[SatinDoll]

DNA of Tierra del Fuego peoples proved they are related to aborigines of Australia.

Turns all that speculation about the northern route on its ear.

Fifteen thousand years ago the sea level was 400 feet lower than it is today. A great deal of the earth’s water was locked up in ice. A northern route may have been impassable, but the Australian aborigines traveled to Australia 40,000 years ago. By water.

DNA indicates they traveled a great deal further than that.

[Vigilanteman]

I once studied under an old professor who was Irish-American by birth and Sioux by adoption. He was somewhat of an outcast in his field because he didn't buy into the northern route theory either, although he did not discount the possibility that some native peoples may have used that route. The Ainu of Japan and Aleuts of Alaska, for instance, have many cultural similarities.

His major thesis was hard to argue with: the most advanced remnants of ancient precolumbian peoples are concentrated between Mexico City and Northern Chile. Under what logic would an ancient civilization bypass mild climates on what is now the American Pacific coast and migrate thousands of miles southward to build their greatest cities in the jungles? It just doesn't make sense.

[blam]

'First Americans Were Australians'