A pre-Clovis spear point found in Texas from about 15,000 years ago largely reaffirms the existing paradigm for how the founding population of the Americas settled these regions after the Last Glacial Maximum.
In particular, it clarifies that there were populations in the interior of North America before there was an ice free land corridor from Beringia to North America in the north. Somebody either walked across a glacier for many miles, or took a boat down the Pacific coast and them migrated inland before the ice free land corridor opened.
In other New World pre-history news, a new paper (whose results were previously blogged here) notes that a one study outlier genetic finding in the Amazon has no trace in ancient DNA:
Intriguingly, a signal of Australasian ancestry that has been observed in some Amazonian groups is not evident in any of the ancient Siberian or Beringian samples sequenced here, or in previous studies.
Pontus Skoglund notes that: "the signal is found in Tianyuan at 40kya, stronger than Australasians in its connection to Amazonians in fact. No less mysterious though!" He cites this source. This Tianyuan connection is also stronger than the connection to the Andamanese people.
My own theory is that the genetic trace seen is the product of one or two individuals or a nuclear family who were newcomers to the Beringian community that were in the first wave of advance to settle South America.
17 comments:
"Somebody either walked across a glacier for many miles, or took a boat down the Pacific coast and them migrated inland before the ice free land corridor opened."
If you talk directly to the Blackfoot or Ojibwe, they do not at all go along with the notion that humans arrived in North America from Eurasia within the last 20,000 years.
A careful assessment of the Blackfoot Okotoks narrative about the Ice Age:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wEC6HHQHUm0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X05ukfAzmTw
points to the Blackfoot reclaiming a land after the ice age which they had long inhabited beforehand.
Furthermore, if you ask the Blackfoot, some of them will tell you that they think that some Europeans and Siberians are descendants of the ancestors of some groups of Native Americans. And if you look at the distribution of P-45 lineages (and descendants), that is not entirely implausible.
I see no reason to exclusively support the Beringia Standstill narrative that says that within the last 18,000 years "Somebody either walked across a glacier for many miles, or took a boat down the Pacific coast and them migrated inland before the ice free land corridor opened."
Many people over the years have raised concerns about archaeologists (and geneticists) making inferences about Native American history based only on surface finds using only refined points (Clovis, Western Stemmed, etc.) as a defining reference.
There is *plenty* of evidence that humans reached America multiple times well before 18,000 years ago.
There is far too much discussion about the "origin" of Native Americans that ignores the beliefs of actual Native Americans.
I can't speak for all Native Americans. Nevertheless, the discussions I've had with Blackfoot and Ojibwe people in Canada find the "arrived here in the last 18,000 years from Eurasia" to be very one sided, Eurocentric, and invalidating of their own narratives about their history.
If you look at the recent Sikora paper
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/biorxiv/early/2018/10/22/448829.full.pdf
it says:
"Here, we analyze 34 ancient genome sequences, including two from fragmented milk teeth found at the ~31.6 thousand-year old (kya) Yana RHS site, the earliest and northernmost Pleistocene human remains found. These genomes reveal complex patterns of past population admixture and replacement events throughout northeastern Siberia, with evidence for at least three large-scale human migrations into the region. The first inhabitants, a previously unknown population of “Ancient North Siberians” (ANS), represented by Yana RHS, diverged ~38 kya from Western Eurasians, soon after the latter split from East Asians. Between 20 and 11 kya, the ANS population was largely replaced by peoples with ancestry related to present-day East Asians, giving rise to ancestral Native Americans and “Ancient Paleosiberians” (AP), represented by a 9.8 kya skeleton from Kolyma River. AP are closely related to the Siberian ancestors of Native Americans, and ancestral to contemporary communities such as Koryaks and Itelmen."
In the paper, they suggest that Yana represents "Ancient North Siberians".
There is no reason to think that "Ancient North Siberians" were exclusively confined to Siberia or even Beringia. Many lines of evidence indicate that if humans were living in the far North of Siberia 30,000 years ago, they were also crossing back and forth into and out of North America.
An alternative view on North American lithics:
Jiří Chlachula
Geoarchaeology of Palaeo-American Sites in Pleistocene Glacigenic Deposits
http://cdn.intechopen.com/pdfs/36568.pdf
"if you ask the Blackfoot, some of them will tell you that they think that some Europeans and Siberians are descendants of the ancestors of some groups of Native Americans. And if you look at the distribution of P-45 lineages (and descendants), that is not entirely implausible."
I agree with you on this point which is supported by decent, although not conclusive evidence.
"There is *plenty* of evidence that humans reached America multiple times well before 18,000 years ago."
There are multiple claims. I have yet to be convinced by them.
"There is far too much discussion about the "origin" of Native Americans that ignores the beliefs of actual Native Americans.""
People are entitled to their own opinions, but not their own facts. Oral history more than 18,000 years old (if true), while it shouldn't be ignored (and arguably there is evidence that Australian Aboriginal oral history that old does have some truth to it), has to be weighed against other evidence. This is not really Eurocentric in the sense that I view the claims of the Hebrew and Christian Bibles (especially Genesis and Exodus), the Koran, and other myths regarding creation and deep origins of people and the nature of the world with equal skepticism.
This blog is entitled "Dispatches From Turtle Island", and the Turtle Island myth has meaning and value, but I don't take it as a historical truth. Likewise a lot of "legendary history" such as Greek and Roman and Basque and Germanic and Finnish and Sumerian and Australian Aboriginal mythology ad epics, the Rig Veda, the Avesta, Chinese mythology, the post-Exodus Biblical narrative, the fairy tale tradition, and African myth has nuggets of historical connections to reality but can't be taken at face value is literally true or even figuratively correct.
Oral traditions we no doubt more faithfully reproduced in the pre-literate age than they were in an era where we have lost those techniques in favor of written recollections, but I have learned first hand doing history and genealogy from primary sources that oral accounts of happenings even a couple of centuries or less old are frequently unreliable.
I am not terribly dogmatic. I'm willing to be and have been in the past, convinced to change my mind on topics by new evidence. But, for example, the genetic evidence that virtually all First Peoples ancestry in the Americas that is not Na-Dene or Inuit of people alive today comes from a common founding population with a small effective population that has Asian roots and expanded in the Americas post-Last Glacial Maximum from Beringia is overwhelming. And, while an earlier hominin presence in the Americas can't be flatly ruled out, the absence of extinction evidence, the absence of archaeological evidence of a dramatic population expansion into virgin territory, and the absence of any hominin bones, when many parts of the Americas (although certainly not all) have been scoured by people who would probably find these things if they were there, means than any early hominin presence in the Americas was very thin and had a minimal impact and may not have been long lasting.
It is also very plausible that Neanderthals, Denisovans and ANS people all lacks the maritime capabilities to systemically traverse the Bearing Strait, in times when there wasn't a land bridge, into North America.
"the genetic evidence that virtually all First Peoples ancestry in the Americas that is not Na-Dene or Inuit of people alive today comes from a common founding population with a small effective population that has Asian roots and expanded in the Americas post-Last Glacial Maximum from Beringia is overwhelming"
The common founding population could be a population such as the "Ancient North Siberians" discussed in the recent Sikora paper. Again, there's no reason to think that this common founding population was confined to Beringia until 18,000 years ago.
The sea level was at least 50 meters lower from 60 thousand years ago to 15 thousand years ago:
http://www.seafriends.org.nz/oceano/global02.gif
Why would a highly able people living in Siberia not cross into North America? People have made this argument based on the idea that they were blocked by glaciers. But its clearly the case that people were in North America before 15,000 years ago. So somehow, people made their way around the Laurentide/Cordilleran Ice Sheet. If 18,000 years ago, then why not 30,000 years ago?
The genetic data does support that Siberians/Beringians/North Americans formed a continuous population across Siberia into North America before 20,000 years ago. (see Yun S. Song's analysis in the supplemental data in Raghevan et al., Genomic evidence for the Pleistocene and recent population history of Native Americans, Science , 21 Jul 2015.)
"I have yet to be convinced by them."
To me, it is not about being convinced one way or another. It is about looking at the scientific evidence that we do have, as much of it as possible, and placing dispassionate bounds of uncertainty on that evidence.
Based on the amount of evidence I have seen, to my mind, there is a reasonable *possibility* that modern humans reached North America well before 18,000 years ago. I'm not going to say emphatically that that is true. I too would like to see more evidence. But based on the evidence so far, the Beringia Standstill theory that Ancient Siberians "stood still" in Beringia for 15,000 years, seems like a quite uncertain proposition.
"People are entitled to their own opinions, but not their own facts. Oral history more than 18,000 years old (if true), while it shouldn't be ignored (and arguably there is evidence that Australian Aboriginal oral history that old does have some truth to it), has to be weighed against other evidence."
The oral history of the Blackfoot, and the Blackfoot language, is highly connected to the eco-geography of Southern Alberta and Montana. And it has been shown to have predictive power. For years, people told the Blackfoot that they couldn't have existed on their land during the Ice Age because it had been glaciated. Only recently have they discovered that the entire southern half of Blackfoot territory was never glaciated.
I found the information in the Raghevan et al. Supplemental data that I was looking for:
Method III: Multiple Sequentially Markovian Coalescent (MSMC) analysis
“Divergence from Han (Chinese) is spread mostly between 15 and 30 KYA, with the Native Americans (Athabascan, Karitiana and Huichol) splitting first, and the American Arctic and Siberian populations (Greenlandic Inuit, Nivkh and Koryak) splitting later. The seemingly later split of the latter populations from Han may also reflect post-split gene flow.”
“Splits between the old and the new world are mostly around 20,000 years ago, with some notable exceptions: First, Greenlandic Inuit split much later from all new world populations, indicating post-split gene flow. Also, Athabascan/Koryak is a bit later, indicating gene flow.”
So, what does this say? It says that all Native American populations (with the exception of the Greenland Inuit and other Eskimo/Inuit populations) split from "Han" about 30,000 years ago.
With the exception of Inuit/Eskimo populations, "Old World" and "New World" split about 20,000 years ago.
At this point, based on current evidence, I see no reason, one way or another, to assume that "New World" populations before 20,000 years ago lived only in Beringia. And I also see no reason to assume that a one way single crossing of Beringia accounts for "Ancient Siberian" (as per the Sikora paper) reaching North America.
Sorry for the diatribe, but these origin conversations about Native Americans do have real world consequences, and therefore, I do think we should be up front about uncertainty, and what we do and don't know with certainty.
I'm sorry, but the idea of an 18,000 year old oral history, stretches credibility to the point of ridiculousness.
@Spanked
I'd love to have a thoughtful conversation with you on this topic, but after 30 years of putting up with inappropriate innuendo, gender harassment and discrimination, from half spirited cowards, I have to say that if you want to talk with me on this topic, or any other topic, you'll have to log in under more respectful ID. How about your real name?
PS. Real warriors face their enemy in battle and with their insignia. They don't ambush anonymously using a pseudonym.
I was about to paste Marnie's latest blog post on the fascinating paper on Tam Pa Ling cave, but I'm glad she is here speaking. Marnie, I'm grateful for your excellent range of subjects. My hypothesis that (bark and then wooden dugout) canoes originated in the Papua area, a side-effect of sago palm flour processing, possibly resulting from Denisovan contact. It may be far-fetched, but there are interesting possibilities.
This does not surprise me:
"Pontus Skoglund notes that: "the signal is found in Tianyuan at 40kya, stronger than Australasians in its connection to Amazonians in fact. No less mysterious though!" He cites this source. This Tianyuan connection is also stronger than the connection to the Andamanese people."
I figured that "Melanesians" with bark canoes went north along the yellow sea currents, landing at various sites, and some continued along coastal Beringia (milder than today) to coastal America and pushed to Amazon (Surui), while some went west with dogs (from Phu Quoc island?) cf. Belgium cave had human & canine similarities to Tianyuan. Both Tasmanians & Yahgan (Tierra del Fuego) used bark canoes ( & paddles/spatulas/spades) as do the Pirahã of the Amazon, they preceded wood hulls which required the adze, later developed in the Papuan region.
Two points, or rather questions.
First, the pre-Clovis spear points. To my uneducated eyes, they look exactly like Clovis points except for the central groove, and they have a start of that groove. They are a thousand to a couple thousand years older than the oldest known Clovis points. To my mind, that is plenty of time for people to take the point they have and tweak the style, creating the classic Clovis point. I see no need to assume it is a different people, just an older one. I'd bet they are ancestors of Clovis people. I'd appreciate comment from someone educated on stone technology.
Second comment. If a truly tiny group of modern humans made it into the new world prior to the main event, they might have too small a tech base and too small a gene base to prosper. If you dropped a single family or two, castaways in a dugout canoe, into the American wilderness, how much of their homeland's culture would they be able to reproduce? Not much. And if their population started with a tiny founding group, severe inbreeding would keep them weak. When the Beringians entered the picture, they would easily be swept away besides a few kidnapped girls. I wouldn't be surprised if there were several failed 'colonies' prior to the Beringians. I see a very thinly populated continent of distinctly inferior (genetically and culturally) peoples as a possibility. So few people that we find only traces, with little material culture except a few crude stone tools.
@DDeden
"My hypothesis that (bark and then wooden dugout) canoes originated in the Papua area, a side-effect of sago palm flour processing, possibly resulting from Denisovan contact. It may be far-fetched, but there are interesting possibilities."
I have no idea about the Denisovan contact as the source of bark canoes, but yes, I have noted the bark canoes among Tasmanian Aboriginals. I haven't had a chance to look closely at these.
The Vietnamese coracles, which look quite similar to Native American bull boats, also also quite interesting.
Bamboo rafts appear in Equador, and are quite similar to those in Southeast Asia, China, Bangladesh, Southern India and Ethiopia.
I had a conversation with Akira Goto, the Japanese ethnographer, a few years ago. He is studying the boats in Southeast Asia quite intensively. So you might want to have a look at his work. I'm sure he would be interested to discuss the early use of boats in Japan and Southeast Asia with you. He is also an expert on the early use of fishhooks in Japan and Southeast Asia, which is another interesting line of inquiry.
@DDEden
"Both Tasmanians & Yahgan (Tierra del Fuego) used bark canoes ( & paddles/spatulas/spades) as do the Pirahã of the Amazon, they preceded wood hulls which required the adze, later developed in the Papuan region."
Reed bundle boats are also interesting, and would also not have required an adze.
That's interesting that you think the adze was developed in the Papuan region. I'll have to look into that at some point.
Thank you.
"I see no need to assume it is a different people, just an older one. I'd bet they are ancestors of Clovis people. I'd appreciate comment from someone educated on stone technology."
I don't think that there is an intent in the case of the pre-Clovis point to claim that these people were not derived from the Founding population of the Americas. If they were not ancestors of the Clovis people, there would at least have been a sister population with a common origin within a few thousand years of each other.
We know that the Clovis people spread east to west. It isn't at all clear which direction the people who made this point arrived from and that can't be determined in isolation.
While it was already well established that there were pre-Clovis Native Americans, at a minimum at all points along the Pacific route, I'm not sure how much evidence we've had prior to this find that modern humans had made it that far east in North America that early.
If you look at the portable rock art in North America it is easy to see people have been here more than 110,000 years. I find carved gators in Pennsylvania that have to date before the last ice age. Two of these can be seen at www.portablerockartmuseum on the members gallery 20 under my name Gregg Walls
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