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Courtesy of Theodore Schurr
“There is no substitute for actually being on location and seeing a place and what the landscape looks like, meeting the people living there, talking to them, getting a sense of their history.” Theodore Schurr, Professor of Anthropology
participation. It’s mutually beneficial,” he says. “You can work with individual communities on genetic studies and learn a tremendous amount by engaging with them.” He’s seen this time and again. In Turkey, research revealed that religious and ethnic backgrounds varied slightly from village to village. Some ancestry traced back to the Greeks, others to people from the Caucuses, some to invading Turkic tribes. In Trinidad, in the Caribbean, he discovered what he calls a “complex genetic dance” compounded by the arrival of non-natives. “The indigenous [people] have their origins in these areas,” Schurr explains, “but also, they themselves are the product of historical mixing of African, European, and South Asian peoples since colonial entry there.” Schurr says he tries to return to communities to share his results with participants, but if going back in person isn’t possible, he finds another way to provide them his findings. He also aims to publish all his data in peer-reviewed journals or as book chapters, to build on our archive of material about the path of the world’s people. He’s been prolific. He currently has three papers in press: about the genetic diversity of the Svan people in the country of Georgia, variations in Y-chromosomes in native South American populations, and a possible link between susceptibility to human papillomavirus and mtDNA in Argentinean populations. That doesn’t count the four additional papers he thinks will come in
the near future, and another dozen or so in some stage of development. His methods have also made their way into clinical settings, by way of people like his former graduate student Matthew Dulik, now a director in the clinical diagnostics lab at CHOP. In Schurr’s lab they worked on the genetic diversity of southern Siberia’s Altai-Sayan region. Dulik sequenced and analyzed mtDNA and Y-chromosomal DNA samples from indigenous Altaians, and he says he became familiar with techniques and equipment that he still uses today. “You’re always going to learn something but it’s also an enjoyable time,” Dulik says, of working with Schurr. “In his lab, there is a structure but he also gives you enough free rein to explore ideas and really lets you develop as a researcher.” It’s this combination of structure and freedom, of tying together DNA analysis and genetics with anthropological practices, that has allowed Schurr to make true scientific headway. Wallace calls him a leader in the field. “He’s been extraordinarily successful. He’s done a great job,” Wallace says. “He’s doing a lot of really beautiful work.” Work that will, with any luck, continue to unlock the mysteries of how people became who they are in some of the farthest reaches of the world.