That's a real beauty. Fitting.
Posted on 09/24/2006 7:25:30 PM PDT by blam
DNA Ties Together Scattered Peoples
Data on descendants of the Chumash spur new ideas about the first settlers of the Americas.
By Steve Chawkins, Times Staff Writer
September 11, 2006
Over the years, a couple of dozen descendants of the Chumash Indians have complied with the odd requests of their old friend John Johnson, a leading scholar of the tribe's culture and head of the anthropology department at the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History. After all, what harm could come from parting with a few of their hairs or letting him swab the inside of their cheeks for a saliva sample?
What emerged from Johnson's DNA studies are tantalizing clues that link some of today's Chumash with settlers of coastal regions from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego more than 10,000 years ago.
"It's mind-boggling," said Ernestine De Soto, a 68-year-old nurse whose rare strain of DNA matches that found in ancient remains thousands of miles from the Santa Barbara area, where her family has lived for centuries. "I've always known I was Chumash, but this is something else."
Johnson's work, along with studies by archeologists and geneticists nationwide, adds more strong evidence to a theory that challenges long-held assumptions about when and how the first Americans arrived.
Ever since it was articulated by a 16th century Spanish missionary to South America, the prevailing theory has been that the first inhabitants of the Americas were big-game hunters who crossed a 1,000-mile land bridge from Asia, slogging down into the Great Plains through an inland corridor created by receding glaciers.
A number of scientists believe some may have trudged from Asia and then built boats that, over hundreds of generations, took them to spots where they put down roots along the length of the Pacific Coast.
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
ping
What?
I posted the article, lol.
This is already a strange thread.
They're the ones I used. They provide good service.
There definitely was a land bridge - the question is whether EVERYONE took it to get to the Americas, or whether some people went along the coast in boats.
Plate tectonics has NOTHING to do with it as the plates move really slowly - even 20,000 years ago the North Atlantic plate was only about 750 feet away from where it is today. The continents were essentially in the same place they are today when the land bridge existed.
The SEA level fluctuated RADICALLY however during the ice ages - when there was a lot of ice the sea level was upwards of hundreds of feet lower than it is today. the Bering Sea is shallow - when the sea level is that much lower, it becomes land all the way across.
ping
This is interesting. They should build the grandest casino yet, to celebrate.
Sorry, the mtDNA pattern does not match those of the eastern Mediterranean.
Not even close. Try again?
The plate tectonics events are happening very slowly, much too slowly to matter in human migrations. Glacial events can be much more rapid. The land bridge theory is well supported by both human and animal evidence.
The Aleutian Island chain is over 1000 miles long. If the water was lower or if the islands were connected by ice, one could walk from Russia to Alaska.
I guess the Discovery Channel show I saw awhile back was all wet. In that one, a scientist traced DNA markers from the Middle East, through India...Mongolia...Alaska...and down to the Hopi Indians in Arizona. His empirical evidence obviously does not carry the weight that your unsupported assertions do. So I yield to your expertise. End of story!
Good choice since Coyoteman is infact an expert in this particular field.
Apology accepted.
I guess the Discovery Channel show I saw awhile back was all wet. In that one, a scientist traced DNA markers from the Middle East, through India...Mongolia...Alaska...and down to the Hopi Indians in Arizona. His empirical evidence obviously does not carry the weight that your unsupported assertions do. So I yield to your expertise. End of story!
Thank you. In this case, that is the wisest course of action for you.
I am working from primary research, and the research from a number of my colleagues. It is much more recent than that of the Discovery channel program.
If you saw the Discovery program you may be thinking of Haplogroup X, which does originate in the mountains of central Asia (the Caucuses), and which then travels to both Europe and North America.
However, the mtDNA in the article cited in this thread is Haplogroup D. And it is a haplotype of D that is found in both On-Your-Knees-Cave in southern Alaska (dated to 10,300 years ago) and among living descendants (Chumash) in the Santa Barbara area of California, as well as among living individuals in South America and elsewhere.
(Your citation of the Discovery channel is admirable; I wish more folks watched that and the Science channel. Good going!) But you should be careful before challenging a fellow freeper with "My humble apologies. I didn't realize we were in the presence of an expert...". On these threads you just might run into such an expert. And you have.
The information from the Discovery channel is quite old; a year or two in DNA research is ancient. But I think you have misinterpreted even that data.
The mtDNA patterns from the eastern Mediterranean are distinctly different from the five Haplogroups found in the Americas (A, B, C, D, and X). None resembles those of Noah (actually, Noah's wife and the other females reported to have survived the flood).
The American haplogroups are all thought to date to 20-30,000 years ago, or perhaps even older. It is likely that one or two were in California by 13,000 years ago (Haplogroups A and D), and there is the strong likelihood that Haplogroup X reached the east coast much earlier (most likely the subject of the Discovery program you saw).
If you have any additional questions, please let me know.
The next thing they will come out and say that all the people of the world are related, which is not true.
We are NOT the world...
"The land bridge theory is well supported by both human and animal evidence.
These people could not build bridges or boats a thousands years ago. They were too backwards - plain savages - until Colombus came, civilized them, fed them, educated them and tamed them.
Terrifying isn't it?
Everyone keep clam!
Everyone keep clam!
Don't mean to mussel in on this conversation, but somebody's shrimpin' their duty here. We need at least three puns per reply to a post like this, and there was only one. I gotta be urchin you to do better!
Extremely interesting stuff.
I always wondered about the folks living in the mountains of Pakistan, which exhibit European DNA. National Geographic had an issue some years ago where they followed the trail of Alexander the Great. They found these tribes which had blue eyes and some had blonde hair. They believed that they were the descendants of some of Alexander's troops which stayed behind.
I think that in the article they said that these people had DNA that was similar to Germans and/or Italians.
Have you heard of this?
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