Fresh light on how humans colonised the Americas?

December 3, 2002 3:37 PM

[A]nother race may have pre-dated native Americans.
....Dr Gonzalez told BBC News Online: "We believe that the older race may have come from what is now Japan, via the Pacific islands and perhaps the California coast....this discovery, although it is very significant, raises more questions than it solves." This seems like real news to me: the 'Bering Straits' route is still the dominant theory of pre-Colombian migration, is it not? Yet clearly, for anthropologists, it hasn't that simple for quite some time. Are we on the verge of a new consensus about human expansion across the globe? Or is this doomed to fail, like previous speculation? [Kon-Tiki, anyone?]
posted by dash_slot- (42 comments total)

Well, there were certainly pre-Clovis people who predate the commonly accepted Bering Strait route. The problem is that their skull morphologies are profoundly different from Northern Asians, which Native Americans seem to fall in with, statistically. The Kenniwick skull, and a handful of other pre-Clovis skulls that have been sitting around in museum drawers and cabinets for almost a hundred years or more, seem to fall into the Ainu (from Japan) general skull morphology. There's also a skull from the interior of Brazil that seems to have more in common with Australian Aboriginal or African skulls. So we're looking at a possibility of several different colonizations of the Americas.

And the reason that I think an awful lot of North American anthropologists are so vehemently against looking at this new data (up until recently they didn't even bother digging under the Clovis layer most of the time) is that there is the problem of where did these peoples go? Are we looking at the possiblity of ancient genocide? Or were they here in such low proportions and numbers, that when the Bering Strait peoples migrated in, they were just absorbed?
posted by geekhorde at 4:21 PM on December 3, 2002

The first skeleton that introduced this strange race in the Americas was the Kennewick man. The Kennewick resembles modern Caucasians but the similarities are probably coincidental environmental adaptrions.(For instance, African blacks and Oceanic Papuans physically resemble eachother, but are about as unrelated genetically as any two people on earth can be.) White and Asian features appear to be two separate ways human races evolved to adapt to cold climates. Both have lighter skin to (probably) better absorb vitamin D in lighter climates. Asians have the familiar epicanthal eye-fold, that probably works to reduce glare off of snow. (this feature appears on many far north races who live in extreme cold, such as Siberian tribes, Eskimos, Inuit, and Yukon tribes, and the northern race of Scandinavia known as Sami (Laplanders). All of those races also seem to have developed less vertical builds for conserving heat. Caucasians have excessive body hair, which is no doubt a cold adaption as well, but a unique one from the Asian adaptions.
The Kennewick man, like the new skeleton, is thought to be from a race, perhaps related to the Ainu of Japan. The Ainu are a hairy race who resemble Caucasians but seem to be more closely related to Mongoloid peoples genetically. The Ainu are the oldest inhabitants of Japan, but were pushed to the North by the migrating ancestors of the modern Japanese, called Jammu. Today the Ainu are a dying and severely disenfranchised minority, who have been pushed completely into Japan's northern-most island Hokkaido. It is theorized that it was these NorthEastern-most people, the Ainu, who were the first Homo-Sapiens to make their way over to the Americas and leave all those confusing bones for us to pick up.
posted by dgaicun at 4:41 PM on December 3, 2002

Correction: . . .absorb vitamin D in daker climates.
posted by dgaicun at 4:45 PM on December 3, 2002

[A]nother race may have pre-dated native Americans.

Um, whomever got here first most certainly wasn't native american, since by definition they came from someplace else.


Anyway, I was born and raised in America, so as far as I'm concerned I'm a native American.
posted by Ayn Marx at 4:48 PM on December 3, 2002

And the reason that I think an awful lot of North American anthropologists are so vehemently against looking at this new data... is that there is the problem of where did these peoples go?

I don't understand this. Wouldn't this "problem" make the data more attractive? Don't scientists generally want to find data that change perceptions? Or am I misunderstanding your point?
posted by languagehat at 4:50 PM on December 3, 2002

Ayn: Which America? North, Central, South?

Or do you mean you were born in the USA? (In which case I shall call you a United-Statesian)
posted by titboy at 4:52 PM on December 3, 2002

geekhorde & dgaicun, super comments! Thanks for the additional info.
posted by Blake at 4:59 PM on December 3, 2002

Funny how the world map as a whole looks a like a jigsaw puzzle needing to be squeezed together.

Didn't some of the pharaohs' tombs in Egypt have cocoa in it from South America. This establishing a trading route from Asia/Africa to South America?
posted by thomcatspike at 5:03 PM on December 3, 2002

And the reason that I think an awful lot of North American anthropologists are so vehemently against looking at this new data... is that there is the problem of where did these peoples go?

I don't understand this. Wouldn't this "problem" make the data more attractive? Don't scientists generally want to find data that change perceptions? Or am I misunderstanding your point?

Scientists should languagehat, but some people get nervous with science and facts that they feel could potentially cause discord among certain ethnic groups. 'Your ancestors murdered all of my ancestors' seems like just such a topic.
posted by dgaicun at 5:32 PM on December 3, 2002

Anyway, I was born and raised in America, so as far as I'm concerned I'm a native American.

Oh, please. It's a widely accepted term with a known meaning, and therefore useful -- nobody made it up on purpose to offend your sensibilities.

dgaicun, I'm not entirely certain why you believe that anthropologists -- most of whom will not, statistically, be Native Americans -- would be uncomfortable with documenting what you're calling genocide (but which wasn't, by any but the most general definition). I'm wondering whether you're reading motivations into situations based on your own, heavily race-based thinking, as demonstrated in other threads.

In any event, there's no reason that there couldn't have been multiple migrations, some more successful than others, and there's not necessarily any reason that multiple racial groups couldn't have arrived here more or less simultaneously. (In fact, if we accept that one may have been more or less fleeing the other, there's plenty of reason to suspect both crossed the land bridge in the same blink of an eye.)
posted by dhartung at 5:48 PM on December 3, 2002

dhartung, I never called anything genocide, that was geekhorde, who said it was only a possibility. I only told languaguehat that was why geekhorde thought it was a sensitive topic. Personally, I have no opinion on the matter, it's a mystery like the Roanoke colony. I'm wondering if you're reading dark motivations into my posts based on your own distaste with my interest in race.
posted by dgaicun at 6:17 PM on December 3, 2002

Book.
posted by dopamine at 6:17 PM on December 3, 2002

. . .it's a mystery like the Roanoke colony.

. . .The disappearance of the American Ainu, not the hesitation of anthropologists. I haven't heard anything about the anthropologist thing.
posted by dgaicun at 6:25 PM on December 3, 2002

It's not so much that anthropologists are hesitant - It's that their are Native American tribes trying to stop them. Kennewick man was discovered 6 years ago and there are Still Legal Battles being fought over the fate of the remains.
posted by Tenuki at 6:44 PM on December 3, 2002

Now that I've heard about.
posted by dgaicun at 6:51 PM on December 3, 2002

What Tenuki said --- I'm a strong advocate for return of ancestral remains, but it's rendered moot by the need to determine whose ancestor, if any, Kennewick Man actually is. The tribes that are laying claim to the remains have, at best, a tennuous case based solely on the loation where they were found rather than further archeological evidence.
posted by nathan_teske at 6:52 PM on December 3, 2002

I only told languaguehat that was why geekhorde thought it was a sensitive topic.

dgaicun reads minds! I'm impressed.
posted by languagehat at 7:20 PM on December 3, 2002

languagehat,

it doesn't take a mind-reader to understand what people are trying to communicate.

. . .but sometimes it takes a regard for context, careful reading, and nuanced intuition. hmmmm.

But don't take my word for it. What did you mean geekhorde? Did I answer languagehat's question correctly?
posted by dgaicun at 8:24 PM on December 3, 2002

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posted by y2karl at 10:56 PM on December 3, 2002

the epicanthic eye folds didn't evolve to "probably works to reduce glare off of snow" though it's a common misconception dgaicun. It can be found amoungst the !Kung San [in africa] and South Africa's Xhosas - have a look at a picture of Nelson Mandela to see his folded eyes.
posted by dabitch at 12:42 AM on December 4, 2002

Seems like epicanthic eye folds might be an adaptation to bright sun in open places in general.
Maybe not--Australian Aborigines and Arabs should have them too, if that was the case. I dunno.
posted by hippugeek at 1:23 AM on December 4, 2002

it's just a genetic mutation. I doubt it appeared as an adaptation to anything [is red hair - another mutation - an adaptation to...eh? what exactly?] but may have survived and become more common due to culture - say some people thought it was a really attractive feature and set out to find potential mates with said feature. It's a really wide-spread mutation not tied to any particular 'race'.
posted by dabitch at 1:31 AM on December 4, 2002

Ah. Thanks for the further elucidation, dabitch. Apparently the part of my brain that learned about the San isn't very well connected to the part that learned about sexual selection.
posted by hippugeek at 4:30 AM on December 4, 2002

dabitch, one recently-voiced theory has it that red hair is the genetic legacy of Neanderthals.
posted by misteraitch at 4:50 AM on December 4, 2002

I knew there was more to my question above which I found in the Kon-Tiki.

Ten months later four Aymara Indians from Bolivia, who still mastered the traditional art of building reed boats, built Ra II. This boat went on to complete a successful transatlantic crossing, covering the 4000 miles to Barbados in just 57 days. The voyages with Ra I and II proved that it had been possible with transatlantic contacts between the old civilisations and the Americas.

Slash I noticed the anthropologists notes were dated 1975, is this info still up to date to their findings at this point of time?
posted by thomcatspike at 5:55 AM on December 4, 2002

There is a strange relationship between the press and the question of the peopling of the New World. Several archaeologists who study this question have commented that they often see the strangest ideas in the popular press that they never even hear in professional journals or meetings. This is not to say the community shuts them up, it is just that people working on the “fringe” seem to enjoy going to the press first with their ideas.

This is not to say that this is necessarily a “fringe” article, but there are certain passages that make me cringe, and would probably make any American-trained anthropologist cringe. It suggests the journalist did a little free-form interpretation of what they discovered or the anthropologists they talked to were a “little out there.” On the other hand, it would be really great if they really have confirmed a 10-13,000 year old site in Mexico. For the most part, what we know about early people in the New World comes from North America where the archaeological coverage is much greater. There are only a handful of early sites known in all of Central and South America. They are there, they just haven’t been found yet.

Here are a few examples of passages that I found very problematic:

Tests on skulls found in Mexico suggest they are almost 13,000 years old ... and their shape is set to inflame further a controversy over native American burial rights.

Native American burial rights are a big deal in the US and Canada, but there are no similar movements among native peoples for changes in the way archaeologists work anywhere else in the Americas, and certainly not in Mexico. This is minor, but it certainly raised warning flags for me.

The two oldest skulls were "dolichocephalic" - that is, long and narrow-headed. Other, more recent skulls were a different shape - short and broad, like those from native American remains. This suggests that humans dispersed within Mexico in two distinct waves, and that a race of long and narrow-headed humans may have lived in North America prior to the American Indians.
No American-trained anthropologist would use the term “race” in this context. The problem with skull morphology is that it is very tricky to move from that to information about human communities, especially in a sample so small. The degree of individual variation kills you every time. Forensic anthropology works well today to identify “black”, “white”, or “Asian” so well because we understand the variation in the underlying population so well and because the population of the U.S. is peculiarly sampled from very different and non-contiguous areas of the earth. If the population of the U.S. evenly represented all of the peoples of the earth, the gradual gradation of physical features would make work much more challenging and much more probabilistic.

In prehistory, using skull morphology to get at these kinds of interpretations can often get you into trouble without other supporting data sets. The most famous cautionary tale is that of the Smithsonian physical anthropologist Ales Hrdlicka, who studied several southwest U.S. pueblo sites between 1900-20, before archaeology really understood what was going on. He looked at a few cemeteries and with a few hundred skeletons and he would routinely say, for example, that 20% were European, 30% African, 25% Asiatic, and 25% Native American. He also came to the conclusion that the southwest must have been a “crossroads.” Today we know that all of the people in the cemetery would be labeled “Native American” in our system, and it was just the degree of individual variation and a focus on differences that caused Hrdlicka the problem.

Dr Gonzalez told BBC News Online: "We believe that the older race may have come from what is now Japan, via the Pacific islands and perhaps the California coast. "Mexico appears to have been a crossroads for people spreading across the Americas.
This was probably the most troubling quote. As far as I can tell, all they have are some old skeletons. They don’t explain how they “know” that these people came across the Pacific Islands and they don’t explain the evidence they have that these people had the kinds of boat technology to make this crossing several thousand years before anyone else. They certainly don’t explain their evidence that shows these people must have gotten off a boat rather than walked to Mexico over the course of a few millennia. The last quote really sounds more like a program of nationalistic archaeology (our country was home to the oldest, largest, most intelligent, most interesting x)

Sorry for the length of the post! I just had too much to say!
posted by Tallguy at 6:26 AM on December 4, 2002

Didn't some of the pharaohs' tombs in Egypt have cocoa in it from South America. This establishing a trading route from Asia/Africa to South America?

I think that was COCA as in cocaine found in the pharaohs' tombs. There are paintings of pineapples on the walls of houses in Pompeii too and a cache of Phoenician lamps was found in a cave in Alabama, but there's no telling what the aliens were taking from culture to culture besides the knowledge of pyramid building. Seriously though, I'm not sure that any of the evidence proved an established trade route, just contact.

Well said Tallguy, I'm with you on the evidence there, where is any indication that these people came on boats, that they came via the islands, any of that. Not so sure I think its some sort of eugenics and phrenology mongering, though it does sort of smack a bit of that.
posted by Pollomacho at 6:56 AM on December 4, 2002

the epicanthic eye folds didn't evolve to "probably works to reduce glare off of snow" though it's a common misconception dgaicun.

I'm not sure it is a misconception. The most popular theory remains that the Asian epicanthus is an adaptation to cold weather. This eye-feature is only a simple mutation, and it is not unknown outside of Asia. For instance the Khoisian race of Africa have this fold as well.

But the geographical probability of the epicanthus is not random. Like skin color, the eyefold appears in a discernable latitudinal pattern. It was selected for in many populations independently in latitudes of extreme cold. Why would unrelated populations who live in cold environments, all develop similar phenotypes? I submit because those phenotypes are useful.
posted by dgaicun at 7:26 AM on December 4, 2002

thomcatspike,

The best review of the cocaine/nicotine/marajuana-using mummies can be found here.

The reason most mainstream archaeologists have a problem with this German team's findings is that they seem to find cocaine and nicotine in every mummy that they look at (200 and counting last I heard), and these mummies span several centuries (at least). At that point you are beyond trans-Atlantic crossings, and the Egyptians must be growing it somewhere. But that should leave botanical evidence and the Egyptians would have been likely to write about it somewhere. So there should be compelling supporting evidence. The alternative, that trade took place between Egypt and the New World for several centuries, is rejected because that should leave some serious evidence on both side of the Atlantic. Certainly early trade of all sorts has left ample evidence (i.e. between the Norse and Native Americans, Europeans and Native Americans, Chinese and Philippines, Romans and South Asia, etc etc etc), so why should this be any different?

I think most archaeologists suspect something must be wrong with the tests, but are not sufficient experts in chemistry to deal with this argument. For example, is there something about the process of mummification that could give a false positive?

Either way, archaeology tends to progress when someone can bring multiple lines of evidence to bear on a single issue. Any single finding in archaeology is usually open to multiple interpretations. I think the German team is still working on this question, and I guess the world can wait to find out what else they have learned.
posted by Tallguy at 7:30 AM on December 4, 2002

Monte Verde is another such controversial and problematic find, as it relates to figuring-out the migrations of pre-history. Clovis (the earliest native-American migrants) archeological finds in America suggest people entered the New World about 11,000-11,500 years ago, and rapidly moved southward over the next millennia. But the semi-recently discovered Monte Verde ruins in Chile, contradicting a lot of other evidence, seem to indicate that people were already as far South as Chile about 12,500 years ago.
posted by dgaicun at 8:05 AM on December 4, 2002

But then Monte Verde was disproved to be accurately dated just as YOUR OWN link states!
posted by Pollomacho at 8:57 AM on December 4, 2002

I don't know if disproved is the right word. That link doesn't say the debate is over.
I am firmly in the camp of the Clovis paradigm if that's what all the exclamation is about. Monte Verde is simply another 'controversial and problematic find, as it relates to figuring-out the migrations of pre-history.'. Submitted for your entertainment.
posted by dgaicun at 9:37 AM on December 4, 2002

There is increasing suspicion that Clovis should not refer to the first people in the New World, but is simply a very visible tool tradition that was practiced for about 500 years in North America. There is mounting evidence that the idea for making Clovis-style points may have started in Eastern North America and then spread west. If that is the case, then there certainly had to be "Pre-Clovis" people. The perplexing part is the low archaeological visibility these people had.

Also, Monte Verde is not the only widely accepted pre-Clovis site. There is increasing evidence that Cactus Hill in Virginia has a pre-Clovis occupation. Of course, it is still a little early. Lots of early sites have looked promising over the decades only to get shot down a decade or so after their discovery. Usually these sites get challenged based on painstaking geo-archaeological studies that cast doubt on whether the thing they dated was actually associated with the artifacts they found.

Now I remember why I am not a paleoindian specialist...
posted by Tallguy at 9:51 AM on December 4, 2002

Thanks Tallguy for revealing more for me. Not trying to derail this thread one more thing I would like to mention is Atlantis as this could have also bridged a route for how the skull in the first article mentioned came to be.
posted by thomcatspike at 10:24 AM on December 4, 2002

This thread is quickly turning into a potpourri of way-out there ideas. I think it is a real indictment of mainstream archaeology that almost any popular discussion of peopling of the New World, the Inca, first crops, first states, Egypt, first writing, or lots of other things quickly detours into talk of UFOs, Atlantis, and Phonecians in my backyard.

I really can't tell by your tone, thomcatspike if you are joking. So I will just say that Atlantis was the name that Plato gave to his fictional utopia so he could tell a morality tale. He was very clear it was fictional. Somehow, though, it has taken on a life of its own. Needless to say, state-level societies are incredibly easy to find archaeologically precisely because they leave behind so much evidence. And no evidence has been found of missing or sunken state-level society, especially not 10,000+ years ago.

The "scientific" evidence from the Atlantis page you posted reads like a mish-mash of evidence, religions, and myths pasted together without internal consistency. For example, our intrepid researcher places Atlantis in southeast Asia (the biggest problem with Atlantis is that it won't sit still!) and then also claims elsewhere in the site that the native inhabitants of the Canary Islands (in the Atlantic) are remnants of the Atlantians. Wow! Since the Canary Islands were not populated until about 100 B.C., that means they had about 10,000 years of walking around. And boy are their feet sore!
posted by Tallguy at 1:02 PM on December 4, 2002

One is hardly a potpourri, Tallguy. I was going to read some book called Forbidden Archeology, thinking maybe it would talk about confusing finds like Cactus Hill and Mesa Verde and how they might be interpreted, but in the introduction the authors said that their motivation for writing the book was some sort of spiritual quest initiated by some oriental new-age religious teacher of theirs. The warning flags came up and I immediately put it down and walked away, for fear of the very trend you just stated Tallguy. I have no patience for that kind of 'Roswell' thinking.
posted by dgaicun at 2:00 PM on December 4, 2002

dgaicun,

By potpouri I was referring to Atlantis, cocaine mummies, Thor Heyerdahl, and the article that started this thread: Mexico as a prehistoric waystation for New World immigrants. All of these fall outside the scope of mainstream archaeology.

It is probably best you skipped Forbidden Archaeology. It is an especially bad mishmash of psuedo-science and religion.

If you are looking for good, authoritative, yet accessible discussion about New World archaeology I would recommend most books by David Hurst Thomas (not the Wendy's guy!), Ken Feder, or Brian Fagan. Some good books on some of the topics in this thread would be Frauds, Myths, and Mysteries: Science and Psuedoscience in Archaeology by Ken Feder or Fantastic Archaeology: The Wild Side of North American Prehistory by Stephen Williams.
posted by Tallguy at 3:08 PM on December 4, 2002

Thanks! I'll try and check those out.
posted by dgaicun at 4:00 PM on December 4, 2002

"languagehat,

it doesn't take a mind-reader to understand what people are trying to communicate.

. . .but sometimes it takes a regard for context, careful reading, and nuanced intuition. hmmmm.

But don't take my word for it. What did you mean geekhorde? Did I answer languagehat's question correctly?
posted by dgaicun at 8:24 PM PST on December 3 "

Perfectly, actually. I majored in Anthropology in college, and I can tell you, the majority of the anthropologists that I met were extremely uncomfortable with the subject of pre-Clovis peoples in the Americas.

Mostly though, I think it has to do with their own comfort with their world view. They think they have the answer: everyone came over the Bering Strait landbridge. Anything that questions this accepted notion is regarded with skepticism. I know, not a very scientific attitude, but scientists are human, I guess. Most of them, anyway.

And the whole subject of race is a very sensitive issue with many people. Kennewick man died violently. And he lived a very hard life. There's, from what I understand (I could be wrong, it's been about 3 or 4 years since I've looked at the data) evidence that his ribs were broken and healed, and that he suffered various injuries that you only get from close combat or from hunting large game animals like the Neanderthal did, not like modern Homo Sapiens do. I think there was also an arrowhead in his ribcage.

If he belonged to another group that predated the Bering Strait migration (and the Bering Strait migration had to occur in a very short time window down a very narrow corridor in Canada), and the Bering Strait, aka Clovis type peoples, perhaps more numerous and possibly even slightly more sophisticated technologically migrated into his home range and started hunting his game or started fishing where he fished, don't you think there would be conflict? It stands to reason, if the rest of our species is any indication.

I think it's possible.
posted by geekhorde at 8:29 PM on December 4, 2002

And as for the other major contender for the peopling of the Americas, namely, people crossing the Pacific ocean in boats of some sort, I do want to point two things.

First, human beings have had boat technology of some sort for about 40 to 50 thousand years. We had to in order to colonize Australia as a species. And second, there has been almost no underwater archaeology that wasn't somehow connected to sunken ships.

In other words, let's say that some peoples living in the vicinity of Australia and what is today Indonesia and New Guineau some distant time in the past, certainly before the end of the last Ice Age, started to really take advantage of their boat technology and began exploring the Pacific ocean. Let's further postulate that perhaps some of them found their way to the Americas, whether by going up and hugging the coast or by sailing straight across, I'm not sure. Take your pick. At any rate, whatever evidence they may have left on the coasts is now well underwater. The Ice Age ended about 10 thousand years ago, and the seas rose.

Until we start doing some serious underwater archaeology, I suspect we won't really know the answers as to how long ago the Americas were peopled.
posted by geekhorde at 8:58 PM on December 4, 2002

Tallguy, I was not joking, yet I was not trying to go into some UFO deal either( I should have made a bigger disclaimer when using that link, your right).

I was more interested in the actual land maybe(big)existing as a bridge. Are you familiar with what some say will happen when So. Cal has the big one, earthquake. Some of the scientist have said it will roll over into the ocean leaving maybe an island with the dessert being new shore front property. But the utopia city, Atlantis being some magical place I totally agree, a tall tale of myth.

Yet were did the land base for Atlantis come from?, that was more of my bridge to the discussion. My point was how did man go from Asia/Africa to the America Continent taking away the ice bridge theory from Russia to North-America continent per one of the linked articles.
posted by thomcatspike at 5:17 PM on December 5, 2002

'Earliest American writing' unearthed
posted by homunculus at 11:13 PM on December 5, 2002