But Still Clinging to the "Land Bridge"

[Farpoint]

Before I comment, if I'm qualified to comment, may I ask, which paper specifically?

[countrcultur]

Before I comment, if I'm qualified to comment, may I ask, which paper specifically?

qualified, heh, there are no qualifications required, just looking for imput. it's a paper for Anthro 219: world prehistory.

[uniface]

Bear in mind that these people are comparing the present day Native Americans with the present day inhabitants of other countries.

This says nothing (except by a huge leap of faith) about where the people who were here X0,000 years ago came from.

The only way you could do that would be to ignore the present and work with the genetic material surviving from that era, comparing this with similarly old material from other places.

IOW : You can't conclude anything about apples from comparing oranges with oranges.

[Minimalist]

I have to agree with you on that, Uni. The claims of geneticists seem to undergo far too many changes far too often to take any of them at face value. I always get a feeling that they are still working the kinks out of what will become a very good system.

[uniface]

Contemporary peoples and their locations are the outcome of 20,000 years of "Survivor," with all kinds of displacements, migrations over huge distances (hell, look at the aftermath of the Roman Empire's collapse) (the medieval Scots placed their origin in Scythia -- the steppes of Southern Russia), exterminations, die-offs from famines & diseases, etc.

The earliest North Americans were a different sort of people.

[Minimalist]

Interesting way to phrase it.

[E.P. Grondine]

In the study of the peopling of the Americas, DNA evidence is viewed as having great potential in helping to identify source populations and the timeline of their migrations. There is still far more work to be done in this area, such as getting a greater sample size of indigenous DNA and refining the estimates of the rates of genetic change. As the evidence seems very open-ended, it seems likely that it is possibly being stretched to fit theories. The interpretation of the data in this article still appears biased towards the current scientific view of one or more migrations through Beringia.

The study states that, “Phylogenetic analysis revealed that most Native American lineages are classified into four major distinct clusters. Individuals belonging to each cluster share at least two specific polymorphic sites that are nearly absent in other human populations, indicating a unique phylogenetic position of Native Americans.” It goes on to state, “the four Native American clusters are distinct and dispersed in the tree. These clusters almost exclusively consist of Native Americans--with only a few Asians, if any.” (epg - This is factually wrong - see the Cambridge World Haplogroup Maps for Asian distributions of NDN mt DNA.)

While this article contains good data that is likely based on good science, the conclusions made in it seem to be a bit of a stretch and may possibly be attributed to a bias of conformity. The connection that can be made from a minute percentage of the DNA samples shouldn't be enough to point to all migrations coming from similar sources or even to all indigenous populations having originated from a set of recent migrations.

[circumspice]

It would be far more interesting to see what any ancient DNA results might show.

[Minimalist]

They did try with Kennewick Man.

http://www.nps.gov/archeology/kennewick ... cabana.htm

Conclusion

We were unable to obtain reliable ancient DNA amplification results from the Kennewick samples. This means that either (1) no original DNA was preserved in the bone samples transferred to our laboratory, or (2) original DNA was preserved in the bone samples but we were unable to extract it.

[kbs2244]

Min....
You opened a festering wound with that Kennewick man post.
How can I get the rest of that report/
I tried to navigate around the site but was ubable to get past the home page.

kbs2244

[Ernie L]

Min....
You opened a festering wound with that Kennewick man post.
How can I get the rest of that report/
I tried to navigate around the site but was ubable to get past the home page.

kbs2244

I know you did not ask me but on this page seemingly every line is a link. (as well as the usual underlined sentences indicating a link ,lines with the black squares are links as well)
http://www.nps.gov/archeology/kennewick/index.htm#DNA

[Minimalist]

That ought to keep you busy for a while, kb.

[kbs2244]

I keep getting a "cannot find file" error.

[Ernie L]

I keep getting a "cannot find file" error.

You could try the "Dell tech support fall back one size fits all get em outta our hair solution" .......you know..clear the cache and reboot...

My guess is you are having server problems..probably over load from the additional traffic caused by the hurricane taking out a lot of servers. Of course it could be aliens.

[kbs2244]

Good guess.
Those Nat Park Svcs files are most likely on East Coast machines.
I will try to remember to try again in a week or so.