Posted on 11/07/2005 3:24:22 PM PST by blam
Kennewick Man, meet your distant cousins
By Kate Riley
Monday, November 7, 2005 - Page updated at 12:00 AM
COLUMBIA, S.C. — Discerning the story of America's prehistoric past is a bit like groping through an unfamiliar room in the dark.
One learned scientist's tattooing tool is another's piece of rock. Ask them to agree how long it has been there and you're bound to set off an argument that makes Seattle's whether-to-monorail conflict seem like a tea party.
So it goes with evolving thought in archaeology. We all know the prevailing theory. Our children's high-school textbooks talk about the first Americans coming from Asia about 13,000 years ago across the Bering land bridge, chasing big game through Siberia, Alaska and down through Canada and the Pacific Northwest between two ice sheets. That would be about 4,000 years before Kennewick Man is believed to have died on the shores of the Columbia River.
The controversy over whether scientists should study those 9,300-year-old bones — they prevailed in court over tribal objections — piqued my interest about the earliest Americans. I'll be spending the next year exploring these issues.
My first stop was a four-day archaeological conference, "Clovis in the Southeast," that attracted about 400 archaeologists and others. And I thought I was in for a break from politics when I left town during election season. Not quite.
Under the established theory, the land-bridge travelers' descendents were or became Clovis — the first identifiable culture in early America, distinguished by a distinctive spear or arrow point. But in recent years, evidence emerged to challenge Clovis as the first people in America. Clovis culture shows up beginning about 11,500 years ago. But human artifacts some archaeologists believe to be 1,000 to a few thousand years older have been found at a handful of sites from Wisconsin to Monte Verde, Chile.
The "Clovis in the Southeast" conference was called, in part, to showcase the theory-busting findings of University of South Carolina archaeologist Al Goodyear. Though he counted himself firmly among the "Clovis First-ers" a decade ago, he is having a serious case of second thoughts.
At the Topper site in Allendale County, he thinks he has found human-made artifacts associated with materials tested to a breathtaking 50,000 years ago — no spear points, but possibly manufacturing scraps. Several archaeologists were not persuaded the artifacts were human-made.
In a field where breakthroughs are made from diligent gathering and documenting of evidence over decades, such meetings provide a forum for scientists to compare notes and argue. Sometimes, minds start to change.
At the last Clovis-related conference six years ago, Dennis Stanford of the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History advanced what at the time was almost heresy. Soon, he and a colleague will publish a book about their theory that Clovis point technology is derived from that of the Solutrean culture in what is now Spain. Following seals as the climate warmed, people moved north, hopscotching by boat through the Arctic and down into what is now the U.S. Southeast. They spread westward, not the other way around.
Euro-centric prejudice? No. Stanford does not believe Clovis people were first in the Americas. By the time they arrived in the West, they probably ran into other groups, whose people came in other ways, such as over the Bering land bridge. Or maybe by boat along the coasts of Asia and Canada. (That might explain why Clovis sites, plentiful in the East, are rare in the Northwest and Canada — one is near East Wenatchee.)
A couple of serious catches with Stanford's theory — the 4,000-year gap between Solutrean culture's disappearance and Clovis' appearance. And where are the boats?
Stanford believes the evidence to resolve both questions is underwater. The prehistoric Atlantic coastline was possibly hundreds of miles farther east. People made it across the sea to Australia 50,000 years ago. Others traveled over water 30,000 years ago to retrieve pieces of obsidian from Kozushima Island, 95 miles south of Tokyo. How did early people do it?
In opening the conference, the University of Texas' Michael Collins suggested that the notion early people could not have built seaworthy vessels is akin to "primal racism."
Hoo, boy. That's an allegation that will be resolved only by a lot more groping in the dark — and possibly underwater.
Many other paleo and pre-paleo skeletons have been found - end even destroyed - because they blew the "common beliefs" out of the water.
Real scientists have had their careers ruined because they made finds that disprove what we know as "fact" regarding the ancient history on North America.
By Steve Connor Science Editor
03 December 2002
Scientists in Britain have identified the oldest skeleton ever found on the American continent in a discovery that raises fresh questions about the accepted theory of how the first people arrived in the New World. The skeleton's perfectly preserved skull belonged to a 26-year-old woman who died during the last ice age on the edge of a giant prehistoric lake which once formed around an area now occupied by the sprawling suburbs of Mexico City.
Scientists from Liverpool's John Moores University and Oxford's Research Laboratory of Archaeology have dated the skull to about 13,000 years old, making it 2,000 years older than the previous record for the continent's oldest human remains. However, the most intriguing aspect of the skull is that it is long and narrow and typically Caucasian in appearance, like the heads of white, western Europeans today. Modern-day native Americans, however, have short, wide skulls that are typical of their Mongoloid ancestors who are known to have crossed into America from Asia on an ice-age land bridge that had formed across the Bering Strait.
The extreme age of Peñon woman suggests two scenarios. Either there was a much earlier migration of Caucasian-like people with long, narrow skulls across the Bering Strait and that these people were later replaced by a subsequent migration of Mongoloid people. Alternatively, and more controversially, a group of Stone Age people from Europe made the perilous sea journey across the Atlantic Ocean many thousands of years before Columbus or the Vikings.
Silvia Gonzalez, a Mexican-born archaeologist working at John Moores University and the leader of the research team, accepted yesterday that her discovery lends weight to the highly contentious idea that the first Americans may have actually been Europeans. "At the moment it points to that as being likely. They were definitely not Mongoloid in appearance. They were from somewhere else. As to whether they were European, at this point in time we cannot say 'no'," Dr. Gonzalez said.
The skull and the almost-complete skeleton of Peñon woman was actually unearthed in 1959 and was thought to be no older than about 5,000 years. It formed part of a collection of 27 early humans in the National Museum of Anthropology in Mexico City that had not been accurately dated using the most modern techniques.
"The museum knew that the remains were of significant historical value but they hadn't been scientifically dated," Dr Gonzalez said. "I decided to analyse small bone samples from five skeletons using the latest carbon dating techniques. I think everyone was amazed at how old they were," she said.
Robert Hedges, the director of Oxford's Radiocarbon Accelerator Unit, who also dated the age of the Turin shroud, carried out the radiocarbon analysis, which is accurate to within 50 years.
"We are absolutely, 100 per cent sure that this is the date," Dr. Gonzalez said. The study has been peer-reviewed and accepted for publication next year in the journal Human Evolution.
At 13,000 years old, Peñon woman would have lived at a time when there was a vast, shallow lake in the Basin of Mexico, a naturally enclosed high plain around today's Mexico City, which would have been cooler and much wetter than it is today. Huge mammals would have roamed the region's grasslands, such as the world's largest mammoths with 12-foot tusks, bear-sized giant sloths, armadillos as big as a car and fearsome carnivores such as the sabre-toothed tiger and great black bear. The bones of Peñon woman, named after the "little heel" of land that would have jutted into the ancient lake, were well developed and healthy, showing no signs of malnutrition. Dr Gonzalez found that the two oldest skulls analysed were both dolichocephalic, meaning that they were long and narrow-headed. The younger ones were short and broad * brachycephalic * which are typical of today's native Americans and their Mongoloid ancestors from Asia.
The findings have a resonance with the skull and skeleton of Kennewick man, who was unearthed in 1996 in the Columbia River at the town of Kennewick in Washington state. The skull, estimated to be 8,400 years old, is also long and narrow and typically Caucasian.
James Chatters, one of the first anthropologists to study Kennewick man before it had been properly dated, even thought that the man may have been a European trapper who had met a sudden death sometime in the early 19th century. Kennewick man became the most controversial figure in American anthropology when native tribes living in the region claimed that, as an ancestor, his remains should be returned to them under a 1990 law that gave special protection to the graves and remains of indigenous Americans. The debate intensified after some anthropologists suggested that.
Kennewick man was Caucasian in origin and could not therefore be a direct ancestor of the native Americans living in the Kennewick area today. Dr Gonzalez said that the identification of Peñon woman as the oldest known inhabitant of the American continent throws fresh light on the controversy over who actually owns the ancient remains of long-dead Americans.
"My research could have implications for the ancient burial rights of North American Indians because it's quite possible that dolichocephalic man existed in North America well before the native Indians," she said. But even more controversial is the suggestion that Peñon woman could be a descendant of Stone Age Europeans who had crossed the ice-fringed Atlantic some 15,000 or 20,000 years ago.
This theory first surfaced when archaeologists found flint blades and spear points in America that bore a remarkable similarity to those fashioned by the Solutrean people of south-western France who lived about 20,000 years ago, when the ice age was at its most extreme. The Solutreans were the technologists of their day, inventing such things as the eyed needle and the heat treatment of flint to make it easier to flake into tools. They also built boats and fished.
Bruce Bradley, an American archaeologist and an expert in flint technology, believes that the Solutrean method of fashioning flints into two-sided blades matches perfectly the Stone Age flint blades found at some sites in American. One of these is the 11,500-year-old flint spear point found in 1933 at Clovis, New Mexico. Dr Bradley said that the flint blades that came into America with the early Asian migrants were totally different in concept and mode of manufacture. Both the Clovis point and the Solutrean flints shared features that could only mean a shared origin, according to Dr. Bradley. Studies of the DNA of native Americans clearly indicated a link with modern-day Asians, supporting the idea of a mass migration across the Bering land bridge. But one DNA study also pointed to at least some shared features with Europeans that could only have derived from a relatively recent common ancestor who lived perhaps 15,000 years ago, the time of the Solutreans.
Not every specialist, however, is convinced of the apparently mounting evidence of an early European migration. "I personally haven't found it very convincing," Professor Chris Stringer, the head of human origins at the Natural History Museum in London, said. "For a start, there are lots of examples in archaeology where various artefacts from different parts of the world can end up looking similar even though they have different origins," he said. "Most humans in the world at that time were long headed and it doesn't surprise me that Peñon woman at 13,000 years old is also long headed."
Nevertheless, the remarkable age of the young Paleolithic woman who died by an ancient lake in Mexico some 13,000 years ago has once again stirred the controversy over the most extraordinary migration in human history.
Buhl Woman is just one example and Spirit Cave Man, the oldest mummy, 9,400 year old, ever discovered in the Americas can't be studied, he looks like Kennewick Man.
Are you aware that John McCain has introduced a bill that would just give all human remains to the Indians without question?
Another Route to the New World
With all this in mind, let us take a look at the American Indian traditions -- do any of the tribes trace their ancestry back across the Bering Sea to Siberia? And can we trace their origins further west than Siberia?
Long before great cities of steel and glass arose above the landscape of the Eastern Seaboard of the United States, this area was the home to another nation -- an almost forgotten nation with its own traditions, history and past heroes. With the arrival of the Europeans this nation was shattered and swept away to become mute entries in encyclopedias and works of history of the white man. But all was not lost. It left behind -- in ancient pictographs -- a record of its history to give us a last glimpse of Ancient America. This account is called the WALLAM OLUM (the RED RECORD), and the people who recorded it are the LENNI LENAPE -- later named the "DELAWARE INDIANS."
In The Red Record: The Oldest Native North American History, translated and annotated by David McCutchen, we read --
The aboriginal source of the RED RECORD, the Lenni Lenape, or "ORIGINAL PEOPLE," were widely known and respected among the Indian tribes. With a deep knowledge of their past and a tradition of PICTOGRAPHIC RECORDS, the Lenni Lenape were uniquely qualified to write this chronicle of ancient heroes and events. -- Avery Publishing Group Inc., Garden City Park, N.Y. 1993. P. 4.
Anthropologist Werner Muller (Pre-Columbian American Religions) adds --
In the long chain of tribes along the East Coast, one ethnic group stands out, not only in the European written sources but also in the judgment of the Indians themselves. This remarkable group was the DELAWARE, called in their own language the LENNI LENAPE. They had a special status in the eyes of many other Indian peoples: they were reverenced as the 'grandfathers,' representatives, after a fashion, of authority and legality. -- P. 162.
The Wallam Olum (the Red Record) is the record of the Delaware Indians' ancient history -- told in the form of an epic song. "Recorded in pictures and words, the saga tells of the rise to glory of the Lenni Lenape and their great Lenape family, also called the ALGONQUIANS, the most populous and widespread Native American language group in ancient North America. The Delawares today firmly believe that this is the record of their past" (The Red Record: The Oldest Native North American History. P. 4).
The Algonquian people, comprised of several hundred tribes, occupied most of the Canadian region lying to the south of Hudson Bay between the Rocky Mountains and the Atlantic Ocean. Also, they occupied that section of what is now the United States extending northward from North Carolina and Tennessee. In addition, Algonquian tribes lived in various isolated areas to the south and west -- including parts of what are now South Carolina, Iowa, Wyoming and Montana.
The best known of the Algonquian tribes include the Algonquian (from which the stock takes its name), Amalecite, Blackfoot, Cheyenne, Conoy, Cree, Delaware, Fox, Gros Ventre, Kickapoo, Massachuset, Miami, Micmac, Mohegan, Mohican, Montagnais, Musi, Narraganset, Naskapi, Nipmuc, Ojibway, Ottawa, Pequot, Potawatomi, Sac, Shawnee, Tete de Boule and Wampanoag.
The Encyclopedia Britannica (1943 edition) relates that this stock "is one of the great stocks of native North America, perhaps the largest on the continent in point of area occupied, extending around latitude 55 degrees continuously from the Atlantic Ocean to the Rocky Mountains, and to the south less regularly as far as Cape Hatteras and the Ohio river. This is essentially the natural region of northern woodland, whose coniferous forests the Algonkin tribes occupied almost exclusively and the deciduous ones largely" (Vol. 1, p.622).
The encyclopedia goes on to note --
In general the southern Algonkin tribes farmed, the northern ones were non-agricultural. Three divisions drifted into the northern Plains and became nomadic bison hunters: the Arapaho and Gros Ventre, the Blackfeet and the Cheyenne. The speech of the first two is highly specialized, indicating their separation for a long time; the Cheyenne are later comers in the Plains. In recent generations some of the Cree and Ojibway have begun to take on the Plains type of customs. -- Vol. 1, p.622.
Cyclone Covey, in his article Algonquins, Egyptians, and Uto-Aztecs, informs us that when the Algonquin ancestors wended their way to the Great Lakes forests, some groups descended into the St. Lawrence Valley, while one group in particular extended up to North Labrador and down to New Jersey.
In recent years anthropologists have come to realize that the speech of the Beothuk Indians of Newfoundland, the Kootenay of British Columbia and the Wiyot and Yurok of the Californian coast is a remote branch of Algonquin.
By the time the Europeans arrived in North America, the Delaware may have numbered as many as 20,000, but several wars and at least 14 separate epidemics reduced their population to around 4,000 by the year 1700 -- the worst drops occurring between 1655 and 1670. Since the Delaware afterwards absorbed peoples from several other Algonquian-speaking tribes, this figure remained fairly constant until 1775. By 1845 it had fallen to a combined total of about 2,000 Delaware AND Munsee in both the United States and Canada. The 1910 census came up with roughly the same number; but the current Delaware population has recovered to about 16,000 -- most of them living in Oklahoma. Nearly 10,000 Delaware are in eastern Oklahoma and, until quite recently, were considered part of the Cherokee Nation.
"Delaware" is not a Native American name. The Delaware called themselves Lenape, translated either as "original people" or "true men." The Swedish form was Renape -- showing a link to the Scandinavian countries. For many Algonquian (as in other groups), the Lenni Lenape were the "grandfathers," a term of great respect stemming from the widespread belief that the Lenape were the original tribe of all Algonquian-speaking peoples; and this often gave the Lenape the authority to settle disputes between rival tribes.
A common tradition shared by most Algonquian maintains that the Lenape, Nanticoke and Powhatan were, at some point in the past, a single tribe which lived in the Lenape homeland. Linguistic evidence and migration patterns tend to support this -- leaving only the question of "when."
Occupying the area between northern Delaware and New York, the Lenape were not really a single tribe in 1600 but a set of independent villages and bands. There was no central political authority, and Lenape sachems (chiefs), at best, controlled only a few villages usually located along the same stream. The three traditional Lenape divisions (Munsee, Unami and Unalactigo) were based on differences in dialect and location. However, there was a common sense of being "Lenape" from a shared system of three MATRILINEAL clans which cut across their village and band organizations. Among the Unami and Unalactigo, the Turtle clan ranked first, followed by the Wolf and Turkey. The Munsee apparently only had Wolf and Turkey.
Despite the European insistence that they were one, the Lenape were not a unified tribe until after they had moved to Ohio in the 1740s. Even then their tribal organization followed the pattern of their traditional clans. The tribal council was composed of three sachems, one each from the Turtle, Wolf and Turkey clans with the "head chief" almost always being a member of the Turtle clan. These were hereditary positions from selected families but still required election for confirmation. War chiefs, however, were chosen on the basis of proven ability.
Crossing the Sea
The RED RECORD begins its narrative with the Lenape accounts of Creation and of the great flood of Genesis 7. It continues with the crossing of the Lenape people FROM SIBERIA INTO THE NEW WORLD, and of their encounters with the people who were already inhabiting the North American continent. It includes a TIME SCALE covering more than a THOUSAND YEARS, and an ACCURATE RECORD of their travel over THOUSANDS OF MILES from the cold wastes of Arctic Siberia to the Eastern Seaboard of the U.S.
"The compressed, evocative nature of the words of the Red Record," writes translator David McCutchen, "is consistent with descriptions of the Lenape language. William Penn, for example, called the language 'lofty, yet narrow, but LIKE THE HEBREW; in signification full, like short-hand in writing; one word serveth the place of three, and the rest are supplied by the Understanding of the Hearer...And I must say, that I know not a Language spoken in Europe, that hath words of more sweetness or greatness, in Accent and Emphasis, than theirs'" (The Red Record, p.16).
To retrace the migration of the Lenni Lenape to the New World, we must project ourselves into the remote wilderness of Siberia, and into the most distant historical past revealed in the Red Record. The eastern part of Siberia is vast -- as large as the continental United States. To the north, the cold, dry tundra of the NORTH SLOPE extends eastward in a long peninsula of barren mountains leading to the Bering Strait. In the center are the evergreen taiga forests, situated beyond low ranges of windswept mountains. These vast forests are watered by the great LENA RIVER -- a river longer than the Mississippi.
To the west, Siberia extends all the way to the Ural Mountains, and for about a third of its area -- from the Urals to some distance beyond the Yenisey River -- is a great plain with few sharp elevations. Sloping generally downwards, from south to north in the west part of this area, are large tracts of swamp punctuated with thousands of small lakes.
The shore of the Arctic Ocean is low and flat. Almost the entire north section of Siberia, extending from the Arctic Ocean south for almost 250 miles, is TUNDRA -- treeless and marshy plains that are perpetually frozen to great depths. The tundra surface thaws sufficiently in summer to permit short-lived vegetation (such as perennial mosses, lichens, and stunted shrubs) to grow, providing support for the migrating REINDEER HERDS.
The evidence in the words and symbols of the Red Record clearly show how, from the cold mountains of their first home, the LENAPE HUNTERS FOLLOWED THE HERDS OF REINDEER and the rivers northward -- spreading into the snowy TUNDRA of the NORTH SLOPE. When their enemies (the Snake people) fled eastward across the rugged and barren wastelands, THE LENAPE PURSUED THEM UNTIL THEY REACHED EASTERN SIBERIA. Hard-working and ingenious, the Lenapi prospered, living off the herds in the plains of Eastern Siberia.
Notes David McCutchen: "The traditions of the Lenni Lenape, as recorded by Heckewelder in a later time when they were known as the Delaware Indians, state that their ancestors came out of a LAND OF ICE AND SNOW in the FAR NORTHWEST of the continent. Other traditions of their closest relatives -- the NANTICOKES, the SHAWNEE, and the MOHICANS -- give even more detail, including what may be descriptions of THE ACTUAL CROSSING OF THE BERING STRAIT itself" (Ibid., p. 38).
A Shawnee legend describing an exploration of the New World was recorded from an oral story related by an old Shawnee at Piqua in Ohio in 1823. It describes in great detail AN ANCIENT ARCTIC HOME, and how and why their ancestors crossed the ocean -- which in the legend is called the GREAT SALT LAKE. "...At some indefinitely remote past, they had arrived at the main land after CROSSING A WIDE WATER. Their ancestors succeeded in this by...walk[ing] over the water as if it had been land."
The symbols and words found in the Red Record clearly show that this crossing was accomplished on a BRIDGE OF ICE; and this event is echoed by a NANTICOKE legend put down in writing in 1767 by the missionary Charles Beatty --
They came to a GREAT WATER. One of the Indians that went before them tried the depth of it by a long pole or reed, which he had in his hand, and found it too deep for them to wade. Upon their being nonplused, and not knowing how to get over it, their God made a BRIDGE over the water in one night, and the next morning, after they were all over, God took away the bridge. -- Journal, p. 21.
The MOHICANS, also closely related to the Lenni Lenape, recalled this event. According to Dr. Daniel G. Brinton, in his Lenape and Their Legends, "the Mohican's description reflects the strong currents characteristic of the BERING STRAIT, as well as its abundant marine life, with great numbers of whales migrating between the Arctic Ocean and the Pacific Ocean" (Pp. 136-137).
Even the mighty CHEYENNE, a LENAPE TRIBE of the great plains, have a tradition of this crossing. In an extraordinary narrative they recall:
...having lived in a land that was perpetually covered with ice and snow. Trying to escape the continual rule of Hoimaha [the winter storm], they started EASTWARD toward the sun. After many years, they came to a NARROW NECK OF SEA at a time when the water was frozen. As the people were about halfway across the frozen water, one of the young women discovered a horn sticking out of the ice.
The horn took her fancy. Even in these difficult times of moving, the women and the children made sliding sticks from horns and managed to enjoy life a little more. The woman wanted this horn, for it was large and long, and would make a splendid sliding stick. She tried to pull the horn out of the ice, but the harder she pulled, the tighter the horn seemed to be imbedded. Finally, she called to her relatives for assistance. Some of the men came and helped her. But, like her, they were unable to pull the horn out. Then, they began to cut the horn, for they liked the girl and wanted to make her happy. As they cut deeper into the horn, blood spurted out in great gushes.
The people were frightened and grouped together on both sides of the men who had been cutting the horn. Just as they realized that the horn must be that of a monster, they felt a great tremor and knew that the monster must be struggling below the FROZEN WATER. Before anyone could move away, the ICE suddenly broke, the horn disappeared, and a great chasm appeared. Some of the people were drowned. Many of them found themselves before an ever-widening channel of water, so they had to retreat to the land from whence they had come. THOSE ON THE SIDE TOWARD THE SUN watched their friends retreat; then, saddened by the insuperable gulf between them, they took flight onward IN PURSUIT OF THE SUN and moved INTO THE EAST and THE NEW LAND. Never have these people -- the Tsi-Tsi-Tsas [Cheyenne] -- forgotten this story.-- Horn In The Ice, by Dusenberry. P. 12. Recorded in a personal interview with Rufus Wallowing, Lame Deer, Montana, 1955, who had heard it in 1951 from Frank Old Bird, age 80, of the Southern Cheyenne.
There's a lot more at stake here than politically correct BS. Think of the money!
If it is proven that what are today known as 'Native Americans' have no greater claim on the New world than those who came here post Columbus, their loses will be huge.
They will be forced to say good-bye to real estate (reservations), special Gov't. handouts, nation within nation status and casinos.
We're talking really big bucks here.
read tomorrow
"Lovelock, Nevada, is about eighty miles northeast of Reno. It was in a cave near here, in 1911, that guano miners found mummies, bones, and artifacts buried under four feet of bat excrement. The desiccated bodies belonged to a very tall people - with red hair."
"This is not the physical profile of your typical American Indian, to put it mildly. And in fact, the local Paiutes had legends about these towering troublemakers, whom they called the "Si-Te-Cah." According to them the redheads were a warlike people, and a number of the Indian tribes joined together in a long war against them. Eventually, the Paiutes and their allies forced the Si-Te-Cah back to their home acres, near Mount Shasta in our own California."
Very interesting, thank you.
When I read the part about the monster's horn protruding from the ice, my mind went to narwhale.
Professor Stephen Oppenheimer has done DNA studies that show that 25% of the Ojibway Indians carry the X-gene. The X-gene occurs only in the American Indians and some Europeans.
Shouldn't that be Haplogroup?
Brief Communication: Haplogroup X Confirmed in Prehistoric North America
Ripan S. Malhi and David Glenn Smith
American Journal of Physical Anthropology 119:84–86, 2002
ABSTRACT
Haplogroup X represents approximately 3% of all modern Native North American mitochondrial lineages. Using RFLP and hypervariable segment I (HVSI) sequence analyses, we identified a prehistoric individual radiocarbon dated to 1,340 ± 40 years BP that is a member of haplogroup X, found near the Columbia River in Vantage, Washington. The presence of haplogroup X in prehistoric North America, along with recent findings of haplogroup X in southern Siberians, confirms the hypoth- esis that haplogroup X is a founding lineage.
See also http://www.humpath.com/article.php3?id_article=1651
Yes. The pop media uses 'X-gene'.
Remember, you're the professional here. I'm a retired chip-maker.
Haplogroup X represents a minor founding lineage in Native Americans
Approximately 97% of Native American mtDNAs belong to one of four major founding mtDNA lineages, designated A to D (Haplogroup A, Haplogroup B, Haplogroup C, Haplogroup D).
Unlike haplogroups A-D (Haplogroup A, Haplogroup B, Haplogroup C, Haplogroup D), Haplogroup X is also found at low frequencies in modern European populations.
There is a consensus haplogroup X motif that characterizes our European and Native American samples.
Among Native Americans, haplogroup X appears to be essentially restricted to northern Amerindian groups, including the Ojibwa, the Nuu-Chah-Nulth, the Sioux, and the Yakima, although we also observed this haplogroup in the Na-Dene-speaking Navajo. (#9837837#)
European and Native American haplogroup X mtDNAs, although distinct, nevertheless are distantly related to each other. (#9837837#)
Time estimates for the arrival of X in North America are 12,000-36,000 years ago, depending on the number of assumed founders, thus supporting the conclusion that the peoples harboring haplogroup X were among the original founders of Native American populations. (#9837837#)
To date, haplogroup X has not been unambiguously identified in Asia, raising the possibility that some Native American founders were of Caucasian ancestry. (#9837837#)
I had not realized that Haplogroup X had been found in southern Siberia prior to finding this abstract. I sure it will be fascinating to find out how it got there!
Some of these folks out of UC Davis are doing some very interesting research into migrations! Wish I knew more about it.
Here is the Caucasian linage: (haplogroup x)
Caucasia. A large region between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea on the border between Eastern Europe and Asia. It is traversed by the Caucasus Mountains, from which it derives its name. In the north, Caucasia extends to the Kuma-Manych Depression and, in the south, to the northwestern border of Turkey and northern border of Iran. The region covers an area of over 440,000 sq km and in 1959 had a population of 27 million. Its northwestern part is settled by Ukrainians.
Caucasia consists of three geographical zones: (1) the steep Caucasus Mountains, known also as the Great Caucasus Range; (2) the steppe lowlands of Subcaucasia, which lies north of the mountains and is divided by the Stavropol Upland into the Kuban Lowland and the Terek-Kuma Lowland (see Terek region); and (3) the mountains of Transcaucasia (the Little Caucasus and the Southern Caucasian or Armenian Highland), which are south of the lowlands and are separated from them by the Rion Depression and the Kura Valley. The Caucasus mountain watershed divides Caucasia into two historical-political regions: (1) Transcaucasia, with an area of 190,000 sq km (encompassing Georgia, Azerbaijan, and Armenia) and a population of 14 million; and (2) Subcaucasia or northern Caucasia, with an area of 250,000 sq km belonging to the Russian Federation (encompassing Krasnodar krai, Stavropol krai, and the republics of Kabardino-Balkaria, North Ossetia, Chechnya, Ingushetia, and Dagestan) and a population of 13 million.
The area was generally protected from even extreme glaciation for the last 50+ thousand years, and shows at least some evidence of habitation as far back as 80,000 years
Do you have any recent references in the technical journals for the distribution of Haplogroup X? This is getting interesting.
cc. Blam
Take a look (take the trip) on Oppenheimer's Journey Of Mankind and you'll see that there was a group exiled around the Meadowcroft area by the LGM. I believe this is the origins of the haplogroup X in North America.
It's my guess that the Toba eruption 74,000 years ago broke the link between the two groups with the haplogroup X.
Oppenheimer says (in one of his books) that the oldest (undisputed) mongoloid skeleton ever found is only 10,000 years old. Apparently there is a 21k year old skeleton found near Lake Baikal that they get into shouting matches over, say Mongoloid, some say no.
Thanks but, I don't know how to do pdf.
http://www.tracegenetics.com/Eshlemanetal2003.pdf.
Not long and dry at all. (Even Eshleman's dissertation at 130 pages is not long and dry. It do take some studying, though.)
According to the article, the Haplogroup X linkage would have been through Siberia, as Oppenheimer has it.
But how about those folks sailing the ice on TV last night? (There was almost 10 minutes of science in that two-hour show!) But it does not look like the latest studies are finding that linkage through mtDNA????
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