Origin

A Genetic History of the Americas

By: Jennifer Raff

Narrated by: Tanis Parenteau, Jennifer Raff - Interview, Yvonne Russo - Interview

From celebrated anthropologist Jennifer Raff comes the untold story - and fascinating mystery - of how humans migrated to the Americas.

Origin is the story of who the first peoples in the Americas were, how and why they made the crossing, how they dispersed south, and how they lived based on a new and powerful kind of evidence: their complete genomes. Origin provides an overview of these new histories throughout North and South America, and a glimpse into how the tools of genetics reveal details about human history and evolution.

Twenty thousand years ago, people crossed a great land bridge from Siberia into Western Alaska and then dispersed southward into what is now called the Americas. Until we venture out to other worlds, this remains the last time our species has populated an entirely new place, and this event has been a subject of deep fascination and controversy. No written records - and scant archaeological evidence - exist to tell us what happened or how it took place. Many different models have been proposed to explain how the Americas were peopled and what happened in the thousands of years that followed.

A study of both past and present, Origin explores how genetics is currently being used to construct narratives that profoundly impact Indigenous peoples of the Americas. It serves as a primer for anyone interested in how genetics has become entangled with identity in the way that society addresses the question "Who is indigenous?"

©2022 Jennifer Raff (P)2022 Twelve

Critic reviews

"Social and genetic history cannot be disentangled. ORIGIN also highlights the colonizers’ evolving cultural myths that shape and are shaped by their science. This is a valuable read for consumers of popular genetics who are not aware how much science is built on colonial theft, and how Indigenous peoples push back to improve science." (Dr. Kim TallBear (Sisseton-Wahpeton Oyate), professor, Faculty of Native Studies, University of Alberta, Canadian research chair in Indigenous peoples, technoscience, and society, and author of Native American DNA: Tribal Belonging and the False Promise of Genetic Science)

"Rarely does a book combine the scientific, the compassionate, and the respectful when engaging with genomes, histories, and the movement of peoples. Even more rarely does a non-Indigenous scientist listen to - and learn from - Indigenous interlocutors, past and present. Jennifer Raff’s ORIGIN deftly weaves a critical narrative of discoveries, biases, achievements, faults, and possibilities, offering an integrative, caring, and scientifically rigorous approach to thinking with and about the histories of the First Peoples of the Americas. Filled with complex but accessible archeological, historical, and genomic analyses presented in the context of honest and often difficult narratives, ORIGIN is a necessary and elegant text." (Agustín Fuentes, professor of anthropology at Princeton University and author of Why We Believe)

"Ancient DNA, extracted from bones thousands upon thousands of years old, has the potential to rewrite the story of the human past. In ORIGIN, Jennifer Raff expertly explains the complicated science behind it, how it can tell us who the first inhabitants of the Americas really were, and how they got there. ORIGIN balances its cutting-edge command of the science and its interpretation with a deep commitment to the ethical implications of this work. The result is a lively, learned, and wonderfully told guide to a fascinating topic." (Patrick Wyman, author of The Verge: Reformation, Renaissance, and Forty Years That Shook the World and host of Tides of History)

good book, horrible narration

The book provides an overview of what genetic archeology teaches us on the first people in the Americas with some insights on the work of researchers.

The narration is highly unpleasant, sometimes. separating. every. word. with. a. long. pause. making it hard to listen.

Loved this book

This book is informative not only for archaeologist but also for anyone who wants to learn.

Interesting topic. Great for challenging outdated theories.

Ignore the reviews claiming woke politics- anyone curious about origin theory, genetics, and anthropology (and interested in what is nothing short of a paradigm shift in this field) will like this book. Those reviews putting “politics” on an evidence-based scientific field need to go holler in their echo chamber. So many of the world’s most profound shifts in scientific examination fought these types of narratives. That said, this book might be better read vs audible. The narrator is wanting.

How did people come to the Americas

Eye opening! So many fascinating concepts that shatter what I was taught in school! I love that the author not only introduces challenges to the current migration theories but also makes us aware of how important it is to include the descendants of those being researched in as much of the process as possible.

Interesting subject but flaws in both the performance and the writing

The writer, quite justifiably, is offended with the way archaeologist in anthropologist have treated native American people and cultures. She talks at some length about the various times this is occurred. This is an incredibly important subject, no question, and must be examined so that it is not repeated. But I got tired of getting hit over the head with it as I listened to this book.

The reader has a bit of a harsh voice, but even more important she missed pronounced both anthropologists’ names and the names of Alaska places. For those of us who live in Alaska and have studied anthropology, this grated.

Fascinating!

Information is new, relevant, and we’ll presented. Appreciate that both sides of a rich debate are laid out, and that the author is clear about what we know, and what we don’t. We’ll done!

Dr. Raff is a gifted writer

What impressed me most about this book, beyond the fascinating information, were the narrative passages where she mused about how things might have happened. They were so detailed and vivid, it made me think that Dr. Raff would make an excellent fiction writer if she ever wants a second career.

It is great to see someone in the scientific community own up to the way scientists have sometimes treated subjects of research as inhuman data sources. Dr. Raff weaves in ideas about how people should be treated without ever getting preachy or diverging far from the main point. Very well done.

might be a better read than a listen

fascinating reframing of the subject, interesting companion to 1491 on the same theme. author's poor ear for non-English pronunciation is distracting and undercuts her credibility, but i appreciated her obsession with the ethics of science intersecting with indigenous communities. anyone who has attempted to hike across arctic tundra will immediately see the logic of focusing on the sea coast route out of Asia

Interesting

The book brought several thoughts and different ideas to consider. I liked the information that was provided.

A Superb Account Of The Science Of Indigenous American Anthropology

Dr. Jennifer Raff, a veteran science communicator* and an anthropological geneticist, has written a magnificent book on the occupation of the Americas by the First Peoples. She presents the various conflicting theories concerning the immigration of indigenous peoples throughout North, South, and Central America and the Caribbean.

Raff sides with what may be a majority opinion held by her colleagues that everything we learned in High School more than twenty years ago is wrong. That musty hypothesis, that the ancestors of indigenous Americans crossed a land bridge between Siberia and North America about 13,000 years ago, spreading across the Americas, hasn't aged well. Genetic and archaeological evidence points to a much earlier peopling of the Americas. Further, they may have first come here by boat and traveled down the west coast.

Raff doesn't hesitate to point out the devastating abuse of indigenous Americans by colonizing nations over the last 530 years. She writes of the historical biases that have ignored the First People's past and emphasized the history of the European colonization of the continents. In short, Columbus didn't discover America. Neither did Leif Erickson. Another history deserves to be told.

Raff firmly repudiates what readers will learn were the unethical and bigoted practices of some scientists who--in the course of their research over more than a century--showed egregious disrespect in ignoring the traditions, opinions, and sensitivities of indigenous people. Raff shows us how this has caused a damaging rift between scientists and indigenous Americans. However, she gives some sterling examples of trust being established between scientists and indigenous peoples. She further outlines steps that need to be taken to maintain ethical scientific standards that serve indigenous communities.

Raff is a good storyteller. Throughout the book she lets her imagination work out possible scenarios for how specimens of human bones were left behind thousands of years ago. As a young mother she can't help but impart some poignancy in her accounts of those burial sites where toddlers are interred. In doing so she highlights--as she does throughout the book--the humanity of the person whose remains are the subject of research.

At one point in the work she takes the reader into her gene sequencing lab where she gives a detailed description of how she prepares to enter a needfully sterile environment. There she painstakingly extracts a DNA sample from an ancient tooth. In her field, such skill is described as "having good hands". Given her position as a senior scientist, she rarely gets to go into a sterile lab like this very often to do basic research. We learn she's a bit unsure whether she still has "good hands". To her relief, she does. While she waits for the sample to incubate, she shadow boxes around the lab in order to stay warm in its very cool temperatures, and in order to maintain another set of hand skills. For those listening to the interview at the end of the audiobook, you learn that she's also a martial artist.**

And this humanizes Raff...as does the story of her learning how to be a "Bear Guard" on an Alaskan dig, where she was briefly stalked by one of North America's largest carnivores: a Polar Bear.

When I last checked, this book had made the top ten best seller’s list for the New York Times. This clearly will be one of the top science books of the year. Hopefully, it won't be the last one she ever writes for the general public. I'd love to see her do one for children.

Count me as one of her greatest fans.

*Raff has written science articles for the Huffington Post and the Guardian, and has a popular science blog, "Violent Metaphors".

**For those who follow her blog, you likely already knew about her martial arts training. Raff has been studying martial arts for over thirty years.