What happened to the ancient Egyptians?

“History
Nathaniel T. Jeanson
The Persians? The Romans? The Mayans? defines us.”

TRACED
received his B.S. in
“Dr. Jeanson has found the Rosetta Stone of human history”
—Ken Ham
molecular biology
and bioinformatics
ARE WE THEIR DESCENDANTS? Which history?
Standard narratives
from the University Recent genetic discoveries are uncovering surprising links between us and tell the political
of Wisconsin- and cultural side of

TRACED
the peoples of old—links that rewrite race, ethnicity, and human history:
Parkside and his the human story,
PhD in cell and • Today’s Native Americans descend from Central Asians who arrived in highlighting the rise
developmental the early A.D. era. and fall of empires
biology from and the succession
Harvard University. • Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob still have clearly identifiable descendants, of world powers.
He is also the author albeit rare ones. For thousands of
of Replacing Darwin: years, DNA has kept
• Every people group on earth can genetically trace their origins to Noah
The New Origin hidden the history of
and his three sons.
of Species and of peoples. The who of
human history has
Replacing Darwin
remained a secret.
Made Simple.
Until now.
Are modern Italians
the descendants of the
ancient Romans? Are
modern Egyptians the
offspring of the great
Pharaohs of old? Can
modern Jews claim
…a profoundly intriguing book.
It throws a new light on ancient
…a ground-breaking book…likely
to become a classic.
Human DNA’s Big Surprise the ancient Israelites
as their genetic
ancestors? Who did

Jeanson
history and will leave the reader
eager to learn more. Ola Hössjer, PhD, modern Iraqis come
Professor of Mathematical Statistics, from? The Hittites?
Steven E. Woodworth, PhD, Stockholm University, Sweden Assyrians? Persians?
Professor of History,
Texas Christian University Who are your
ancestors?

Nathaniel T. Jeanson
SCIENCE/Life Sciences/General
HISTORY/General This book reveals the
$24.99 U.S.
ISBN-13: 978-1-68344-291-2
shocking and messy
answers to these
questions—and more.

EAN
First printing: March 2022

Copyright © 2021 by Nathaniel T. Jeanson. All rights reserved. No part of

this book may be reproduced, copied, broadcast, stored, or shared in any form
whatsoever without written permission from the publisher, except in the case of
brief quotations in articles and reviews. For information write:
Master Books®, P.O. Box 726, Green Forest, AR 72638
Master Books® is a division of the New Leaf Publishing Group, Inc.

ISBN: 978-1-68344-291-2
Digital ISBN: 978-1-61458-793-4
Library of Congress Control Number: 2021948815

Cover by Diana Bogardus

Unless otherwise noted, Scripture quotations are from the New King
James Version (NKJV) of the Bible.

Please consider requesting that a copy of this volume be purchased by your

local library system.

Printed in the United States of America

Please visit our website for other great titles:

www.masterbooks.com

For information regarding author interviews,

please contact the publicity department at (870) 438-5288.
 For David, Billy, and Axel
And all those who long for the “rest of the story”

Advance Praise for Traced:

. . . a ground-breaking book . . . likely to become a classic.
Ola Hössjer, PhD, Professor of Mathematical Statistics, Stockholm
University, Sweden

. . . extremely well researched.

Emerson Thomas McMullen, PhD, Emeritus Associate Professor of History,
Georgia Southern University

. . . a profoundly intriguing book. It throws a new light on ancient history

and will leave the reader eager to learn more.
Steven E. Woodworth, PhD, Professor of History,
Texas Christian University

. . . pulls the curtain back further on the mystery of early human history
using genetics, history, and linguistics . . . goes a long way toward
reconstructing the origins of the human family.
Les Bruce, PhD, retired research specialist,
Summer Institute of Linguistics International

Jeanson will take you on a tour of human history like you

have never seen before.
Joe Owen, Director, Answers in Genesis Latin America
 . . . sheds a scientific light on our understanding of humanity’s
past . . . a new history.
Yingguang Liu, M.M. (Shanghai), PhD, Associate Professor,
Liberty University College of Osteopathic Medicine

. . . an exciting journey to discover human history in the light

of genetic discoveries.
Nagy Iskander, MB.Bch (Cairo), Medical Doctor,
Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons of England,
Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons of Glasgow

. . . a novel way to look at how our planet was populated.

Rick Roberts, PhD, Associate Professor of Biology, Grace College

. . . will be a valuable resource in helping your children

answer the questions that most history books don’t cover.
Simon Turpin, Executive Director for Answers in Genesis UK/Europe
 Table of Contents

INTRODUCTION
1. The Hiddenness of History...............................................................9
PART I: EARLY CLUES
2. Smaller Than We Think...................................................................19
3. More Connected Than We Think...................................................29
4. Faster Than We Think......................................................................35
PART II: FINDING THE ANCIENTS
AFRICA
5. Still African........................................................................................49
6. The Corridor......................................................................................63
EUROPE AND CENTRAL ASIA
7. Vulnerable..........................................................................................77
THE MIDDLE EAST
8. Mirror.................................................................................................89
SOUTH ASIA
9. Relative Mystery..............................................................................103
THE FAR EAST
10. The Great Divide.............................................................................109
THE PACIFIC
11. From West to East..........................................................................123
COLOR PLATE SECTION
THE AMERICAS
12. A New World...................................................................................133
PART III: PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE
13. Breaking at the Dawn....................................................................157
14. Finding Out....................................................................................187
EPILOGUE
15. The Lost Civilization......................................................................199
Appendix A: Technical Methods...........................................................205
Appendix B: Y Chromosome Adam and Evolution...........................217
Appendix C: Can I Find My Ancestors with
Genetic Testing?.............................................................................223
References.................................................................................................227
Glossary of Key Terms............................................................................241
Acknowledgments...................................................................................243
Credits.......................................................................................................245
Introduction
 1
The Hiddenness of History

I n the late 1990s, I was a high school student living in small-town

southeastern Wisconsin and driving a ’93 green Mercury Tracer past
farmers’ fields to a tiny Christian school 25 minutes away. For two of
those semesters, world history class lifted me far away in time and
space from my modern parochial home. And it left me with nagging
questions.
In broad brushstrokes, I learned a history that went something like
this: The first civilizations arose half a world away from Wisconsin. In
ancient Mesopotamia, the Sumerians appeared. To the southwest in
Africa, the ancient Egyptians also emerged. To the west and northwest
in the Mediterranean, the first European civilizations (the Minoans
and Mycenaeans) ascended.
As history progressed, it focused on this same small geographic
triangle. One kingdom rose and fell after another, including ancient
Assyria, Babylon, and Persia. However, these Asian empires eventually
gave way to a European one. Alexander the Great rushed his armies
through Persia to create, at that time, the world’s largest empire.
The focus of my class then shifted to Europe. We learned that the
ancient Greeks were eventually overrun by the Romans. For several
hundred years, the Romans dominated the Mediterranean and west-
ern Europe. Then they fell to Germanic tribes of barbarians, sending
Europe plummeting into the Dark Ages.1
1. Now known as the Early Middle Ages.
-9-
 Traced

Europe awoke from the Dark Ages to the rising culture of the
Renaissance. The continent recovered some of the glory of the great
Greek and Roman ideals. Then the Reformation shook the Europe-
an world. Eventually, the inevitable march of technological progress
pushed Europe to venture out in the Age of Exploration, ushering in
an era which brought together East and West, Old World and New
World, into one global enterprise.
This was the story I was taught. Like many students, I learned the
required facts and recited them on tests. But the experience left me
unsatisfied.
Who did the ancient Sumerians come from? From whom did the
Egyptians arise? What about the Minoans? Mycenaeans? Greeks? Ro-
mans? When these empires were overthrown, what happened to the
people of these ancient civilizations? Did they just recede into the
shadows of history? Did they go extinct? Are they still with us today?
My history education never answered these questions. It was as if
civilizations popped into existence and then disappeared into oblivion.
I knew this couldn’t be true. But I had nothing to offer in its place.
The narrow focus of this history also nagged at me. Along the way,
I’m sure we learned something about historical India and China. We
may have touched on the Aztecs and Mayans in the Americas. But if
we did, I didn’t retain much of their histories.
In other parts of the globe, large gaps in the timeline remained in
my mind. We learned next to nothing about what was going on north
of the Rio Grande before Europeans arrived. My course left the pre-Eu-
ropean history of sub-Saharan Africa as a large void. The pre-Europe-
an peoples of Australia and of the Pacific had no story — at least none
that was taught to me. Central Asia — the vast landmass between Eu-
rope and China and above the Middle East — was hardly discussed,
except to highlight the massive Mongolian empire of Genghis Khan.
What had happened in these places? In these locations, the indige-
nous peoples had no narrative to explain their existence. Their history
seemed a big blank slate.
Again, I knew this couldn’t be true. Again, I had nothing to offer
in its place.
I never thought that one day I’d be personally uncovering the an-
swers to these questions.

- 10 -
 The Hiddenness of History

*******
By training, I’m a biologist. I did my Bachelor of Science at the
University of Wisconsin-Parkside. Officially, my degree was titled Mo-
lecular Biology and Bioinformatics. In more understandable terms, my
training involved looking at life at the tiniest levels — the microscopic
and chemical levels (the Molecular Biology part of the degree). And it
involved analyzing the results with computers (the Bioinformatics part
of the degree). I learned these skills in the classroom and in the lab,
where I worked with single-celled algae. My goal — or, I should say,
the goal of the lab in which I trained — was to understand the larger
question of how plants genetically control photosynthesis, the process
by which they turn sunlight into useful energy.
For my PhD, I moved to Massachusetts and studied at Harvard.
Originally, I planned on working in a cancer lab. At the time, little
did I know that the field of cancer research was taking a sharp turn
in a new direction. Prior to arrival in Boston in 2003, I had acquired
an interest in stem cells — the cells that are responsible for replacing
old cells in the body as they die. I soon discovered that these cells had
unexpected relevance to cancer. I realized this connection much more
fully during the years I spent working on my thesis in an adult blood
stem cell lab. My experiments produced no great breakthroughs, just
average scientific advances.
But immersion in the wide-open world of how cells develop,
change, and mutate produced lasting effects on my career — in ways I
never anticipated.
After graduation in 2009, I began a journey in an entirely different
direction — one that would unexpectedly tie all my scientific pursuits
together and lead back to the history of the ancients.
In the fall of 2009, I began developing a research program on the
origin of species — different types of creatures. I was part of a team that
tried to tackle the problem from as many angles as possible. The field
of genetics — the study of inheritance at the DNA level — became key.
In 2013, I published the first of several papers on the origin of
species. Rather than study the DNA of species directly, I compared
their genetic sequences indirectly. Proteins are encoded by DNA, and
comparison of protein sequences among species is a useful way to gain
insights into their DNA differences. I compared the protein sequences

- 11 -
 Traced

from more than 2,700 different species, and I used the results to
predict the function of the similarities and differences among these
sequences.2
At the close of the paper, I examined another type of DNA finding:
the rate at which DNA sequences change from generation to genera-
tion. The rates for a particular type of DNA3 were known for only four
types of creatures. Of the four, three were animal species. The fourth
was our own species — humans. At the time, I treated the human data
as a clue to the larger animal questions. But as I dove deeper into the
data, the human connection grew.
In 2015, I published the next set of findings in two papers. One pa-
per examined the patterns in which new types of animals formed from
preexisting types.4 The second paper focused exclusively on humans
and again on the rate at which DNA sequences change from genera-
tion to generation.5
In 2016, this cycle repeated itself. I published a large paper on the
mechanism by which new animal, plant, and fungal species form.6
Then I published a second paper, digging even deeper into the ques-
tion of the speed at which DNA changes in humans.7
By this time, the potential impact of these findings on the history
of civilization was hard to miss. So I began to ask questions of the da-
taset that focused on events from the history of humanity.8
In 2020, the answers exploded. From the family trees I was explor-
ing, the echoes of the history of civilization were jumping out. Here,
right in front of me, were the marks of the Mongol conquest of Asia
and Europe, of the Russian expansion from eastern Europe to the Pa-
cific, of the long isolation of African and Chinese civilizations, and
of so much more. Even more tantalizing were the histories of places
whose story, to date, had consisted largely of pre-history9 — such as
the pre-Columbian Americas and pre-colonial Australian, Papua New
Guinea, and the Pacific.

2. Jeanson (2013).
3. Specifically, for mitochondrial DNA.
4. Jeanson (2015a).
5. Jeanson (2015b).
6. Jeanson and Lisle (2016).
7. Jeanson (2016).
8. Jeanson (2019); Jeanson and Holland (2019); Jeanson (2020).
9. I.e., the time period before written records were created to document historical events.
- 12 -
 The Hiddenness of History

Most shocking were the connections among the various civiliza-

tions — and the implications for human ethnic identity.

*******
In this book, we’ll explore some of the answers I’ve begun to
uncover — answers you won’t find anywhere else. These answers are
also just the tip of the iceberg. Of the billions of people who roam our
planet, we have public access to the DNA from only thousands of them.
The conclusions you will find in this book are based on these sequences.
These conclusions will likely be updated and may change as more data
comes in.
Some readers might find that last sentence unsettling. It’s actually a
distinguishing feature of science. By definition, scientific ideas must be
open to change and even to direct disproof. Uncertainty, rather than
certainty, is the rule in science.
However, despite this uncertainty, scientific conclusions can still
be useful. The ultimate standard in science is whether something
works. We invoke gravity because it works. It successfully explains and
predicts activity in the physical world. The ultimate test of the conclu-
sions of this book is whether they work — whether they successfully
explain the history we know, and whether they successfully predict
future historical-genetic discoveries. I’ll leave it to you, the reader, to
decide whether the conclusions in this book meet this standard.
In communicating where the project is right now, I hope to give
you a taste of the wild and emerging field of historical genetics. I also
hope to inspire the next generation of budding historians, archaeolo-
gists, geneticists, linguists, and anthropologists to dive in and take the
research even further.
For everyone else, my hope is that you’ll wonder and marvel at the
story of humankind — in ways you’ve never dreamed of marveling
before.
The 30,000-foot View
Before we take our journey together, let’s sketch the outline of our path.
In chapters 2 through 4, I lay out some of the background findings
to these recent genetic discoveries. I do so because these recent genetic
discoveries are shocking — so shocking that you might be tempted
to dismiss them. The background of chapters 2 through 4 is needed
- 13 -
 Traced

context for what we’ll encounter. In one sense, these chapters are a
reminder to me: I frequently invoke these conclusions in my own mind
as I evaluate and reevaluate the unexpected implications of genetics.
In chapters 5 through 12, we’ll focus our historical and genetic
searches on seven ancient or prehistorical (i.e., pre-written records)
civilizations — those of the ancient Egyptians, the ancient Romans,
the ancient Persians, the earliest Indians (i.e., from South Asia, not
the Americas), the ancient Chinese, the indigenous Easter Islanders,
and the Native Americans. We’ll explore their rise and fall through the
DNA of modern peoples. We’ll take DNA from modern Egyptians,
modern Italians, modern Iranians, modern Indians, modern Chinese,
modern Easter Islanders, and modern Native Americans. And we’ll
compare their DNA to DNA from modern peoples around the globe.
For chapters 13 and 14, we’ll look deep into the past and then into
the future. Using genetic clues from one of the smaller but well-known
ancient Near Eastern peoples, we’ll uncover how the human story
began. Then we’ll step back to evaluate the bigger picture. Once we
identify the biggest outstanding historical mysteries, we’ll gaze into the
future and assess our chances of solving them.
If I had read the previous paragraphs just a few years ago, I proba-
bly would have been disappointed. Yes, Native Americans and Easter
Islanders are groups outside the emphasis of the typical world history
class. But Egyptians, Romans, and Persians? We hear about them all
the time. Why not explore the history of sub-Saharan Africa before
the arrival of Europeans? Or northern Europe before the time of the
Romans? Hearing again the history of the tried-and-true historical lo-
cations would have seemed tiresome and unhelpful. At least, it would
have seemed so until recently.
In our journey, we’ll discover that, in trying to tell the stories of
these seven civilizations, we’ll end up telling the story of the whole
world.

- 14 -
 The Hiddenness of History

How to use this book

Whether you’re a lay reader or a technical reader, I think you’ll
find this book unlike any that you’ve read before. In light of this
prospect, I’ve included the following tips to help you navigate it
and make the most of your journey.
First, a picture is worth a thousand words. This adage is espe-
cially true when exploring the hidden parts of human history. This
history is locked away in our family trees and in the geography of
our ancestors; the color plates are where this information jumps
out. I recommend that, while you read the text, you keep a finger
in the section containing the illustrations. This way you can easily
move back and forth between text and color plates, and the con-
clusions will make more sense.
Another reason to keep your finger in the illustrations section
is that I’ve deliberately designed the color plates as memory aids.
The details of the genetic history of humanity can easily become
overwhelming. In the color plates, I’ve color-coded the details to
make them easier to remember.
Second, a brief heads-up on the pacing and scope of the sci-
entific detail: In Part I (chapters 2 through 4), you’ll likely find
the content to be leisurely and light. The subjects are familiar, but
the conclusions are not. These chapters take straightforward topics
and give them an unexpected twist.
In Parts II and III (chapters 5–14), the pacing and scope shifts.
Instead of tackling familiar themes, these chapters blaze new trails.
They read more like a detective story. I anticipate that you’ll find
the material in these chapters to be less familiar and more intense.
I synthesize evidence from geography, languages, written records,
and DNA to derive the rest of the story of history — the part of
history that my high school class never covered. If at any time the
path becomes hard to find, just skip to the end of the chapter where
I’ve written short chapter summaries in bullet point format. Then,
armed with this information, you can return to the section that
you were just reading. Alternatively, you might start each chapter
by reading the summaries, and then going through the chapter
text.

- 15 -
 Traced

Third, for technical readers and for skeptical ones, Appendix A

has the technical details on my conclusions as well as pointers to
more in-depth papers and online tables. If you’re looking for the
step-by-step answers to How did he derive that conclusion? then
Appendix A is the place to start.
On a related note, Appendix B deals with contemporary ori-
gins controversies, like the creation/evolution debate, and how this
book relates to these disputes.
Fourth, in the spring and summer of 2020, I recorded a video
series describing early stages of this research. During and after the
completion of the video series, I received many questions from
viewers who wanted to find out their own history with genetic test-
ing. Appendix C walks you through the steps to answer that ques-
tion. It also contains the key findings from chapters 5 through 14
for those who want a quick reference for what the results of their
genetic tests mean.
I hope these tips will make your search for the hidden history
of humankind as exciting as the search has been for me.

- 16 -
 2
Smaller Than We Think

O n February 25, 2012, in a small church in the center of Birming-

ham, Alabama, I married the love of my life. Growing up, I wasn’t
sure that this day would come. My ethnic and cultural background had
raised questions for which I didn’t have ready answers.
Despite being born in the heart of the Midwest, I grew up bilin-
gual. My American dad had enlisted in the military, met a German
woman while overseas, married her, and settled in the U.S. Wisconsin
was a thoroughly English-speaking context in which to raise a family.
Yet my mother made sure to teach German to my siblings and me so
we could speak to our German relatives.
Culturally, Wisconsin wasn’t the only influence on my upbring-
ing. Almost every year, I would see my German relatives for weeks
at a time. Usually, we would fly to Germany and stay with my grand-
parents. Part of our time together would include seeing tourist sites.
But most of the trip was simply living with my German grandparents,
doing what they did alongside them: Going to German grocery stores,
bakeries, and butchers; eating what Germans eat; driving what Ger-
mans drive; and playing what Germans play — Fußball (soccer). We
created rich memories together. For this American son, the other side
of the Atlantic became, over time, a home away from home.
As I matured toward marrying age, I began to wonder how my
heritage would affect my family prospects. I asked my mother if she
thought I should look for a German spouse rather than an American
- 19 -
 Traced

one. Or, I thought, maybe a wife from either country would create
problems. After all, I had my feet in both worlds.
Eventually, I recognized what years of living in the United States
had produced: A thorough-going American with German ties. My
now-wife, a southern belle who had been born in Italy to missionary
parents, didn’t have German ties. But I felt at ease marrying her. For
both of us, English was our first language; American was our primary
culture.
Implicit in my little marriage dilemma was a fact we all take for
granted: Linguistic heritage and cultural heritage naturally direct our
choices in mates. I thought my bilingual and bicultural upbringing
would add extra constraints to my marriage prospects. In the end, I
followed the path that most Americans do: Marrying someone who
shares the same primary language and traditions.
These types of constraints exist all around the globe, but they are
felt more acutely when different cultures exist in close geographic
proximity. For example, today, modern Greeks and Egyptians reside
only a few hundred miles apart on the Mediterranean Sea (Color Plate
1). Yet they exist in dramatically different worlds. Greek nationals be-
long to a country that is a member of the European Union. Egyptians
are geographically African. Greeks speak the language that gives them
their name and that ties them back to Alexander the Great. Most Egyp-
tians speak the language of the nation’s Muslim conquerors — Arabic.
In terms of religious practice, faithful Greeks attend churches — Greek
Orthodox ones. Faithful Egyptian Muslims frequent mosques.
Naturally, these differences preclude much mixing between these
two peoples. I can’t imagine many single Greek men spending their
time looking for hijab-clad spouses. And why should they? If a Greek
man wanted to marry someone outside his nationality, why choose
Egyptian? Why not French? Or Spanish? German? Serbian? Perhaps
Romanian or Swedish? Or Irish? Turkish? How about Pakistani?
Nigerian? Angolan? Chinese? Vietnamese? Samoan? Peruvian? The
world is a big place — too big to assume that any two of the vast
numbers of peoples will regularly intermingle. There are just too
many options.
For that matter, why go looking outside Greece at all? With a
population of more than 10 million, Greece must surely offer the single
Greek man plenty of options for a wife. Similarly, why send Egyptian
- 20 -
 Smaller Than We Think

men beyond the borders of Egypt to find a spouse? With a population

of nearly 100 million, Egypt must surely offer the average Arabic-
speaking man a litany of choices for potential nuptials.
But what about the Greeks and Egyptians of ancient times? Would
the same rules have applied? Would they have lived in separate worlds,
never to intermingle or mix their family trees?
Politically and culturally, ancient Egypt and ancient Greece looked
as different from one another as do modern Egyptians and modern
Greeks. In Egypt, the Pharaohs commissioned elaborate pyramid
tombs, built the Sphinx, and etched their histories in engravings and
art forms that are unmistakably Egyptian. The Greeks built the Parthe-
non. Egyptians were ruled by Pharaohs. The Greeks gave us democ-
racy. Linguistically, Egyptian hieroglyphics were as different from the
Greek script of Aristotle as you can get.
On their face, these differences suggest that these ancient peoples
kept to themselves. This is the default conclusion I grew up with. And
it’s one I’ve since learned to reject.
Full
Take a look at a current political map of the globe (Color Plate 2). I’m
guessing that it’s pretty familiar to you. Even if you don’t look at maps
on a regular basis, you probably still have an image like this burned
into your mind. Even if parts of your mental map are fuzzy, I’m sure
you have a sense for how high and wide the major landmasses are.
Furthermore, I’m sure that your mental map is full. We visualize
a map in which every square inch of the globe is claimed by some-
one. No blanks exist. Fuzzy parts, yes. For example, in homes in the
West, the former Soviet republics in Central Asia — Kazakhstan,
Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, and Tajikistan — are not
the typical topics of dinnertime conversations. Neither are the fine
details of Southeast Asian countries — Laos, Cambodia, Thailand,
Malaysia, Brunei. But we know that even the fuzzy parts are political
entities ruled by someone, even if we don’t know the details of who
the someones are.
Naturally, when we think about the beginning of human civiliza-
tion, this modern map subconsciously nags at our thinking. Today, we
know that all the land on the globe has been claimed. Yet at the begin-
ning of human history, the map was drastically different.
- 21 -
 Traced

Cradles of Civilization
The earliest human civilizations were born in places that we term
cradles. The ancient Aegeans (the Minoans and Mycenaeans) and the
ancient Egyptians created two of them. Mesopotamians, South Asians,
East Asians, and Central Americans also birthed the earliest human
civilizations (Color Plate 3).
But why in these places? Or, to put it in terms that nagged at me
while growing up, what was going on in the rest of the world? Why
didn’t the people in the rest of the world also create civilizations? What
were they doing?
Consider the vast geographic region of Russian Siberia (Color Plate
2). We know that the people of Siberia came from…someone. Yet the
first human civilizations never touched Siberia. As another example, a
great diversity of people roam modern Europe — Irish, British, French,
Spanish, Portuguese, German, Swiss, Norwegian, Danish, Swedish,
Finnish, Italian, Polish, and on and on the list of modern nationalities
goes. Again, we know that these peoples must have come from some-
one. Yet the maps of the earliest stages of human history show a big
blank in these regions. In ancient times, no civilizations formed there.
On other continents, the same questions arise. Who did the Su-
danese come from? Who gave rise to the Ethiopians? The Kenyans?
The Zambians? The Nigerians? How about the Australian Aborigines?
Who were their ancestors? What about the Navajos of North America?
The Guaraní of South America?
The more you look at the details of the modern globe, the bigger
the mystery of early human history.
Perhaps you can understand my shock, then, when I first saw a
map of modern population density (Color Plate 4). Do you see how
much of the world is virtually empty of people? Remember: This map
shows the modern era. Civilization is largely absent from large chunks
of the globe today.
Notice how much of Canada and Russia are blank. With few excep-
tions, North and Southwest Africa are equally empty. In Color Plate 4,
Australia looks almost uninhabited. The Arabian Peninsula is sparsely
populated, as is the Amazon in South America and the Rocky Moun-
tain region of North America. In modern China, the land of more than
1 billion people, the population is concentrated in just half of the total
landmass.
- 22 -
 Smaller Than We Think

Historical Population Density

Now let’s expand our horizons to the past. How did the map of peoples
— not polities — look in the ancient past?
Take a look at population density in 1000 b.c. (Color Plate 5). In
sub-Saharan Africa, few people exist. Similarly, the Americas show lit-
tle sign of human occupation. The Olmec civilization exists in Mexico.
But most of the rest of the Americas are empty. In Southeast Asia, in
Australia, in the Pacific, and in Central Asia, few people reside, and
so history books don’t cover them. Instead, they focus on the densely
populated regions like India, China, and the Mediterranean lands.
But wait, you might say. Couldn’t our understanding of population
densities simply be a consequence of the presence or absence of histor-
ical records? In other words, isn’t the evidence behind the population
density map of 1000 b.c. an artifact of what we know or don’t know
from historical records? Maybe many people did roam these regions,
but we just haven’t discovered the evidence for them yet? Perhaps.
But population densities are determined not solely from written
historical records — records like the ancient Roman and Chinese cen-
suses. Archaeology also fills in the gaps. For example, some of the sites
without written records, like pre-Roman northern and western Eu-
rope, still show strong population sizes (Color Plate 5).
More importantly, if you compare the map of population density
to other maps of earth, the absence of peoples makes sense. Siberia
and Canada are mostly empty because they’re some of the coldest
places on earth (Color Plate 6). North Africa holds few people; it
also holds the largest desert in the world — the Sahara (Color Plate
7). Deserts stretch across Southwest Africa and the Middle East, and
the dry outback covers most of Australia. The Rocky Mountains slice
through much of western North America, and the landmass connecting
the Middle East to India — i.e., Iran, Afghanistan, and Pakistan — is
covered with mountains. Few people have tried to call these areas
home. Similarly, few have tried to eke out an existence in the thin
air of the Tibetan plateau. The absence of peoples at these heights is
understandable.
These features would have been present in 1000 b.c. It makes sense
that these same factors would constrain population densities in the
ancient past.

- 23 -
 Traced

Let’s watch how this ancient map matures. One thousand years
later (a.d. 1), little has changed (Color Plate 8). Sub-Saharan Africa,
the Americas, Southeast Asia, Australia, the Pacific, and Central Asia
remain mostly empty. In contrast, where people are concentrated,
history books make mention — Egypt, the Mediterranean, and
the Middle East (all under Roman rule); Central America (under
Mayan rule); India (under various rulers); and China (under Han
Dynasty rule).
Fast forward another thousand years to a.d. 1000 (Color Plate 9),
and previously sleepy regions begin to wake. For example, in South-
east Asia and West Africa, people begin to concentrate. Consequently,
history books mention the Khmer empire in Southeast Asia and the
Ghana empire in West Africa. As another example, in the Americas,
the previous loci of peoples expand. Though the Classic Mayan civili-
zation has just collapsed, Central America is just a few hundred years
removed from the rise of the Aztecs, and South America is anticipat-
ing the rise of the Incas.
In the rest of the map, the human story continues to march for-
ward at the traditional foci of activity. Europe’s population continues
to grow, despite the raids of the Vikings. In the Middle East, the Arab
Muslim conquerors continue to dominate. Far to the east in China,
the Song Dynasty reigns, and to the south in India, multiple kingdoms
cover the landscape.
Moving forward in time from a.d. 1000 (Color Plate 9) to the pres-
ent (Color Plate 4), the map undergoes a noticeable change. Yellow
intensifies to red, as population densities suddenly increase in China,
Southeast Asia, India, Europe, and parts of Africa. The Americas also
show sudden signs of life. In the previous population density maps,
the changes didn’t look quite this dramatic (compare Color Plates 5,
8, and 9 to one another). The color transitions between maps were
smoother. Why?
Explosion
When King David was on the throne of Israel around 1000 b.c.,
the entire world population was around only 50 million people.1 A
thousand years later (a.d. 1), this number had more than tripled to
1. McEvedy and Jones (1975); also for the rest of the paragraph and subsequent
paragraphs.
- 24 -
 Smaller Than We Think

almost 170 million. However, in the coming centuries, several factors

kept the rate of population growth low. For example, by the a.d. 500s,
the western Roman Empire had fallen, and China had experienced
its own tumult. Consequently, from a.d. 1 to a.d. 1000, the world
population grew more slowly. In fact, it didn’t even double in size. By
a.d. 1000, the world population sat at 265 million.
The world population took a hit when the Black Death swept
through parts of Asia and then into Europe. Pre-Black Death, in a.d.
1200, the world population had reached 360 million. Because of the
Black Death, it dipped to 350 million in a.d. 1400.
And then the population took off.
Today, nearly 8 billion people roam the earth. In other words, in
just 600 years, the world population has grown over 20-fold. This is a
remarkable rate of increase. By contrast, the 2,400 years prior to a.d.
1400 saw an increase of only 7-fold (Color Plate 10). The arrival of
modern medicine and of improvements in agriculture and technology
have combined to produce an explosion in human population size.
This explains why the history of the world looks so empty for most
of the past several thousand years. Only in the last few hundred years
has the human population grown to such an extent that nations have
extended their political reach across every terrestrial part of the globe.
In other words, we live in a unique era of human history.
The Ancient World
In the simplest sense, we know that everyone — including the an-
cients — came from…somebody. But the history of human population
growth casts this fact in a new light. You don’t have to go far back in
history to see that there were far fewer somebodies alive then, than are
alive today. Just a few hundred years ago, the peoples of the globe were
fewer in number and more limited in their geographic reach. Eligible
bachelors had a much smaller pool of potential spouses from which
to pick.
Let’s make that statement more concrete.
Say you’re browsing a dating website today, and it reports 100 peo-
ple who might be a good match to you. Just six hundred years ago, an
analogous process would have returned only 5 matches — because,
back then, the world population was 20-fold smaller than today. And
going back even further in history, the pool would have been even
- 25 -
 Traced

smaller. The single men would have gone looking for spouses and
found the list of candidates to be small.
When for millennia — uninterrupted — you face slim pickings,
at some point you have to settle for someone who might be a fourth
cousin. Or closer. Or you might go looking outside your ethnic group.
Choose the latter, and you’ve begun to bring the genealogies of the
world together.
This is the situation that faced the ancient Aegeans and Egyptians.
Ancient Greece didn’t have 10 million people. Instead, in 1250 b.c.,
about 1 million resided there.2 Ancient Egypt wasn’t populated by 100
million people. In 1200 b.c., around 3 million called the Nile Valley
home.3
In terms of eligible bachelors, ancient Greece would have had far
fewer than 1 million. Assuming a 50:50 split of males and females, only
500,000 males would have lived in ancient Greece. If we assume a 1:1:1
breakdown of children versus marriable adults versus elderly, then less
than 170,000 men were looking to start families in 1250 b.c. In other
words, modern New York City had 50 times4 as many people as the
entire land of ancient Greece had men of marriable age.
How often did the peoples of ancient Greece and ancient Egypt in-
termix? Much more than we expect — because the ancient world was
much smaller than we think.

2. McEvedy and Jones (1975), p. 110.

3. McEvedy and Jones (1975), p. 226.
4. https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/newyorkcitynewyork/PST045219.
- 26 -
 Smaller Than We Think

Chapter 2 Summary:
• Normally, language and culture constrain our choices in
mates.
• Political maps of the globe imply that a multitude of lan-
guages and cultures exist across the entire surface of the
earth. From this perspective, it’s hard to imagine that these
diverse groups regularly mixed.
• Population density maps of the globe show that languages
and cultures have a much narrower geographic distribution.
From this perspective, it’s easier for these diverse groups to
intermix.
• Compared to the present, populations in the ancient past
were even more geographically restricted, and their num-
bers were far lower.
• Fewer people meant fewer options for mates.
• Fewer options for mates would have brought the genealo-
gies of the world together, making the ancient world smaller
than we think.

- 27 -