Origin: A Genetic History of the Americas

Just over 20 years ago my research group was doing molecular phylogeography of a group of little butterflies called the Comma Skipper complex, which have a Holarctic (northern hemisphere) distribution but are most diverse in western North America. The conventional morphotaxonomy pointed to a history of movement across Beringia, probably quite recently. The parallels with what was emerging about human arrival in the Americas were striking. Though we had never worked on human molecular phylogeography, I decided to have a one-time graduate seminar on the "peopling of the Americas." Like everybody else, I had been brought up on the scenario of ancestral Native Americans coming out of Siberia and trekking southward to colonize the Americas--rather a long walk in a rather short time frame. The story was complicated by the notion of "Pleistocene overkill"--that as humans spread south they encountered a thriving megafauna with no previous exposure to humans as predators, and the expanding wave of human colonization led to their extinction. It was a very neat story, but already there were lots of holes in it. What would the emerging science of DNA-sequencing genomics tell us? David G. Smith, the molecular guy in our Anthropology Department, didn't participate in my seminar, but his two crackerjack grad students, Rika Kaestle and Ripan Malhi, did. Both of those folks are well-known in this field today. We considered the paleoanthropology, the genetic data, even the linguistic evidence, and we concluded that the traditional "Clovis-first" scenario could not possibly hold up. Even the availability of an "ice-free corridor" between the retreating continental and cordilleran ice sheets as a highway to the Great Plains was incredibly shaky. By the time the seminar ended none of us believed in "Clovis first" and most of us were convinced that Dillehay's Monte Verde site in south-central Chile virtually guaranteed that the Americas were colonized by boat from their west coasts, not by overland trekking. This book demonstrates that we were at the proverbial cutting edge.
Rika Kaestle became Jennifer Raff's thesis adviser. There is thus a direct line from David Smith's lab (which at the time was involved with the saga of "Kennewick Man") and our seminar to this book. That is not to say anything is finally resolved. The story continues to evolve and has become considerably more complicated as more ancient and modern genomes have become available.
One of this book's Amazon reviewers complains about all the virtue signaling in it, and there is indeed a lot. But indigenous people are not butterflies. Butterflies do not have religious and cultural traditions, at least as far as we know, and there is no obvious way to ask their permission to use their DNA in phylogeographic studies. Historically, indigenous people were often studied not so much as fellow human beings but as specimens, with little thought or attention given to the ethical dimension of such research. Times have changed, and indeed the ethical atmosphere was already changing rapidly at the time of our seminar--helped along by the controversy swirling around "Kennewick Man." This humanizing movement was spurred earlier in the century by Franz Boas and his students, though there had been sensitive commentators even in the19th Century. We will never completely harmonize the findings of science with the beliefs of traditional societies that commonly hold that they have always been where they are/were placed there by their Creator. As a minimum, scientists need to treat these people with proper respect, to acknowledge their contributions, and ideally to arrive at a mutual understanding with them that the science is intended to enrich and amplify, not destroy or deny, their traditions. Researchers may even mean this when they say it, rather than merely reciting a soothing mantra. I believe Raff believes what she says.

I bought the hard cover book. There is an Introduction. The book is divided into three parts. Part One contains the first three chapters. Part Two contains chapters four and five. Part Three contains chapters six to nine. Following this, there is an Epilogue chapter. The Introduction and the other chapters (not including the six-page Epilogue) vary in length from 13 to 52 pages. The typical chapter length is in the twenties. The chapters are followed by Acknowledgments, Notes and Index sections. The chapters do not have titles. This is the only scientific themed book I have ever read that was written for the general public, but doesn’t have titles. Very strange. Chapter five has photographic plates and chapters one to three and six to eight have figures.

However, the figures depicting archeological sites in Asia and the western hemisphere have lettering and numbering which is very small (number one font?). I had to use a five times magnifier to see what was written. This detracted from my enjoyment of the book. Some readers may skip the figures because of this problem.

Dr. Jennifer Raff writes accurately about the various archeological discoveries that have been made since the early twentieth century. She even includes information about relatively recent discoveries that were made using established archeological techniques and genetic analysis. However, I found some of Dr. Raff’s writing to be problematic and inappropriate for a scientific book.

She included a “Land Acknowledgment Statement” before the Introduction. In this statement, she explains that “This book was written on land taken from the Kaw, Osage and Shawnee nations.” Why does she feel the need to state this? It is true that the land was taken over by principally European settlers and past government actions, but there is no reason to freshly open old wounds in a book which is supposed to be a scientific work. The second paragraph in the “Statement” explains that Native American tribes were displaced or forced into or out of Kansas. Many readers probably know this, but the statement smacks of political correctness and is inappropriate in this book.

In pages xxvii to xxix of the Introduction, Dr. Raff refers to “Indigenous People,” “First Peoples” and “Native Americans.” She explains that people from different tribes prefer to be called different names. She adds that some people in various tribes do not take offense at being called “Indian,” but they don’t attach any meaning to the name. When I went to college in western New York, I twice had roommates from the local tribes. Their preferred name was the local town name followed by the local tribal name. In this case, a designation similar to Tonawanda Algonquin (this is only an approximate example).

Pages 101 to 105 in Chapter 3 describe the finding of a skeleton of an adult female with spear points for hunting and a toolkit and also the exposure of the skeletons of children with spear points along side them. Dr. Raff states that the adult female could have been a hunter with an active life style, rather than a female member of the tribe who gathered food, worked on preparing hides and raising children – traditional female roles. She discusses the idea that one should consider the existence of genders amongst tribal members rather than just their biological sex. She adds that Christian colonizers imposed their ideas of sexuality on the Indigenous People and ignored the concept of genders. I have read that, in some North American tribes, there are as many as four genders, but does this discussion belong in a scientific book that is principally concerned with genetic research and its use in deciphering the descent of one group of people from another? Hopefully, Dr. Raff is not trying to turn this part of the book into a transgender discussion.

On page 150, third paragraph of Chapter 4, Dr. Raff states that “These remains represent an acknowledgment to accept responsibility for past transgressions and unscrupulous methodologies, to accept responsibility for preconceived assumptions about race and societies which resulted in cultural erasers and persisting prejudices.” She is talking about being mindful of the tissue samples that have been collected for genetic analysis. She explains elsewhere in the book that tribal people consider these samples to be part of their ancestors’ bodies – and their bodies. I can understand this belief by the tribal members. However, it seems that Dr. Raff has become hypersensitive about the subject and, again, a politically correct advocate of Indigenous People. I wonder if she pushes her beliefs on her students.

In Chapter 8, page 225, second paragraph, lines three and four, Dr. Raff states that storms intensified by climate change “rapidly increased coastal erosion.” However, a check of past Arctic storm records will show that storminess varies as with other regions of North America and that there is a general trend of decreasing storminess. One only has to dig out the climate and meteorological data collected by NOAA, NASA and other institutions in order to see the trend. On line six, she states that “Arctic warming is thinning and melting regional sea ice, extending the ice-free season.” Arctic ice cover varies over the decades. The reader should consult the research and general circulation publications of Dr. Susan Crockford in order to review the ice cover maps. Her books are available through Amazon.

In the Epilogue, page 272, third paragraph to the end of page 273, Dr. Raff writes with what appears to me to be an air of “white guilt” for past mistakes and wrongs caused by previous genetics investigators. In the last paragraph of page 272, she talks about “detached assuredness” that scientists try to maintain as precisely the problem. However, aren’t scientists supposed to work with a degree of detachment in order to prevent bias from affecting their work? This is a strange statement coming from a fellow scientist. For scientists, it’s understandable to have some degree of enthusiasm and excitement regarding the research they perform, along with a certain amount of attachment to the subject of interest. Although, becoming emotionally attached to the subject blinds scientists from being objective and producing unbiased work. This is part of the reason why 60% of all scientific work cannot be duplicated.

In summation, had Dr. Raff not included her emotional and politically correct statements and erroneous climate information in the book, I would have given it a very good rating – maybe five stars. Still, if the lay archeologist can ignore this nonsense, you will find good information. The text is a relatively easy read. I recommend this book with my warnings noted above.

Raphael Ketani
Sunnyside, NY

I was so looking forward to reading this book. Unfortunately, the author seems more interested in denigrating the work of those in the field who came before her instead of adding new insights. Her superior, misandric attitude has no place in real scientific observation. I was planning to write a much longer review based on specific observations, but it's just not worth the time or effort. Too bad.

The book has a simple theme: it uses recent paleo-genetic research (along with recent archaeology) to challenge traditional, archeaeology-based theories of how the Western Hemisphere was populated by migrations from Asia. It posits (with seemingly strong evidence) an earlier date (by at least several thousand years) to the migrations and a migration with a strong coastal/seaborne component, as vs. the inland movements which were scientific dogma until recently. That's all fine, well done, and refreshing. Unfortunately, the author also uses the book time and again to self-flagellate her profession for abuse of ancient Native American remains and to complain about the treatment of Native Americans in general. She may be quite right in that regard, but it grows very tiresome in a book which nominally is focused on science, not on "woke" politics. The book is not long but could be even shorter given its relatively narrow scientific topic/thesis and if one left out the preaching. In sum, a good scientific effort on a narrow topic but with an additional larding of political commentary. That's why I rated it at 3 stars rather than 4.

I really wanted to love this book but was put off by many aspects of its structure and writing.
Probably most significant is the fact that the meat of the book, the information I would think most people would buy this book to learn, starts on page 175 and ends on 247. The rest of the book is in large part an apology for and detailed explanation of how Native Americans have been mistreated by researchers historically. Tons of pontificating that could have been contained in one chapter but kept infiltrating the genetic/ archeological narrative. It is also part memoir, and part mind numbing depiction of the laborious pipetting techniques needed to accomplish DNA research. Other distractions are pages long sidebars that should have just been incorporated into the text and maps so tiny I needed a magnifying glass to attempt to see them.

Perhaps this book could have been helped by a strong editor. It attempted to do too many things and switched gears too much.
The actual story of what we currently know and what the controversies are in the field felt like it /they were given short shrift. The contained information could have been conveyed in a long magazine article, like 10 or 12 pages. It deserved more space.

I’m sorry to be negative about this book as the topic is important and inherently very interesting. The historically poor treatment of Indigenous Peoples and insensitivity to their perspective by researchers certainly was worth pointing out. But it seemed to overwhelm the book’s purpose. This is the authors first book and I think she could have used some better guidance from her editor or publisher. Maybe next time. This field is changing so quickly there will have to be a follow up volume.

As a North American archaeologist of five decades, I found Origins to be a very thoughtful, informative and up-to-date synthesis of the peopling of the New World as seen through the lens of the unfolding aDNA revolution. Were I still teaching a North American archaeology survey course, my peopling lectures would have been stronger for having read this book.

As one indoctrinated within the Clovis-First paradigm who spent much of his career ... disconnected to Indigenous peoples, I winced a bit at outset at what I perceived as undue concern with Native perspectives. However, as I read the book Raff moved me to a better ethical place as I gained a deeper appreciation of how Indigenous peoples view DNA studies.

I have long accepted the compelling evidence that humans arrrived in North America by at least 15-20K and her characterizations of the Pre-Clovis archaeological record of Gault, Page-Ladson, Meadowcroft, etc. all range true to my understanding.

While I had understood the gist of Standstill hypothesis, multiple early and late waves of Old World arrivals, lack of genetic evidence for Solutrean peoples, etc., Raff gave me a far better appreciation for the rapidly growing genetic data and how it is being explored.

And the writing is really excellent--I know first hand the challenge of writing engagingly about complex realities for a lay audience. Raff's book was almost a page-turner for me and found myself really enjoying the way she used personal vignettes to weave her own intellectual and career development into the larger narrative. She also did a very fine job of setting essential context as she built arguments and introduced new topics.

All in all, five thumbs up! We've long needed such a book.

As an anthropology grad I was looking forward to this book. Those of us interested in the field know very well that the "Siberian land bridge" is not the whole story of human migration to the Americas. But the author is clearly more interested in criticizing anyone who does not bow down to the superior Native American culture and admit to the heinous crimes of daring to study the issue without the proper reverence. This polemic starts on the very first page and never lets up. This is not about science at all. It's about pushing a political point of view. Anti-white, anti-male, anti-European, anti-everything but me because I am so enlightened. This attitude is so pervasive in this book that it is laughable. It overwhelms whatever she is really trying to say, which, frankly, is not a whole lot that hasn't been said before. There is no "breakthrough" in understanding here. It violates the very basic tenants of anthropology to not be ethnocentric. That includes ALL cultures. But the author is too full of self-hatred to understand that.

Despite my great interest in the topic (the peopling of the Americas) this book was a great disappointment. It was way too long, too rambling, packed with nonessential footnotes, discontinuous sidebars that interrupted the narrative flow, and irritatingly excessive "wokeness." The technical content, its main point, could have been much more concisely and clearly explained. Even the images were badly done, with many maps printed in small scale in low contrast grey-on-grey with microscopic fonts. There are implications that Native American mythology is as valid a truth as the author's own current science, and repeated insults of previous scientific techniques, which "linger like the smell of stale cigarette smoke." The message seems to be that 19th century archeologists should have used 21st century DNA studies, after first getting permission from the 300th generation descendants of the skeletons they unearthed. Yes, mistakes and abuses were made - but those were also made by indigenous tribes against other indigenous tribes. Yes, scientists should be respectful of culture. But those and other points could have been made in 80 well written pages instead of 280.

This well-researched and otherwise interesting book on the peopling of the Americas is contaminated by the author's constant harping about deferring with supreme sensitivity to the spiritual preferences and belief of the descendants of First Peoples. Mentioning this idea once, maybe twice, is enough, but her "deference mantra" is repeated in virtually every chapter and many of the footnotes as well. All right, we got it the first time. All the other times Raff is needlessly sticking peas up readers' nostrils.

One of the best books I've read in a long while.

Jennifer Raff is a great writer. Origin is interesting for its subject matter, but she makes paleogenetics riveting. Over the course of this book, she describes in detail how paleogeneticists uncover the history of ancient peoples, giving a critique of the problematic (and extraordinarily racist) history of the field and what has been done in recent years to heal the the entirely valid distrust between Native communities and researchers. She shows how ancient DNA is extracted and analyzed. She examines the archaeological data, context, dating methods, and virulent disagreements concerning "good" sites containing human evidence from the deep past. She provides a world-class primer on scientific research ethics and how to build trusting relationships among stakeholder communities. And she lays out the state of the science concerning how Native peoples moved from Siberia to places as far afield as Florida, Chile, and the Greater Antilles. (Extra points for describing the North American ice wall from the last glacier maximum as six times taller than the wall from Game of Thrones.)

This book is written for general readers, not specialists, and it's clear that Raff is involved in science education, because every chapter is accessible, perfectly structured, and crystal clear. Also, the further reading resources seem fantastic. I very much look forward to whatever Raff publishes next (and secretly wish she had time to teach other scientists how to write books, because this was a joy). Five stars.

ARC