Posted on 05/11/2006 5:09:23 PM PDT by blam
Ancient American Skeleton Has European DNA Link
[Original headline: Sinkhole Skeleton Skeletons DNA Could Shed Light on American Migrations]
Vanlue, Ohio [AP] The discovery of prehistoric tools from an Ohio cave is one of several finds that has scientists questioning the identity of settlers thought to have moved in 11,000 years ago.
A just completed excavation of Sheriden Cave in Wyandot County, 100 miles southwest of Cleveland, revealed tools made from flaked stone and bone. The items are scheduled to go on display next year at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History.
Kent State University archaeologist Kenneth Tankersley, who led the excavation over the past four years, said definite answers wont come until someone finds an Ice Age skeleton and the DNA is tested.
Rare Genetic Link to Europe
Disagreement swirls around the timing of their arrival, the nature of their migration, how fast they moved across the landscape and their relationship to contemporary Native Americans, he said.
Some scientists think that the earliest colonizers could have started out somewhere in Europe, not in Asia as previously thought. That idea is rooted in a rare genetic link called haplogroup X - DNA passed down through women that dates back more than 30,000 years.
Recent genetic samples from remains in Illinois show that the rare European DNA was around centuries before European exploration. Today, haplogroup X is found in about 20,000 American Indians.
To some researchers, its presence suggests the Mongolian ancestors of most American Indians were latecomers. Genetic tests show the DNA is completely absent from East Asian and Siberian populations.
That could dispel the more than half-century old notion that humans migrated across a land bridge from Siberia at the end of the Ice Age, made stone tools and hunted while moving south.
Archaeologists since 1996 have found genetic indications of several migrations, along with evidence that people came from Polynesia, regions near Japan and even western Europe.
Skeleton Has Scientists Jumpy
Frankly, it makes me nervous, Smithsonian Institution anthropologist Stephen Loring said of the idea that the first Americans during the Ice Age were of European ancestry.
Its a heretical argument, and some people, unfortunately, will use it to assert the cultural superiority of Europeans. But its a good theory that needs to be tested.
Tankersley and Brian Redmond, head of archaeology at the Cleveland Natural History Museum, have been seeking clues about the first colonizers from the cave, which is hidden 50 feet below cornfields.
To find human remains of that age, 11,000 years old, is really, really rare, and I dont think there are any in that cavern. We would have found them, Redmond said. But he added, Who knows what may turn up in the future. Were certain it was a camping area.
Farmers and landowners fear they could be tied up in litigation by preservationists and Indian tribes if old bones are disturbed.
We know of places where you could probably find human remains up here, said Keith Hendricks, a Hancock County sheriffs deputy whose family owns the sinkhole where the Ice Age relics have been recovered. But the problem is youd be opening a Pandoras box. Its a sensitive issue.
Story originally published by
ABCNEWS.com - November 27 2000
We had a thread not too long ago with that theme.
1. I just found it.
2. I wanted to get it into the GGG archives. The GGG did not have 'files' at the time of the original posting..
3. We've had a number of related articles lately.
4. This subject always draws a big audience and I like the attention.
5. I try each day to post at least one interesting anthropology/archaeology article and yesterday was a 'slow' day.
Interesting.
Did it give any suggestion as to where we might find the ruins of Tirion on Tuna?
"...Pandoras box. Its a sensitive issue"
______________________________________________________
The truth shall set anthropology and NA Indians free.
Remember it was the Smithsonian that tried to change the history of WWII a few years back!
But you ddn't point out that it's wrong and that Haplogroup X has been found in Siberia.
And that the Hap X in North American Indians is not the same as found in Europeans.
Whoever mentioned the Ainu -- leaving aside the fact that they are a modern ethnic grouping dating back only until about 500 AD, they are genetically related to their Asian ancestors.
Kennewick man and the Ainu may well have the same ancestors.
Doug
"And that the Hap X in North American Indians is not the same as found in Europeans."
Didn't know either of those. Can you link or lead me to some info to this effect?
Thanks. More or less what I was saying, although there are some unanswered questions.
See also:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/hokkaido/ainu2.html
And of course the Ainu Museum:
http://www.ainu-museum.or.jp/english/english.html
The "Ainu Culture" extended from about 1400 to the early 1700 s. According to one theory, the Satsumon Culture developed into the Ainu Culture through the influence of the Okhotsk Culture.
S. Malhi and D.G. Smith. 2002. "Brief Communication: Haplogroup X Confirmed in Prehistoric North America." * Am. J. of Physical Anthropology* 119: 84-86.
Abstract: Haplogroup X represents approximately 3% of all modern Native North american mitochondrial lineages. Using RFLP and hypervariable segment I (HVSI) sequence analyses, we identified a prehistoric individual radiocarbon dated to 1,340 =/- 40 years BP that is a member of haplogroup X, found near the Columbia River in Vantage, Washington.
The presence of haplogroup X in prehistoric North America, along with recent findings of haplogroup X in southern sSiberians confirms the hypothesis tha haplogroup X is a founding lineage.
....(p. 84) Derenko et al [2002. "The Presence of mitochondrial haplogroup X in Altaians from south Siberia," *Am. J. Human Genetics* 69: 237-241] reported the presence of haplogroup X in altaian populations from southern Siberia, where the other four Native American founding haplogroups are also present.
Doug
Give me a break.
Findings by American anthropologist C. Loring Brace, University of Michigan, will surely be controversial in race conscious Japan. The eye of the predicted storm will be the Ainu, a "racially different" group of some 18,000 people now living on the northern island of Hokkaido. Pure-blooded Ainu are easy to spot: they have lighter skin, more body hair, and higher-bridged noses than most Japanese. Most Japanese tend to look down on the Ainu.
Brace has studied the skeletons of about 1,100 Japanese, Ainu, and other Asian ethnic groups and has concluded that the revered samurai of Japan are actually descendants of the Ainu, not of the Yayoi from whom most modern Japanese are descended. In fact, Brace threw more fuel on the fire with:
"Dr. Brace said this interpretation also explains why the facial features of the Japanese ruling class are so often unlike those of typical modern Japanese. The Ainu-related samurai achieved such power and prestige in medieval Japan that they intermarried with royality and nobility, passing on Jomon-Ainu blood in the upper classes, while other Japanese were primarily descended from the Yoyoi." The reactions of Japanese scientists have been muted so. One Japanese anthropologist did say to Brace," I hope you are wrong."
The Ainu and their origin have always been rather mysterious, with some people claiming that the Ainu are really Caucasian or proto-Caucasian - in other words, "white." At present, Brace's study denies this interpretation.
Hmmm. Thanks. Maybe it came across Siberia after all.
Glad to see someone else put the term 'Native American' in quotes. I hate the term. It is a misnomer since humans are not native to NA to begin with....
as that communist organizer of the may 1 "boycott" said
"bbeeesa? weee don't neeed a beeeesa"
:-) Edo Nyland thinks every language is related to Basque. Really. He's a bit confused about the Ainu themselves also.
There is a big difference between 'Native American' and 'native American'. I'm a native American, but not a Native American. It doesn't look as though HSS originated in the Americas, so if you take the phrase literally in the sense of earliest ancestors being American, it's wrong.
Most American Indians prefer the term Indian.
But I live in the UK -- here, if you use the word Indian, no one would think you meant someone whose ancestors came from America, they'd assume you meant someone whose ancestors came from the Indian subcontinent. That's true probably everwhere but the Americas.
So, no easy solution. And I guess you could say if someone's ancestors go back ten thousand, maybe forty thousand years on one continent, they have a prior claim to the term 'native'. No one in the British Isles could make a similar claim (well, maybe ten thousand, not much more).
Fascinating Story here:
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