Posted on 02/23/2004 11:16:05 PM PST by farmfriend
My guess: They came from the same group as Kennewick Man. (Asian water route)
Some we killed, some we absorbed likely as not. Same thing we did to other tribes.
What did you think we spent our time doing, holding hands and singing Kum-by-ya?
So was I. As I once said to another poster "we were either depicted as sadistic, amoral savages with no redeeming values or we were peaceful childlike vegetarians and lovers of the earth and I am not sure which point of view ticks me off more."
I keep hoping for a little balance and sanity. And I would like some honest exploration of pre-history. But too many people on both side of the debate have too much to lose if that is allowed. And part of it has to do with a very real fear of losing our traditions and ways.
How would you feel if everything you had been taught about your history was being challenged? It is a touchy subject.
It's part of the current culture wars. I would say this is precisely what the Left is doing to the history of white Europeans and the United States. They challenge and denigrate it every step of the way. As a mixed breed person myself, I want to know the truth. As far as prehistory goes, somewhere down the line, we all came from the same source, and therefore share the same history. I find the subject fascinating.
I've/we've always heard we should "follow the money", and that may be part of it, but I wonder if some large, tender egos aren't getting trampled on right about now? I imagine a lot of careers and tenure have been built upon and intimately intertwined with the status quo. These folks should maybe develop a taste for crow; looks like they'll be dining on it before long.
FGS
I know about the Altai being a possible source for migrations to the New World, but Central Asia was basically a conveyor belt of people in both east and west directions. Central Asians are probably very mixed in their ancestry.
The Scythian culture that controlled southern Russia during ancient times was made up of people who seem to have resembled modern Northern Europeans in their physical appearance (and presumably genetic makeup). They appear to have migrated east from the Altai about 800 BC. At that time, many of the people of the Steppe were not Turks or Mongols, but Indo-Europeans, as far east as Xinjiang province of China (the mummified bodies found there were of Caucasoid people wearing Scythian and Celtic dress.) Several Indo-European cultures, such as the Indo-Iranian (Aryan/Mittani, Scythian) and Celtic, seem to be derived from the Andronovo and Afanasievo cultures in the region of present day Kazakstan and the Altai.
What seems to have happened is that Europeans migrated east across the steppe in the Neolithic, and maybe that is why haplogroup X is found in the Altai. The article does NOT say whether haplogroup X in the Altai more resembles European haplogroup X or Amerindian haplogroup X. The two have been isolated from one another for over 10,000 years.
If it resembles haplogroup X from Europe, then it is the genetic legacy of Indo-European people such as the Scythians.
If it is closer to Amerindian haplogroup X, then the finding of haplogroup X in Native American populations is far less important than we thought.
Probably true about both violence and intermarriage. You see it in Europe during Neolithic times (e.g. Keeley's War Before Civilization, great book for anyone who is into archeology or ancient/medieval warfare) when farmers from the Middle East migrated into Europe, and were basically alternately intermarrying with natives or fighting and killing them. And in the Americas, we see evidence of violence too (Kennewick man was probably wounded by an enemy, and La Brea woman, the first human in LA, was murdered. Apparently LA was a violent place 9000 years ago too.)
It is possible, even likely, that there were populations in the Americas that preceded the main ancestors of modern Native Americans. The presence of haplogroup X (assuming it is a marker of European or European-related peoples)in later Native Americans could indicate that the later migrant groups intermarried with the earlier group. Here's an analogy: on my mom's side of the family, there is a mixture of Native American and white ancestry; that's not unusual, because Native peoples interbred with whites and were often basically absorbed by them.
Probably the same thing happened to the people who carried the haplogroup X lineage or had the unusual skull shape and facial features (BTW, it used to be argued that those things were not inherited, but the study that said that was done in the early 1900s and has largely been discredited.)
My friend, that happens everyday no matter what your cultural background.
bump
those things= skull shape and facial features
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