Did first Americans come from Europe?

MSNBC ^ | 2/20/06 | By Bjorn Carey

[Pharmboy]

LOL! Can I deal blackjack?

[chesley]

IMO, nothing will change the fact that Columbus "discovered" America. The reason: he was the first to "publish". The other discoveries, including the Vikings, who got here before the Chinese, led to nothing. Except, of course, the Asiatic colonization.

[CobaltBlue]

see - you owe it all to us ! Now show a bit gratitude ... :)

Even if some people came to America from France, their genes didn't survive, which means they all died out. It wasn't their descendents who populated the Americas. :)

Don't feel bad, the same thing happened to the Vikings. They were here for a little while, and couldn't survive, so went back home.

Me, on the other hand, my own genes (A2) come from Inuit who lived from Siberia to as far east as Greenland. It's just as likely that it was the Inuit who taught the French to make those stone points, but y'all Europeans are too Eurocentric to realize that.

That's OK, we don't expect gratitude from y'all, not after 400 years of none.

[blam]

Vintage Skulls

Researcher Silvia Gonzalez examines a 13,000-year-old skull. (Liverpool John Moores University)

The oldest human remains found in the Americas were recently "discovered" in the storeroom of Mexico's National Museum of Anthropology. Found in central Mexico in 1959, the five skulls were radiocarbon dated by a team of researchers from the United Kingdom and Mexico and found to be 13,000 years old. They pre-date the Clovis culture by a couple thousand years, adding to the growing evidence against the Clovis-first model for the first peopling of the Americas.

Of additional significance is the shape of the skulls, which are described as long and narrow, very unlike those of modern Native Americans.

Joseph Powell, a physical anthropologist at the University of New Mexico, cautions that other explanations for the skull shape differences must be considered before jumping to conclusions about origins. "Natural selection or some other microevolutionary forces may play a role. People change when their diets change. This happened in China, for example. Ancient Chinese don't really look much like modern Chinese from the same area. It's a worldwide phenomena and it may be related to the changes at the end of the Ice Age."

Paleoindian specialist Kenneth Tankersley believes archaeology is only beginning to scratch the surface of the debate. "Variation in the languages and DNA of American Indians not only suggests there were multiple migrations from a number of different homelands, but they imply that the first wave of people arrived in the Americas more than 30,000 years ago. This suggests archaeologists should be looking in older geological strata."

DNA evidence might be the best way to know where the first Americans came from and how or why they changed over time. The researchers have planned DNA tests, though successful extraction from remains this old is challenging.--COLLEEN P. POPSON

[Hacksaw]

The other discoveries, including the Vikings, who got here before the Chinese, led to nothing.

What about Greenland? (not considered part of North America, I know).

[PhilCollins]

This isn't news. I read, in the L.A. Times, in Oct. 1996, that, scientists, in Oregon, found an ancient skeleton. They found, from the bone structure, that it was a white man, and they found that he died before any Indians came from Asia. It was proof that Whites were in North America before Asians.

[CobaltBlue]

I'm researching the history of colonization of North America, especially around Virginia, Maryland and North Carolina.

If, indeed, the Native Americans who lived there were descended from Europeans, then it was their own brothers who killed the off.

Yes, a few tribes still survive but others were completely lost to disease and violent confrontations.

Not that the Native Americans were all fun and games. On the other hand, they were fighting for their own survival, unwilling or unable to adapt.

They certainly knew all about the Spanish, who enslaved them as free labor until they kidnapped or killed off the closest ones, the ones who were easiest to catch.

But I still think, and will continue to think until proven wrong, that any Europeans who came to the Americas either died off or their DNA was so diluted that it will never be found.

[CobaltBlue]

Forgot to mention, although perhaps you know, the soil in Eastern VA is so acidic that bones are dissolved in less than 3 hundred years. Unless a body was preserved in a cave, or similar, unlikely archaeogists will ever be able to test skeletal DNA.

And how would one know whether a living person's European DNA came from archaic contact or recent contact?

[fso301]

Remind me, why did the glaciers begin receding beween 17,000 and 13,000 years ago?

Because that was around the time when what became known as White Europeans completed the genocide of the peaceful indigenous tribes inhabiting the vast forests of Southern Eurasia. Ever warlike in nature, these proto-Caucasians felled the forests for wood to fuel their wasteful lifestyles. In so doing, they created the first cycle of global warming.

[fso301]

Don't feel bad, the same thing happened to the Vikings. They were here for a little while, and couldn't survive, so went back home.

Actually, a mini-ice age finished off the Viking colonies in Greenland.

[CobaltBlue]

In theory, Beringia actually was a "land bridge" because massive glaciers (which are made of ice) cause sea levels to drop.

But you're right, the Aboriginal Americans could have travelled by boat as well as by foot, just as the people living there now do.

[ozzymandus]

Grandma and Grandpa came from Europe, and they were the first Americans in my family. Does that count?

[CobaltBlue]

BTW, according to this Yukon museum about Beringia (link), Beringia never was glaciated because the climate was too dry.

I dunno, myself.

[Sam Cree]

*

[blam]

The oldest Mongoloid skeleton ever found is only 10,000 years old.(Stephen Oppenheimer) All the skeletons found in the Americas older than 6,000 years old are non-Mongoloid and I think the jury is still out on exactly who they were/are. I expect they'll be found to be Ainu/Jomon (who look more similar to Caucasian than Mongoloids) and I'm beginning to think may have produced both the Caucasians and Mongoloids.

I'm aware of the effects of soil Ph on skeletons. The soil in this area is so acidic that Civil War skeletons are completely gone.

There is a halpogroup (The 'X' gene) that is common to Europeans and American Indians and the Indians in the northeast (Ojibawa(sp))have the highest % of this 'X-gene'.

[blam]

Kuelap - Machu Picchu Of Northern Peru (Chachapoyas - White, Blonde Haired People)

[blam]

Spirit Cave Man

9,400 (Red-Haired) Spirit Cave Man (Found in a cave in Nevada)

[CobaltBlue]

You'll probably like this map link to site. As you can see, it has Haplogroups A, C and D coming from Siberia to Alaska and Yukon, while it has B coming from Korea and Japa to southwestern Pacific coast of North America.

As for me, all I know is that A2 is found mostly among Inuit from Siberia to Greenland, so I know how my mom's people got here.

[CobaltBlue]

Spirit Man looks very Native American to me. Not Asian, not European. The fact that he had red hair now doesn't mean he was born a red head. It could have been bleached by sun, salt, or heat.

The earliest known mummy, from Egypt, in the British Museum, is nicknamed "Ginger" because of his red hair.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mummy

In dark hair, which contains both melanin and carotene, the melanin bleaches out faster than the carotene. I know this from many failed attempts to lighten my own dark hair.

[blam]

Thanks. Take this trip:

Journey Of Mankind