RaveNew York Times Book ReviewRaff beautifully integrates new data from different sciences...and different ways of knowing, including Indigenous oral traditions, in a masterly retelling of the story of how, and when, people reached the Americas. While admittedly not an archaeologist herself, Raff skillfully reveals how well-dated archaeological sites...are at odds with the Clovis first hypothesis. She builds a persuasive case with both archaeological and genetic evidence that the path to the Americas was coastal (the Kelp Highway hypothesis) rather than inland, and that Beringia was not a bridge but a homeland ... Throughout, Raff effectively models how science is done, how hypotheses are tested, and how new data are used to refute old ideas and generate new ones ... [Raff is] an informed and enthusiastic guide throughout ... The book is richly referenced, and informative footnotes and endnotes give readers an opportunity to take a deeper dive if they wish ... Our job as anthropologists is to breathe life into the past, to retell the stories of our ancestors and extinct relatives ... Sprinkled through Origin are lovely vignettes of life thousands of years ago ... Through a combination of rigorous science and a universal humanity, Raff gives ancient people a voice ... Throughout Origin, Raff takes on pseudoscientific nonsense rooted in bigotry and colonial thinking ... While science is the most objective way of understanding the natural world that humans have ever devised, it is still done by an emotional, subjective primate — us. Raff celebrates science, but also calls attention to the many ways science has harmed Indigenous communities ... My only quibble with this outstanding book is that we don’t learn who Raff herself is and how she personally has contributed to this work through her scholarship until halfway through Origin ... She has written the book anyone interested in the peopling of the Americas must read.
