The Evolution of the Human Genome

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I think there are two reasons why i have always been drawn to this subject matter. The story of our species is just, it's so remarkable that we survived against the odds. And one of my hopes in writing this book and, you know, maybe books in the future is to inform myself as much as anybody else about what is out there. What can we learn from genetics that we can't learn from archaeology or oral traditions, and vice versa? I think all these different lines of evidence are complementary, and they're all important but they give us different insights into the past.

Thousands of years ago, humans crossed a land bridge from Siberia into Alaska. They tried to move south, but a two-mile-high, coast-spanning ice wall stood between them and the rest of the continent.

How did they get past it?

Scholars have fought over that question for decades. But in her book, “Origin,” Jennifer Raff says breakthroughs in genetics have given scientists an entirely new understanding of how the Americas were peopled and what happened in the millennia that followed.

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