[Blue State Insurgent]

If there where only six original women then I'm going to take a guess a say that the Indians arrived by boat rather then a supposed land mass.

More would have arrived if they came by a land bridge, IMHO.

[Coyoteman]

If there where only six original women then I'm going to take a guess a say that the Indians arrived by boat rather then a supposed land mass.

More would have arrived if they came by a land bridge, IMHO.

The land bridge still seems to have been the source for most migration. There were one or more coastal migrations, but they seem to have been small, and didn't result in much spread to the interior.

Here is a good recent article: Beringian Standstill and Spread of Native American Founders.

[muawiyah]

There are only 6 surviving lineages of mitochondrial DNA. The original group (if 5000 people were involved) probably had about 2000 females.

Or, you could have had 20,000 females, some bad luck, and only 6 lineages surviving.

Obviously all the blue-eyed blonds died out eh~!

[gleeaikin]

“There were only six original women,”

Actually, there may have been a lot more. The mitochondria are only passed from mother to daughter. My grandmothers had 5 daughters and one son on one side, and 2 sons on the other. The 5 daughters had 8 sons and one daughter. The one granddaughter had two sons. End of the line for that mitochondrial DNA. So over the millenia, a lot of women never passed on their mitochondrial DNA.