Origin: A Genetic History of the Americas, a new book from anthropologist Jennifer Raff, is the story of who the first peoples in the Americas were, how and why they made the crossing, how they dispersed south, and how they lived based on a new and powerful kind of evidence: their complete genomes.
Jennifer Raff is associate professor of anthropology and affiliate faculty member in the Indigenous Studies Program in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at the University of Kansas. She has a dual Ph.D. in anthropology and genetics. In addition to her research, she has been writing on issues of scientific literacy and anthropological research at her own website, Violent Metaphors, and for The Guardian, HuffPost and Evolution Institute blogs for several years. Since 2019 she has been writing a monthly column for Forbes on emerging research in genetics and archaeology.