American studies history, human evolutionary biology, the Hutchins Center for african and African American research at the initiative for the science of the human past and of course, the Standing Committee on archeology. The goal of the initiative for the science of the human past, which is about a dozen years old now at harvard, is to weave together the different scholars and laboratories and seminars and Research Programs afoot in this vast and complicated university and to together bring the power of the scientific advances of the 21st century to bear on uncovering new information, completely new information about our human past and to do so in collaborate, meeting with students, scholars, veteran art geologists, historians and scientists from the beginning of their harvard experience up until they move on to tenure and beyond. Here in creating new knowledge together, we aim to try and sustain this critical map of researchers that begins in freshman year. I interviewed a freshman for working with us just yesterday and to keep everybody fed. No small task at harvard is those of us who are inside the institution know, as opposed to those who watch from outside and imagine dollar signs. Every time we look at a problem. We do too, but were looking at the red dollar signs and in so doing, to bridge the divide between the two cultures of the humanity vs the sciences. And thats what were up to. And tonight offers us a really remarkable experience in which the sciences, and particularly today, the life sciences, the Data Sciences and the Earth Sciences are combining with the humanities to open a completely new windows on the human past. From our very beginnings down to very recent times indeed. The initiative for the science of theuman pet is a Network Across various schools and divisions of the university that organizes and helps and encourages and sustains one another and has been going as i say, for about a decade, 12 years now. It is the partner at harvard of the virtual marx park, harvard researchenter for archaeal science of the ancient mediterranean. Were partnered with the Max Planck Institute for evolutionary anthropology at leipzig of recent nobel fame for 70 people work on the neanderthal genome, which was done in part here as those of us who were here at the time. Well, remember which offers a whole new set of tools working together with the compliment. Tree strengths of the boxpark society of germany and of Harvard University city. A word from our sponsor in midapril. Well have another one of these events about recent discoveries from ancient dna out of the reich lab and the max planck covered research center, which integrate archeology history, acute genetics to understand the mass of migrations that we are discovering took place inside the roman empire as it rose to its peak and those that originated outside of it, as it ran into new difficulties. So the sites of the human past i mentioned neanderthals. Is it only about the remote human past . Our answer today, i think, is pretty clear. No. It comes right down until the present. Many of us are able to identify our ancestors, our immediate ancestors, to oral tradition. Grandma told me that x, y and z. And occasionally its even true. Some of us are able to turn to written records and to push the story further into the past. But theres a large group of americans, americans of african ancestry, who were mostly excluded from one of the most important repositories of knowledge of our human past. The national censuses, ordered by the constitution, enslaved africanamericans were excluded until 1870, and only from that time forward can they follow the their direct ancestors. In most cases, you can see here the first census for los angeles, and you can see the b for the people who are classified as black in the census of 1870. The human past. The site of the human past uses different scientific methods. Today, were going to talk mostly about our genetics and ancient dna, but were going to hear a little bit about remote perspective in those spatial Data Sciences, and well hear a little bit about isotopes which have nothing to do with ancient dna but come from the same human evidence. Skeletal remains, and tell us different stories. What is ancient dna . Arc genetics based on ancient dna. A specialist for the United States military at fort detrick once told me ancient dna is dna thats not walking. So it really does bring us down to the present day plays a very important part in the American Military for identifying missing were particular really thrilled that todays presentation is able to occur in black History Month of 2024. We hope that this brings special joy to all of you to see the kind of work that the size of the human past is able to do today on this wonderful occasion, i myself, as many of you know, have a background in economic history. And so im familiar with the the first stages of the total Industrial Revolution in new england with in which water power and then steam power were harnessed to machines and largely young women were harnessed to the machines to produce the textiles. And its only through this project that i learned that in the 18th century, in many in some parts of america, human power was also harnessed to those machines, but not through wages, through enslavement. And that is the story that the wonderful Research Team that youre going to hear from today has encountered and uncovered bit by bit from the first rescue excavations in the 1970s and eighties, down to the publication of the paper in september, Catoctin Furnace, maryland. We have the special privilege of having here amongst us the Elizabeth Anderson cohort who has joined us for this and has stinson. Elizabeth has played a pivotal role in organizing knowledge of continuing, i believe, in a tradition that was begun by her mother. Yes. And hers is the person for outreach, for the findings of this study, for the descendants collateral and perhaps direct from the community that worked at that correct amount. So please applaud and welcome them for having journeyed to the far north from the temperate climes of maryland, where once i live myself. So this is about the catoctin iron furnace, about ancient dna and about the discoveries that have followed. The research was led by dr. Aideen harney, who got her ph. D. Here in the department of organismic and evolutionary biology and who is now a postdoc wh 23 and me and a lecturer in human evolutionary biology and was even for a period of her graduate studies supported by the sciencef the human past. And professor david reich in whose lab it was done and who is one of the founding figures of archaea genetics and one of the forces of nature in this whole field. And youll hear from both of them. So were going to begin with professor reich offering a little introduction, an extremely is going to be joining us and talking about her research. Well follow up with a comment from my friend and colleague evelyn brooks higginbotham the victor as thomas professor of history and professor of africanamerican history, thinking about how what were finding fits in to the Bigger Picture of u. S. History and africanamerican history in the u. S. Jesse hoffnunggarskof has recently joined the department of history. The latest jewel in a crown. And were very thrilled that he, too, a specialist of political and cultural migration latin, latin, american, latin and african migration and politics and discoveries will be offering a brief comment as well. My friend and colleague jason ur. So with no further ado, lets welcome david reich to get us started. I can see and hear you perfect. The reason 18 is not here is that please on the last day of covid isolation and she really, really wanted to be here, this has been her project from when she was a grad student through her postdoc. And now shes a staff scientist at 23 and me. But shes here. Shes actually fully healthy, but shes just has to follow the rules. So tomorrow we can see her in person. I think, or Something Like that. So the way were going to do this in 15 minutes is im going to give a little introduction in to the motivation for the project for about 5 minutes. And then 18, and well talk for about 8 minutes and then i will talk for 2 minutes and we will have only 15 minutes of talking between us. So its going to come fast. And so im going to begin with motivation for this project. So this is a project where you see some faces up here, but its actually a larger team. Weve over sampled the faces of some of the people from harvard because this is a harvard venue. But this is really most of the people on this project are elsewhere, especially from the team at the Smithsonian Institution, which is represented here by dug owsley, elizabeth komar is here and also. People elsewhere. So i just wanted you to be clear that this is a larger team. This is also two papers that came out simultaneously, one about the science and one about thinking about the ethical issues involved in the complicated type of research that this was. This is actually quite new type of research. Youll see why. Next slide, please. Again, so brief. History of Catoctin Furnace. Im not the expert on this. There are people here are expert, but the furnace was established in 1774 and it was used to make munitions in the revolutionary war, for example. And it began using an enslaved workforce which stopped in 1850. And then the furnace itself closed in 1903 in the context of highway excavation, a highway was going through the cemetery, the africanamerican cemetery near Catoctin Furnace. And what that does is it often happens when that kind of thing happens. It triggers whats called rescue archeology, when a team goes in and excavates the cemetery and removes that in document said and the remains were curated at the Smithsonian Institution and then revisited with engagement with the community as part of this project, which had an ancient dna component. This is, of course, not ancient dna. Its not like the ancient greeks or neanderthals. Its historical dna. Its kind of a misnomer in some sense. It in next slide, please. So this is really a Community DrivenResearch Project at the Catoctin FurnaceHistorical Society, of which elizabeth colmer is president and the African American resources, culture and heritage society. One of their goals was to, quote, identify a Descendant Community for the catoctin africanamerican workers enslaved and free to connect the individuals within the cemetery to their ancestral roots in africa and to share the discovery process and its results with the public. There was a museum at the site and this was something that they wished after consideration to happen. So a dna component of the project was part was what was requested. And so this project was initiated to address that. At the time this project began, they were no known genealogical descendants. That changed over the course of the project. Where to genealogical lines were identified. Next slide, please. So this new scientific instrument came online beginning in 2010, only with the first whole genome sequences where it became possible to take human remains or remains from other living creatures. And in a clean room, such as we have several here at this institutions get beneath the surface of the human remains and take a little bit of powder or from the bone or tooth, usually thats being analyzed. And then to release the dna in a solution that removes the protein and mineral content and also the inhibiting substances, that that prevents the dna reactions from going going forward. And then to sequence the dna, which is miraculously preserved because bone and tooth material happens to be a good context for preserving dna and were now able to get dna of the quality that you get when you send your spit sample to a personal Ancestry Testing Company quite regularly and reliably from material thats 100 years old, a thousand years old, even 10,000 and often 100,000 years old. So its kind of a miracle that we can do this next slide, please. So as a result of the Technical Innovations which made this possible from the first whole genome sequences in 2010, in 2022, there were more than 10,000 individual tools with genome scale data of the same quality approximately as you get from sending your spit to a personal Ancestry Testing Company that were published at that time. And theres tens of thousands of more that are in the process of being prepared for publication by multiple laboratories working on this. And this makes it possible to ask and answer questions that were not possible to ask before adding next slide. Please. So the first ancient dna studies most of them focused on on really incredible archaic humans like neanderthals and other archaic humans that were published for the first ones in 2010. And then the largest number of ancient individuals has been on prehistoric individuals, people who lived before the time of writing. And there have been really extraordinary findings that have come from analyzing such data, which makes it possible to compare these individuals to each other and to see how theyre related to each other and to People Living today. But one of the things thats exciting, that personal ancestry Companies Like 23 and me, where it works can do is they can find long lost dna. Cousins some of you may have done this. You submit your dna to one of these companies, companies and by finding bits of dna that are very large that you share with someone else, one of these other approximately 10 Million People who have participated, you can find someone whos related to you who you didnt know. You might share a third great grandparent or Something Like this, and you find this and then you can contact them through the company and perhaps trace your common ancestor. So people have been using this to find long lost relatives. So the idea we had was, well, if were looking at historic genomes, not prehistoric ones, but historic ones, ones that are somehow within dna cousins range of detectability of the present, we can open up this amazing thing where we can compare these historical genomes to 10 billion people who are in these personal Ancestry Testing Company. If we can somehow put the historical genomes we get together with the personal ancestry testing companies, which has never been done before. So the way this project initiated is that a dean went to this one of these personal ancestry testing companies, 23 and me and her project was to work on the Catoctin Furnace individuals and to see if we could connect those people who we were in search of a descended community for two. All of the people who were in that dataset and maybe we would find some relatives. So that was the idea. And so that was the genesis of this project, and that was what the maryland Descendant Community asked us to do. So now over 18. Thank you so much, david. And im so sorry that i cant be there in person to present these results. It seems like such a wonderful event, but in the interest of time, i know theres a lot of people who are going to kind of provide some interpretation of what we found. So for my part, im really just going to give you a very quick overview of what we found in this study. So we were able to sequence the genomes of 27 individuals who were buried in the Catoctin Furnace africanamerican cemetery. Out of those 27 individuals, 22 had good enough quality dna preservation that we were actually able to include them in all of our analysis. But for all 27, we were able to learn some things about them. And when we compared the caterpillar individual just to one another and this is when we kind of found one of the most striking early insights about the cemetery. What we found is of those 27 individuals, they could be divided into five distinct genetic family groupings, which comprised of 15 of the individuals. So most of the action individuals that we found, but not all of them could be assigned to one of these different family groups. And what we found is if we actually look at the locations in the cemetery where these different members of these different families were buried, we saw that different family groups tended to be buried closely together and kind of the closer the relationship that we identified, the more likely they are to be to be buried right next to each other and the types of relationship