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Javier E

Did the First Americans Arrive via Land Bridge? This Geneticist Says No. - The New York... - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...ry-americas-jennifer-raff.html

americas migration origins bridge land archaeology genetics

shared by Javier E on 08 Feb 22 - No Cached
  • In her new book, “Origin: A Genetic History of the Americas,” Raff beautifully integrates new data from different sciences (archaeology, genetics, linguistics) and different ways of knowing, including Indigenous oral traditions, in a masterly retelling of the story of how, and when, people reached the Americas.
  • Raff skillfully reveals how well-dated archaeological sites, including recently announced 22,000-year-old human footprints from White Sands, N.M., are at odds with the Clovis first hypothesis.
  • the path to the Americas was coastal (the Kelp Highway hypothesis) rather than inland, and that Beringia was not a bridge but a homeland — twice the size of Texas — inhabited for millenniums by the ancestors of the First Peoples of the Americas.
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  • Raff effectively models how science is done, how hypotheses are tested, and how new data are used to refute old ideas and generate new ones.
  • Raff takes the reader from underground caverns in Belize to a clean lab at the University of Kansas where ancient DNA is tediously teased from old bones. She explains difficult to understand concepts — geoarchaeology, coalescence times, biodistance — with well-placed sidebars. The book is richly referenced, and informative footnotes and endnotes give readers an opportunity to take a deeper dive if they wish.
  • Given the fast and furious pace of discovery in this field, Raff is clear that not everyone will agree with her interpretations of the data. “All scientists must hold themselves open to the possibility that we could be wrong, and it may very well be that in five, 10 or 20 years, this book will be as out of date as any other,” she writes. “That possibility is what makes working in this field so rewarding.” That, she explains, is how science is done.
  • Jennifer Raff is a well-published scholar and accomplished scientific communicator who has contributed important insights into the genetic history and movement patterns of Indigenous Americans. She is at the forefront of a culture change in our science. And now she has written the book anyone interested in the peopling of the Americas must read.
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