Posted on 02/22/2003 9:06:38 AM PST by blam
VINTAGE SKULLS
Researcher Silvia Gonzalez examines a 13,000-year-old skull. (Liverpool John Moores University)
The oldest human remains found in the Americas were recently "discovered" in the storeroom of Mexico's National Museum of Anthropology. Found in central Mexico in 1959, the five skulls were radiocarbon dated by a team of researchers from the United Kingdom and Mexico and found to be 13,000 years old. They pre-date the Clovis culture by a couple thousand years, adding to the growing evidence against the Clovis-first model for the first peopling of the Americas.
Of additional significance is the shape of the skulls, which are described as long and narrow, very unlike those of modern Native Americans.
Joseph Powell, a physical anthropologist at the University of New Mexico, cautions that other explanations for the skull shape differences must be considered before jumping to conclusions about origins. "Natural selection or some other microevolutionary forces may play a role. People change when their diets change. This happened in China, for example. Ancient Chinese don't really look much like modern Chinese from the same area. It's a worldwide phenomena and it may be related to the changes at the end of the Ice Age."
Paleoindian specialist Kenneth Tankersley believes archaeology is only beginning to scratch the surface of the debate. "Variation in the languages and DNA of American Indians not only suggests there were multiple migrations from a number of different homelands, but they imply that the first wave of people arrived in the Americas more than 30,000 years ago. This suggests archaeologists should be looking in older geological strata."
DNA evidence might be the best way to know where the first Americans came from and how or why they changed over time. The researchers have planned DNA tests, though successful extraction from remains this old is challenging.--COLLEEN P. POPSON
I never heard of Ainu, but from the images posted they appear to be Persian. This is somewhat odd to me since Persians look like the Flemish, which is my heritage. Pictures of Iranian leaders look a lot like pictures in my family album, and that is doubly odd since my family originally emigrated from the moors of England to Massachusetts a long time ago after presumably emigrating from Flanders to England.
What does it mean? Not much except that humans were migrating all over the planet long before written records became common. 13,000 years? Current events to old goats.
Maybe we need to evict the Indians from their reservations as squatters.
There are about 10k Ainu still living on the Japanese island of Hokkaido
Also, I haven't read it elsewhere but Dr Scoch said that the Olmec sites in Mexico contain "cord" type pottery which is distinct to the Jomon of prehistory Japan.
Describes the distinctive Jomon cord pottery.
Seems like a lot of folks, including quite a few here, have been saying that for a long time. It's hard to shake up the Establishment.
An Ainu Man (Related to Kennewick Man)
Yup. That's what happened at either the Cactus Hill or Topper site, they got to the Clovis level and stopped. After the word from Monte Verde,35,000 year old artifacts, they went back and dug some more and found artifacts older than Clovis.
I believe there have been numerous waves of Proto-Europeans across the Russian/Asian steppes like the Ainu, Jomon and most recently these: The Takla Makan Mummies.
I believe some of these early waves made it across the 'top' and we're finding them now as Kennewick Man, Spirit Cave Man and etc.
I'm beginning to think there was a time when there were more proto-Europeans in Asian than there were Asians.(as we know them today.)
There's an excellent book by Victor Mair about these mummies titled: The Tarim Mummies. I believe the Tarim Mummies are refugees from the Black Sea flood in 5,600BC.
Tell me!
That picture was taken from the Ainu Museum site.
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