Gene study supports single main migration across Bering

[kbs2244]

Tribe" or "family" or whatever.
The point is, they were there.
How and when?

[Minimalist]

Ultimately, the issue of long-term viability has to come into play. Tribes tend to have more staying power than a simple clan.

Besides, who can say what the effect of protracted in-breeding would be in a small group? It didn't help the pharaohs of Egypt.

[kbs2244]

Well, that would have to depend on how diverse the original group was.
But the point is not how long they were there, or how interbred they were.
The point is that they were there in the first place.

[Minimalist]

And that they did not survive......apparently.

[Cognito]

Maybe "tribe" is the wrong word? It implies a larger social group than may have existed. Size estimates I've seen for HG groups are in the 20-30, range. Discounting the old and the young, how many could be prime of life hunters? Five? Six? What would the tipping point be for deaths in that group which would consign the group to eventual extinction?

As I understand it, Luzia's tribal burial area contains the remains of about 50 individuals discovered so far.

I really don't dispute that Siberians took the Beringia route (probably both by foot and by boat), but others definitely boated east via the South Pacific islands. By the way, upon further review it appears that the report referenced at the beginning of this thread is indeed skewed by recapping genetic groups that only represent about 30% of the Native American gene pool by type. Nice report, though, with regard to entrants into North America circa 10-13 thousand years ago.

[Beagle]

http://www.sciencenews.org/articles/20071201/fob2.asp

Here is the first of follow-up reports on this study. Now we see some cracks:

Despite the migration findings, Holliday and Dillehay both say that southward migration along interior routes should still be considered. Dillehay notes that the current study excludes Native Americans from the United States and eastern Brazil. "It's a sampling bias," he says, that might have erroneously favored the Pacific coast migration model.

Rosenberg says that a second paper will soon address the genetics of tribes in the United States and whether there was more than one major Siberian migration.

While the study points to an eastern Siberian origin for most of the genes that spread across the Americas, it can't rule out small genetic contributions from other groups, says Kari Britt Schroeder of the University of California, Davis. In 2001, scientists unearthed 8,000- to 11,000-year-old skulls in Brazil that strikingly resemble today's Australian aborigines (SN: 4/7/01, p. 212). The find fueled speculation that several waves of immigrants from different parts of Asia reached the Americas.

While awaiting further comments from other scientists, we might assume that this study is biased toward the Clovis -firsters.

[Leona Conner]

This was a good article. I agree that the sampling comes across as biased. Think they are going to have to get a lot more samples before they can come up with a definitive answer to this question. If all N.A.s come from the same root stock, how did they get so many different looks? To me the people living on the west coast of S.A. look Oriental while the people living in the jungles of the Amazon look African, as did the Olmecs.

[Cognito]

Think they are going to have to get a lot more samples before they can come up with a definitive answer to this question.

Leona, according to a friend of mine who has substantial knowlege of genetics and read through the article, they only touched on about 30% of the relevant gene pool. And that excludes those Brazilian tribes who went extinct. While I agree that the authors did a thorough job with their data, their conclusions are biased due to the poor sampling protocol. That part wasn't good science.

However, for investigating those who took the northern route, it is an excellent report. Even those people likely came by boat and by land.

[Minimalist]

Sure as hell does not account for Kennewick Man, does it?

[john]

............Nor the longheaded tribes of Baja California,

very recently extinct.


John

ps


Religion and Burial Practices

The Pericu religion was a basically shamanistic system in which the shaman (medicine man) could call down supernatural forces (spirits) to cure the sick. Mortuary and mourning observances were remarkably elaborate, although since these tended to survive and be examined in archaeological excavations, we know much more about them than about the religious beliefs behind them.

The so-called "Las Palmas Complex" is an archaeological pattern of burial customs that were reflected in Pericu mortuary customs right to their termination only a few hundred years ago. The burial practices of the Las Palmas Complex are concentrated the southernmost Cape region of Baja California Sur, Mexico. Dating is very insecure but could go as far back as 10,000 years from the present.

The complex was recognized in the late 19th century and is characterized by secondary burials of disarticulated bones painted with red ochre in caves or rockshelters. The skulls in such burials tend to be extremely long-headed (highly dolichocephalic), leading to suggestions that makers of the Las Palmas complex (identified with the historical Pericu) might represent either a genetically isolated remnant of a very early wave of immigrants into the Americas or later trans-Pacific migrants. Other elements in the material inventory of the Las Palmas Complex include stone grinding basins, atlatls (spear throwers), lark's-head type netting and coiled basketry and palm-bark containers.

In 1883/84 Lyman Belding and Herman Frederik Carel ten Kate unearthed a Pericu skeleton that was "wrapped in cloth made from the bark of the palm and bound with three ply cord which had been plaited as sailors make sennit, the material being fiber of the agave". Dr. W. H. Dall (Smithsonian contributions to knowledge, number 31) noted that the mummies of the Aleutian Islands off Alaska were bound with cord quite similarly braided in square sennit. The package of bones was about 51 cm (20 in.) long and did not appear to have been disturbed since burial, although a femur and some small bones were missing, and nearly all of the bones had been unjointed and painted with ochre. The bones of the hand were inside of the skull, which was full of small bones and sand.

Dr. Ten Kate is also reported to have found the skeleton of a girl of about twelve years that was also in excellent condition but had not been painted with ochre - a rare exception. For the skeletons found by Dr. Ten Kate on Espiritu Santo Island (in the territory disputed between Pericu and Guaycura, just off La Paz) as well as at Encenada and Los Martires, all had been painted the usual brick red ochre. However, one skeleton found at Los Martires was that of a crippled person - it had not been painted with ochre. It seems that young (and female?) and handicapped people were not given the normal ochre treatment before burial.

Some bones found in a cave near Candelario and several skeletons found at San Pedro were also painted with ochre. All of the skulls were highly dolichocephalic and quite un-Amerind.

The only ornaments or other objects found with the skeletons were two small, neatly worked pearl oyster shells in the package of the bones of the young girl. These shells had been polished on the convex side, the edges finely serrated and pierced at the apex to be hung, probably around the neck.

The methods used by the Pericu to de-flesh and disarticulate the bones of their dead remain unknown. For a number of methods used by a comparably ancient and still living population see Chapter 19 in the Andamanese section of this site.


All -

Gosh, there's that darn red ochre again

this time in association with pre Beringian long-headed skulls

in North America.

"No, no it just cant be.............."

Janis Joplin



john

[Frank Harrist]

I wonder how these long-headed skulls relate to the later practice of some meso-americans binding the heads of their children in order to elongate their skulls. There could be a very elaborate and interesting tale there.

[Minimalist]

Gosh, there's that darn red ochre again

this time in association with pre Beringian long-headed skulls

[kbs2244]

I do not recall Red Ocher in the Pacific.
All across Europe, Scandinavia, Africa, and the NA East Coast.
But not the N A West Coast, or in the Pacfic.
Have I just missed it, or is this a new mention?

[Cognito]

But not the N A West Coast, or in the Pacfic.
Have I just missed it, or is this a new mention?

Actually, I think you missed it. Read the following:

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/l ... mday2.html

From the article: "Skeletons and burial boxes were thickly dusted with red ochre for spiritual protection."

Red ochre seems to be everywhere.

[Minimalist]

Red ochre seems to be everywhere.

And man, that annoys the hell out of me. IT seems to indicate a common cultural root.

You know, if you see someone attach a handle to an axe you might say to yourself "Wow, what a great idea....I think I'll try that."

But would you look at someone sprinkling red ochre on a corpse and think " Yeah....what a great idea....let's do that to our dead, too."


Maybe its just me but something about that scenario just doesn't seem logical.