Genetics - The Story of the Peopling

5min Snip

00:00

Play full episode

Summary

Transcript

Episode notes

Archaeologists found evidence of massodon bones that had been fractured and rocks that were kind of out of place, right? And so the scenarea one could invision would be, ok, these rocks were brought here by early humans. But red, you know, we have to leave open to the possibility, even if it's unlikely. That does seem to be the story of the journey we've been onin this journey of discovery. A so continuing with the jetipera most probable description of the peopling of the america. So i guess it begins in siberia, a about 30 thousand years ago. We're ancestral to what i'm calling them the first peoples

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.

Next Big Idea Club — Want to hear 12-minute book summaries written and read by the authors themselves? Download the Next Big Idea app today at www.nextbigideaclub.com/app