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First Americans May Have Been Australian
DarthVeda writes "There are some surprising new findings that suggest the first inhabitants of America may have come from down under rather than Siberia. The research is based off of 'distinctive' skulls that predate known Native American skulls. The researchers intend to use extracted DNA to help prove their findings."
There have been indications of this sort of thing for some time, but it's very politically contentious. Kennewick man is one example. There have been some ideas that the people in Tierra Del Fuego had different origins from other groups in South America (Indicating perhaps they were remnants of a previous group coming to the Americas that were displaced by later arrivals).
The main effect is to slow down either supporting or falsifying the ideas about earlier human groups in the western hemisphere.
It's an area where peoples sense of origin and cultural place are on the line, and that's often a very sensitive spot. This leads to a lot of questioning of motives of the scientists in doing the research (i.e. They're trying to say we were just another set of invaders), and of the native groups when they want remains turned over before study (i.e. They're trying to hinder our research.).
Furthermore, whether or not there were already weird black guys with boomerangs when the ancestors of the current Native Americans arrived is completely irrelevant to the history of european conquest of native american tribes. It was still mean, genocidal, and all those other things that W would go to war over if it happened today.
These findings don't take away from the last 500 years of history in the Americas the same way finding the Viking villages didn't take away from Columbus's idiocy (or greatness) when he stumbled onto the new world.
On a side note, I want to learn Columbus's trick. "So, you're saying that if we don't turn around, you're going to kill me and take over the ship?"
"Yes, sir"
"Look, a New World!"
Like what I said? You might like my music
A better response, however we did not do to them what they practiced upon themselves. They were defeated in battle and we allowed their culture to continue. A practice that was alien to them. Let also not forget their behavior to us during the 16th, 17th, 18th, and early 19th centuries. Vicious and brutal genocidal attacks resulting in innocent woman and children routinely tortured, enslaved, and killed. They halted our westward expansion for over a century. It was only after the demobilization after the American civil did we rolled over them. Also keep in mind that while two different cultures will have conflicts, it was the Americans that practiced tolerance of the aborigines, not the other way around. So we have large battle hardened armies and 3 ½ centuries of their endless crap. Most cultures would not tolerate such behavior for such a length of time. Just what ceremonies and remembrance do American aborigines have for all the tribes that they exterminated? American culture has incorporated many aborigine symbols and place names. Some of our national symbols are aborigine. We even used their symbols on our currency and coins though out the 19th century. Lorenz
No seriously. I'm a scientist, and it's so ruthlessly political it's not funny. The idea sounds good - look at evidence, go where it takes you - and indeed that's the idea. As such, science is apolitical. But whenever you're depending upon agencies for funding, and their biases, it's impossible to keep science clean. It's political on both the large scale (if I publish this work that happens to support this political party's platform, I never get funding from this agency propped up by the other party) and on the small scale (if I don't kiss this scientist's ass in the intro to my paper, it ain't getting published - and if I question his work, I'll never get published again). I've been bitten by both so many times I can't count.
I'm glad people who aren't scientists think it's this glorious, nearly untainted objective field, but after the experiments are done, it's as political or more than other fields. And experiments done in a vacuum (figuratively, of course) do no good. And work banished to third-tier journals because its authors have been blackballed for whatever reason might as well not exist, because it doesn't get noticed. And so much of the interesting research that does get press is due to shameless self promotion, that research gets attacked viciously, and it ends up "debunked." The study in the story suffers from some of that effect. Always beware of science released in a press conference, newspaper, or magazine before it's published in a peer-reviewed journal. Also beware of the small-minded assholes who attack groundbreaking research because they didn't come up with it first.
I hate cronyism, and it's half the reason I'm not going into academics. Of course, I'll admit if I were a social scientist, I'd have committed suicide by now. That's a field where you're expected to know the outcome before you investigate, and where any politically incorrect answers aren't even allowed.
I think in my next life I'll be an electrician or something.
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
The British had been transporting their criminals to the American colonies way before they had start to do so to Australia. It was the result of Independence that caused Britain to start using Australia.
One Man's Trash Is Another Man's Treasure.