Computer scientists at Columbia’s School of Engineering and
Applied Science have published a study in the November 2012 issue of The
American Journal of Human Genetics that demonstrates a new approach used to
analyze genetic data to learn more about the history of populations. The
authors are the first to develop a method that can describe in detail events in
recent history, over the past 2,000 years. They demonstrate this method in two
populations, the Ashkenazi Jews and the Masai people of Kenya, who represent
two kinds of histories and relationships with neighboring populations: one that
remained isolated from surrounding groups, and one that grew from frequent
cross-migration across nearby villages.