In 1786, he discovered the kinship of Sanskrit and ancient Greek.
Reich’s work can finally answer the tantalising question first posed by an British civil servant, Sir William Jones. Although studies in ancient DNA have now leapfrogged archaeology and linguistics to become the best source of knowledge on prehistoric human populations and migrations, they dovetail with those disciplines in a three-way corroborative process. Most significant developments in human history have happened in the last 10,000 years since the retreat of the great ice sheet, and for Europe the past 5,000 years are crucial. Reich revisits recent breakthroughs in charting the early history of humans, but his most dramatic discoveries have been made in the more recent past.
Photograph: Dave Webb, Cambridge Archaeological Unit A double “Beaker” grave excavated at Trumpington Meadows, Cambridgeshire, and dating to c2000-1950 BC.
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