24,000-Year-Old Body Is Kin to Both Europeans and American Indians

The New York Times ^ | 20 Nov 2013 | NICHOLAS WADE

[mandaladon]

The genome of a young boy buried at Mal’ta near Lake Baikal in eastern Siberia some 24,000 years ago has turned out to hold two surprises for anthropologists. The first is that the boy’s DNA matches that of Western Europeans, showing that during the last Ice Age people from Europe had reached farther east across Eurasia than previously supposed. Though none of the Mal’ta boy’s skin or hair survive, his genes suggest he would have had brown hair, brown eyes and freckled skin.

The second surprise is that his DNA also matches a large proportion — some 25 percent — of the DNA of living Native Americans. The first people to arrive in the Americas have long been assumed to have descended from Siberian populations related to East Asians. It now seems that they may be a mixture between the Western Europeans who had reached Siberia and an East Asian population.

The Mal’ta boy was aged 3 to 4 and was buried under a stone slab wearing an ivory diadem, a bead necklace and a bird-shaped pendant. Elsewhere at the same site some 30 Venus figurines were found of the kind produced by the Upper Paleolithic cultures of Europe. The remains were excavated by Russian archaeologists over a 20-year period ending in 1958 and stored in museums in St. Petersburg.

[ApplegateRanch]

Right; the Predecessors just stuck to wiping out the Others...except rapable women. And vice-versa.

Personally, I prefer fences.

[ApplegateRanch]

Never mind that the Indians were the same way; when we do it it’s baaaaaaad.

Here's a map of where the tribes were in 1650. A hundred years later, the Cheyenne were in Arikara & Apache territory; the Sioux had moved into the Cheyenne territory. Plenty of other stirring around had taken place.

In another 50 years, the Sioux were finally successful in driving the Cheyenne out of the Sioux's "sacred Black Hills".

I had another map, with migration arrows & dates, showing the routes & timeline, but it disappeared; but this one will do to illustrate the point.

The Commanche had one hell of a deserved reputation for nastiness in the Texas-Mexico border region. Considering they had been forced out of the Powder River/Wind River area and systematically driven to that area over a 200 year period, one might understand why they decided to not be pushed any more. There mistake was trying to push back against Texans.

[ZULU]

If Mungo Man reached Australia by 40,000 BP, there is no reason that modern humans were moving eastwards and westwards out of Europe, Asia and Africa far earlier than previously expected.

I believe Northern American Indians had a genetic component provided by Solutrean European Clovis people, Euro-Asians from Siberia like this child, and far eastern Asians.

Further, I think it not improbable that South American Indians may have had an Africa and Polynesian component.

[Makana]

I had my DNA traced and the results included Persian (12%), from the Fertile Crescent, in addition to Northern European and Mediterranean.

Since I am from Massachusetts and my Senator is Elizabeth Warren, I now proclaim myself NATIVE AMERICAN! Where’s my restitution?

[Dysart]

The Commanche had one hell of a deserved reputation for nastiness in the Texas-Mexico border region.

I had a Commanche girlfriend and can confirm their disposition when their ire is spurred. I've never seen anything like it before or since.

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks AGR. A tribesman here in Michigan told me a tribal story about the “rice wars” — his ancestors had lived in (I think it was) upstate NY, before it was NY. Some shaman had a vision or dream about what we know as “wild rice”, and got the whole tribe to move toward where he thought it would be found. Naturally there were already people living there, so there was a protracted, multi-generational war over the area, which was somewhere n of The Bridge.

[dsc]

“Their mistake was trying to push back against Texans.”

The Comanche were the reason that there were Texans to begin with. The Mexicans imported Americans as a buffer between the Comanches and themselves. Gave them land for free if they married a Mexican gal and converted to Catholicism (Nota bene, these were secular rules, not Church rules.)

Even so, the Texans were no match for the Comanche until after the Civil War, when they had repeating rifles and a big enough population. Quanah Parker was never defeated; they got him to surrender by rounding up the women and children and holding them prisoner in what is now Lawton, Oklahoma.

When I was a boy, I lived two doors down from one of Quanah’s grandsons.

[dsc]

Interesting map. Thank you.

[gleeaikin]

Just finished reading two books about Atilla the Hun (400s AD). Populations ranged back and forth across the great Eurasian plains over the centuries and millenia, depending on weather conditions and population growth among other things. My son had his 6 wisdom teeth removed and the dentist asked if he had Esquimo blood. His father was 1/16th Cree Indian (a Canadian tribe) The rest was northern European from Scotland, Prussia, and Wales. I think his father had visible traces of Neanderthal blood as well.

[SunkenCiv]

World famous ancient Siberian Venus figurines ‘are NOT Venuses after all’
http://siberiantimes.com/science/casestudy/features/f0213-world-famous-ancient-siberian-venus-figurines-are-not-venuses-after-all/

[Nailbiter]

“we’re all African-Americans.”

I guess I just the white sheep of the family

[firebrand]

Did you learn “Are you afraid of a tiger?” to help you remember the Tigris and the Euphrates?

We had strange teachers when I was a kid. One of them had us draw a horse every morning, until the last week of school, when we were told to draw a chariot.

They taught us things without the political/social implications.

In seventh grade, we learned about gibberilic acid (which makes plants grow bigger but not necessarily better) and the stuff that seeds clouds to make rain. No mention was ever made of the implications of these two practices. They left it to us to figure it out.

In second grade we drew saber-toothed tigers and mammoths, but no one ever said what a shame it was that species had disappeared. We got it but not in a preachy way.

It’s something like the Montessori approach, where the kids discover two vessels, one tall and thin and the other short and fat, and play with them as they discover that both have the same volume. No instructions are given, and the word “volume” or anything like it is never spoken. This is in a classroom for two-year-olds.

We learned that the Fertile Crescent was between the Euphrates and the Tigris and that today it is desert. Talk about environmentalism deep in your bones.