Amazonia and Australasia

[shawomet]

Personally, I have one reaction to these studies: WOW!!

http://hms.harvard.edu/news/american-history-201

""“About 2 percent of the ancestry of Amazonians today comes from this Australasian lineage that’s not present in the same way elsewhere in the Americas,” said Reich.

However, that doesn’t establish how much of their ancestry comes from Population Y. If Population Y were 100 percent Australasian, that would indeed mean they contributed 2 percent of the DNA of today’s Amazonians. But if Population Y mixed with other groups such as the First Americans before they reached the Americas, the amount of DNA they contributed to today’s Amazonians could be much higher—up to 85 percent.

To answer that question, researchers would need to sample DNA from the remains of a person who belonged to Population Y. Such DNA hasn’t been obtained yet. One place to look might be in the skeletons of early Native Americans whose skulls some researchers say have Australasian features. The majority of these skeletons were found in Brazil."

http://www.nature.com/news/ghost-popula ... as-1.18029

[Minimalist]

I'm always suspicious of claims of identifying a specific ancient population in a modern population. It is an awful lot of generations back and, let's face it, people screw around.

It's the problem with being skeptical. One is a skeptic about everything.

[kbs2244]

There are two problems with this idea;

One is the Pacific Ocean.
As a believer in the various boat ideas, I think that could be over come as far as the west coast of SA is concerned.

But second is the Andes mountains.
IMHO this is a greater barrier.

Unless the boat people could regularly round Cape Horn, in both directions, or an unknown easy mountain pass is discovered, I have to come down on the unlikely side of this one.

Of course, they could have come from the other direction?
Where did the Australian DNA come from?
(Again, water is not a barrier. It is a carrier.)
And 2% is not very much.

[E.P. Grondine]

"About 2 percent of the ancestry of Amazonians today comes from this Australasian lineage that’s not present in the same way elsewhere in the Americas,” said Reich."

As has been seen in Europe, Y DNA is not too good a tool, because people screw around, as min pointed out. (This is more formally known as Hardachre's Observation).

Besides the "giants" which George is having problems with, there were two Native populations of very short stature: Ocanachee and Yuchi. The surviving populations are so small they have not even shown up in existing haplogroup mappings.

But since these peoples have not attracted the attention of the various nuts out there, including the theosophists, Mormons, and George, they are pretty well documented.

My guess is that they are remaining populations of the haplogroup that came north from Pedra Furada bearing clovis. If we are to listen to the Brazilian archaeologists, these were ancient emigrants from North West Africa.

The other peoples in this haplogroup were burned off the face of the Earth in South America
by the Rio Cuarto impact event, and washed off the face of the Earth by the Great Atlantic Impact Mega-tsunami. An entire haplogroup very nearly completely extincted by impact!

Aside from that, you have both B and D mt DNA haplogroups in South America, and this has been known for a long time now. Of course, B nd D intermarried with the existing C mt DNA haplogroup in South America.

I do love it when the archaeo-geneticists publish using their own definitions,
without telling us how they fit in with the existing taphonomy.

[Minimalist]

(This is more formally known as Hardachre's Observation).

Probably far more polite than I would normally phrase it, E.P.

[E.P. Grondine]

(This is more formally known as Hardachre's Observation).

Probably far more polite than I would normally phrase it, E.P.

Hi min -

I always try my best to be polite, min.

I also try to give proper acknowledgements.

I seem to remember that hardachre phrased it somewhat differently as well.

[shawomet]

I'm not in the least bit skeptical of this possibility. Neither study assumes journey by boat from Southeast Asia; both still presume down that ole' ice free corridor, or maybe the Pacific kelp highway. But what leads me to believe the genetics itself is not erroneous is the great number of skeletons that have been found in the Amazon, Paleolithic in age, and displaying Australasian traits. Of these remains, that of "Luzia" is the best known. The studies are of course recent. But speculation regarding an Australasian connection has been around for quite awhile. What happened is these studies brought the notion back with a vengeance and placed it at center stage in the peopling of the Americas debate. I am surprised, but, as noted, they were unable to make the results go away, and they have all those skeletons to explain away otherwise....

http://austhrutime.com/aborigines_new_world.htm

http://www.nytimes.com/1999/10/26/scien ... ories.html

http://www.bradshawfoundation.com/journey/luzia.html

"81 skulls, the largest sample of American skulls, from the Lagoa Santa region of Brazil were studied, comparing them with worldwide data sets representing global morphological variation among humans. Multivariate analysis of the data indicate close morphological affinity between the skeletal material from South America and living Australo-Melanesian groups, suggesting that in the Pleistocene/Holocene transition the New World may have been colonised by 2 biologically distinct populations."

These results in the two new studies, unintended by the authors, nonetheless supported these earlier speculations. There is a very good reason 81 skulls from Brazil show morphological affinities with Australasians. Namely, there is a genetic connection. Only by sampling surviving DNA from one or more such remains will the connection clarify. But, as of now, the existence of these remains in Brazil, and that many of them, in conjunction with these two studies, for me at least, make the connection unmistakable.

Make the strings of evidence that compelling, and my skepticism is eroded on this one.

The question is whether they arrived earlier then the so-called First Americans, who show closest genetic affinity with living Native Americans, at the same time as the First Americans, or later. I lean toward the study that itself leans toward the notion of two founding populations, one of which had this Australasian affinity.

So, I would say one needs to explain the Australasian morphological affinity in those 81 skeletal remains from the Brazil Amazon. And the genetics would explain it. Leaving the how and when this population arrived in question.

[shawomet]

Hints from 1996 of what these two studies would later bolster. I don't know if Neves story line is what the authors of these studies really have in mind. But, without a doubt, we can probably at least say the idea of Australasians in the Americas has come in from the margins, if margins is where these ideas lay before the two new genetic studies. If on the right track, these Australasians were swamped by First Americans. In Brazil their skeletons lay, clearly Australasian. In 3 groups of living Amazonians, they are still there, hidden in the genetics, swamped out long ago, but still there in the genetic history.

If we were dealing simply with the living people, I would not find the notion as compelling as I do with the addition of the remains found in Amazonia representing early people in the region. It just seems like this stuff is on the mark, on the right track.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/scien ... 03874.html

"Walter Neves keeps 40 skulls belonging to the world's most ancient Aborigines in his office. They are all stored neatly in his computer. But it is not the hi-tech, 3D storage of aboriginal human remains that is causing ripples. It is the fact that all the skulls come not from Australia but from South America.

For Dr Neves, Professor of Biological Anthropology at the University of Sao Paulo in Brazil, believes that America was discovered not by Columbus or the Vikings, or even by the ancestors of today's American Indians, but by Australian-style Aborigines.

His research strongly suggests that the first Americans were Australoid colonists - not Mongoloid peoples, as has always been assumed.

By analysing the multi-dimensional images on his computer screen and comparing hundreds of ancient skulls from all over the world, Dr Neves has found the only exact match for his early South American examples are ancient skulls from Australia. The morphologies are identical. "We were very surprised by what we found," he says.

Dr Neves points out that before East and South-east Asia were taken over by the ancestors of today's Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese and other Mongoloid peoples, the region was inhabited by peoples similar to the Australian Aborigines. Ancient aboriginal-type skulls have been found in China and Korea. He believes that Australia and adjacent islands are merely the last surviving territory of a once-vast aboriginal homeland that covered much of East and South-east Asia.

And he is convinced it was aboriginal colonists from this "Greater Australia" who first set foot in the New World and became the first Americans.

The migration may well have been sparked off by a conflict between the aboriginal population of East Asia and the expanding Mongoloid peoples.

Mongoloid peoples probably developed somewhere in the ultra-cold wastes of central Siberia, perhaps 20,000 to 40,000 years ago. Then, probably between 15,000 and 20,000 years ago, they began to expand their territory at the expense of early Australoid peoples.

Dr Neves suspects that this expansion may have driven the Aborigines into the New World.

Mongoloid tribes also entered the Americas later, and he believes these later arrivals, who became the American Indians, drove the Aborigines into the least desirable areas, where the majority died out. Most of his American aboriginal skulls date from 14,000 to 10,000 years ago. After that date, most ancient American skulls are Mongoloid in type.

In a remote area of central Brazil, in the state of Minas Gerais, Dr Neves is excavating caves and rock shelters in the hope of finding fresh material.

Brazilian researchers are also combing the world's museums for ancient American skulls. So far Dr Neves has tracked down material in Scandinavia, Britain and the United States.

But it is among living peoples that Dr Neves may find the most exciting evidence that Aborigines were the first discoverers of America. In the southern part of South America are two ethnic groups that may well be the last survivors of the first Americans. In southern Brazil, Dr Neves suspects that the Je Indians still preserve some aboriginal traits - both physically and linguistically. And in southern Argentina and Chile, he believes the last pure American Aborigine - a Tierra del Fuego Indian - died just 30 years ago, although mixed-race Tierra del Fuego people still survive, preserving an ethnic heritage of probable Australoid origin.

Australia's Aborigines - and their near relatives, the Melanesians - may now not be alone as the sole survivors of the Australoid race.

The aboriginal achievement is breathtaking in more ways than one. Some 60,000 years ago - more than 20,000 years before humans reached Europe - Australoid people started long-distance sea travel, using primitive boats to make what was then an 80-mile voyage to the island continent of Australia.

The evidence collected by Dr Neves suggests that they had reached the Americas by at least 14,000 years ago.

The major remaining question, then, is how did they enter the Americas? Australoid peoples were not adapted to cold weather like their putative Mongoloid rivals and would have found it difficult to cross over into the New World via what is now the Bering Strait - the route that the ancestors of the Americans Indians are believed to have taken. The Australoid colonists may have used their maritime skill and experience to take a more southerly route - island-hopping all the way from East Asia to North America.

It is possible to travel from Malaysia, New Guinea or Australia all the way to the North American mainland, arriving in Alaska at a relatively low latitude (equivalent to central England), by island-hopping. Using the Indonesian, Philippine, Ryuku, Japanese, Kuril and Aleutian island chains and archipelagoes, the 4,000-mile journey can still be undertaken with no single sea voyage of more than 120 miles.

The proposal that Australian-style Aborigines discovered America is likely to prove controversial.

But it is already gaining some tentative academic support in both the United States and Australia. "It is an exciting new theory with interesting support not just from fossil material but also from living peoples in southern South America," said Dr Alan Thorne, an anthropologist at the Australian National University in Canberra. An early Australoid migration to America is "a reasonable possibility", he says."

[Tiompan]

[quote="E.P. Grondine"]

Besides the "giants" which George is having problems with {quote ]

I may well "have a problem "with giants , but as I didn't actaully say anything about them and as you typically failed to provide a quote ,it's a meaningless comment .
Provide a quote ,then we can discuss , but as usual no breath will be held .

[shawomet]

Funny how evidence can be so obvious, yet little talked about. But there it is, all along. All these studies did is show there are living populations in the Amazon whose ancestors include Australoids. And it seems like 81 early remains from Amazonia must certainly represent that ancestral stock:

"By analysing the multi-dimensional images on his computer screen and comparing hundreds of ancient skulls from all over the world, Dr Neves has found the only exact match for his early South American examples are ancient skulls from Australia. The morphologies are identical. "We were very surprised by what we found," he says."

Neves 2005 paper:

http://www.pnas.org/content/102/51/18309.full

Abstract
Comparative morphological studies of the earliest human skeletons of the New World have shown that, whereas late prehistoric, recent, and present Native Americans tend to exhibit a cranial morphology similar to late and modern Northern Asians (short and wide neurocrania; high, orthognatic and broad faces; and relatively high and narrow orbits and noses), the earliest South Americans tend to be more similar to present Australians, Melanesians, and Sub-Saharan Africans (narrow and long neurocrania; prognatic, low faces; and relatively low and broad orbits and noses). However, most of the previous studies of early American human remains were based on small cranial samples. Herein we compare the largest sample of early American skulls ever studied (81 skulls of the Lagoa Santa region) with worldwide data sets representing global morphological variation in humans, through three different multivariate analyses. The results obtained from all multivariate analyses confirm a close morphological affinity between SouthAmerican Paleoindians and extant Australo-Melanesians groups, supporting the hypothesis that two distinct biological populations could have colonized the New World in the Pleistocene/Holocene transition.

[shawomet]

We'll, apparently the studies did not in fact support Neves idea of an early Australoid migration based on those skulls after all:

http://news.sciencemag.org/archaeology/ ... globe-away

"The Science results also counter the Paleoamerican model. When the team sequenced the DNA of 17 individuals from the extinct South American populations with the distinctive skulls, they found no trace of Australo-Melanesian ancestry. “The analysis refutes a very simplistic view of [skull] variation,” comments anthropologist Rolando Gonzalez-Jose of the National Scientific and Technical Research Council in Puerto Madryn, Argentina."

Unless I'm misinterpreting the above, I assume those 17 skulls are from the 81 Neves studied.

[E.P. Grondine]

Hi shawomet -

This is news, as usually the arcdheo-geneticists simply ignore the contradictory studies of their colleagues.

Personally, I use Cambridge Universities studies and maps.
Their maps for mt DNA appear to work quite well.