Origin: A Genetic History of the Americas
by Jennifer Raff
by Jennifer Raff
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above as well as <strong>the</strong> American Society <strong>of</strong> Human <strong>Genetic</strong>s’s statement<br />
“ASHG Denounces Attempts to Link <strong>Genetic</strong>s and Racial Supremacy,”<br />
American Journal <strong>of</strong> Human <strong>Genetic</strong>s 103, no. 5 (2018): 636, doi:<br />
10.1016/j.ajhg.2018.10.011; Lynn B. Jorde and Stephen P. Wooding,<br />
“<strong>Genetic</strong> Variation, Classification and ‘Race’,” Nature <strong>Genetic</strong>s 36<br />
(2004), S28–S33; Garrett Hellenthal, George B. J. Busby, Gavin Band,<br />
et al., “A <strong>Genetic</strong> Atlas <strong>of</strong> Human Admixture <strong>History</strong>,” Science 343, no.<br />
6172 (2014): 747–751, doi: 10.1126/science.1243518; and a blog post<br />
written by Ewan Birney, me, Adam Ru<strong>the</strong>rford, and Aylwyn Scally<br />
entitled “Race, <strong>Genetic</strong>s and Pseudoscience: An Explainer”<br />
(http://ewanbirney.com/2019/10/race-genetics-and-pseudoscience-anexplainer.html).<br />
37. See “The Biology <strong>of</strong> Racism,” a published discussion by Leith<br />
Mullings, Jada Benn Torres, Agustín Fuentes, et al., American<br />
Anthropologist (2021), doi: 10.1111/aman.13630.<br />
38 Redman, Bone Rooms<br />
39. Hrdlička, Physical Anthropology <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> Lenape or Delawares, vol. 3.<br />
More than 100 years later, I’m struck by how much Hrdlička got wrong<br />
about <strong>the</strong>se individuals. Contrary to Hrdlička’s assertion, disease and<br />
malnutrition have left extensive evidence on <strong>the</strong> bones <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong>se<br />
ancestors. It’s actually quite hard to read about <strong>the</strong>se pathologies,<br />
knowing how much <strong>the</strong> people who carried <strong>the</strong>m would have suffered,<br />
and given that <strong>the</strong>se conditions were not present to nearly <strong>the</strong> same<br />
extent on remains from this region prior to European contact, it’s hard<br />
not to attribute <strong>the</strong>m to <strong>the</strong> effects <strong>of</strong> colonization. Techniques for<br />
studying <strong>the</strong> human skeleton and identifying <strong>the</strong> effects <strong>of</strong> disease and<br />
trauma began in <strong>the</strong> nineteenth century but became far more<br />
sophisticated and standardized in <strong>the</strong> second half <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> twentieth<br />
century. For introductions into <strong>the</strong> history <strong>of</strong> this field, see: Jane<br />
Buikstra, “Paleopathology: A Contemporary Perspective,” in A<br />
Companion to Biological Anthropology, edited by Clark S. Larsen (John<br />
Wiley & Sons, 2010), pp. 395–311; Della C. Cook and Mary Lucas<br />
Powell, “The Evolution <strong>of</strong> American Paleopathology,” in<br />
Bioarchaeology: The Contextual Analysis <strong>of</strong> Human Remains, edited by<br />
Jane E. Buikstra and L. E. Beck (Academic Press, 2006), pp. 281–322;<br />
Anne L. Grauer, “A Century <strong>of</strong> Paleopathology,” American Journal <strong>of</strong>