Slashdot Mirror
DNA Reveals History of Vanished "Paleo-Eskimos"
An anonymous reader writes The earliest people in the North American Arctic remained isolated from others in the region for over 4,000 years before vanishing around 700 years ago, new analysis shows. The study also reveals that today's Inuit and Native Americans of the Arctic are genetically distinct from the region's first settlers. "A single founding population settled, and endured the harsh environmental conditions of the Arctic, for almost 5,000 years — during which time the culture and lifestyle changed enough to be represented as distinct cultural units," explained Dr Maanasa Raghavan, first author of the new paper.
probably a gated community, too.
Native Native Americans wiped out by Native Americans. This will be a fine discussion...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
4000 years ago isn't that ancient. The clovis people were around in the americas 12,000 years ago
Although it isn't widely taught about in North American schools and even colleges due to it being a politically sensitive topic, anyone who looks into the matter in more depth is sure to learn about the Clovis culture that existed in North America prior to the arrival of the ancestors of what are today called "Native Americans".
It's likely that the ancestors of today's "Natives" may have helped contribute to the elimination of the Clovis people.
So it is in fact quite hypocritical of today's "Natives" to complain about the actions of Europeans centuries ago, when they themselves very likely engaged in the same sort of behavior when they arrived some time earlier.
~80% of current Native Americans are direct decedents of Clovis people.
http://www.npr.org/2014/02/13/...
http://news.ku.dk/all_news/201...
SJWs are the new boogeyman. -Me
Ah, yes! The "Both Sides Do It" argument comes to archaeological discussion.
Ergo, none of the existing western hemisphere indians or eskimos are aboriginal or first nation or descendants of anyone who was aboriginal or first nation. Some of them may be native or indigenous, but then I'm native and indigenous: I live a mile from where I was born, and only a few dozen miles from where most of my parents and grandparents were born. Looks like the fraudulent rent-seeking indian industry has passed it's best-before date.
Why shouldn't it?
As a physicist, I think it's critical for all of the facts to be on the table, even if they may be deemed politically incorrect.
This is what separates real science from the so-called social sciences.
Real scientists stand for nothing less than the absolute truth, or as close as we can possibly come to it. Social scientists, and I use the term 'scientist' very lightly here, tend to only want to consider the facts that don't hurt people's feelings, or facts that don't further their political ambitions. What they engage in is not science; it's politics, if not outright propaganda.
The real scientific facts are beginning to show that the ancestors of today's Amerindian population were not as innocent as they've often been portrayed by so-called social scientists and politicians. Thus the special treatment and benefits that today's Amerindian population receive are not deserved, are without basis, and should in all fairness be taken away. They should be treated as any other Eurasian-descended individual is treated.
Not that you are a physicist or stuff.
Real ones abide by the doctrine that science doesn't take sides.
You're a fake and a rabid right wing European Invasion denier.
Go to hell.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
Since 90 percent of native americans were wiped out by european diseases this basically says that 80 percent of the original population of the americas was not resistant to euroasiatic diseases. There is a marked non-scientific warpath to discredit the solutrean hypothesis. The extremes to which modern historians go to discredit the solutrean hypothesis actually reduce the entire discipline to a pseudoscience. Please realize that there was most likely a constant low level genetic drift between the continents for the past 40 thousand years. I am fairly confident that the bronze age atlantic civilization was in sporadic contact with the new world. The massive push for colonization of the new world / pursuit of new paths of commerce to asia brought about by the fall of constantinople and monopolization of the east west trade coupled with the resurgence of written history in europe in no way sheds doubt on the ability of ancient mariners to traverse the globe.
A non-violent mass die-off could suggest something along the lines of a population's first exposure to a new disease (as in one nobody in the population has any immunity for) of some sort, perhaps several. Slightly more modern examples include native american populations that essentially disappeared during the early days of European exploration and settlement of north america.
-- That grumpy BSD guy - http://bsdly.blogspot.com/
I live around three or four major reservations and have visited others. Poverty among the people governed by the Bureau of Indian Affairs is far, far worse than the poverty of just about any other group, and in part it stems from the policies of the BIA.
There's a little known fact that if land granted to individuals is not worked, lived on, or otherwise improved by those individuals, being effectively unclaimed the BIA auctions it off, and anyone, not just Indians, can bid. The buyer can't necessarily open-sell that land, but given that it's rural farming or ranching land they can profit through its use, and it can be inherited. Worse, the BIA doesn't assign contiguous chunks to family groups, The father's land may be one area, the mother's another, and the childrens' bits spread out. The land not-worked eventually becomes a patchwork of non-native land among the native land in the reservation.
So, first we take away their use of their original lands so we can have them. Then we slaughter large numbers of them them and confine them to 'reservations', then we start taking away the reservations. Yeah, they're so getting special treatment and benefits...
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
There is a lot of scientific reasons to doubt the Solutrean hypothesis, and very little scientific reason to back it. For instance, the lack of DNA or linguistic similarities. As of now, it is a theory mostly supported by the Discovery channel and such.
40 thousand years of contact, with no evidence to show for it? It seems very unlikely. There's been pretty good written records in Europe for more than 2,000 years, surely if there was constant contact with the New World there would have been some kind of record. And monopolization of the East-West trade didn't cause exploring. The lack of Mongolian monopolization was the reason for the push. Pre-Roman civilization simply wasn't complex enough or sea-going enough to travel across the Atlantic.
Slashdot: providing anti-social weirdos a soapbox, since 1997.
It's likely that the ancestors of today's "Natives" may have helped contribute to the elimination of the Clovis people.
Today's natives ARE the Clovis people. Available genetic data shows that the Clovis people are the direct ancestors of roughly 80% of all living Native American populations, with the remainder having entered afterwards.
"Social scientists, and I use the term 'scientist' very lightly here, tend to only want to consider the facts that don't hurt people's feelings"
Or perhaps those things you call facts simply aren't actual facts.
80 percent of the original population of the americas was not resistant to euroasiatic diseases.
At the time they migrated to the Americas, the people in Eurasia were not resistant either. They became resistant when they started keeping herds of animals.
There is a marked non-scientific warpath to discredit the solutrean hypothesis.
The problem with the hypothesis is that "Asian" people not only replaced "Caucasian-like" people in North America, but that the same thing happened in Northeast Asia. The original aboriginal people of Northeast Asia were similar to Europeans in facial structure and hair color/texture. There are still living remnants of these populations, such as the Ainu people in Hokkaido and Sakhalin, and remains of vanished tribes, such as the Tarim Mummies. So it is more plausible that if "Caucasian-like" people lived in America 15,000 years ago, they came from Northeast Asia, not Europe, and they were wiped out (or assimilated) by the same wave of "Asians" that wiped them out in NE Asia. So, in the absence of other supporting evidence, the Solutrean Hypothesis does not pass Occam's Razor.
There is a lot of scientific reasons to doubt the Solutrean hypothesis, and very little scientific reason to back it. For instance, the lack of DNA or linguistic similarities. As of now, it is a theory mostly supported by the Discovery channel and such.
40 thousand years of contact, with no evidence to show for it? It seems very unlikely. There's been pretty good written records in Europe for more than 2,000 years, surely if there was constant contact with the New World there would have been some kind of record.
Leaving the Solutrean hypothesis aside for a minute some of these 'crazy' ideas that our ancestors were more mobile than we give them credit for have been stigmatized by the great egos in the scientific community in the past to the point where putting serious effort into investigating them was the equivalent of professional suicide. Even so sometimes, not always, but sometimes, they deserve better than to be ignored. In fact there is a written record that goes back at least a thousand years about contact between Europe and N-America:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saga_of_Erik_the_Red
These records have been well know for a long time but nevertheless until the discovery of L'Anse aux Meadows was rubbed in their faces some scientists thought accounts of Viking travel to the Americas were folk tales that should not be taken seriously. Since then Native American DNA has been found in Icelanders and that DNA is thought to be the result of pre-Columbian contact. Basically there is now genetic evidence that at least one Native American woman was brought to Iceland where she married a local man resulting in a group of living descendants:
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2010/11/101123-native-american-indian-vikings-iceland-genetic-dna-science-europe/
This is not really so surprising if you think about it. If the Vikings, who count among the greatest navigators and seafarers in history, could find America. Why is it unthinkable that some Native Americans could not have gone back with them to Europe? There is no mention of this in the Sagas or contemporary annals but does that mean it didn't happen? The DNA seems to tell a different story. Another good example is that there is a growing body of evidence that Native Americans had pre Columbian contact with Polynesians which was considered laughable not so long ago. In retrospect it seems pretty ridiculous to think that scientists once considered it obvious a people who are arguably the greatest navigators on earth and who were capable of sailing for thousands of miles over open ocean between tiny islands with primitive technology would have missed what are by far the two biggest islands in the Pacific but that's sicentists for you. In the end they are only human and it takes a change of generations for the thinking to change.
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
They were probably wiped out by cold of little ice age, just as vikings in Greenland were.
http://iceagenow.info/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/GISP-last-10000-years.png
Truthfully , the Eskimo culture is quite a bit more odd than most think. Excess female births would wind up mummified, wrapped and stuffed into the nose of a kayak for luck in the hunt. Etiquette dictated that a guest was treated to a night with the wife. I suppose that Eskimo kissing by rubbing noses is either a funny reference or a good idea, as intestine is no sooner washed than it is turned inside out to nibble the lining as a treat. And then there is blubber.... wanna smooch now? Little tongue maybe? Shit gets weird in isolated places. Shit gets weirder with a 6 month night.
If they know the DNA, they can tell if anyone living has that DNA ... does anyone living have that DNA?
Frankly there are better records that Ogam speaking Pictish/Celtic were admixture to N.American residents Pre- "discovery" by "civilized" Euros. There are findings to suggest that also the Chinese, Minoans, Africans and others came and got laid, as well. I wonder if this (sorry for the S word) study is similar to the "global warming" studies in its lack of criteria in formulating its conclusions. Like the "weathermen", "paleontologists" run the risk of having over eager charlatans ready to
publish their work and get the funding cycle rolling again.It's a bitch, but rigorously seek out all affective criteria or your picture of the subject is worth less than the funny pages. Sad, how the sciences are turning out to be no better than Religion or Politics. But, that is another rant for another day.
Until you are able to meet the Sciences with Arts and Humanities as well as the parts of science that you see as less than complete enough to be meaningful; your discoveries will continue to be misinterpreted fragments of a whole that keeps the species from truly being able to advance to the next logical level of existence.
Quit masturbating with your slide rule and go find the rest of what you lack.
Yeah, but why should anybody care, except for a few specialists in anthropology?
vikings are a thousand years apart from what was discussed and only mere few centuries way from columbus.
that's pretty far from having contact between south europe and middle america 2000 years ago.. or longer.
or that aliens did it.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
All this reminds me of the Lake Mungo skeletons in Australia.
Despite having no genetic link to modern Aborigines, these skeletons were returned to the Aborigines and are not allowed to be "studied" nor any new remains studied.
DNA showed them to be unrelated to Aborigines and more "European" looking, especially at 6'5" and slender.
It is a total travesty that we are unable to properly investigate their part in evolution.
Their existence threatened the idea of Aborigines being the "first" Australians and hence were "removed" from further research.
So... embracing the truth is 'taking sides'?
...most of my parents...
- so, ho any parent do you have? I ask out of interest ... ;-)
After all these years, did he, or did he not get satisfaction? The double negative raises doubts, these decades on.
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
The theory that travel was motivated by finding new sources of fish and game and was commercially sensitive goes a long way in explaining the lack of records of the contacts with the new world. One gets to Iceland and brings back prize catches and obviously hides information about where the game was taken. As more vessels figure out where the new gathering grounds are located more adventurous vessels reach out further trying to maintain better yields. Maps were either nonexistent or well hidden. And then we have the ship wrecked folks. Life at sea has always involved survivors being stranded on unknown shores. Chances are that people from many nations and regions were ship wrecked somewhere in the Americas from time to time. Breeding with locals was sure to follow. Then we also have the issue of records. Many races did not recognize native people as human kind. If they brought back a native to Europe they might be recorded as livestock or property rather than as persons. It is next to impossible that many hundreds of ship wrecked soul were not washed up on American shores over the centuries. Native Americans did capture and keep people as slaves and chances are it was common for ship wrecked survivors to be taken into bondage.
Wait a sec. Truth ... is a word too easily used, and too often for wrong reasons, emotional and knee-jerk reasons. Using it is intellectual equivalent of physical all-out aggressive brutality - it serves the purpose of stopping the process of argumentation and forcing ones own agenda upon others. Whenever I hear word "truth", I feel the jackbootsteps of tyranny coming, I shiver and look out for exits.
Seeking the truth, on the other hand, is something I commend, for it brings sometimes knowledge and always wisdom. Truth is precious, and very rare. Sometimes I wonder if it really exists at all, outside tautologies.
Because scientists require more than a good story, they require evidence that a good story might be waiting in the wings, and then when they get enough of this evidence together, they start to reconstruct the story.
The reason the ideas above aren't taught has little to do with ego, scientists have huge egos in the sense of wanting to strike virgin ground in the realm of knowledge. If they had access to the evidence, they'd be climbing over each other to be the first to publish. The reason it hasn't happened isn't due to personality, it's due to lack of evidence.
Also, keep in mind that any evidence isn't good evidence. It has to be evidence that differentiates one theory from another, as outstanding claims require outstanding evidence. Likewise, lack of evidence doesn't imply it didn't happen, it's just not something to be considered as we have nothing to back up our statements. Without the proof to back up statements, there would be little difference between science and some forms of science fiction.
"The study also reveals that today's Inuit and Native Americans of the Arctic are genetically distinct from the region's first settlers."
Nah. There is no genetic difference between any humans. The differences are all a social construct.
So is that about the Dorset which were finally wiped out... only 112 years ago by disease ?
Non-Linux Penguins ?
Because scientists require more than a good story, they require evidence that a good story might be waiting in the wings, and then when they get enough of this evidence together, they start to reconstruct the story.
The reason the ideas above aren't taught has little to do with ego, scientists have huge egos in the sense of wanting to strike virgin ground in the realm of knowledge. If they had access to the evidence, they'd be climbing over each other to be the first to publish. The reason it hasn't happened isn't due to personality, it's due to lack of evidence.
Also, keep in mind that any evidence isn't good evidence. It has to be evidence that differentiates one theory from another, as outstanding claims require outstanding evidence. Likewise, lack of evidence doesn't imply it didn't happen, it's just not something to be considered as we have nothing to back up our statements. Without the proof to back up statements, there would be little difference between science and some forms of science fiction.
They're not 'ideas', there is now actual DNA evidence for the presence of a Native Americans in Europe before Columbus. The same goes for Polynesians visiting America there is enough evidence to warrant further investigation. Polynesians found tiny little islands but missed two ginormous continents? Really? I'm no scientist but I do know enough about navigation to know that this suggestion is just plain stupid. It's a bit of a catch 22, if you are unwilling to investigate anything without evidence than you never find any evidence because you never investigate anything. People like you is the reason we need nutty scientists who go out on a limb. Sometimes they actually discover something that runs contrary to everything their more conservative colleagues held to be unchallengeable truths and often these colleagues are people who dominate a field, i.e. the 'great egos'. My favorite example of this is probably the supposed impossibility of there being Neanderthal DNA in modern humans. There were a number of great scientific egos who dominated the field of paleontology who ended up with egg all over their faces over that one, especially Ian Tattersall. Tattersall never went looking because there was no evidence, Svante Pääbo went and did something that was supposed to be impossible and then he actually went looking for something despite having no evidence and lo and behold he found found it.