Book ID: CBB019954667

Genetic Crossroads: The Middle East and the Science of Human Heredity (2021)

unapi

Burton, Elise K. (Author)


Stanford University Press


Publication Date: 2021
Physical Details: 400
Language: English

The Middle East plays a major role in the history of genetic science. Early in the twentieth century, technological breakthroughs in human genetics coincided with the birth of modern Middle Eastern nation-states, who proclaimed that the region's ancient history―as a cradle of civilizations and crossroads of humankind―was preserved in the bones and blood of their citizens. Using letters and publications from the 1920s to the present, Elise K. Burton follows the field expeditions and hospital surveys that scrutinized the bodies of tribal nomads and religious minorities. These studies, geneticists claim, not only detect the living descendants of biblical civilizations but also reveal the deeper past of human evolution. Genetic Crossroads is an unprecedented history of human genetics in the Middle East, from its roots in colonial anthropology and medicine to recent genome sequencing projects. It illuminates how scientists from Turkey to Yemen, Egypt to Iran, transformed genetic data into territorial claims and national origin myths. Burton shows why such nationalist appropriations of genetics are not local or temporary aberrations, but rather the enduring foundations of international scientific interest in Middle Eastern populations to this day.

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Reviewed By

Review Edna Suárez-Díaz (2023) Review of "Genetic Crossroads: The Middle East and the Science of Human Heredity". Isis: International Review Devoted to the History of Science and Its Cultural Influences (pp. 222-223). unapi

Citation URI
https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB019954667/

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Authors & Contributors
Chadarevian, Soraya de
Ryholt, Kim
Burton, Elise K.
James Uden
Barjamovic, Gojko
Germann, Pascal
Concepts
Human genetics
Heredity
Human evolution
Anthropology
Science and race
Medicine
Time Periods
20th century
19th century
21st century
Ancient
20th century, late
20th century, early
Places
Turkey
France
Iran
Falkland Islands
Levant and Near East
Middle and Near East
Institutions
Kaiser-Wilhelm-Institut für Anthropologie, Menschliche Erblehre und Eugenik
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