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3.86 AVERAGE
3.86 AVERAGE
informative
reflective
medium-paced
Very thoughtful and very thorough, with some absolutely fascinating parts. I definitely am glad I read it. I would have appreciated more handholding with the hard science, though, I know it was written for laypeople but I wish it was more so.
challenging
hopeful
informative
medium-paced
medium-paced
Really fascinating research, great point of view, not that well presented. Although I wanted to like this treatment of contemporary archaeological and genetic research into the peopling of the Americas more, I struggled with a few things. Organizationally, the book feels like the chapters were re-ordered about ten minutes before it was sent to the printer -- a section intro halfway through the book feels like it was the original intro. As a consequence, Raff fails to introduce new technical concepts as she talks about them, getting into the weeds of controversies before the reader is able to follow. Additionally, there aren't enough illustrations of complex theories, maps, or genetic relationships, which makes many of the arguments difficult to understand. And what illustrations there are are shockingly small, almost unreadable.
Still, if this is a topic of interest, I'd recommend it, in particular for the deeply sympathetic discussion of how indigenous peoples are and should be involved in invasive research into their ancestors and predecessors on the land.
Still, if this is a topic of interest, I'd recommend it, in particular for the deeply sympathetic discussion of how indigenous peoples are and should be involved in invasive research into their ancestors and predecessors on the land.
Fascinating study of paleo-genomics and the movement of early humans into the Americas. What sets this apart is the author’s emphasis on the ethics of archaeology and the need to involve indigenous people as stakeholders in the process.
This was for work. It was cool! But again not compelled to finish. Plus I saw her give a talk on the book and that was more engaging
informative
medium-paced
informative
medium-paced
I liked how she went into how they got DNA, but she talked about it for a very long time. She also talked about tribes rights and sovereignty for a very long time, and while that’s good and all, I wanted to learn more about the genetic history of the Americas.