I share an interest in seeing the day when (if ever) solid genetic evidence can truly provide a historic trail of ancient peoples. So far that field has been ripe for charlatans preying on such interest and for practitioners of science fiction. So no, I don't expect "genetic evidence for a Lost Tribe origin of the European Caucasians" or for any other ancient peoples to be forthcoming. One choosing to wait for that train best carry a big lunch. {ggg}.Many disciplies have advanced significantly since the 18th Century, linguistics is one of them. Relativistic answers don't really cut it.
For example, "eye of the beholder" misunderstandings of Quantum Theory based on Newtonian Mechanics are more accurately referred to as "errors."
That's smooth and slippery talk but I don't think you can provide substantial evidence to back it up.Dig in...
Joint research conducted by genetics specialists and linguists (Cavalli-Sforza, Greenberg, Ruhlen at Stanford University, for example) have shown that the genetic ties between populations are comparable to the linguistic traits linking different languages. Indeed, significant correlations have been found between the linguistic and biological population distribution in many regions of the world (Africa, Europe, China, etc.)
As a result, in the field of linguistics, new hypotheses concerning language typology and classification are emerging. The patterns elaborated at the end of the 18th and in the early 19th centuries by linguists working on the comparison of Indo-European languages have been completely called into question.
Origins of humankind, language and languages
There are diverse quantitative methods in order to know better the ancestors of the Europeans before the arrival of Indo-Europeans (IE). Among them are genetics of population, dialect linguistics, and quantitative ethnology. We will try here to compare some results of the first two methods....
PRE INDO-EUROPEAN AND CELTIC LEXICON IN THE
« ATLAS LINGUISTIQUE DE FRANCE »,
AND COMPARISON OF BASQUE LEXICAL AND GENETIC GRADIENTS
In support for Greenberg's linguistic model of three separate migrations, evidence from archaeology, dental morphology and genetics are used to display the initial entry into the New World no earlier than 12,000 years ago. Shortly following the archaeological discovery at Folsom and the beginnings of radiocarbon dating, the "Clovis first" model for American aboriginal origins was postulated in the 1950's, and still largely adhered to by many researchers today. According to this view, aboriginal peoples of the Upper Palaeolithic technology type from the Lena river area in northeast Siberia migrated into northwest Alaska-Yukon during the terminal Pleistocene when the Bering Land-bridge was exposed as part of the expansive Beringian ecozone. Once in North America around 12,000 BP, these specialized big-game hunters travelled south through the ice-free corridor along the eastern slopes of the Rocky Mountains and finally expanding rapidly throughout the continental United States by 11,500 years ago. An alternate to the ice-free corridor hypothesis is that these Siberian groups could have travelled along the Pacific coast refugia areas and still reached the continental States to become the expansive Clovis culture at the same time (Fladmark 1978,1979). The uniformity of Clovis dates implies a very rapid migration and spreading throughout the Americas, likely within a thousand of the initial entry. The Clovis complex is then seen as the as the ancestral culture from which all North and South American aboriginal cultures evolved (Gruhn 1997). The acceptance of the Clovis-first archaeological model lends support to Greenberg's hypothesis for the initial migration of aboriginal Americans from Siberia around 12,000BP. The similarities in distinctive microblade technology of the late Pleistocene Diukhtai people of Siberia and the Proto-Na-Dene group of Alaska are believed to provide an archaeological link for the second migration of aboriginal peoples into the New World at the terminal Pleistocene. For the final migration, the Eskimo-Aleut group in southwest Alaska is believed to be technologically similar to earlier archaeological finds along the Aleutian island chain and coastal Siberia (Greenberg et al 1986).
Biological studies in dental morphology and genetics also support Greenberg's linguistic hypothesis and support three separate population migrations from Siberia to the New World. The analysis of dental morphology in American aboriginal populations by Christy Turner (1986, and Greenberg et al 1986) displays the Sinodont dental pattern which is exclusive to peoples of northern Asian ancestry. In summary Turner notes, the New World dental variation matches the North Asian Sinodont pattern, is greater in the north than in the south, has an original divergence schedule corresponding to Clovis, and forms three clusters which correlate highly with the linguistic and archaeological groupings. The genetic evidence derived from the analysis of Gm allotypes in blood has been used to calculate the amount of genetic "distance" between two populations. In regards to American aboriginal populations, Suarez, Crouse, and O'Rourke (1985) provide genetic evidence suggesting an early migration resulting in a large group of North and South American Indians, followed by two later migrations which brought the present-day Na-Dene and Eskimo-Aleut peoples.
The Role of Linguistics Within a Multidisciplinary Framework
For Studying the Initial Peopling of the AmericasNow, while our understanding of the correlation between linguistics and genetics is only just emerging, it's not true to suggest that it's not there. Further, where you have great migrations of people in the Historical Period, you don't find an absence of both linguistic and genetic evidence.
Therefore, if the Lost Tribes of Israel became the European Caucasians, we should expect to find at least some of the evidence requested.
It's always interesting to see requests for "substantial evidence" from those who provide none.
