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."

Comments

A bit more in an existing debate:

[Hartree]

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.).

Re:A bit more in an existing debate:

[damiangerous]

Seriously, scientists found evidence and are investigating, because that's their job. Science doesn't start with a conclusion and work backwards (except "creation science")

You are naive if you believe that. "Scientists" are people too, and they have their own beliefs and biases. Science is just as political a field as any other. There's no shortage of scientists who decide what they want to prove ahead of time, and there's no shortage of sound but unpoplar science "shouted down" for no other reason that it's unpopular.

A word of caution..

[InternationalCow]

to all who think that DNA sequencing is going to solve the debate:
1. The DNA had to be extracted from bone. This is difficult, the DNA may be fragmented leading to incomplete or dubious sequences.
2. One way to look at population genetics is to look at mitochondrial DNA, which is transmitted maternally. All assumptions on dating changes in that DNA depend on assumptions about mutation rates which are increasingly turning out to be incorrect.
3. Another way to do it is to look at repetitive sequences in DNA. Here, the amount of change between population groups is used as a timer for divergence. Turns out that repetitive DNA attracts mutations, again screwing up timing estimates.
Add to this a nice mixture of ethnic pride, scientific pride and plain old human thickheadedness and we have ourselves a nice new long debate that isn't going to be solved anytime soon. Still, I like the idea. It's provocative and might actually help (in the long run) to rid the debate of who was there first of unconstructive emotions.