Could the rapid migration to the south have been to the availability of the ice age mega fauna then populating
North and South America? Large slow moving protein sources would have allowed a quick transit of any new arrivals who would have been drawn to the ever warmer and lush southern regions.
9
I think that when we finally accept the reality of Sky People that they just may have a very different story to tell us about the history of human life on this planet.
We may simply be being a bit microcosmic in our focus.
5
I don't understand why we assume that migration has to follow an arrow like route that is always moving forward to newer grounds.
Putting myself in time 10,000 years back, i'd prefer to go back to the hunting and foraging grounds that my grandfather (of that time) spoke so highly of, instead of moving to unknown lands...
4
The mystery to me is what happened to those groups here earliest of which no trace remains in subsequent DNA. The newcomers would have been following herds of animals that they hunted for food, since agriculture did not yet exist. Did the others somehow find their hunt source depleted or were they wiped out by some plague? What other fossil remains (or lack thereof) might shed some light on this?
11
The existence of the first settlers of the western hemisphere is probably the best proof the god of the the Christian bible does not.
9
See? Even the Native Americans are immigrants.
https://emcphd.wordpress.com
8
@Rev. E. M. Camarena, PhD
Dr. Camarena,
While I understand the point you are trying to make, the difference is that the first Americans did not displace people that were already here. The Europeans that came 10,000 years later were invaders - taking land that was already occupied by other humans. Immigrants are peaceful; invaders are violent. Most modern Americans are descended from invaders.
39
@RA Talca vood theory, except for the fact that each successive wave of immigrants tended to slaughter and dominate the group that was here before them
10
But wait, wasn’t the world created just six thousand years ago and weren’t the first people Adam and Eve?
11
Here we all, on the present sands of time, gather parched evidences to corroborate these findings, as most may take special liking for the cases that are fitting to our preformed conceptions - that the creationist theory may be ditched into the trash can, right? As to the "how" it all came together, opinions may differ, but as the "why" we may all flounder. For, to answer the existential questions of human existence, it may almost be impossible to preclude an intellectual essence Who carefully and purposefully weaved it all together. And, as to why it all rolled out the way it did, we may definitely have to ask Him, whom most have denied. How then do we move on from here?
1
I went to school with several women from the White Mountain Apache tribe in New Mexico. They told me they'd gone to China on an exchange and while there noticed very strong similarities between their tribe's version of the Apache language and Mandarin Chinese. I thought that was amazing that tens of thousands of years later, descendants of those crossing the land bridge could detect so many similarities between their language and the language of most Chinese people today.
55
These researches are endlessly fascinating. The reality is that the fairly meager evidence may give a misleading view on any aspect of human evolution and travel throughout the globe. Nonetheless the more effort, the more discoveries, the more interesting and enlightening.
17
Do we know the age of the people we have done DNA studies on? What was the average life expectancy at the time?
Maybe young people were looking to get away from the family, the tribe, and with a group of friends find a new world away from the constraints of society. This may explain the rapid expansion across the continent. Young adults or teenagers would have lots of energy, good health, and dare I suggest angst to keep moving on.
Are there any artifacts or ruins that predate Chavin de Huantar, from what is now Peru, in 900 B.C.E in the Western Hemisphere.?
2
@Luke Life expectancy was probably 30 back then but I'm most likely wrong
1
A comment was made asking how the newcomers would have viewed the wide open expanses. My guess would be no different than what they saw before making the crossing into North America. Would the population on the west side of the Bering Sea be so large that its absence to the east would have an impact on the newcomers? I would think not, it was all relatively unpopulated. What a time that would have been! All the seaside land you wanted and nobody to tell you otherwise - and all those wooly mammoths just asking for it.
12
I watched the Western Indian and Cowboy movie fifty some years ago as teenager. I was intrigued by the old Indian warrior portrayed in the movie with facial features almost identical to the Asian. I thought at that time the native Indian may be somehow migrated from the east.
Fast forward my belief is vindicated, bot more important is how discovery and science taught us we are really brothers and sisters belong to the same human race. I hope humanity will eventually overcome the short sighted political expediency with nativism, racism, bigotry and xenophobia .
16
“was an 11,500-year-old girl whose remains were found in eastern Alaska.”
How do we know the child identified as a girl?
6
@Mike
Rib count
14
Very interesting, it always amazes me how much more is left to be known about our origins, and how the origin stories were always so simplified. For example, the idea that one African migration seeded the world, newer evidence says that there were multiple migrations out of Africa, and species of proto humans developed in multiple places at the same time. The migration story to the new world was there was a migration from Asia that came about 10,000 years ago and was the basis for all the native tribes; now we find out there were multiple migrations and the DNA history is complex (and also, that the group that disappeared may have been wiped out by another group). Other theories, that caused outrage among native groups, was that people might have come west from Europe, skirting the ice sheets to travel to the new world, and might have come here at the same time or before the current native groups did so, with the implication they may have been wiped out by the ones who came from Asia ; DNA will likely show if this theory is true or not.
I agree totally that the remains of the ancient people should be treated with respect, and I hope that there is a way to be able to test remains respectfully, because to me the complexity of who was a 'native Ameerican" is a beautiful part of the story, plus also let's the descendents of those people know their own story.
6
@bill d "the remains of the ancient people should be treated with respect, and I hope that there is a way to be able to test remains respectfully" What does this mean in actual, physical terms? Honestly, isn't it all just physical matter, once life is gone?
12
I so love the many advances coming via science. The more we know about ourselves the better off humanity will be. The world is beginning to realize there's only one race: the human race in all its glory of sizes, shapes and colors.
The rise of organized religions several thousand years ago has worked in evil ways to balkanize humanity into tribal affiliations that have led to endless hate and warfare; us vs "those" people.
A pox on all religions and their comic book folklore explanations on the origin and working of the universe.
We can easily craft a single comprehensive code of ethics for human behavior by choosing the best examples long known and often incorporated into existing laws and moral compasses.
One humanity. One creed. One for all. All for one.
35
Enjoyed your article; thank you. When more discoveries of ancient ancestors are found and testing is done, appears the more we will all be connected.
With the recent explosion in commercial DNA testing for individuals, including myself, I was credulously optimistic that I would connect with the 400+ 1st to 4th genetic cousins I was matched with. Especially, since our common ancestor based on autosumal DNA testing would only be a few decades to a few hundred years ago. But I soon discovered very few of these cousins want to connect; anonymity, not ancestry. I guess, on a personal level, we are really connected but do not want to be that connected.
7
That's right. All this endless talk & fear & hate. About "Racial Purity" & us & them. It's so ridiculous.
We are & always have been, & will be for some time, be stuck on this tiny rock, floating through space. The hate makes no sense.
None of these studies go back far enough though. Yes, I know it is abhorrent for some to think about it (why , I have not a clue. It's silly), but if we went way way waaaay back, we find we all descended from a tiny rat like creature in Pangea most likely.
How's that for "Racial Purity" Limbaugh ? I'd love to see your tiny wheels grind up against that idea ! Ouch - does not compute ! Ha !
41
Caravans!
28
I realize that the map is meant to be general, but who came to the Eastern parts of Noth America? Did the Northern branch eventually move south?
6
So. We all had essentially the same first mom and dad. I'd be OK with that if I didn't live up here among so many nasties, ne'er-do-wells, nincompoops and and nematodes.
I simply do not want to be related to them. Not. Not. Not.
6
Fascinating article. While the Neanderthals ceased as a species about 40,000 years ago, science tells us that about 2 percent of their DNA survives in modern humans. Any indication that remnants of Neanderthal DNA crossed the bering strait into North America?
5
@Tom
I thought it was 2% of non-African humans, not all modern humans.
9
So then everyone with native American genes living south of our country and headed north isn't exactly arriving for the first time. In a sense they are returning.
93
@Billy Well, no, 'they' aren't because they aren't the same individuals. Nothing to do with them.
8
@Billy
Many of my ancestors are from a belt of land stretching from Belgium to Bohemia. If I went to any of the modern states in that region without entry papers, should they let me in because I'm "coming home"?
13
@Len Arends
Well, they should!
7
Absolutely fascinating. Thank you.
I read "She Has Her Mother's Laugh" and have started "A Brief History of Everyone Who Ever Lived".
Any good suggestions for things to read regarding human prehistory and genetic research?
2
@Katherine I'd recommend Seven Daughters Of Eve by Brian Sykes.
2
@Katherine, try Who We Are and How We Got Here, by David Reich, published this year. The author is mentioned in the article. In some parts a stiff read, other parts easy. New history of ancient Europe; the American research too new to be included in the book.
3
@Katherine
Try "Wo we are and how we got here" by David Reich, who had worked with Svante Pääbo on decoding the Neanderthal genome. He uses the most recent, state of the art genetic technology to sequence whole populations, hundreds of people at a time. Although the book is a little technical, the conclusions are stunning, reconstructing the history of ancient peoples, and showing that they mixed and replaced each other repeatedly over time. Interesting: the origin of Indo-European populations, and how some sub groups in India managed to stay isolated for tens of thousands of years. The studies cover Europe and Asia so far, but not yet the Americas.
7
I always preferred the hybrid theory for peopling the Americas. The land bridge, yes. However, coastal hopping also allowed certain indigenous populations to expand much more rapidly than was previously expected. The earliest remains wouldn't exist because everything is underwater now. Genetics is essentially mapping the previously unknowable.
I would even venture to suggest the dates in South and Central America are on the conservative side. Carbon dating is imperfect. The margins for error can be off by centuries if not millennia. Hopefully genetics offers an honest way to narrow that uncertainty.
I think everyone should tread carefully when using genetic research in human origin stories though. Native Americans have a right to be skeptical. Genetic analysis has some giant ethical pitfalls. I feel like most researchers fall into the hole before they ever noticed it was there.
4
@Andy
Skepticism about conclusions may be warranted, but not for the reasons many First Nations representatives give ... their doubt is no more well-founded than that of a Young-Earth Creationist.
7
The ancient peopling of North America and the rest of the world is a story with many lost chapters that modern DNA science is now uncovering. Imagining what the earliest waves of settlers 10,000 to 20,000 years ago must have thought when they arrived and scanned the vast open expanses of this continent is a fun thought experiment indeed.
But what do these discoveries mean for our present time? What is the *value* of this science?
I venture, that first and most obviously it further and finally exposes contemporary nativism as a dumb lie, a savage political expedient.
Also, doesn't this science give us some deeper insight to the "meaning of life?" It tells us that history's many waves of humanity -- the "tribes" -- have all come and gone, their time in Earth's spotlight startlingly finite, brief and fleeting.
So it should remind us that our modern American civilization -- in cosmic time, a strapping adolescent experiencing the prime of its youth -- is not "too big to fail," but rather very capable of failure, and indeed the historical odds all but assure it.
So, shouldn't we ask, how does our civilization propose to face this daunting natural challenge? Will we go the way of our predecessors and be viewed 20,000 years from now as brief travelers in the train of history, or will we surpass their achievements? Break their records? Raise the bar on humanity's gifts and achievements?
40
There have always been, and will always be, migrants... some who successfully populated their new land, and others who didn't. Do we really think we can stop migrants? Would we allow ourselves to be stopped if circumstances (no food, no safety) threatened us and our children?
25
Hunter/gatherer migration of prehistoric man is a very different kind of migration than political/cultural migration. Let’s not confuse the two... ;-)
8
@e w
So there was no point in the American Indians trying to defend their land from the Europeans? Your comment doesn't make much sense. When have the native people not tried to stop new immigrants?
5
@e w
I suppose you wouldn't call the police if a vagrant set up camp in your back yard.
7
"Earlier studies had indicated that people moved into the Americas at the end of the last ice age, traveling from Siberia to Alaska across a land bridge now under the Bering Sea."
No studies indicated this rout. It was only ever a hypothesis.
2
@Himsahimsa
Stated differently, earlier studies support the Bering land-bridge hypothesis as there is far less evidence supporting singular or contemporaneous westward migration from Eurasia. The wording in the article may be for brevity.
8
Jaw dropping science has unearthed the origins of man.
I understand that genetics can indicate a link to people from different regions of the world. But can it also indicate a specific tribe or ancestries like Spanish, English or Irish?
If so, millions of people would be Italian since the Romans conquered about 32 modern countries during the time of the Roman Empire which lasted about 600 years.
2
These journeys lost in time: the discoveries of new lands, strange creatures, bizarre plants, humbling vistas, are a rich troves for the imagination to run free. These peoples weren't just cataloguing their finds, shooting things and boxing them up for museums, but forced to live in and adapt to the landscape, or perish. Oh to be one of the first scouts to look upon North America unsullied!
12
We can, with a keen sense of the obvious, draw some conclusions from this data. Our forerunners moved over large distances rapidly, most often on foot and at times on rafts. They were ostensibly seeking ever-better hunting grounds and, on the way, picking up exotic mates and new styles of tools, song and dance, and art.
Jump forward to the myths perpetrated in the nineteenth century about peoples rooted on specific territories since the mists of time: utter nonsense! Look at a fairly large nation-state today, say, France: multiple linguistic and ethnic groups dating back millennia: Bretons, Occitans, etc. So much for racially tinged, and thus dangerously silly, nationalism!
Let’s enjoy the big mix, while preserving what we can of proliferating cultures.
88
I know there are many and many layers of research on this topic but I was surprised that it was not mentioned of the Japanese DNA found in the people in Chile. This DNA shows how Japanese travelers transited to south America separate from the larger population being discussed in this article.
7
@ZigZag
Ainu. Not "Japanese."
The Ainu are indigenous to that area. The "Japanese" came from the mainland at a later date.
14
The DNA studies can give new meaning to racism and nationalism.
We are all bits and pieces of a past that defy racial and ethnic purity. Like the blends that form the millions of colors of light, the collection of people at any one time is an arbitrary and every changing mix.
The new political nationalism of Donald Trump is a geographic, legal, economic and cultural bond that is not defined by any typical DNA or traditional mating patterns. Blond hair and blue eyes just don't matter anymore. Wealth and opportunity does.
54
Absolutely fascinating - both the article and the comments. They set off thunderstorms of thoughts in my mind. Something about connectiveness is fundamental to our psyches. The idea of human migration originating in Africa and going full circle - up to Europe, across to Alaska, down to the tip of South America, and then west across the South Pacific to the watery vicinity of its origin is absolutely mind-blowing. A giant gyre over a vast range of space and time.
44
These studies of human ancient DNA are fascinating, but unfortunately cannot tell us what these peoples thought. Clearly, the first wave spread so quickly because there were enough resources for everyone, there were no impassable geological barriers, and no other humans who could say "stop". But, what did they think of this unexplored land? I imagine the first scout that cleared the glaciers, and looked out over one of the grand landscapes of western North America. Was he aware of the magnitude of his own endeavor in the same way later explorers were?
18
@David Godinez These studies do indeed leave us to speculate about a lot of things. I'm particularly curious about how a wave of North or Central Americans swept into South America 9,000 years ago and may have entirely replaced the people who had been there for thousands of years. The difference between old-timer and newcomer was not agriculture, which would not arise for a few thousand more years. It was hunter-gatherers meeting hunter-gatherers. Intriguingly, Dr. Reich has found this kind of replacement in Europe. So we know it can happen more than once, but it's not clear how.
33
@Carl Zimmer
Apparently, there were no people there 9000 years ago. If so, where are THEIR remains?
@matty There are some skeletons in Brazil and Chile that are over 10,000 years old. Their DNA shows that they were closely related to the man from Spirit Cave and other early members of the southern branch in North America. But younger skeletons appear to arise from separate populations of southern branch people.
15
It is unforgivable that we allow the superstitions and religious nonsense of indigenous populations and others to stand in the way of our search for knowledge to benefit all humanity. Prehistoric remains and ancient artifacts don't "belong" to any current tribe or culture. They belong to the human race. Whether it's scientists who are investigating our origins through DNA analysis or astronomers searching for the origins of the universe, their search for knowledge to benefit us all is being thwarted by the ignorance that is religion. Here in Hawaii, the addition of a new globally important telescope at the summit of the volcano on the Big Island has been held up for years because local Hawaiians protest that it is disrespectful to Pele, their goddess of the volcano. Religion is a product of our ignorance in the ancient past. Surely our advanced human society can do away with this malignant aspect of our culture and all the damage it continues to do.
35
@Mayor Jeremy Harris
It is actually the lack of sacred view that is causing so many of the world's problems, from global warming and other environmental damage, to tremendous social injustice, to rampant, savage capitalism that not only ruthlessly extracts resources but divides and represses people throughout the world. So called "advanced human society" may not be all that advanced after all. Science is a tool, not the be-all and end-all of human endeavor. If you want to have a glimpse of advanced human civilization that strove to marry science and spirituality, take a look at ancient Meso-americans, where their whole society, from agriculture to astronomy to precise calendar calculations, to mathematics and to social and governing structures were geared to allow people to develop spiritually and to live in harmony with the vast cosmos that surrounds us. Also, it seems very disrespectful to outright dismiss indigenous spiritual views without first inquiring into their more subtle aspects and social benefits. I do, though, have to agree that in many cases, the world's great religions have wreaked plenty of havoc throughout history. But then one could say the same about western science.
15
@Mayor Jeremy Harris
I was about to remark on the religious nonsense before I read your comment. You said it better than I'd have done. Thank you.
6
@Dan Dayley
You mean the Mesoamerican civilizations which practiced human sacrifice, and collapsed into anarchy when their agricultural practices and prolonged drought made a mockery of their water-control infrastructure?
"More Enlightened Civilization" is a work-in-progress. But we don't make progress unless we are allowed to challenge accepted practices.
Working around prohibitions against examining remains isn't even a new challenge. It's why Leonardo Da Vinci had to encrypt his notes after examining cadavers.
17
Fascinating. Our diversity belies our similarities and vice versa.
5
Great story. Genetics aside, the movement of homo sapien sapien is fascinating. Can't get enough of stories like this!
14
Looking at the map. let's keep the flow SOUTHWARD!
I understand that last week scientists discovered the missing link between ape and civilized man. It's us.
16
What does it mean to have the same DNA as our ancestors? Doesn’t this mean that you stick an ancient human into jeans or heels and he or she is indistinguishable from us?
Regards
10 best mods
1
Long before the popularity of dna testing, my genealogy explorations discovered a link to Native Americans(probably Cherokee)and, maybe African natives. DNA tests (2) confirmed my findings. While I was ecstatic about the discovery, my adult children were pretty much disinterested. Except for one!! One son is a Rush fan, and rabid conservative, mostly due to a wife from Indiana (a supposition on my part). This son insists that a dna test done for him has NO sign of Native American dna. (I guess they mixed up the babies in the hospital 66 years ago. Ha! ) My mother’s great grandfather married a “mulatto”...and my grandfather’s mother was definitely “native”. (Put a feather headdress on a formal portrait of my dad and he’s pure NA.) Incidentally, my ancestors were here in 1624, my husband’s came from Ireland during the famine..guess which ancestors he claims as his.
8
Which just goes to show that there are no 'native Americans', just those who came from somewhere else into America.
5
Some people have been here 10,000 years or more though. It’s ironic that the children of people who came from overseas are now freaking out at the people who have lived on this continent for thousands of years crossing the border.
9
DNA studies and language studies have illuminated what we know of human migration throughout the world. The spread of East Asians to become Polynesians is as fascinating as the spread of Central Asians to become Native Americans. Humans are very adaptable, as are dogs and cats. Now if we could just figure out how not to self-destruct. We are all one human family.
46
It's too bad that when we encounter another human being we do not see them as a remarkable result of generations untold and humankind's long walks.
Maybe if we did we could appreciate them more and find hating one another less possible.
30
@AWENSHOK
In addition, they might be related to us!
5
So am I right in thinking there were no human ancestors living anywhere in the americas before the migrations from Asia? If that is the case it is truly amazing what has happened in the last few thousand years, a relatively very short time in the history of thr world.
23
@Herb
If you ask me I think what has happened to our world in the last few thousand years is sad.
6
@Herb Here's a quick history of our species: Homo sapiens evolves in Africa about 300,000 years ago. Humans expand and diversify in Africa for the next ~200,000 years ago. Small groups of people in East Africa wind up in the Near East, then other parts of Eurasia. They get to southeast Asia & Australia by ~70,000 years ago, Europe by ~45,000 years ago. There's archaeological evidence of people in the Americas about 14,000 years ago, although there's older stuff that archaeologists debate for now. This new genetic evidence fits into this timeline, roughly speaking--although "Population Y" reminds us there may be more surprises in store. The last major wave of human movement was in the past few thousand years from New Guinea/Philippines out to Polynesia and Hawaii.
48
@Herb
War, after war, after war, after war. All in the last few thousand years.
4
This story makes me appreciate anew indigenous Australians who have been on this continent anywhere between 60 and 125,000 years. Deep time.
23
For a great segment of the nation, this is "fake news." The science is both fascinating and instructive, especially to those of us who still believe in the importance of the "family of man."
7
It is illogical to refer to the progeny of people who are descendants of ancestors that came from Asia as "indigenous" people.
More accurately, as compared to Europeans and Africans who came later to this continent, they are Prior Immigrants and Settlers. They are not "indigenous" or "native". They did not sprout up from the ground or drop from the trees.
Does that give them a special foothold or claim superior to other immigrants who came later to the continent?
17
@MIKEinNYC Possession is 9/10ths of the law if you can enforce it. Native Americans had poor homeland security.
10
@MIKEinNYC
We got to the Moon first. Does is belong to US? See the logic?
3
@MIKEinNYC
What you're really saying is that nationalities are meaningless and borders are a figment of the imagination.
5
After the initial migration from Asia to Alaska, How far does the path of the north branch split travel? Does it account for the indigenous peoples in the upper eastern US, for example, those who became the Iroquois Nation, and others along the northern east coast?
I have a very small component, maybe 1/32 or 1/64 of Seneca inheritance, but have been questioned by dentists about my “Asian” teeth, which have five cusps on molars, instead of four...
29
@Kiffi Summa The North Branch story is interesting but still mostly unclear. Athabascan tribes are northern branch, and there seems to be some Northern branch ancestry in Kennewick man's DNA. Some Northern branch people much later moved south, giving rise to tribes like the Navajo. Scientists can't say much more because they haven't studied many US tribes' DNA.
12
This gives the the idea of a "caravan" a whole different perspective.
22
This story highlights a sadness for me. Native peoples travelled vast distances, accomplished amazing cultural feats (Machu Pichu, Mesa Verde, Taos Pueblo, Tikal). And yet today, after bloody invasions by “civilized” Europeans, current native peoples struggle to maintain their lives and cultures, living for many tribes in “concentration camps” called reservations. Because they were different, because they had territory Europeans coveted, they and their culture were decimated. Too late, too few realize what is lost.
33
@ncarringer
Your "native" peoples sacrificed other peoples; they wiped out entire civilizations; they destroyed foreign cultures; they enslaved their enemies.
Just as we've done in the past, so do we continue today.
12
@ncarringer
Don't kid yourself - those folks killed each other for the territory that Europeans coveted. Just like bow and arrows trumped spears, guns trumped bow and arrows. Its the human condition.
11
As James of Wisconsin below notes, the reason for the migrations utterly baffles me. At least the first wave ones. Why? There were no conflicting land claims, there was no shortage of food and resources. There was, however, the need to learn and adapt with every few hundred miles of movement and/or with altitude change. And life is rougher at higher altitudes, so why linger? How could this happen so fast?
If I am granted the liberty of guesstimating the distance from Alaska to southern South America at a conservative 8000 miles, and we take the quote of "hundreds of years", OK, ten hundred, a thousand, then they moved at least 8 miles per year on average. Not much when you have a reason, but inexplicable with the changes encountered.
I got interested in anthropology when I was in college in the 1960's. But it was a slow, dusty science. What with DNA and the internet, it's now a fascinating, accessible past time.
34
@Jus' Me, NYT
When I was in my late teens and twenties I had wanderlust in spades. Is that genetically driven? At any rate I don't find it odd at all that a portion of the population wanted " to move on".
20
@GTR also worth noting that for most of human history, 40 would be considered quite old. The vast majority of these explorers would have been in their late teens and early 20's and likely filled with the instinctual vim and vigor for the next horizon that characterizes that age group.
6
@Jus' Me, NYT I was wondering about that as well. What was pushing them to move so fast, other than a desire to explore? It’s fascinating.
4
Recalling the book Kon Tiki, which using the prevailing ocean currents as a basis, postulated that the people living on Easter Island, was it, came from South America via a raft(s). The author, Thor Heyerdahl, demonstrated this possibility by so journeying and making a movie of his adventure. So maybe the ancient people went via raft or boat from South America to Australia rather than from Australia somehow to Siberia, across the land bridge to Alaska, and then down to South America. Just a speculation based on considerable ignorance of ocean currents, paleontology, and more.
6
Another big question, it seems to me, is why these ancient people moved so relentlessly over such great distances. What drove them into what must have been a scary and treacherous unknown? "Modern" traditional people appear to be firmly rooted in one place.
Were they just following big game?
32
I don’t remember much of the tale my great-aunt told me—or how much is fable versus truth versus myth—but she described her elders saying that in ancient times our tribe would plant a pole in the ground at night. In the morning, they would journey in the direction that the pole was leaning. When the pole stayed upright and tall, they stopped moving and settled there. “There” happened to be in the area of what is now Mississippi.
I often wondered if it was because once they hit the Gulf Coast, they couldn’t continue south anymore (assuming they came down from the direction of Alaska).
13
@James "Modern" people who migrate encounter something that many of those described in the article did not - other people. These migrants may have been the first humans to enter these lands, meaning that there was no competition for resources, no one saying "this is my land - stay out (or die)". Is there a single speck of land on this planet that someone - or some government - has not laid claim to?
12
In this article, we see both the profound achievement of science--learning things about distant human history that were unimaginable just a few years ago--and the ugliness of religion--tribal organizations blocking scientific inquiry on the assumption that they "own" archaeological remains. I applaud these archaeologists for learning how to work with these organizations to find a way to perform their research, it is sad that they need to do so.
49
@MA, Ma! Cousin Ma, interesting that the root of the word religion, includes the notion of bonding, originally as monastic vows, but also connected to the idea of reverence, recognizing and venerating bonds that connect people. We can learn something from indigenous Americans, who insist on reverencing evidence of bonds that connect them to ancient peoples.
19
@MA. Pls, do not interject "us against them" into this wonderful cooperative endeavor. A mark of civilization is respect for one's dead. Even those of us who are not religious and are not sure of any life after death can respect the wishes of the living. Are we still mired in the white man's insistence that all others must bend to our "enlightened" thoughts? If we begin with respect, we shall move forward. Anything less leads ultimately to failure.
30
As a degreed anthropologist, I understand your frustration; however, that frustration also reveals a bias. The close genetic connection across 10,000 years reveals that these people were related and not a separate peoples.
I would be insulted if ancient Jewish tombs were raided and the remains desecrated in violation of Jewish law. I hold native people and the remains of their ancestors with that same regard.
I believe that the new generation of archaeologists are doing this the right way—with respect and consideration in the pursuit of knowledge.
64
My wife, of German-Spanish ancestry, opted for National Geographics Genographic maternal-only DNA Ancestry test. As with all humans, it tracked out of Africa, then on through the Middle East. Her ancesters, about 30,000 years ago settled in Central Europe, but later a branch split off and trecked across Eurasia, then the Aleutian "Bridge."
Her DNA ancestors were among the "the first humans to populate the Americas" (test was a decade ago) The results also noted her closest ancestral relatives were Northern Plains Native Americans. Perhaps, after reading this article, that included "Montana Boy."
BTW, her brother, now deceased, refused to accept the idea that his ancestral relatives emerged out of Africa. He was, after all, an avid Rush Limbaugh devotee.
104
@Dr. Bob thank you for sharing, very interesting.
8
Reading this, it makes all those border wall talks sound petty and small
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Please note how many times in archaeological history the new people wiped out the existing people. Even in this article it explains how new waves displaced and eliminated previous immigrants. I will bet the previous immigrants were not that thrilled about it. I don't think the United States is about to be overwhelmed and eliminated by large movements of people but the idea that movements of people is always a good thing for everybody is historically ridiculous.
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Great article. Thanks. I hope these keep coming. If only we could get the evangelicals to read and understand the significance of this information instead of the mythology they promote.
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@USMC1954 Literally billions of humans probably find solace and a sense of community in their religious beliefs and practices. They shore up the "golden rule" and make the planet a better place - except for some violent extremists of course.
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@USMC1954 What a great comment.
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@USMC1954
The typical Abrahamic Creationist, although woefully underinformed, would actually dispute little about this narrative, other than the timing (migration is implicit in the aftermath of Noah's flood).
It's the identity-affirming indigenous communities that most strongly dispute the conclusions of secular science about the peopling of the Americas. Claiming that tribes DIDN'T spring from the ground on their current soil at the beginning of time is just more Western colonial oppression.
Fortunately (for them), overly broad regulations about the treatment of ancient skeletons gives tribal activists the power to block research in the truth.
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Flashes of light into our mysterious past. And more mystery remains. What does it mean to have the same DNA as our ancestors? Doesn’t this mean that you stick an ancient human into jeans or heels and he or she is indistinguishable from us? In fact IS us? In any case, thanks for a great story.
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@Cathryn Thanks--I'm delighted to hear you enjoyed the story. As far as scientists can tell, members of our species 200,000 years ago were pretty much like us today. They were in the range of physical variation today, and they had brains as big and as sophisticated as our own. So we'd expect clear genetic connections to people who lived "just" 10,000 years ago!
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@Cathryn
Take a modern child thru a timewarp and raise them 11,000 years in the past, would there be any real difference?
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Homo sapiens are still Homo sapiens no matter when or where they lived.
Put another way: humans are still humans.
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