Forty years ago, most archaeologists were pretty sure they had discovered how the Americas were colonized. Around 13,200 years ago, native Siberians crossed the then-dry Bering Sea to Alaska. (Sea level had dropped up to 400 feet during the Ice Age.) While the passage to the south was blocked by an ice wall some two miles thick, an ice-free corridor opened allowing them to reach the Great Plains. From there they quickly spread throughout both North and South America. They are known as the Clovis people, after a town in New Mexico where many of their distinctive fluted points were discovered. No known sites predated the Clovis.
Too easy. Beginning in the 1970s, armed with improved dating technology, archaeologists began to find sites that convincingly pre-dated Clovis—Meadowcroft in Pennsylvania, Cactus Hill in Virginia, Paisley Cave in Oregon, and Buttermilk Creek in Texas. Most convincing was the site of Monte Verde in Chile that produced a good date of 14,600 years ago, predating the earliest Clovis site by 1,400 years. Since land passage from Alaska to the south was still blocked by glaciers, archaeologists theorized the First Americans must have traveled along the Pacific Rim by boat. The initial debates were ferocious, but as evidence mounted the Clovis-first school gave way to an earlier migration story.
In this highly readable account, Jennifer Raff recounts the debate of the past thirty years on who were the First Americans and how and when they came to the New World. Raff, of the University of Kansas, has dual Ph.Ds. in anthropology and genetics and skillfully uses both to document the latest evidence of this migration. DNA tediously gathered from ancient human remains as well as modern Native Americans unequivocally ties them to Asian ancestors and points to a more complex migration than previously documented. Collection of DNA evidence is complicated by the lack of very early human remains and by the resistance of modern Native Americans to this research based largely on earlier insensitivity to Native concerns by non-Native scientists. Raff details her attempts to include Indigenous people in modern research and the dividends that it pays.
Origin is an outstanding history of the most recent research and controversies of the peopling of the Americas, the most contentious debate in American archaeology today. Written for the lay person, it is enhanced by copious illustrations and by sidebars that explain historical threads as well as technical issues. This is a field of study in archaeology, genetics, linguistics, and other disciplines that is rapidly evolving, and Raff is the first to admit that it is unlikely to be the last word.
