A geographic history of human genetic ancestry

Describing the distribution of genetic variation across individuals is a
fundamental goal of population genetics. We present a method that
capitalizes on the rich genealogical information encoded in genomic tree
sequences to infer the geographic locations of the shared ancestors of a
sample of sequenced individuals. We use this method to infer the
geographic history of genetic ancestry of a set of human genomes sampled
from Europe, Asia, and Africa, accurately recovering major population
movements on those continents. Our findings demonstrate the importance of
defining the spatial-temporal context of genetic ancestry to describing
human genetic variation and caution against the oversimplified
interpretations of genetic data prevalent in contemporary discussions of
race and ancestry.