The Genetic Origins of Indigenous Americans: Interview with Professor Jennifer Raff

Tides of History

Wondery / Patrick Wyman

Documentary, Society & Culture, History

4.8 • 6.3K Ratings

🗓️ 10 February 2022

⏱️ 47 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Professor Jennifer Raff, a longtime friend of the show, returns to discuss her work on the genetic ancestry of America’s Indigenous peoples. We talk about Beringia, waves of migration, the troublesome relationship between science and Indigenous peoples, and her fantastic new book, Origin: A Genetic History of the Americas, which is available now.

Get Origin here: https://www.twelvebooks.com/titles/jennifer-raff/origin/9781538749715/

Patrick's book is now available! Get The Verge: Reformation, Renaissance, and Forty Years that Shook the World in hardcopy, ebook, or audiobook (read by Patrick) here: https://bit.ly/PWverge

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hi everybody from Wondery welcome to another episode of Tides of History.
0:13.4	I'm Patrick Weimann, thanks for joining me.
0:16.3	So several times over the course of this season on prehistory and the deep past of humanity,
0:20.8	I've repeated variations on this theme.
0:23.3	Our understanding of this past is changing so fast thanks to new archaeological discoveries,
0:27.7	the development of new scientific tools and new ways of analyzing the evidence that
0:31.8	anything I write can and will be superseded within a few years at the very most.
0:37.1	Nowhere is this clear than with regard to the earliest inhabitants of the Americas.
0:41.5	The archaeological evidence is bewildering, it's much fought over and it's difficult to
0:45.4	interpret.
0:46.4	The genetic evidence is more promising but it is still exceptionally hard to understand
0:50.6	much less to correlate with the archaeology.
0:53.6	Luckily, we have a fantastic guest with us here today to help us make sense of that genetic
0:58.2	evidence and the story it tells.
1:00.6	Professor Jennifer Raff is returning to Tides for her third visit, she's one of our very
1:04.3	few three time visitors and she'll be discussing her brand new book Origin, A Genetic History
1:09.4	of the Americas which is available this week and which I highly recommend to you.
1:14.2	Professor Raff is an associate professor of anthropology at the University of Kansas.
1:18.0	She has written widely on science for publications like The Huffington Post, Forbes and the Guardian.
1:23.2	Her academic work focuses on the genetic history of the indigenous peoples of the Americas.
1:27.9	Precisely the topic covered by her new book Origin which again is really good and you should
1:32.5	read it.
	...

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