In this episode of the “Polemical History Podcast”, Tim & Anthony discuss a relatively new and controversial player in the field of historical research: genetics, which appears to have evolved into its own historicist subdiscipline, that of genetic history.  

Our genetic markers have come to be regarded as portals to the past. Analysis of these markers is increasingly used to tell the story of human migration; to investigate and judge issues of social membership and kinship; to rewrite history and collective memory; and to right past wrongs and to arbitrate legal claims and human rights controversies.  

But is it true that who we are and where we come from is written into the sequence of our genomes? Are genes better documents for determining our histories and identities than fossils or other historical sources? Does genetic history raise new issues or does it return to old questions of history that were believed obsolete?