This hair sample suggests the earliest Eskimos could have come from an unlikely place. Posted on 05/31/2008 11:22:09 AM PDT by BGHater
But hair sample could have been from a wandering mercenary.
An early wave of migration into the New World and the Arctic has been identified by sequencing a genome from a frozen hair excavated in Greenland.
Archaeological evidence shows that there were two waves of migration to Greenland starting 4,500 years ago, first with the Saqqaq and then the Dorset groups, collectively known as the Paleo-Eskimos.
Later, around 1,000 years ago, came the Thule culture which led to the current native population. The relationship between these three groups has been uncertain.
Some theories hold that Paleo-Eskimos derived from the populations that also led to Native Americans, says Eske Willerslev, of the University of Copenhagen’s Centre for Ancient Genetics. Others argue that, like modern Neo-Eskimo populations, they came from Beringia, the land where the Bering Strait now exists. All in the hair
Attempting to solve this question, Willerslev and his colleagues sequenced the mitochondrial genome of a Paleo-Eskimo using frozen hair recovered from permafrost at an early Saqqaq settlement at Disko Bay in western Greenland, believed to be between 3,400 and 4,500 years old.
The sample matched with neither Native Americans nor Neo-Eskimos, the team reports in Science 1. Instead, it was a good match for a group of mitochondrial haplotypes called D2a1. These haplotypes, themselves groups of genetic variations called alleles, are used by researchers to trace the heritage of modern humans.
Different genetic codes are linked to different regions and groups. D2a1 is linked to Alaska's modern Aleutian Islanders and Siberian Yuit peoples, says Willerslev. “This means there has been migration into the New World that hadn’t been known before.”
It seems that the first migrations into what is now northern Canada and then on to Greenland may not have come from the Native Americans who were already in the Americas, nor from those who later became the Neo-Eskimos.
“What we can show by this data is that Paleo-Eskimos derive from a different group of people than other Native Americans.”
Toomas Kivisild
University of Cambridge
The discovery “clarifies the issue about the peopling of Greenland and northern Canada", says fellow author Toomas Kivisild, of the Leverhulme Centre for Human Evolutionary Studies at the University of Cambridge, UK. “What we can show by this data is that Paleo-Eskimos derive from a different group of people than other Native Americans. This is a positive and conclusive result.”
The work does not shed light on the relationship between the Saqqaq and the Dorset cultures, however. Previously studied Dorset remains have only been identified as being in haplogroup D. Whether they are D3, like some of the Neo-Eskimo groups, or D2a1 is yet to be established, the researchers note.
As the work is based on only a single hair sample, it might not be a true representative of the Saqqaq people. The hair might have belonged to an Aleutian sword-for-hire who tagged along with the migration for money before meeting a chilly end.
Three further hair samples from the same site exist and the researchers hope these will yield more information.
“We are still far away from getting the whole picture,” says Willerslev. “This single sample does definitely suggest migration from the Aleutians into the New World.”
* References 1. Gilbert, M. T. P. et al. Science advance online publication (29 May 2008).
This hair sample suggests the earliest Eskimos could have come from an unlikely place.
A knife found at the excavation site in Greenland.
Hair Spray ping.
Ping
Wow, what a relief!
Usually, the earliest Eskimo’s have the best alarm clocks ...
Because the cock crows only once in the winter.
The Mayan civilization emerged from a Chinese jade trading post in Honduras, necessary because China had no jade yet had a large Chinese jade industry.
Eh?
China had jade mines in Xinjiang Province,Liaoning Province, Henan Province and Shaanxi Province just to name a few. When they needed to import they imported their raw jade from Taiwan, Burma and Siberia not Honduras.
That's the official story, but the truth is that they had large sweat shops full of Guatamalans who made the jade jewelry for pennies on the clamshell of what the Siberians demanded, and then they passed it off was the real Formosan goods. This has thrown off archaeologists, because the knockoffs had the same "Gucci" stamp on the back and were of such high quality as to be undetectable.
The same thing applies to the ancient Eskimo Rolex trade.
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And you know this how? Nephrite jade from the Kunlun Mountains on the Tibetan Plateau was carved by the Chinese for over 5,000 years until another type of jade, jadeite, was imported from Burma in 1784. The distinctive Olmec "blue" jadeite from a source in Guatemala's Motagua Valley, only recently rediscovered, is unknown in Chinese jade carvings. This is the same jadeite that was used by the Mayans.
Monday, Mar. 17, 1941
The corner of Alaska nearest Siberia was probably man's first threshold to the Western Hemisphere. So for years archeologists have dug there for a clue to America's prehistoric past. Until last year, all the finds were obviously Eskimo. Then Anthropologists Froelich G. Rainey of the University of Alaska and two collaborators struck the remains of a town, of inciedible size and mysterious culture. Last week in Natural History Professor Rainey, still somewhat amazed, described this lost Arctic city.
It lies at Ipiutak on Point Hope, a bleak sandspit in the Arctic Ocean, where no trees and little grass survive endless gales at 30° below zero. But where houses lay more than 2,000 years ago, underlying refuse makes grass and moss grow greener. The scientists could easily discern traces of long avenues and hundreds of dwelling sites. A mile long, a quarter-mile wide, this ruined city was perhaps as big as any in Alaska today (biggest: Juneau, pop. 5,700).
On the Arctic coast today an Eskimo village of even 250 folk can catch scarcely enough seals, whales, caribou to live on. What these ancient Alaskans ate is all the more puzzling because they seem to have lacked such Arctic weapons as the Eskimo harpoon.
Yet they had enough leisure to make many purely artistic objects, some of no recognizable use. Their carvings are vaguely akin to Eskimo work but so sophisticated and elaborate as to indicate a relation with some centre of advanced culture — perhaps Japan or southern Siberia —certainly older than the Aztec or Mayan.
In the ancient graves the scientists found more than in the ruined houses. Some skulls contain large ivory eyeballs inlaid with jet pupils (see cut, p. 59). Birdlike ivory beaks were substituted for the corpse's nose. Who were these people? How did they manage to live? Whence did they come, whither did they go? Says Professor Rainey: "We, as archeologists, have a difficult problem to explain the Ipiutak culture."
Burial skull of the Ipiutak culture, Alaska, with artificial eyes of jade and ivory; in the American Museum of Natural History, New York City
jade and ivory...?
Many thanks! Sounds like the town only existed because of crafts and trade, and the items found sound like they came from both sides of the strait.
Well this proves it, I recognize that hair anywhere. It's obvi that they migrated from the Latin Amurkin region.
Note: this topic is from . Thanks BGHater.
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