Origin: A Genetic History Of The Americas By Jennifer Raff — Review

A fascinating overview of our current knowledge of the Peopling of the Americas based on scientific evidence from a number of disciplines along with illuminating discussions

Beringia is the land and maritime area bounded on the west by the Lena River in Russia; on the east by the Mackenzie River in Canada; on the north by 72 degrees north latitude in the Chukchi Sea; and on the south by the tip of the Kamchatka Peninsula. The huge size of the area, more than 4 million square miles, has prompted many scientists to classify Beringia as a now-vanished subcontinent. (Credit: National Park Service / CC0)

When I was in grade school, I was taught that the Native Peoples of the Americas arrived in the New World after traipsing across the now-submerged Bering Land Bridge around ten thousand years ago, and that was the end of that story. I spent a lot of time contemplating what life might have been like for these intrepid explorers: the intense wind and cold, the towering glaciers, the lack of hand-warmers, the dearth of anything green to eat.

As I read further, I discovered that scientists barely knew more than what I was originally told about the Peopling of the Americas. But thanks to cutting-edge DNA technologies, the information we have now is rapidly growing. As you might imagine, this mystery is a topic of intense research and amazing discoveries. For example, we now think that anatomically modern humans arrived in the Americas at least 37,000 years ago (ref) — much longer ago than originally thought. Additionally, at least some of these early people lived in relative isolation for many thousands of years in the now-submerged ‘lost subcontinent’ of Beringia. And the genetic data indicates that Native Peoples arrived in the Americas in more than one wave.