Name: Origin
ISBN: 9781538749715

Jennifer Raff

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

A Genetic History of the Americas

Origin

Cindy Lieberman

3.5 rounded up. A look at the field of paleogenetics - the use of genetic testing on Paleolithic samples - to better understand the migration and evolution of people in the Americas. 

Major take-always: 
- What many of us learned in school - that humans came to the Americas by crossing a landbridge up by what is now Alaska some 1,000 years ago - is proven wrong via genetic testing. Humans have been in the Americas for more than 23,000 years! 
- Paleontologists get their knickers in a twist when discussing clovis points, as this particular line of study raises new theories that do not support the prevailing wisdom (ie taught in school as something scientists “know”).
- We would know more if early anthropologists were not so cavalier with samples taken (or stolen) from indigenous peoples, now reluctant to allow such testing on their ancestors’ remains.
 
The author also goes into great detail on the laboratory process of extracting DNA, and some of the differences between mitochondrial DNA (maternal only) and the “Ancestry.com” DNA that includes alleles from both parents - and how that affects what we can know about the samples. 

This was great as an audiobook, enabling me to understand the major points without getting bogged down in minutiae.

Origin A Genetic History of the Americas

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