There’s more news on the ancient human DNA front: as I report in my new “Matter” column in the New York Timesmy new “Matter” column in the New York Times, scientists have now reconstructed the genome of a Neanderthal with exquisite accuracy. Their genome sequence is as good as what you’d get if you had your own genome sequenced with the finest equipment available today. And yet the DNA comes from a fossil that’s approximately 130,000 years old.

Now zoom out to the tree of all living things*:

Evolution is a mixture of flow–the cascade of genes from parents to offspring, and the criss-cross movement between populations and species. It has made us who were are, over just the past 60,000