PHOTO: JACOB DAVIS
SCIENCE science.org 25 FEBRUARY 2022 • VOL 375 ISSUE 6583 803tinue to use her expertise in those areas
and also apply her skills as a manager,
says one of her former mentors, Evelynn
Hammonds, professor of African American
studies and head of the history of science
department at Harvard University. “I think
it’s a very good move by the president,”
Hammonds adds. “And I think that she and
Francis could turn out to be a great team.”
The 140-person OSTP staff provide tech-
nical expertise to the White House, coor-
dinate research-related policies across the
government, and produce a stream of con-
gressionally mandated reports. Its health
and life sciences division, for example, is
helping coordinate governmentwide efforts
on both ARPA-H and the Cancer Moonshot.
To Lane, that overlap is a formula for
bureaucratic confusion, if not gridlock.
“Who’s in charge?” he asks. “If Francis isn’t
reporting to Alondra, that raises serious
questions.” Lane also worries that some se-
nior administration officials might regard
Nelson as Collins’s deputy, while Collins as-
sumes a more visible public role.
Holdren disagrees. He thinks bringing
in Collins will bolster the White House
science team. “Biden wanted someone of
stature in biomedical research to lead the
charge [on his priorities], and that is what
Francis Collins represents,” Holdren says.
“Lander was doing that. But those issues
are not in Alondra Nelson’s wheelhouse.”
Biomedical research advocates are also
divided over the appointments. Collins’s
long government tenure and easy rapport
with Congress make him an ideal can-
didate to push the health initiatives for-
ward, says Ellen Sigal, founder and chair
of Friends of Cancer Research. “There’s no
one better than Francis,” she says.
At the same time, many lobbyists are un-
happy with the administration’s intent to
house ARPA-H within NIH, a plan Collins
has backed. They would prefer to see it
have more independence by locating it
within NIH’s parent body, the Department
of Health and Human Services. And several
researchers complained about the Biden
administration opting for yet another
“old white dude” to be science adviser,
reviving a criticism levied when Lander
was named.
Neither Collins nor Nelson will get
Lander’s Cabinet seat. Science advocates
applauded Biden’s decision to elevate the
OSTP director to the Cabinet, a status
normally held by heads of major agencies
who are Senate-confirmed. But an OSTP
spokesperson says whoever Biden nomi-
nates for the permanent position will have
Cabinet status once confirmed. jWith reporting by Jocelyn Kaiser.A
frica is the birthplace of our species,
but ancient DNA from the continent
has so far provided relatively few clues
to our history there, partly because
researchers have struggled to recover
genetic samples that survived the hot,
humid climate. Now, an analysis of ancient
DNA from six individuals from southeastern
Africa offers a glimpse of the lives, move-
ments, and relations of people who occu-
pied the continent between 18,000 and 5000
years ago; it also hints at the complex com-
mingling of African populations even further
back. For instance, the work suggests that
during the last ice age, some African societ-
ies may have become more sedentary and
isolated as their environments fragmented.
The study, published this week in Nature,
is “terrific,” says Susan Pfeiffer, an anthropo-
logist emeritus at the University of Toronto.
“It’s like a little hint of what I hope will be a
wonderfully rich story.”
To get a clearer picture of ancient Africa,
a team led by North American researchers
and including 13 scientists from five African
nations analyzed samples from the remains
of four infants and two adults buried in Ma-
lawi, Tanzania, and Zambia. The team man-
aged to extract enough DNA to partiallysequence the genomes. Five samples came
from inner ear bones, which are dense and
preserve DNA well.
Two infant boys from the Hora rock shel-
ter in Malawi were buried on their sides in
a flexed position about 14,000 years ago. “I
spent a lot of time thinking about the circum-
stances that led to them dying so young and
... about how carefully their communities had
interred them,” says Yale University anthropo-
logist Jessica Thompson, who led the Hora
excavation in 2019. The most recent remains,
of an adult woman from Zambia’s Kalemba
rock shelter, were radiocarbon dated to about
5000 years ago. The oldest remains belonged
to a woman found in Tanzania’s Mlambalasi
rock shelter amid ostrich eggshell beads
radiocarbon dated to about 18,000 years ago.
Previously, the oldest human genome from
sub-Saharan Africa was 9000 years old.
Thompson and colleagues analyzed the six
new partial genomes plus 28 previously re-
ported from across the continent. The team
ran the data through a computer program
that compares similar snippets of DNA to
estimate relatedness; they reconstructed a
rough family tree dating back 18,000 years.
Their model suggests the 34 individuals
descend from three major source popula-
tions. Two of them, from northeastern Africa
and southern Africa, were already known.Oldest genomes from Africa
offer glimpse of complex past
Signs of ice age isolation match archaeological clues
HUMAN EVOLUTIONBy Michael PriceArchaeologists and fieldworkers excavate Malawi’s Hora rock shelter, where two male infants had been buried.