Genetics and Tradition as Competing Sources of Knowledge of Human History

Recent genetic studies aiming to reconstruct the history of human migrations made a claim to be able to contribute to the writing of history. However, because such projects are closely linked to sociocultural ideas about the categorization of identity, race and ethnicity, they have raised a number of controversial cultural and political issues and are likely to have important potential socio-political consequences. Though some such studies played a positive role helping the researched communities to reaffirm their identity, other projects yielded results that contradicted local narratives of origin.

Keywords: population genetics; anthropology; history

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Egorova, Yulia(Dec 2007) Genetics and Tradition as Competing Sources of Knowledge of Human History. In: eLS. John Wiley & Sons Ltd, Chichester. http://www.els.net [doi: 10.1002/9780470015902.a0020657]