Slashdot Mirror


Ancient DNA Reveals a Completely Unknown Population of Native Americans (sciencealert.com)

schwit1 shares the findings of a new study of 11,500-year-old bones: Sunrise girl-child ("Xach'itee'aanenh T'eede Gaay") lived some 11,500 years ago in what is now called Alaska, and her ancient DNA reveals not only the origins of Native American society, but reminds the world of a whole population of people forgotten by history millennia ago. "We didn't know this population existed," says anthropologist Ben Potter from the University of Alaska Fairbanks. "It would be difficult to overstate the importance of this newly revealed people to our understanding of how ancient populations came to inhabit the Americas." In a new study published this week, the team reports that a genetic analysis of sunrise girl-child's DNA shows she belonged to a forgotten people called the Ancient Beringians, unknown to science until now. Before now, there were only two recognized branches of early Native Americans (referred to as Northern and Southern). But when the researchers sequenced sunrise girl-child's genome -- the earliest complete genetic profile of a New World human to date -- to their surprise it matched neither.

Given the nature of this field of research -- and the scope of the new findings -- it's unlikely the new hypotheses will remain uncontested for long. But in the light of all the new evidence researchers are uncovering, it's clear the first settlers of America carried a more diverse lineage than we ever realized. "[This is] the first direct evidence of the initial founding Native American population," Potter says. "It is markedly more complex than we thought." The findings are reported in the journal Nature.

111 comments

  1. Must be my ancestors by Snotnose · · Score: 5, Funny

    Sent a DNA sample to ancestry.com for my family tree, they sent back an envelope of seeds with a note "start over".

    sigh

    1. Re:Must be my ancestors by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      It's obvious that these unknown native americans are actually ancient aliens, as some ancient alien theorists theorize...

    2. Re:Must be my ancestors by Narcocide · · Score: 1

      You deserve a +1 funny for this one.

    3. Re:Must be my ancestors by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

      Sent a DNA sample to ancestry.com for my family tree, they sent back an envelope of seeds with a note "start over". sigh

      That isn't even half as funny as real life stories of the shock many white supremacists get when they read their ancestry.com results and find out what manner of mongrel they really are. My favourite reaction so far is a guy who actually made his ancestry results public on a 'community' forum and was told that he could still be part of the movement but that he'd not be allowed to breed.

    4. Re: Must be my ancestors by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Does the ancient aliens show use stupid phrases like "forgotten to history" or "unknown to science"?

    5. Re:Must be my ancestors by Joce640k · · Score: 1

      That isn't even half as funny as real life stories of the shock many white supremacists get when they read their ancestry.com results and find out what manner of mongrel they really are.

      I also find it ironic that "Aryan" actually means "Iranian".

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

      --
      No sig today...
    6. Re: Must be my ancestors by Narcocide · · Score: 1

      You seriously have never watched it? It's great. Honestly it's even better if you don't buy into it. You're missing out.

  2. Not actually new by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    They've long known that there were at least two waves of immigration to the Americas, and long suspected there was at least a third wave before that one.

    This seems to be a solid confirmation of that third wave, but not actually a 'new' discovery.

    1. Re:Not actually new by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 3, Interesting

      This seems to be a solid confirmation of that third wave, but not actually a 'new' discovery.

      The DNA in the two girls' remains does not show up in extant native American populations, so they are more likely to represent a dead end rather than a "wave".

    2. Re:Not actually new by PopeRatzo · · Score: 3, Interesting

      So, are these what they call the Clovis or "pre-Clovis" people or are we talking way before them? We visited a Clovis site in New Mexico this summer, and they were a fascinating culture who hunted mammoths. If I remember correctly, they also died out, so are considered a "dead end".

      --
      You are welcome on my lawn.
    3. Re:Not actually new by drinkypoo · · Score: 2

      It's probably going to turn out that there were multiple parties which got here in a variety of ways. Are you seeing all the places they're finding cultivated cannabis buried with corpses around the world way before that was supposed to have gotten around? At minimum, people were migrating with the seeds, but it's also a potential indicator of trade with the new world .

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    4. Re:Not actually new by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 3, Informative

      So, are these what they call the Clovis or "pre-Clovis" people or are we talking way before them?

      It is unlikely they are Clovis. The Clovis people are genetic ancestors of Native Americans, while the girls in TFA are not. Also, the Clovis people lived in Montana and New Mexico about 13 kya, while these girls lived in Alaska 11.5 kya, so they likely arrived from Siberia after the Clovis migration.

    5. Re:Not actually new by Aighearach · · Score: 4, Interesting

      She is from a group that came to the area she was found 5-15,000 years before she lived.

      She is related to modern groups, but from before they split. She is definitely pre-Clovis from a genetic perspective. It shows that Clovis people did not likely supersede the people in Central Beringia, but developed after having migrated out.

      Also, perhaps the second wave passed through Beringia as travelers or refuges, not as conquerors, since they had large numbers but didn't displace the early wave. So not only did the "pause" happen, but the pause culture was likely very strong and outlasted the second migration, perhaps lasted until the local conditions changed. The first wave left Siberia ~10k years before they expanded down into North America from Beringia, and the second wave came through not that long after first came down. So there is overlap between all these groups.

    6. Re:Not actually new by Freischutz · · Score: 5, Interesting

      So, are these what they call the Clovis or "pre-Clovis" people or are we talking way before them? We visited a Clovis site in New Mexico this summer, and they were a fascinating culture who hunted mammoths. If I remember correctly, they also died out, so are considered a "dead end".

      Judging by the date these are a hitherto unknown group of 'Clovis' people but Clovis is more of a cultural and temporal designation than a genetic one. Clovis (oversimplifying here) is currently a label that is stuck on any group inhabiting the Americas between ~15.000-11.000 years ago and that used a particular style of cultural artefacts and (mostly) their stone tools (because stone tools and garbage piles is usually all we ever find). Thus Clovis is a cultural grouping that does not map directly to a distinct genetic population any more than all modern humans who use claw hammers, wrenches, files, soldering irons, ... etc belong to the same genetically distinct population since humans readily adopt new cultures and abandon old ones if they see an advantage in it. Walk the streets of Tokyo or Shanghai, and you won't see many people in Edo or Qing dynasty period clothes. The locals have all abandoned their traditional clothing culture for European/American style clothing culture for the most part while we here in America/Europe have supplemented much of our food culture with Oriental food culture. The majority of the early Native Americans were of Asian descent while a smaller group among them may have come from a population in Siberia with some genetic affinity to populations that settled Europe but that population has died out in Asia and was swamped by later immigration waves in Europe. If I'm understanding this correctly the early settlers of N-America split into two populations with one group staying in Beringia while the rest migrated into N-America where that group then split once again into the distinct northern and southern branches of Native-Americans. The Beringians were then later swamped or absorbed by immigration waves coming back up into Canada and Alaska from the south out of North America. What is interesting about these results is firstly that they indicate a single settlement wave that gave rise to all modern Native American populations and that the DNA seems to indicate immigration into the northern most parts of North America began over 20.000 years ago. This can either mean those people were pre-Clovis if they used that tool culture or alternatively that Clovis can be pushed back to over 20.000 years ago just like 'Ötsi' the ice mummy found in the Alps some years ago pushed back the beginning of the copper age in Europe by about a thousand years.

    7. Re:Not actually new by PolygamousRanchKid+ · · Score: 1

      The Beringians were then later swamped or absorbed by immigration waves coming back up into Canada and Alaska from the south out of North America.

      So . . . can we build a time machine, and travel back to that time and build a great big wall, to keep out the illegal immigrants?

      Then the Beringians will not get swamped and their descendants will be living next door to us, ready for some pleasant chat about hunting seals and walrus.

      --
      Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
    8. Re:Not actually new by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Not necessarily a dead end. The abstract says (my emphasis)

      Our findings
      further suggest that the far-northern North American presence of
      northern Native Americans is from a back migration that replaced
      or absorbed the initial founding population of Ancient Beringians.

      The sciencealert article has opted for "absorbed" for some reason:

      Life would not have been easy, but the population as a whole – separated from those who journeyed elsewhere in the New World – lasted thousands of years before eventually being absorbed into other Native American populations.

    9. Re: Not actually new by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      George Carlin would have had a comment on these "unknown" people.

    10. Re:Not actually new by Barsteward · · Score: 1

      " Don't forget, the U.S. is a Christian Nation" - only by force as most christian nations are some form of pagan in origin

      --
      "The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
    11. Re:Not actually new by Zocalo · · Score: 5, Interesting
      A genetic dead end is actually quite likely, statistically speaking. Any statistician could tell you that you are the decendant of *every* person who lived beyond a certain point back in time because family trees must ultimately start to have the same person in multiple branches. What's more surprising is just how quickly that happens, and (mathematically at least) how many people must have lived but who's line died out. According to Joseph Chang, a statistician at Yale, the figures are just 600 years for everyone currently alive in Europe to have a common ancestor and around 3,400 for everyone in the world. Those timescales were corroborated by geneticists Peter Ralph and Graham Coop in 2013 based on a study of genetic records. What's even less intuitive is that, according to Chang, how many people from history - like the two early North American infants - appear to have no living descendants today, per the linked article:

      Chang’s calculations get even weirder if you go back a few more centuries. A thousand years in the past, the numbers say something very clear, and a bit disorienting. One-fifth of people alive a millennium ago in Europe are the ancestors of no one alive today. Their lines of descent petered out at some point, when they or one of their progeny did not leave any of their own. Conversely, the remaining 80 percent are the ancestor of everyone living today. All lines of ancestry coalesce on every individual in the 10th century.

      If that's the case after just 1,000 years, it seems quite reasonable that many, many, more lines would have existed and died out in the preceeding 10,000 or so. Especially if you were to start factoring in the more tribal nature of communities and the increased susceptibility to famine, disease, conflict, natural disasters, and so on that results.

      --
      UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
    12. Re:Not actually new by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      No they weren't a dead end, they were the true indigenous people of North America and the racist Siberian's came over and took their lands and wiped them out, then they claimed title of "native americans". So the European migration was really just retaliation against the evils of the Siberians.

    13. Re: Not actually new by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I'm glad the Europeans came over and beat those savages down. They deserved it for their murderous crimes.

    14. Re:Not actually new by HiThere · · Score: 1

      When you say "line died out" you're using an inappropriate metaphor for the evidence. Because of meiosis in each immediate descendant a random half of the genes of each of the parents are not included. When a small population is absorbed by a larger population, this can easily, over the generations, result in all unique genes not passing through, even if they all have living descendants. (Which, admittedly, is quite unlikely...but isn't addressed by the evidence.)

      --

      I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
    15. Re:Not actually new by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      So in other words the so called native Americans killed of and systematically eliminated this 'dead end? Sounds to me alike genocide. You should know that only white people are genocidal. All other people are victims of white genocide or cultural appropriation depending on the year. You need to retake your mandatory cultural diversity antigentrification training

    16. Re:Not actually new by phantomfive · · Score: 1

      According to Joseph Chang, a statistician at Yale, the figures are just 600 years for everyone currently alive in Europe

      It's hard to know for sure, but looking at my own ancestry, which is traced to the 1500s, I find this number unlikely. People largely stayed in the same area for many many years. I understand (from the article) he used numerical analysis to make an estimate of how people mix, and I accept it's true if you go back farther (for example, 700s), but 600 years seems too short just based on empirical evidence.

      I also have serious doubts about 3,400 years for everyone in the world......some of the populations were isolated for 10s of thousands of years (Australian aborigine, for example), and 3,400 years seems too short. If he'd said most people share an ancestor from 3,400 years ago, that would pass the "smell test," but statistically there is high probability of straggling communities who are a bit isolated.

      --
      "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
    17. Re:Not actually new by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Careful, you're making a cogent scientific argument that humanity's MRCA can be estimated as even more recent than 6,000 years ago.

      I'd brace for a standard Slashdot "creationist" witch hunt.

    18. Re:Not actually new by Zocalo · · Score: 1

      That's where the geneticists come in, and this is covered in the article too. Even in *extremely* remote tribes - those in Brazil, for instance - there is genetic evidence of interbreeding with adjacent tribes, who interbreed with their adjacent tribes, and so on. Just because Tribe A has never mingled directly with true outsiders, doesn't mean their cousins in Tribe B, don't have cousins over in Tribe C that don't do so; by land for the Amazonian tribes, by sea (Polynesians, etc.) for the Aborigine. Once you start factoring in breeding by wider-ranging performers, traders, explorers, and (of course!) militaries and raiders, it starts becoming more and more likely that no one is truly isolated from everyone else for long. Obviously Chang's work is just a mathematical model and his numbers are the result of that, but it does seem to correlate very closely with genetic evidence so, while there will always be outliers, for the majority of the global population at least he's probably not all that far out of the ball park.

      --
      UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
    19. Re:Not actually new by phantomfive · · Score: 1

      I'll give you another concrete case: my parents have ancestors from similar regions in Europe, but as far back as we have records, they have no shared ancestors. What are the chances I'm an outlier? Unlikely, because of the close proximity of those two ancestor trees.

      --
      "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
    20. Re: Not actually new by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      [Citation needed]

    21. Re:Not actually new by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      "What is interesting about these results is firstly that they indicate a single settlement wave that gave rise to all modern Native American populations ..."

      Not quite?

      1) A very small proportion of Indian ancestry in Amazonia comes from the original inhabitants of South America, who were otherwise wiped out by the Indians - a group related most closely to the Andamanese. The Beringian girl isn't related to this population, which provides additional confirmation that however they made it to South America, it wasn't through Beringia.

      2) After the Indian-via-Berengia population was established in the Americas, there was a second large migration from Siberia, this of Na-Dene speakers (the Navajo, Apache, Tlingit...)

      3) A final series of Siberian migrations brought the Eskimos: Inuit, Yupik, etc, who took over Northern North America.

    22. Re:Not actually new by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Persuasion isn't force. And certainly not to the extent of Islam

  3. What a mouthful by dcollins117 · · Score: 1

    The real question is how did they know Xach'itee'aanenh T'eede Gaay was her name? The next time you bring your pet to the veterinarian give them this as your pet's name. They will look at you a little bit differently.

    1. Re:What a mouthful by Narcocide · · Score: 1

      Yea! And what's this I hear now about her saving the planet?

    2. Re:What a mouthful by swb · · Score: 1, Insightful

      The real question is how did they know Xach'itee'aanenh T'eede Gaay was her name?

      They didn't, and of course if her entire population was lost to history, it also seems unlikely that whatever language she spoke it isn't the same as the contemporary native language being used to translate her name, either.

      I'm not sure why the article chose to provide us a name in a language her people didn't speak or to give her a name in the style of a contemporary native group, either.

      My guess is that it's part of some multiculturalist agenda to elevate native cultures beyond the status of stone age semi-nomadic hunter gatherers and put them on the same footing as more advanced cultures and civilizations with written languages of their own.

    3. Re:What a mouthful by gtall · · Score: 1

      Whoosh! Please have your comedic sensors checked for faulty alignment.

    4. Re:What a mouthful by HiThere · · Score: 1

      How about because "It's a lot of work to come up with good unique names."? Nobody ever accused the British settlers of Australia of being culturally sensitive, but they still gave animals names like kangaroo and wallaby.

      --

      I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
  4. If we didn't know they existed until now by 93+Escort+Wagon · · Score: 2, Insightful

    How do we know they were called "the Ancient Beringians"?

    --
    #DeleteChrome
    1. Re:If we didn't know they existed until now by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      From the driver's license she had with her.

    2. Re:If we didn't know they existed until now by CaptQuark · · Score: 1

      If you had to create a new name for an ancient group of people living near the Bering land bridge, what else would you name them? (Unless you were also attempting humor, in which case insert courtesy smile here.)

      --

    3. Re:If we didn't know they existed until now by Aighearach · · Score: 3, Informative

      Because we suspected that they existed, and because we knew that Beringia existed. Names had been coined.

      Also, we don't know what they were called, Ancient Beringians is what they are called.

      The summary and title of course are clickbait and should be ignored. The key phrase isn't "completely unknown" but "previously unproven."

    4. Re:If we didn't know they existed until now by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      I don't believe in labeling people. :)

    5. Re:If we didn't know they existed until now by PPH · · Score: 1

      Beringian

      -ian

      So, descendant from the Armenians.

      --
      Have gnu, will travel.
    6. Re:If we didn't know they existed until now by 93+Escort+Wagon · · Score: 1

      (Unless you were also attempting humor, in which case insert courtesy smile here.)

      Yeah, I was attempting humor...

      --
      #DeleteChrome
  5. Two Tribes by mentil · · Score: 4, Funny

    two recognized branches of early Native Americans (referred to as Northern and Southern)

    North American is best American!

    --
    Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
    1. Re:Two Tribes by Kjella · · Score: 2

      North American is best American!

      Oh god, didn't you settle this in the 1860s already. Stop rubbing it in.

      --
      Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
  6. Skeleton People! by notthegeneral · · Score: 2

    This archaeological finding trumps them ALL. https://www.theonion.com/archa...

    1. Re:Skeleton People! by mapkinase · · Score: 1

      The joke is on extrapolation to millions of years ago.

      --
      I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
    2. Re:Skeleton People! by iggymanz · · Score: 1

      That's when spooky dinosaur skeletons roamed the earth; they were wiped out by an asteroid hit that killed all the hosts they were trying to haunt.

  7. not a bad coverage by mapkinase · · Score: 1

    >average coverage of approximately 17 times

    --
    I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
  8. let me guess by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    they were genocided so fast there didnt even leave a trace o dna behind?

    1. Re: let me guess by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Genocided by those currently called the 'Native Americans,' who also wiped out whole major species in the Americas, including hunting to extinction the horses on N. America without figuring out how to ride them.

    2. Re: let me guess by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Well, they already had dinosaurs to ride.

  9. This is racism by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Native American oral history states that they have always resided in the Amercias. They didn't come from somewhere else. Your science can't trump history.

    1. Re:This is racism by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Funny

      Elizabeth Warren agrees, high cheek bones and all.

    2. Re:This is racism by HiThere · · Score: 1

      That *is* a problem, but if we're going to respect any religious beliefs, there isn't a legitimate reason to refuse to respect theirs. We don't need to agree with them, though. I don't agree with any religious beliefs I know of except my own (which are experimentally derived), and I'm *not* an atheist. More nearly a heretical Jungian, with a bias as to what religion means. But not believing doesn't mean I shouldn't respect them.

      --

      I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
    3. Re:This is racism by HornWumpus · · Score: 2

      Their claim should be given the same respect that '6000 year old earth' is given. That is to say regular mocking and laughter whenever it's raised. Particularly when someone attempts to use it to end a discussion. For instance when natives attempt to end study of ancient remains by claiming that they are, by definition, 'their ancestors'.

      --
      John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
    4. Re:This is racism by phantomfive · · Score: 1

      More nearly a heretical Jungian, with a bias as to what religion means.

      What does that mean? It sounds atheistic, or like you are calling yourself a god. Serious question.

      --
      "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
    5. Re:This is racism by HiThere · · Score: 1

      I'm saying the gods are real and exist in all humans in essentially identical potential forms which are actualized in way that derive from personal experiences. The gods are direct creations of the DNA machines that underly us, but because of this they aren't adapted to the local situations that we encounter. Which is why they need to be instantiated during development...but the instantiated instance is not the real god.

      Don't think of them as "mental", or as "physical", because they exist at a lower mental layer than those concepts. If consciousness is python code, then the gods are the instructions in the python virtual machine. Not, by the way, the binary code of the python virtual machine, or the microcode of the CPU. Things we *can* be aware of are at a much higher level. We even have difficulty directly perceiving the gods, and when we do we tend to garble them, and come up with limited understanding of their more general nature.

      Note that different species have evolved different virtual machines, so mapping their thought processes onto our own will never work well as a means of understanding them.

      --

      I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
    6. Re:This is racism by RockDoctor · · Score: 1

      but if we're going to respect any religious beliefs

      Your question contains the answer : just don't respect any beliefs. If you want respect for a belief, provide some tangible evidence for it. Do a miracle! Raise a dead person. Turn whine into water. Otherwise, take the religious idea and bury it's fetid corpse under the garden hedge along with the last three cats.

      --
      Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
    7. Re:This is racism by phantomfive · · Score: 1

      Is that God, or is it just a declaration that we can't really understand the processes that govern us? More to the point, is there an afterlife in your view?

      --
      "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
  10. Facinating by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    This has intrigued me for years. Can some explain or point me to a reference that explains the following.

    It's widely believed Americas was settled by people's crossing the Bering Straights and migrating out. If that is the case then why are the seemingly more advanced/developed civilizations located in central or south America. It seems counter intuitive that the further away regions are more developed.

    1. Re:Facinating by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Maybe the smart ones got the heck out of the cold north.

    2. Re:Facinating by ve3oat · · Score: 1

      In the equatorial regions, life is easy. In the northern regions of America, life is hard. It takes all your energy and time just to survive and there is no time or incentive to invent things like bloody sacrifices, pyramids, intricate jewellery, or complex social structures. That's why the "further away" regions eventually had what are perceived as more "advanced" civilizations. The people in the north were just as "advanced"; it is just that all of their advancements were related to hunting for food and staying warm and making best use of the local environment.

    3. Re:Facinating by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      There were advanced/developed cultures in North America - look up "Mississippian Culture".

    4. Re: Facinating by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      AC here. Thank you

    5. Re: Facinating by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      AC here. I definitely get your point. However with certain areas of the west coast hospitable much like the Mediterranean it's interesting there are no major developments as found further south in the Americas. Then again maybe we just haven't found evidence yet or maybe other indigenous were unfriendly and they moved on.

      Interesting nonetheless.

    6. Re: Facinating by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Think in terms of climate/conditions that favor individual, nomadic enterprise (hunting, gathering, fishing) versus coordinated civilization (early agriculture). It's not an accident that most ancient, large civilizations that we've identified all formed in tropical and sub-tropical areas with major rivers and flood plains. This is where humans first figured out how to do some farming. You need something like crop land to anchor people to a place and make them want to figure out how to live together in larger groups, and this needs to go successfully enough to produce excess food to support people spending their time on more advanced cultural activities rather than living hand-to-mouth.

    7. Re:Facinating by HiThere · · Score: 2

      It wasn't always true. But the more southern regions could support higher population densities during much of the history, and those make developing a culture easier.

      OTOH, the Algonquin nations in the late 1600's were probably the highest civilization in the new world. Of course, partially this depends on what you consider "civilization" to mean. They didn't tend to live in dense population clusters. The Pueblo Indians did, however, before a climate change wiped them out. (Killed them? Forced them to move elsewhere? All I really know is they're gone.) But studies seem to show that crop failures were behind the fall of many civilizations, also including the Maya.

      --

      I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
    8. Re:Facinating by Quirkz · · Score: 1

      The book "1491" has some great exploration of the North American populations and their development. Boiled down to one word, I think the answer is "maize."

    9. Re:Facinating by RockDoctor · · Score: 1

      It's widely believed Americas was settled by people's crossing the Bering Straights and migrating out. If that is the case then why are the seemingly more advanced/developed civilizations located in central or south America. It seems counter intuitive that the further away regions are more developed.

      Firstly, the peopling of the Americas took place between approximately 15500 years ago and 14800 years BP (Before Present, "Present" being 1950, when absolute archaeological dating was just getting started). The Monte Verde site in Chile is quite securely dated to 14800 BP ; 15500 is an educated guess. However, this fossil is from 11500 years BP, over 3000 years later. During those 3000 years the Americas were populated to the maximal density their technologies could support.

      Sometime between 11500 BP and today several things happened - (p) the last descendent of the parents of this fossil died without issue ; (tilde) agriculture was developed based on maize ; (Prince-squiggle) squashes and potatoes were developed too ; (foo) murderous fornicators arrived on large canoes from the east ; (bar) this fossil was dug up. (Arrange p, tilde, Prince-squiggle and foo how you like; bar was the last of the sequence. Probably.)

      The development of more complex, more urbanised civilisations in central and southern America most likely reflects the calorific yields of their food crops. More calories produced per man-day means more food to support "specialists" (non-farmers) to invent and/ or build "civilisation".

      --
      Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
  11. Ancestry.com fakes results by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Those DNA-testing companies sell more con than science.

    That’s what Inside Edition discovered when they had a set of triplets send their saliva to Ancestry.com and 23andMe for DNA testing. Although the triplets all came from the same womb, they got wildly different results from both companies. The DNA test results had the triplets differing from each other by more than 10%, which is a greater difference than the 7% genetic difference between humans and monkeys, the 3.1% difference in DNA between humans and orangutans, and the 1.2% difference between humans and chimps. (See “Animals That Share Human DNA Sequences“)

    Indeed, genetics experts say the DNA-testing companies prey on gullible people by pinpointing your biological origins on a map with spurious specificity:

    Anthropologist Deborah Bolnick of the University of Texas at Austin calls “fraudulent” companies that claim DNA testing will tell you where you came from.
    Anthropologist Jonathan Marks of the University of North Carolina, Charlotte, says that instead of tracing our genetic past, what we get is a scientific scam: “It sure looks like science. Well, it is science. It’s done by scientists, and it’s done on DNA samples. And it produces real data.” But these companies simply don’t have enough comparative information to pinpoint a gene on a world map.

    Morgan not only confirms what the anthropologists say — that the DNA tests are not as accurate and precise as they are claimed to be — he also reveals other problems, such as test results being “tweaked” to conform with the customer’s expectations because “It pays to suck up to the people who pay you,” and test samples being contaminated because the customers sent their saliva mixed with other substances, such as food or saliva from another person.

    Most egregiously, Morgan also confides that his DNA testing company has faked African ancestry for customers deemed to be racists:

    “I only know of two times somebody wanted to be tested for being another ethnicity because they didn’t like that ethnicity. Both times, [they were] white people not wanting to believe they had black ancestors. []

    [W]hat we did was add ‘ That way we weren’t lying, and they [the “racist’ customers] would both be wondering how much under a percentage point was. We always try to round to the nearest number because we sometimes hear about percentage points, but for them, we leave it open to whether it’s a one or a zero. []

    [One customer] wrote to us asking what that meant, and we wrote back that it meant it was under 1 percent. And we were not saying zero. Unless they got another test, that was going to bother them. Maybe they weren’t 100 percent Caucasian [] this way it leaves it open, and they’ll always be wondering.

    1. Re:Ancestry.com fakes results by Maxo-Texas · · Score: 2

      Seemed pretty extraordinary so I thought I would validate one of those claims so I picked deborah bolnick

      She does exist
      https://liberalarts.utexas.edu...
      I couldn't find that statement by her with dna and fraudulent
      I did find an article by her on "recreational" dna testing here.
      https://anthropology.stanford....

      I think on balance this article supports the parent post's assertions. She says that recreational dna testing is real testing and real science but that there is a low coorelation between dna and race, some of the dna companies only test 1% of the dna, spurious hits for alleged american indian dna markers are found on many different continents in four other 'races'.

      She concludes...
      ---
      We must weigh the risks and benefits of
      genetic ancestry testing, and as we do so, the
      scientific community must break its silence
      and make clear the limitations and potential
      dangers. Just as the American Society of
      Human Genetics recently published a series of
      recommendations regarding direct-to-consumer
      genetic tests that make health-related
      claims (20), we encourage ASHG and other
      professional genetic and anthropological associations
      to develop policy statements regarding
      genetic ancestry testing.
      ---

      So- while I didn't validate the entire post, the lead point checks out so the rest would probably check out too. It's certainly credible that some testing companies in the field might have issues (esp the one that tests only 1% of the dna).

      A couple points tho. The technology is going to be much better at building likely (but not certainly) family trees. The police have used the technology to solve cold case crimes by locating likely relatives to the DNA associated with the cold crime.

      On the part of the medical industry- there is some corporate turf protection. They really don't want the companies that release full genetic maps to associate those with medically useful information. Many people have done so successfully however, identifying risks in time to treat them while they are still very minor.

      One argument I see against genetic testing is that it might identify a high risk you will die from something. This seems like a young person's concern to me. Most everyone I know now is planning for death and has a pretty good idea of their likely maximum life span (mine's about 78). Genetic testing (by a doctor) revealed several genetic issues I have which affected my medications. The biggest is that I can't use regular B vitamins very well. My body doesn't "folate" them properly so I have much better results from folated B vitamins. The point being that yes, unsupervised genetic testing might show a high risk and some people might commit suicide but many more will identify risks that can be mitigated.

      --
      She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
    2. Re:Ancestry.com fakes results by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      1% of the data could be all you need to answer a question. That and that article is from a decade ago. The tests and the database have changed significantly. And who tells a testing company what kind of results you want? I really doubt that part. Still, yes, when looking at the small percentages those should just be ignored.

    3. Re:Ancestry.com fakes results by Maxo-Texas · · Score: 1

      I agree, if you just want to know if a particular gene and it's in the 1%, then 1% would be fine.

      From the dna expert's post, using only 1% produces false positives with regard to race.

      --
      She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
  12. 56% Face by alternative_right · · Score: 3, Interesting

    many white supremacists get when they read their ancestry.com results and find out what manner of mongrel they really are

    Apparently it is news to people that the Irish have Semitic and North African admixture, that Slavs are a quarter Asian, and that all of Southern Europe is shot through with Mediterranean outliers.

  13. Siberian/Mongols by alternative_right · · Score: 2

    Genocided by those currently called the 'Native Americans,' who also wiped out whole major species in the Americas, including hunting to extinction the horses on N. America without figuring out how to ride them.

    The same group of violent, primitive Asians who later invaded most of the known world, only to have their rule collapse within two generations? No wonder people called them "savages."

    1. Re:Siberian/Mongols by Brett+Buck · · Score: 2

      The myth of the noble savage dies hard.

  14. I'm not saying it's Anasazi.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    ...but it's Anasazi.

    1. Re:I'm not saying it's Anasazi.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Wrong, dipshit.
      Anasazi is the name given to the precursors of the Pueblo people of New Mexico and Arizona. I know that Alaska and Anasazi start with the letter A but get a grip.

    2. Re: I'm not saying it's Anasazi.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I think he was trying to say Annunaki.

  15. The Celto-Semitic Sprachbund by tepples · · Score: 3, Informative

    Apparently it is news to people that the Irish have Semitic and North African admixture

    This is true even of their traditional languages. Irish is Indo-European, while Semitic languages are in the unrelated Afro-Asiatic family. Yet the Celtic languages of Britain and Ireland share several key grammatical features with Semitic languages. Perhaps these features were shared alongside the mixture of genes.

    1. Re:The Celto-Semitic Sprachbund by RockDoctor · · Score: 1

      Yet the Celtic languages of Britain and Ireland share several key grammatical features with Semitic languages. Perhaps these features were shared alongside the mixture of genes.

      Given the documented evidence (written, genetic, and in the details of isotopic make up of minerals like tin ore) of repeated contact between the Phonecians and the Cornubians from early in the "Bronze Age", this should surprise no one who has thought about it for a second. Therefore anyone expressing such surprise can safely be assumed to have not thought about the subject for a second. They're probably parroting something they've read or heard without understanding.

      Incidentally, everyone in between Ireland and the Levant would have had a bit of sideswipe genetic effect too. Sailors being sailors, and merchants having both valuable goods and a knowledge of what people want. That's if they didn't indulge in a bit of slave trading on the way. Buy 'em; fuck 'em on the boat; if their belly swells, sell 'em where you can get a good price (or trade for another a bed warmer) for 'em; lather, rinse, repeat.

      --
      Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
  16. Re: North American is best American! by ve3oat · · Score: 2

    Ahem. North America is Canada. The rest of you live in that place called America.

  17. Re:Finally, vindication for Fauxahontus by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Must you?

  18. Re: North American is best American! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    How about Northish America?

  19. Re: North American is best American! by c6gunner · · Score: 1

    If North America is Canada then what's North America?

  20. Re:FAKE NEWS! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Wrong mythology:

    Native tribes were created with the earth, right where they were found by the white people, living in perfect harmony with nature, numbered in hundreds of millions, enjoying medical science that has still not been matched.

  21. What they'r e going to find.... by argStyopa · · Score: 1

    What they're going to find is why the Native American organizations have VOCIFEROUSLY fought any dna testing of other paleo-samples: we're going to "discover" that the Native Americans that WE refer to as original inhabitants of the New World are in fact just the last-previous swarm of people that came, kicked the shit out of whoever was there before, and wiped them out.*

    *thus showing that they did the same (or worse) than the Caucasians did to them, deeply damaging their 'victimization' franchise and permanent worldwide sympathy vote.

    --
    -Styopa
  22. Re: North American is best American! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    If North America is Canada then what's North America?

    Canada...

  23. Mormon's "white Indians" by BenJeremy · · Score: 1

    Clearly, this is proof that Jesus came to America, saved the white indians, who were wiped out by the brown people (because all the hardships are just tests by god to see if you were worthy). Praise Xenu or whatever it is they worship.

  24. 'sunrise girl-child' by No+Longer+an+AC · · Score: 0

    Look, we're not living in some hippy commune and I don't believe they were either. How the hell do they figure out that this girl's name was "Sunrise" when the anthropologist quoted in the article says we didn't even know this culture existed?

    And yet so quickly we understand their language and the names they gave their children?

    How did they figure out her name or her first cousin's name? How do they know they were cousins? Were there written records to go by? Or perhaps these were just names given affectionately by the archaeologists digging up their bones - who never meant to suggest that those were their actual names, but just chose them out of a need to identify them other than by whatever reference number anthropologists use.

    We've all heard of Lucy", right?

    Does anyone actually think her name was "Lucy"? I do have to admit "Lucy" is much more appealing than "AL 288-1". It's easier to remember too. I just don't believe that was her real name.

    1. Re:'sunrise girl-child' by RockDoctor · · Score: 1

      How the hell do they figure out that this girl's name was "Sunrise" when

      Oh for fucks sake. Did you actually read the fucking paper? That was a name given to the body by the present-day occupants. They could just as well have called it "Joe Bloggs", "Jane Doe", or "Harley Featherstonehaugh pronounced Fish, the Twenty Third".

      No Longer an AC

      If that' the most substantial comment you can come up with, then it was a bit of a waste of effort, wasn't it?

      --
      Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
    2. Re:'sunrise girl-child' by No+Longer+an+AC · · Score: 1

      That was a name given to the body by the present-day occupants

      No shit.

      That was my point.

  25. Related pre-Clovis news by manu0601 · · Score: 1
  26. The fact is by ve3oat · · Score: 1

    Although the triplets all came from the same womb, they got wildly different results from both companies.

    The fact is, this is normal! They are siblings and siblings often share less than 25% of their DNA with each other. Each person receives half of their autosomal DNA from their mother and half from their father. But the DNA doesn't come in "halves", it comes in little bits, a bit from here and a bit from there, so siblings definitely do not get all the same DNA.

    In theory, siblings can share almost none, or almost all, of their autosomal DNA. The process is entirely random and on average, it is 25% shared (0.5 x 0.5). This is a simple problem in probability which one can't expect any journalist (let alone the average person) to understand.

    As for the marketing aspects of DNA tests, well, Ancestry's marketing techniques speak for themselves. There are, however, respectable and honest DNA testing companies out there, one's with actual research scientists on staff who work closely with the genealogical community and the International Society of Genetic Genealogy (isogg.org). Check it out. (Disclaimer -- I have been testing my own and others' DNA since 2007, though never with Ancestry. Can't recommend them at all.)

    1. Re:The fact is by rtb61 · · Score: 1

      Something that has 25% DNA different to you, is something that is no longer human, not even a little bit. It is far more likely that DNA delivered in sperm is a variation to the theme, not you specifically but nearly you and every egg is identical baring environmental DNA impact. That combination does not produce random outcomes, that makes no sense what so ever, the only logical variation is in the DNA package of sperm, sperm are likely not identical with tweaks based upon age, hormonal and environmental conditions (real quantum state stuff, where really odd things could happen), in the more background genetic impacts, not so much whether stuff is switched on or off but how much it is switched on or off, what they used to call junk DNA.

      As for the original American nations, yeah lots of information is buried basically as a result of guilt with regard to genocide, a entire history buried with it's people. A lie to hide rapacious greed, that still exists to this day, the same lies and the same rapacious greed. Maybe if Americans finally properly reconcile with the members of the original nations perhaps they will stop viciously preying upon the rest of the world but I wont be holding my breath for that one.

      --
      Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
    2. Re:The fact is by ve3oat · · Score: 1

      You are right; I misspoke.

      What I am talking about is shared patterns in the autosomal DNA, patterns formed by segments of identical strings of single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs). The longer the segments of identical patterns comparing person A with person B, the more likely they are to share a close genealogical relationship. If the pattern is broken by person A having a different SNP at some location or missing an SNP that the other person has, then the shared segment is shorter than it might have been otherwise. On average, siblings share about 25% of their total autosomal DNA. The parts that they don't share are comprised of segments (from the same parents) that were constituted differently. One got segment xyz from their father while the other got segment xyz from their mother. That is the key, what segments each sibling received from the mother or from the father. It is random.

      Nothing to do with non-human DNA. Or crimes against conquered peoples.

    3. Re:The fact is by RockDoctor · · Score: 1

      and every egg is identical

      Bzzzzt! Genetics exam failed. Go back and re-do your genetics course.

      During meiosis (chromosome reductive cell division; not regular cell division - that's mitotis), each chromosome splits into two haves, then split at number of points within each chromosome ("crossovers") . The segments between crossover points then randomly switch to one daughter chromosome copy and to another. If both alleles of a gene in a crossover segment are the same, then you'll get indistinguishable products, but otherwise one allele will go to one pair of product gametes, and the other will go into the other pair of gametes. That is essentially random. It's why we have sex. Neither eggs nor sperm are identical.

      There are 26 chromosomes, so even without crossovers there are about 67 million possible outcome eggs from one genome, even without the additional within-chromosome crossover points. Most of them will be broadly similar (because most alleles have very similar functions in either sequence), but it's what makes the difference between, for example, your immune system's behaviour and your identical twin sister's immune system.

      The same argument applies to sperm, of course. And a larger environmental effect, since egg formation takes place while the foetus is buffered by the mother's immune system, while most men go on making sperm until pretty close to death.

      not so much whether stuff is switched on or off but how much it is switched on or off, what they used to call junk DNA.

      That would never have been called junk DNA. It would have been called "regulatory DNA". Not even non-coding DAN (since it codes for a ribosome that regulates the action of other genes by binding to a locus which either prevents or promotes initiation of expression of that gene.

      I don't know what your genetics text book was, but it wasn't a very good one.

      --
      Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
  27. ancestry tests do not sequence dna by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    They use markers which attach to known sections of dna. The ancestry companies know the ancestral geographical distribution of these markers.

    The Indian child study sequenced dna and compared it to other sequences.

  28. Ancestry.com fakes results IS A FAKE POST by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The real study done by the Today Show found rather similar results among the triplets and three ancestry companies tested. This is kind of remarkable considering the tests were independently developed.
    Here is a reference https://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/national-international/Identical-Triplets-Test-DNA-Kits-Accuracy-Today-461282873.html

  29. races may evolve fairly quickly by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The preliminary analysis of Kennewick Man using skeletal dimensions, 9500 year old north american remains, could not place in any known race. It was only when DNA analysis got better on tinynsamples was KM found to be related to native americans.

  30. "markedly more complex than we thought" by fygment · · Score: 1

    Seriously? They thought they had it all worked out and then this?
    Fortunately the climate scientists are much better and _they_ have everything figured out.
    Yeah trollish. But the point is this: there is still a boatload of stuff that remains unknown. Assuming in any scientific discipline that 'we've pretty much got it all figured out' should be interpreted as a sign that they don't.

    --
    "Consensus" in science is _always_ a political construct.
  31. Re: North American is best American! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Tautology.