THE TWILIGHT OF THE GODS?

GENOMIC HISTORY AND THE RETURN OF RACE IN THE STUDY OF THE ANCIENT MEDITERRANEAN

Christopher Stedman Parmenter

History and Theory 63, no. 1 (2024)

This article discusses the impact of genomic history, a subdiscipline that emerged in the study of the ancient Mediterranean in the 2010s. In 2014, scientists first published a method for extracting genetic material, which they christened aDNA (ancient DNA), from ancient human remains in hot climates. After a decade of research, genomic history is now poised to transform our understanding of Mediterranean premodernity, centering migration and conflict as the key mechanisms for cultural change. Despite years of critique, aDNA researchers have failed to seriously examine the bioessentialist assumptions implicit in their work—a failure that has led many to deploy language that is strikingly evocative of pre-World War II racialism. Even worse, some genomic historians continue to make troubling overtures toward the ethnonationalist Right, which has been ascendant across Europe and North America since the 2010s. This article traces the intellectual genealogy of genomic history from World War II to the present, examines recent attempts to answer criticism from the humanities and social sciences, and suggests paths for responsible use of aDNA in historical and prehistorical scholarship.

Mediterranean Bassin Map, dated circa 1582-1584, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale Vittorio Emanuele II, Roma (cart. naut. 2 – cart. naut 6/1-2), from Wikimedia Commons