(A Warning to Historians — What Genetics Has to Tell Us Can Be Quite Useful but Its Historical Claims Should Always Be Treated with Critical Awareness, the U…

(A Warning to Historians — What Genetics Has to Tell Us Can Be Quite Useful but Its Historical Claims Should Always Be Treated with Critical Awareness, the Utility of Genetic Data for History Being Real but Limited and Always Requiring Corroboration from Linguistic Archaeological and Other Evidence Rather Than Being Accepted Uncritically as a Superior Form of Historical Proof): A warning to historians: what genetics has to tell us can be quite useful, but its historical claims should always be treated with critical awareness. Ehret’s closing admonition is characteristically measured. He does not reject genetics as a tool for historical inquiry. He insists that it be used critically — that historians not treat genetic studies as a superior form of evidence that trumps linguistic and archaeological findings, that they be alert to the racialist assumptions that can lurk beneath the surface of ostensibly neutral scientific language, that they verify the historical claims of geneticists against primary sources rather than accepting them on the authority of the laboratory. The appendix is brief but its implications are vast. In an era when ancient DNA studies are reshaping the landscape of population history at a breathtaking pace, Ehret’s warning is more relevant than ever. The prestige of molecular biology can lend an air of scientific certainty to historical claims that are, on examination, no better supported than the outdated sources from which the geneticists derived their historical frameworks. Historians must bring to genetic studies the same critical scrutiny they bring to any other source — and they must be especially vigilant when the conclusions of a genetic study happen to align with the racialist assumptions that the Western academy has spent a century trying, and largely failing, to leave behind.