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Earliest Americans Arrived In Waves, DNA Study Finds
NotSanguine writes "Nicholas Wade of the New York Times has written an article about a new DNA study that suggests the earliest Americans arrived in three waves, not one. 'North and South America were first populated by three waves of migrants from Siberia rather than just a single migration, say researchers who have studied the whole genomes of Native Americans in South America and Canada. Some scientists assert that the Americas were peopled in one large migration from Siberia that happened about 15,000 years ago, but the new genetic research shows that this central episode was followed by at least two smaller migrations from Siberia, one by people who became the ancestors of today's Eskimos and Aleutians and another by people speaking Na-Dene, whose descendants are confined to North America.' The study, published online (paywalled), investigated geographic, linguistic and genetic diversity in native American populations."
Kinda old news. I thought the 'single wave' theory had been abandoned decades ago, though some tribes have been lobbying to rewrite history since their mythology mandates they were the 'first' ones there, so waves conflict with doctrine.
Not as old, about 9000 years.. but it seems Caucasian people from Europe made their way to North America long, long before even the Vikings are known to have done so. Genetic material from the burials was sequenced by scientists back in the 1990s. It isn't (as far as I know) thought that any ancestors from this group of people survive today. They died out somewhere along the way.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/ancient/americas-bog-people.html
www.thescienceforum.com/history/27178-pre-columbian-american-european-contacts.html
The distant cousins of Turkish, and Turkic peoples of central Asia
The fact means that America was settled in waves pretty much blows the "Native" theory out of the water. I'll bet the first people that came over would have a bone to pick with the later waves...if they were still here that is.
if they migrated here from Siberia, they're not native Americans, are they?
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
The article itself is sort of interesting, not really surprising, but it's cool to have more multi-wave evidence. What did catch me off guard was the use of "Eskimos". I grew up learning that it's an offensive term and shouldn't be used. Saying eskimo is kind of like saying negro. It's old fashioned and inappropriate for a public conversation.
The only thing I question is they are still sticking by the Clovis dogma and insisting that the two other waves were later. Why this has always been an issue is the oldest bones found were always very far south. It seemed South America and the southern US were populated before the Clovis migration. Even Clovis itself is questionable since Asians never made that type of point the only other place they were made was Europe. They are ignoring the likelihood that there were migrations earlier that have no decendants. Just look at things like native american long houses. They are the same as Viking ones. Odds are there were multiple migrations from Europe that were wiped out. There have been skeletons found that were potentially European but the local indian groups have always fought testing. Look at another one the Mound Builders. That definitely started in the UK and it coincidentally showed up later in the Eastern US. There are simply too many coincidences related to the northeast and Europe.
Sounds more like they arrived in a corpuscular fashion, perhaps in 3 discrete groups of particles. i.e. ships traveling across an ocean and hitting the shore each with a distinct 'thud'.
In a related announcement from Ottawa, Canadian Aboriginals will henceforth be known as "First, Second and Third Nations Peoples".
The earliest immigrants arrived in waves, more recent immigrants arrived in boats...
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Animals: What the heck are those thing...OHSHI-*thump* ARRRGH! *dies from rock to head*
First Wave: Who they heck are those gu...OHSHI-*thunk* ARRGH! *dies from fire-hardened spear to the guts*
Second Wave: Who the heck are those gu...OHSHI-*THOCK!* ARRGH! *dies from Clovis point to the chest*
Third Wave: Who the heck are those gu...OHSHI-*BOOM!* ARRGH! *dies from musket ball*
Makes you wonder what the next wave for us is going to look like?
Probably something like: "What's that in the sk*FLASH! sizzle-pop*
[End Of Line]
...but they also behaved like particles.
I am sure others see the humor in this stories title.
LOL
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Did the Triumph and BMW people arrive as a single wave, or are you saying that there were actually four waves of immigration?
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
I am never ceased to be amazed at seeing Scientists make "amazing discoveries" of what should be COMMON SENSE principals.
Look -- the smaller something is, the more of it will exist, nothing ever happens all at once and no group of creatures have ever acted in a singular manner not repeated by others of their species.
So yes-- people migrate in waves of herds just like any other animal. Assuming that humans are singular and only do something once is completely fucking retarded and there was never any evidence of it. Just look at South American and North American Indians -- they are wholely different ethic groups and most certainly not from the same herd migration.
And yes -- life exists elsewhere in this solar system, maybe not intelligent, by there sure as fuck is bacteria to be found. And yes, there is intelligent life out there, but advanced life is far more rare than simple life like bacteria, and therefore harder to find -- Just as Suns are more rare than Planet -- oh, we DON'T KNOW THAT hurrrr durr, we need to find out if there are more planets than Stars -- durrrp.
Why agree these concepts so damn difficult? Why can't we take these as solid theory instead of wild and insane concepts needing to be proven? We have enough empirical evidence of their likelihood that the questions should be to disprove these things.
Assuming something in Nature is singular and non-repeating borders on the ignorance and close-mindedness of Religion.
I don't think you understand how science in general, and science publishing in particular works, really.
It's not that no one thought of it, it's that if you're going to publish it, you'd better have done your homework and have the data and analyses done to accompany your 'wouldn't it be great' or 'COMMON SENSE SUPREMACY!' point. Otherwise it's no better than alien pyramids.
http://www.nature.com/news/2009/090108/full/news.2009.7.html
Just saying...
Clovis culture is very European. Perhaps all Clovis people died out so there is no DNA evidence.
A migration from Siberia 15,000 years ago? I'm calling bullshit. If it happened, it would be in the Bible. And as if the Earth even existed 15,000 years ago!
In conclusion, Jesus.
I am never ceased to be amazed at seeing Scientists make "amazing discoveries" of what should be COMMON SENSE principals.
"Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen." Albert Einstein.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
1) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias
2) Scientists choose what to study based on guesses and hunches. They then investigate it by running experiments. Well investigated ideas with significant supporting evidence are then termed "theories". This doesn't mean everything in it is 100% correct, but that it's more or less our best guess to date. Theories are not often thrown out completely (thought it does happen), but more typically refined like tasty tasty sugar.
3) Recognize yourself from previous eras?
"Of course heavier objects fall faster than lighter ones!"
"Of course the earth is flat!"
"Of course the sun goes around the earth!"
"Of course smoking is good for you!"
etc.
At least we could hear the Harley people coming from a few continents away.
"Never let your sense of morals prevent you from doing what is right" - Salvor Hardin
Actually, there are examples of "one off" events in early human history, such as the migration out of Africa by a subset of the ancestral human population some 50,000 years ago.
According to Nicolas Wade's fascinating book "Before the Dawn" (yes, the same Nicolas Wade from TFA), all the genetic evidence points to a single band of maybe 150 people leaving the rest of the ancestral human population behind in Africa, and populating all the rest of the world. Of course, the natural question is, why didn't other waves follow them in all the millennia since then?
The answer is, in part, that the first migrants already blocked the exits. The original departure from Africa was less a migration than it was an expansion... individuals tended to live in roughly the area they were born, and it was only the ever-growing population numbers that drove the advancing wave of modern humans through Asia and Europe generation after generation. The modern humans had a strong advantage (probably language) over the archaic hominids already occupying the new lands, but the human population in Africa had no such advantage over their brethren once the first wave spread out past the Red Sea. Hence, the migration out of Africa appears to have been a one-time event of the type you so quickly derided as nonsense.
Procrastination Man strikes again!
Earliest Americans arrived in waves?
If they were the earliest, who the fuck were they waving at?
Every single thing you list in your post as "common sense" was once an amazing discovery that overturned the prevailing wisdom. Every. Single. Thing.
If "hurrr durr durrrp" sums up your attitude toward science and the people who do it, just turn your computer off, throw away all your modern conveniences, go outside, and dig in the dirt for grubs. Try living without the benefits of thousands of years of very smart people working very hard to understand how the world works. We'll be here when you come crawling back.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
Earliest Americans Arrived In Waves, DNA Study Finds
I think it would be safe to say that the Earliest Americans, arrived in the first wave. Yes?
If my comment didn't sound as good in your head as it did in mine, then I guess we all know who's to blame
I thought the summary said "earliest"? We have bones that predate that quite substantially ...
Ya where I live you can't mention this because the whole mytho thing. Very annoying science is science.
I recall reading (maybe 20-30 years ago) that blood types were significantly different between North American and South American natives. According to these maps, South and Central Americans are almost exclusively blood group O, while blood group A exists in North America, especially in arctic and subarctic regions. FYI, native Americans and East Asians often have Diego positive blood, whereas the rest of the world is exclusively Diego negative.
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
this whole situation is like rain on my wedding day.
Wait
You talkin' about feathers not dots, right? oops.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
In hist book, Before the Dawn, he describes the mutations in the parasite body louse (different from head louse) that lives of humans. From it you can build a tree of migration of human bands. You can also look at the mutations in Y chromosome. Or the mito-chondrial DNA. Or the language families and their inheritance traits.
The most significant finding is that, all these lines of evidence agree. They don't contradict each other. And they are not very broad either so the concordance is significant. Other interesting things are, we started wearing clothes 75000 years ago. Body louse can live only in clothing, it split off from head louse 75000 years ago. There was a Y chromosome Adam, last common ancestors to all living humans about 75000 years ago. There was a mitochondrial eve, last common female ancestor who lived in Africa some 130000 years ago.
I think he mentioned that dogs were domesticated in East Asia/Siberia some 20000 years ago. Did Amerindians have domesticated dogs? That would be a very interesting marker.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
He couldn't be any worse than the Muslim one.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Posting anon...
The distant cousins of Turkish, and Turkic peoples of central Asia
Can you please tell us just what you are trying to achieve here?
Racial superiority of the Turks, or something like that??
^^ This. Ever since these "Turanian Theory" Lunatics discovered the Internet, they have been all over it (youtube, forums, etc) claiming the most inane shit, that everyone with the slightest physical characteristics of the so-called "North Mongoloid" type is a descendant of Turks. Yeniseans, Mongols, Tungus, Siberians, Japanese, Ainu, Native Americas, they all magically descend from the Blue Wolf clan (as if they were some fucking magical mother race that has existed unaltered from the beginning of time.)
It gets worse when they pile up pseudo-science on top of it. It also gets funny when you see Turkic-speaking peoples of Turkey and Greater Iran calling their linguistic northern brethren (Kazakhs or Altay) ugly epithets like "mongol monkeys" (and viceversa with the later calling the former "Turkic speaking Persians/Greeks".)
Racial Theory meets Comedy Central.
... when studying anthropology -- in college and grad school -- the three wave theory seemed to already be commonly accepted. And Eskimos have been recognized as belonging to a separate wave forever (or almost so). This testing may be new and useful because it provides additional confirmation of a long-standing theory -- but it does not amount to any sort of new theory as to the population of the americas from Siberia.
Credo quia impossibilis -- Tertullian
Have the possibilities of an early European people moving east and then over Bering been ruled out? After all, Caucasians have been found everywhere from western Europe, to southern India, and Xinjiang.
It is a possibility, but it is one best confirmed with an archeological/anthropological find, not one via haplotypes. The reason for this, and using haplotype X as an example, is as follows (a pausible theory):
Some population X (called so because they carry haplotype X) at some point migrated somewhere in Asia, and from there split into several groups, of which two survived long enough for their genetic contribution to persist to the present day. One moved Westward and contributed their version of haplotype X into what would constitute the "European" gene pool. The other moved Eastward and contributed their own version of haplotype X into "some" of the Siberian immigrants that would survive and become "some" of the Paleo-Indians.
Other splinter and distinct populations from the original population X might have existed across Eurasia and the Americas, with their generic contribution nixed off the generic pool.
For all we know, haplotype X could have originated from, say, a splinter group of Australoids that went North, separated from the rest who were on their way to South Asia and eventually Australia. And the splinter group developed haplotype X (or haplotype X became extinct among the other Australoids.) The splinter group then became intermixed with some of the Eurasian population that would give birth to the the so-called "Caucasian" and "Mongoloid" populations. I'm pulling this out of my ass, but this would also be possible.
Heck, what if haplotype X is of Neanderthal or Denisovan stock. The former is almost certain to have intermixed with early Eurasians (before the Caucasian-Mongoloid split), or at least with the European/Middle Eastern precursors. The later is known (via DNA analysis) to have left a genetic heritage among the Melanesian people.
Or what if haplotype X were to come from a yet undiscovered hominid (neither Neanderthal or Denisovan)?
So the point of all this speculative soup is that we cannot ascertain a Caucasoid/European origin to haplotype X just by looking at the haplotype alone. You will need:
I for one find the Solutrean hypothesis of Ice Age people migrating from Europe into Eastern North America (by walking/kayaking their way along the North Atlantic Ice Sheet) very tantalizing. Hey, it could be feasible (if people were able to boat their way to Australia 50-60K years ago, why not this?) But it is one that needs archaeological evidence.
The way creation works always astonishes me. We have three waves, but, in six days, God created the earth and the heavens! And people! While this seems like mystery, my faith shows me how it makes perfect sense! This looks just like the Holy Trinity, you know? Where we have the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, but still one God, the Lord.
populations tend to expand as a balloon, each generation further out from the center, until it meets fence. there it changes to a bubble shape, after all who can make a square balloon, but can generate a odd shaped bubble. So the first generation had its followers, and needed more land to gather on, they moved to the next square. It's no a migration of peoples, but an expansion of peoples. One of the latest ideas is maybe applibicle, the humanoid from china, the humanoid from south america could also have been.
Next, there are many places where we have not looked, covered with permafrost, or ice now, remember it was not always so. It may have started there. and we are seeing the sign of previous expansions. how many expansions have been here?
Archaeologists who study Native American history are glad to have the genetic data but also have reservations
Since there is an increasing wealth of archeological sites that predate 15,000 years ago it seems these people must have eliminated the original native inhabitants of the americas.
The earliest Americans arrived via the land bridge -- specifically NOT via waves.
He couldn't be any worse than the Muslim one.
Yes, he can be very much worse. Especially if he has a Republican congress backing him.
In "The Ancestor's Tale" Richard Dawkins references a reconstruction based on DNA evidence involving lots of genes by Alan Templeton. Templeton named his theory "Out of Africa Again and Again". Templeton found three major migrations from Africa, followed by a major migration into Africa, and in between there were small migrations going on all the time.
-1 wackjob
...of uniform density, in a frictionless vacuum....
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Americans speak distinctive dialects.