The gripping account, from the head of a world-leading lab in the field, of the picture of human history and ancestry emerging from the revolution in the study of ancient DNA ~Describes the evidence for ancient migrations and ghosts of ancient and long-lost populations, now revealed through comparing the genomes of ancient modern humans, Neanderthals, Denisovans, and present-day populations ~Considers what the latest research tells us about the often surprising ancestry of the people who now inhabit Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Americas ~Shows how there are no 'pure' races: all modern human populations are mixtures of more ancient ones~Shares new insights into the human story of how our populations spread across the world, and makes a compelling argument that ancient DNA is fundamentally our picture of who we are.