Posted on 01/01/2005 9:22:55 PM PST by blam
Friday, Dec 31, 2004
Bison bone discovery turns B.C. history upside-down
PENTICTON (BC Newspaper Group) — The year 2004 ends with a major story in archaeology, revealed by the use of new DNA technology on ancient bison bones scattered around western North America.
The findings profoundly affect our understanding of how North America was populated by humans, and could have an impact on aboriginal politics as well.
The conventional wisdom, taught to generations in school, speaks of a land bridge connecting Asia with Alaska. This now-submerged bridge was created by lower sea levels in the last ice age, which ended about 8,500 years ago. It was postulated that prehistoric tribes followed herds of migrating big animals down through an ice-free corridor roughly along the Rocky Mountains, eventually reaching all points of the continent and establishing what are now revered as the First Nations.
It is now becoming clear that this conventional wisdom is wrong, or at least woefully incomplete.
Lionel Jackson of the Geological Survey of Canada and Mike Wilson of Douglas College gave a talk on the latest findings Dec. 7 at the H.R. MacMillan Space Centre in Vancouver. Their work relates to DNA findings from an Oxford University team that focused on bison, the most widespread and persistent large animals of the era.
Two big points come out of the Oxford study: Bison were in decline, for reasons not yet clear, as much as 10,000 years before ice and human hunters put pressure on them, and the ice-free corridor was closed at least during the peak of the ice age. Isolated from the rest of the continent by glaciers, the northern bison died out. All of today's bison are descendants of a small southern group that eventually spread back up north.
It follows that nomadic hunting people may also have populated Western Canada from the south.
Indeed, this south-to-north migration theory has been around for a while, but hasn't had much media attention. Jon Driver, a researcher at SFU who studied bones and artifacts in Charlie Lake Cave near Fort St. John, reached this conclusion in 1996:
"All of the available evidence suggests that the peopling of the western interior of Canada in the post-glacial period occurred from the south."
The Oxford DNA result strongly suggests that Driver was right.
Other scientific studies are also poking holes in the accepted patterns of human migration. November's Smithsonian magazine reports on several discoveries that are too old to be explained by an ice-free corridor that formed only 12,000 years ago, such as the Gault site in central Texas. Elsewhere, high cliffs that would have been above the ice level suggest pockets of life that may have survived through ice ages.
As the Smithsonian article notes, it's also becoming more popular to look at boats as the means of humanity's spread. Skin boats used by Inuit whalers suggest the technology has been around for a long time, in reach of stone-age hunters and migrations could thus have come from Europe as well as Asia. The Europeans-first idea is described as "radical" and "heretical" by Smithsonian, but it's supported by startling similarities in stone-tool technology from Europe and North America.
At the Vancouver lecture, I asked Mike Wilson of Douglas College what he thought of the fuss made over Kennewick Man, the European-looking fellow with a stone spearpoint in his hip who was found on an eroding bank of the Columbia River near Kennewick, Wash. in 1996. Wilson shrugged the story off as mostly media hype, noting that Kennewick Man is a mere 9,000 years old and that Asia wasn't as genetically homogenous back then as people tend to assume.
So what does all this mean for aboriginal politics in Canada?
Well, today's cultural preservation dogma demands a rigid system of communal land ownership. This communal system, which is a proven, ongoing disaster, is strictly race-based. The idea of multiple migrations of overlapping races, in an ebb and flow over millennia, doesn't sit well with the First Nations power structure that reaps the benefit of the status quo.
Canada's race-based politics are simply wrongheaded. They perpetuate division by awarding more and more special rights to certain people. And these policies are based on a racial occupation theory that is slowly unravelling, as science makes its slow and steady march toward the truth.
A backhoe is fairly cheap to rent and would be perfect for this type of job!
But, DNA is providing major clues to population movements, and the rest of us will let the chips fall where they may! Exciting times!
Whoops. That should read:
where the data lead?
There are dates here ? Cool where are the freeper match makers at...
Well if if were proven I don't think they would call it a theory.
Please FREEPMAIL me if you want on, off, or alter the "Gods, Graves, Glyphs" PING list --
Archaeology/Anthropology/Ancient Cultures/Artifacts/Antiquities, etc.
The GGG Digest -- Gods, Graves, Glyphs (alpha order)
[pinging sound]
I've read of these too. Reports are too numerous to discount out of hand.
Take your time, use a trowel, or a flat shovel held at a low angle. A backhoe could destroy far more than you recover. Take lots of pictures, and set up a grid to locate objects with.
ping
The tooth thing may seems somewhat far-fetched to some, but really it isn't *that* far from reality. In my family, it is not uncommon for the lower permanent teeth to come in before the baby teeth come out. We have always had to make a trip to the dentist to remove the baby teeth aka 'second row of teeth.'
I don't know anything about hypodentology, and I suppose the second row of teeth in question are not merely baby teeth, but it is not a crazy, off the wall concept.
We think alike! LOL
Last I saw on these, the PhD from the DNA lab said the DNA was 'European.'
"I came to that conclusion a couple years ago. The people that are presently in China are not the same people who were there as short as 6,000 years ago."
Could you elaborate on that? Who were the people in 'China' 6,000 years ago and why did you come to that conclusion?
Have you not heard these stories/read articles about people with double-rows of teeth in the Ohio area?
Begin by reading this book The Tarim Mummies, then do a search on the Jomon and Ainu...and then read up on the history of the Hakka Chinese and the Koreans.
The Samurai And The Ainu
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.
Okay, here's one of those great Ohio Indian Mound stories, and it's true. A professor at Georgia College who used to go on digs in Ohio Indian Mounds gave me a plaster cast of what appears to be either an amulet or coin that he found in layers that were dated sometime very early AD or perhaps late BC. The original artifact was very worn, but the figure on it is clearly a familiar theme on some Roman coins, a Winged Victory. FWIW, I'd be glad to post a photo of this plaster cast (if you can instruct me how to post a photo here!)
James Chatters (of Kennewick Man fame) believes Kennewick Man belonged to a race of people that produced both the Caucasians and Asians of today.
Cool! Thanks! :-)
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