Origin
A Genetic History of the Americas
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By:
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Jennifer Raff
About this listen
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 TwelveListeners also enjoyed...
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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)
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Fifty thousand years ago - merely a blip in evolutionary time - our Homo sapiens ancestors were competing for existence with several other human species, just as their precursors had done for millions of years. Yet something about our species distinguished it from the pack, and ultimately led to its survival while the rest became extinct. Just what was it that allowed Homo sapiens to become masters of the planet? Ian Tattersall, curator emeritus at the American Museum of Natural History, takes us deep into the fossil record to uncover what made humans so special.
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Great Book, Some Sloppy Editing
- By DB on 11-23-20
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The Statues That Walked
- Unraveling the Mystery of Easter Island
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- Narrated by: Joe Barrett
- Length: 6 hrs and 36 mins
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Story
The monumental statues of Easter Island, both so magisterial and so forlorn, gazing out in their imposing rows over the island’s barren landscape, have been the source of great mystery ever since the island was first discovered by Europeans on Easter Sunday 1722. How could the ancient people who inhabited this tiny speck of land, the most remote in the vast expanse of the Pacific islands, have built such monumental works?
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The "Mystery of Easter Island" remains raveled
- By Diane on 09-14-12
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How to Build a Dinosaur
- Extinction Doesn't Have to Be Forever
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- Narrated by: Patrick Lawlor
- Length: 6 hrs and 36 mins
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
In movies, in novels, in comic strips, and on television, we've all seen dinosaurs - or at least somebody's educated guess of what they would look like. But what if it were possible to build, or grow, a real dinosaur without finding ancient DNA? Jack Horner, the scientist who advised Steven Spielberg on the blockbuster film Jurassic Park and a pioneer in bringing paleontology into the 21st century, teams up with the editor of the New York Times's Science Times section to reveal exactly what's in store.
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Good book but misplaced title
- By Robert on 06-19-15
By: Jack Horner, and others
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The Invisible History of the Human Race
- How DNA and History Shape Our Identities and Our Futures
- By: Christine Kenneally
- Narrated by: Justine Eyre
- Length: 12 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
In The Invisible History of the Human Race, Christine Kenneally draws on cutting-edge research to reveal how both historical artifacts and DNA tell us where we come from and where we may be going. While some books explore our genetic inheritance and some popular television shows celebrate ancestry, this is the first book to explore how everything from DNA to emotions to names and the stories that form our lives are all part of our human legacy.
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Who are you really. Who am I?
- By Annie M. on 10-28-14
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The First Signs
- Unlocking the Mysteries of the World's Oldest Symbols
- By: Genevieve von Petzinger
- Narrated by: Robin Miles
- Length: 9 hrs and 16 mins
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
One of the most significant works on our evolutionary ancestry since Richard Leakey's Origins, The First Signs is the first-ever exploration of the geometric images that accompany most cave art around the world—the first indications of symbolic meaning, intelligence, and language.
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Crawling through caves-a memoir
- By GraceAgnes on 01-27-21
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Saxons, Vikings, and Celts
- The Genetic Roots of Britain and Ireland
- By: Bryan Sykes
- Narrated by: Dick Hill
- Length: 10 hrs and 9 mins
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WASPs finally get their due in this stimulating history by one of the world's leading geneticists. Saxons, Vikings, and Celts is the most illuminating book yet to be written about the genetic history of Britain and Ireland. Through a systematic, ten-year DNA survey of more than 10,000 volunteers, Bryan Sykes has traced the true genetic makeup of British Islanders and their descendants.
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Thesaurus taxing mind numbing travelog
- By Twang on 01-07-14
By: Bryan Sykes
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Neanderthal Man
- In Search of Lost Genomes
- By: Svante Pääbo
- Narrated by: Dennis Holland
- Length: 10 hrs and 36 mins
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A preeminent geneticist hunts the Neanderthal genome to answer the biggest question of them all: what does it mean to be human? What can we learn from the genes of our closest evolutionary relatives? Neanderthal Man tells the story of geneticist Svante Pbo’s mission to answer that question, beginning with the study of DNA in Egyptian mummies in the early 1980s and culminating in his sequencing of the Neanderthal genome in 2009.
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Excellent science tale
- By Neuron on 01-19-15
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Deep Truth
- Igniting the Memory of Our Origin, History, Destiny, and Fate
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A new world is emerging before our eyes, while the unsustainable world of the past struggles to continue. Both worlds reflect the beliefs of our past. Both exist - but only for now. Which world do you choose? Best-selling author and visionary scientist Gregg Braden suggests that the hottest issues that divide us as families, nations, and civilizations-seemingly separate concerns such as war, terror, abortion, suicide, genocide, the death penalty, poverty, economic collapse, and nuclear war - are actually related.
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Good Information
- By David on 08-13-12
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Ancestors
- A Prehistory of Britain in Seven Burials
- By: Alice Roberts
- Narrated by: Alice Roberts
- Length: 13 hrs and 48 mins
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Performance
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We often think of Britain springing from nowhere with the arrival of the Romans. But in Ancestors, pre-eminent archaeologist, broadcaster and academic Professor Alice Roberts explores what we can learn about the very earliest Britons – from their burial sites. Although we have very little evidence of what life was like in prehistorical times, here their stories are told through the bones and funerary offerings left behind, preserved in the ground for thousands of years.
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Current narrative
- By James on 06-26-21
By: Alice Roberts
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Prehistory
- Making of the Human Mind
- By: Colin Renfrew
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- Length: 9 hrs and 1 min
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Performance
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A giant of archaeology, Colin Renfrew has immeasurably improved our understanding of human history. In this passionately argued work, he offers a concise summary of prehistory - human existence that predates the development of written records - while challenging the very definition of prehistory itself.
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not for the intellectually challenged
- By Anthony on 07-14-10
By: Colin Renfrew
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When Humans Nearly Vanished
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- By: Donald R. Prothero
- Narrated by: Qarie Marshall
- Length: 6 hrs and 47 mins
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Overall
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Performance
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Some 73,000 years ago, the Mount Toba supervolcano in toda's Indonesia erupted, releasing the energy of a million tons of explosives. So much ash and debris was injected into the stratosphere that it partially blocked the sun's radiation and caused global temperatures to drop for a decade. In this book, Donald R. Prothero presents the controversial argument that the Toba catastrophe nearly wiped out the human race, leaving only about a thousand to ten thousand breeding pairs of humans worldwide.
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A very special book
- By Scott Fitzsimmons on 02-02-19
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Written in Stone
- Evolution, the Fossil Record, and Our Place in Nature
- By: Brian Switek
- Narrated by: L. J. Ganser
- Length: 11 hrs and 29 mins
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Performance
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Spectacular fossil finds make today's headlines; new technology unlocks secrets of skeletons unearthed 100 years ago. Still, evolution is often poorly represented by the media and misunderstood by the public. A potent antidote to pseudoscience, Written in Stone is an engrossing history of evolutionary discovery for anyone who has marveled at the variety and richness of life.
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Very good but has some weaknesses
- By Anonymous User on 06-23-19
By: Brian Switek
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What listeners say about Origin
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- A customer
- 02-17-22
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.
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2 people found this helpful
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- jana
- 03-03-22
Loved this book
This book is informative not only for archaeologist but also for anyone who wants to learn.
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- Amazon Customer
- 02-18-24
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.
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2 people found this helpful
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- Kathleen Mehrzad
- 07-01-24
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.
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- oxalis
- 03-07-22
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.
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4 people found this helpful
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- "smacmanus"
- 07-22-22
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!
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- Christopher Torgersen
- 02-21-22
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.
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- soup cook
- 03-23-22
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
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- Danny
- 05-23-23
Interesting
The book brought several thoughts and different ideas to consider. I liked the information that was provided.
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- Linda S.
- 02-21-22
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.
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8 people found this helpful