Recent human evolution: an overview of two Nature papers

by Erik Aurell (KTH)

Thursday 18 Jun 2026, 10:00 → 12:00 Europe/Stockholm

Albano 3: 5230 - Xenon (12 seats) (Albano Building 3)

Several papers have appeared in the last years leveraging ancient human DNA to estimate which human properties have evolved through natural selection. The topic is of general interest to understand what makes us humans so different from our closest relatives, and may also have medical interest to understand the context in which many heritable or partly heritable diseases appear.

The topic has many difficulties from the actually recovering ancient human DNA, to storing and analyzing large data sets and taking into account missing and/or unevenly sampled data, to confounding factors such as migrations of human populations and replacement / mixing events.

I will here focus on which mathematical models that have been used to infer (or claim to infer) selection, focusing on the recent and very recent papers [1] and [2]. Other papers will be referred to as appropriate and/or needed. 

[1] Irving-Pease, E.K., Refoyo-Martínez, A., Barrie, W. et al. [Eske Willerslev] The selection landscape and genetic legacy of ancient Eurasians. Nature 625, 312–320 (2024)

[2]   Akbari, A., Perry, A., Barton, A.R. et al. [David Reich] Ancient DNA reveals pervasive directional selection across West Eurasia. Nature 654, 419–428 (2026).