Montana Boy: Bones Show Ancestral Links to Europe
Despite general resistence, representatives of tribes in the US recently gave their blessing for DNA analysis of the remains of a Stone Age child. Research conducted on the boy's genes indicate that Native Americans have European roots.
It must have been a pretty special child, otherwise the two-year old wouldn't have been buried in such a ceremonious manner. The boy was sprinkled with celebratory red dust and given distinctive stone artifacts for his last journey.
The characteristic fluting of the stone weapons serve as archeological evidence that the boy, who died some 12,600 years ago, came from the Clovis culture. It was one of the earliest New World groups, disappearing mysteriously a few centuries after the child's burial in present day Montana. From the summit of a hill towering over the burial site near the Yellowstone River, the boy's Ice Age contemporaries could monitor their hunting grounds for mammoth and bison.
Now a team of scientists led by the Danish geneticist Eske Willerslev has analyzed the boy's origins and discovered that he descends from a Siberian tribe with roots tracing back to Europe. Some of the boy's ancestors are likely even to have lived in present-day Germany.
Their findings go even further: More than 80 percent of all native peoples in the Americas -- from the Alaska's Aleuts to the Maya of Yucatan to the Aymaras along the Andes -- are descended from Montana boy's lineage. - http://www.spiegel.de/international/dna-analysis-shows-native-americans-had-european-roots-a-954675.html
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While this study does close a few gaps as to how the America's were populated, it also reignites the debate among anthropologists as to our common humans roots.
There are three major theories here;
a) The Solutrean hypothesis, is an alternative scientific theory about the settlement of the Americas that claims Europeans may have been among the earliest settlers of the Americas
b) The Bering land bridge, which enabled people to migrate to the Americas by walking
c) and maritime travel along the Pacific coast or by both by the land bridge.
Also involved, is the DNA sequencing of what is called the "Clovis People"
The scientific community will be arguing about this for some time to come.
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Excellent article Aeon. Added to the confusion, Charles Mann wrote a book, "1491", a few years ago that was a huge hit and, in the book, he shared much of what was said above. He also added the possibility of a sea route from the Polynesians because of the artifacts and bones found in Peru and Chile that have SE Asian characteristics. The link he gave for the study - well, I never followed up on, but will in the future.
Of concern to him (Mann) were the 40,000 y.o.skeletons found in Brazil, in a cave, who would've had to migrated from ??????
It's an interesting mess. And then add the question of - did the Indian people force other peoples out or where they the first to arrive and build and stay and continue moving south into Central and South America's???
Thanks Aeon.
Add to that, this new link - - as a possible explanation of how a "migration" may have occurred before the 12,500 years.
Interestingly enough, archaeologist have posited that the Bering Land Bridge comes back every 12 - 15,000 years - so, we're 'bout 3,000 years away from the next one, eh?
To add further to the discussion and confusion, I was down in Mexico City a while back having lunch with an Mexican anthropologist who worked for the Museo Nacional de Antropologa In Mexico City.
He advised me that there were Indian tribes along the west coast of Mexico whose language included many old forms of Japanese words. I think we have much to learn and language and DNA will take us to new knowledge.
Not only that, but showing the class battles within the community.
It would be only appropriate and right to admit it. There is no mention of "alter".
Startling revelation, TR. Or would that be Revelation?
There seems to be a lot of evidence in support of the land bridge :
Nearly one-third of Native American genes come from west Eurasian people linked to the Middle East and Europe, rather than entirely from East Asians as previously thought, according to a newly sequenced genome.
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Prevailing theories suggest that Native Americans are descended from a group of East Asians who crossed the Bering Sea via a land bridge perhaps 16,500 years ago, though some sites may evidence an earlier arrival. (See "Siberian, Native American Languages LinkedA First [2008].")
"This study changes this idea because it shows that a significant minority of Native American ancestry actually derives not from East Asia but from a people related to present-day western Eurasians," Willerslev said.
"It's approximately one-third of the genome, and that is a lot," he added. "So in that regard I think it's changing quite a bit of the history."
While the land bridge still formed the gateway to America, the study now portrays Native Americans as a group derived from the meeting of two different populations, one ancestral to East Asians and the other related to western Eurasians, explained Willerslev, whose research was published in the November 20 edition of the journal Nature.
But Petey - no one has been able to tie any artifacts from Siberia/East Asia to the style of artifacts of the Indians. Hmmmm.
I would be inclined to trust DNA evidence above artifacts . When people migrate long distance they change their style of tools to fit what is available for production and to fit the animals they are hunting . Just my POV FWIW .
Well, "supposedly", there is an island in the Straits that contains the bones of over 100K Mastodons who were killed by the Early Americans, which caused the extinction of the large elephants. But, the tools used for the killing have never been found, nor the tools for the scrapping of skins, cutting of joints, sinew, meat, tusks. So, the question is how did the Early Americans kill so many elephants when they had no tools?? There should have been, at least, some 'semblance of tools from either side of the ocean, no??
Depends on which anthropological/archaeological thread you read. The Straits were open for over a thousand years, so, obviously, "something" grew there to support the massive migration of all critters from Eastern Asia to the Western Hemisphere.
Thanks Robert - I just love this stuff. My thanks to Aeon for posting it.
More interesting information. 700,000 year old horse in North America.
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