Origin: A Genetic History of the Americas

Origin: A Genetic History of the Americas
by Jennifer Raff
Twelve (February 8, 2022), 369 pages
Kindle edition $14.99, Amazon hardcover $14.99

In Origin Jennifer Raff sets out to dispel some of the misconceptions about the origins of humans in the Americas and to describe some of the results of the most recent genetic research on the subject.

A central component of the study of humans in the Americas is the Clovis people, named for the town in New Mexico near which their arrowheads were found. They were believed to be in the Americas around eleven thousand years ago. Some old-school archaeologists and anthropologists insist that these were the earliest peoples in the Americas and that sites believed to be earlier are not to be trusted. Raff disagrees, and her irritation with this approach shows. She tells us that humans were in the Americas fourteen to fifteen thousand years ago by the most conservative estimates, and perhaps as much as thirty thousand years ago, depending on the evidence you accept.

Raff is a geneticist and her work along with that of her colleagues takes a much more nuanced view than that of some traditional archaeologists. Their work shows at least four distinct genetic groups who migrated to the Americas at different times.

The author also uses the latest research to debunk other preconceived notions. Disputing the long-held belief that there was a Bering land bridge over which people migrated from Siberia to the Americas, she shows how more recent research suggests that there was a land mass called Beringia in the region where people lived, hunted, fished, and had families for many centuries. It was only later that they moved on to the Americas. She makes the case that some could have made the trip by sea rather than by land.

Although a geneticist, Raff has the utmost respect for her archaeologist colleagues and spends a lot of time discussing the archaeological evidence. She visits one archaeological site, a cave in South America, to see the first-hand the work her colleagues were doing. She understands the criticality of preserving the integrity of such sites. She writes:

Take nothing but pictures. Leave nothing but footprints. Kill nothing but time. (And vandals, some of my father’s friends added, darkly—the gallows humor of long-suffering veterans of cave conservation.)

She discusses her work at a site in Alaska as a consulting geneticist, removing genetic material for study from ancient people whose remains were being moved to safer ground in advance of rising sea levels.

Raff describes in detail the methodology she and her colleagues use to extract ancient genetic material in order to prevent contamination. There are several layers and levels of safety and decontamination she must go through before starting work on a sample. It made me think of the decontamination scene in the movie version of The Andromeda Strain. Such precautions are well-justified, however. Another book I read describes how the first scientist who attempted to sequence a Neanderthal genome ended up with results that were mostly his own genes.

The author is adamant on one issue: respecting the wishes of Indigenous people. She firmly believes that scientists should not study the genes of the remains of Indigenous people without the consent of present-day descendants. While she describes incidents of cooperation between scientists and Native Americans, she also pointedly recounts those times when science did not respect the wishes of the people and engendered their mistrust.

If you are interested in the latest work on human migration to the Americas, Origin is a great place to start.

Synchronicity

Synchronicity: The Epic Quest to Understand the Quantum Nature of Cause and Effect
Paul Halpern
Basic Books (August 18, 2020), 247 pages
Kindle edition $16.99, Amazon hardcover $26.99

This book was not what I expected.

I have been interested in the phenomenon of synchronicity since the mid-1970s and have experienced it in my own life more than once. I’m interested in reading new material on the subject, hence this title caught my attention since I had just finished listening to the audiobook version of Paul Halpern’s Flashes of Creation, which I thoroughly enjoyed. But I’m not sure what Halpern was trying to accomplish here.

He discusses the debate over the speed of light, and the argument over whether it was fixed or variable. He recounts how Einstein’s special theory of relativity put an end to that debate: it is fixed. Halpern then provides an overview of the emergence of quantum mechanics, and how Einstein could never embrace the theory.

The author describes how quantum entanglement was discovered, which states that two subatomic particles can be at a great distance from each other, but the state of one can affect the state of the other. He delves into the work of Wolfgang Pauli, who was interested in this phenomenon. But the work of Carl Jung and his investigations into synchronicity fascinated Pauli as well. The two worked together and Pauli shared his dreams with Jung, which Jung published without revealing the subject’s identity.

Halpern spends a good portion of the book discussing the collaboration between Halpern and Jung but dismisses Jung’s understanding of synchronicity as anecdotal and not verifiable. The author, however, gives grudging credit to the work the two did together: “Though Pauli and Jung’s dialogue was not purely scientific, they did identify a significant dichotomy in nature: the distinction between causal linkages and synchronous connections.”

This book is not the place to go if you want to learn about synchronicity. (Start with Jung’s monograph for that.) Nor is it the best place to learn about quantum mechanics, although there is nothing wrong with what is here. There are many other excellent books on quantum mechanics. (Click the Books link in the Categories map on your right to find several.) If you want to read the best work of Paul Halpern go straight to Flashes of Creation.

The Disordered Cosmos

The Disordered Cosmos: A Journey into Dark Matter, Spacetime, and Dreams Deferred
Chanda Prescod-Weinstein
Bold Type Books (March 9, 2021), 244 pages
Kindle edition $16.99, Amazon hardcover $21.49

Chanda Prescod-Weinstein is an angry woman. And justifiably so.

The author is the daughter of a Jewish father and a Black mother. She identifies as Black. Prescod-Weinstein grew up in East Los Angeles, with all the challenges that implies, yet earned acceptance into Harvard. She got her PhD and engaged in research in particle physics. She has studied dark matter, focusing her work on a theoretical particle called the axion.

The first part of the book is about physics and her research. She then talks about the biases in physics and science in general. She writes about melanin and points out that genetics and biochemistry have shown that skin color is an arbitrary construct, not tied to race.

Prescod-Weinstein segues from her discussion of dark matter to a commentary on how Black people are dark, that is invisible, in society, and all the entailed risks. She then spends a lot of space discussing how we decide where we build our telescopes. She explains how the volcano Mauna Kea in Hawaii is sacred to the indigenous Hawaiians, yet we built our telescopes there anyway. She recounts encountering the wrath of her science colleagues when she joined the native Hawaiians in opposing the latest addition, the Thirty Meter Telescope.

Gender plays an important role in this book as well. Prescod-Weinstein devotes several pages to the challenges that trans people face. She refers to herself as both “agender” and “queer.” In the acknowledgements she mentions her “spouse and political partner” whom she identifies as “Mr-ProfChandra.” Though some don’t like to admit it, gender is a fluid thing.

The author candidly describes her own experience of rape at the hands of a male in a position of power in her field. She describes the event in some detail, making clear that what happened was at the very least non-consensual sex, and was for all intents and purposes rape. Prescod-Weinstein concludes the book with a heartfelt letter to her mother, a civil rights activist, which recounts all that her mother did for her.

Much of The Disordered Cosmos is not easy to read, but it is a reminder of how far we have to go in the work of social and racial justice.

The God Equation

The God Equation: The Quest for a Theory of Everything
by Michio Kaku
Doubleday (April 6, 2021), 215 pages
Kindle edition $11.99, Amazon hardcover $13.99

I am always interested in books on physics, quantum mechanics, and cosmology, so in reading a review of this title I decided it was worth my time. The author is a working physicist who teaches graduate students, but who also had written several books for the general reader. This is his most recent.

The purpose of the book is to discuss whether a “theory of everything” is possible, something that so far has eluded scientists. Kaku starts by reviewing the history of physics, starting with Newton, and moving on to quantum mechanics. I guess I’ve read more books (or listened to more audiobooks) on the subject than I’ve given myself credit for, because I noticed at least a couple of places where Kaku glossed over things where he could easily have provided a complete explanation. For example, he somewhat simplifies the (in)famous Schrödinger’s cat thought experiment, when presenting it exactly the way Schrödinger did would have taken perhaps another half paragraph.

Kaku spends some space, appropriately, discussing the race for the atomic bomb during World War II. He describes how Werner Heisenberg was appointed to lead the German effort. Kaku says that the Germans under Heisenberg were well behind the Americans, who were pursuing their secret Manhattan Project at Los Alamos. However, other sources I have read state that Heisenberg knew the correct formula, but deliberately introduced subtle errors, too subtle for anyone but the sharpest physicist to notice, that were just sufficient to prevent the Germans from getting the bomb.

But back to the theory of everything. Kaku “has a dog in this fight,” as linguist John McWhorter likes to say, and Kaku admits it. He tells us he has been researching string theory since 1968 and believes that it offers the best candidate for a theory of everything.

Near the end of the book he also tells us that string theory continues to uncover new layers, and a final, definitive version of string theory has yet to emerge. Kaku hopes that a definitive version of string theory will provide us with a neat, mathematically complete theory of everything.

Somehow, though, as I finished the book I was left disappointed and unconvinced.

The Human Cosmos

The Human Cosmos: Civilization and the Stars
Jo Marchant
Dutton (September 1, 2020), 399 pages
Kindle edition $14.99, Amazon hardcover $24.21

The Human Cosmos is a look at how humankind has looked at the heavens through the ages.

The author describes how the earliest civilizations tracked the movement in the sky and how a king’s astronomers could help him solidify his power. The ability to predict an eclipse could reinforce his legitimacy, while an error could make him vulnerable.

The book goes on to follow human achievements in astronomy through classical, medieval, and early modern times. Marchant describes how observing the cosmos influenced the transition from the American colonies to the new United States. Oddly, the author goes off on a tangent recounting the events of the American and French revolutions, the only connection seemingly being that Thomas Paine used some of Newton’s principles in his writing.

But when she returns to the world of astronomy the book gets interesting again. She describes the current science and shows how a meteorite found in Antarctica turned out to be a chunk that was blown off of Mars. She also talks about pulsars and writes about the desire of many to believe that the signals occurring at precisely timed intervals were artificial and the creation of an intelligent source out there. So far, most of the signals seem to be natural events, emitting from rapidly spinning stars near the end of their life cycles. She does tantalize us, however, by saying a couple of the detected signals have not been adequately explained.

If you enjoy astronomy and/or the history of science you will like The Human Cosmos.