PositiveScience NewsRaff wants to tell the most accurate, if still incomplete, story of how humans settled the Americas by integrating research on ancient and modern DNA with archaeological finds ... Raff delves into several competing models of how, when and where people first made inroads into the Americas ... Raff articulates scientific arguments for these settlement scenarios in clear, nontechnical language. But her narrative revs up when she describes how geneticists, with some admirable exceptions, have treated Indigenous groups as afterthoughts or as passive DNA donors ... After mentioning that a few large, well-funded labs dominate ancient DNA research, Raff leaves unexplored the implications of that concentration of resources for studying ancient human migrations. But her book gives a balanced view of what’s known about the First Peoples and how scientists can cooperate with their modern-day descendants.
