How⁠—and when⁠—did people first come to the American continents? Jennifer Raff, Associate Professor of Anthropology at Kansas University, joined our HOT Topic program to examine the latest genetic and archaeological evidence that provides a clearer picture of America’s first peoples. She pieced together a story told by fragments of DNA recovered from a tooth in Siberia, by a small broken knife found deep below the surface of a muddy pond in Florida, and the footprints of children left thousands of years ago on the banks of an ancient lake in New Mexico. She explored why the same pieces of evidence tell different stories to different groups of scholars and the ethical directions that genetics and archaeological research needs to move towards.

Moderator: Briana Pobiner, paleoanthropologist and educator at Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History.

This Zoom webinar with Jennifer Raff aired live on December 15, 2022 as part of the ongoing "HOT (Human Origins Today) Topic" series.