Replies

The real connection is simply that one of the groups ancestral to the Berbers, American Indians and the Sa'ami left the Western European refugia before the others ~ actually several thousand years earlier.

Some anthropologists have been arguing that the American Indian connection does not occur until the Sa'ami and the Yakuts linked up somewhere in the 7000BC to 8000BC period ~ which, of course, they did, but the Yakuts linked up with a number of groups at that time.

The Yakuts later on (6000BC to 5000BC made their way to North America and South America.

The problem here is that NONE of the South American Indians today show any sign of Sa'ami relationship. It's strictly North American.

It's pretty clear the Yakuts linkups in Central Asia and South Asia were not necessarily two-way. They'd figured out how to domesticate reindeer, so most likely these were trading expeditions where Yakuts traded reindeer to more primitive people in the far North or South. The Yakuts would have walked away with ermine, arctic fox and other valuable furs.

Let me explain how a smart guy hunts reindeer. First, he takes his family's "tame" reindeer ~ from that Yakuts breed ~ and teaches it to walk into a wild herd and attract a member back to his home where his master leaps out from behind a tree and slaughters the newcomer.

Or, the owner walks into the herd with his tame reindeer. While it provides protective color, the owner slips up beside a wild reindeer, puts his arm around it, and it freezes in place ready to be slaughtered.

There are a number of variations on the technique. BTW, I've picked this up watching internet videos of reindeer herders at work. The tame reindeer plays a major part in all this. More recently, of course, the Sa'ami and others have taken to trucking reindeer around to various feeding grounds. These are referred to as domesticated reindeer ~ but only that tame reindeer is actually domesticated. Older write-ups on Sa'ami hunting techniques refer frequently to the use of the tame reindeer.

No, how can you just walk up to a reindeer and grab it? I think part of it has to do with a problem the Sa'ami have with dogs. Unlike the Yakuts, not all Sa'ami get along with dogs ~ some do, some don't. I suspect they have some hormone in their systems that makes the reindeer think of them as "friendly". That would necessarily irritate the dogs.