Very interesting website on useing genetics to map human history.

[Odin2005]

https://www3.nationalgeographic.com/genographic/atlas.html

It's associated with the Genographic Project run by geneticist Spencer Wells. You can volenteer a DNA sample for thier data as well.

[PublicWrath]

1. Wow. I think I might do the test. Thanks! n/t

[dipsydoodle]

2. Similar exercises

have been conducted before. From memory they were directed toward establishing links between the black community and specific areas of Africa. UK volunteers were also involved. The project had some success but the results were clouded by disproportionately high incidents of white european blood lines coming to the fore.

I'm guess the site has been put together primarily for school use. It's a fine result and thanks for drawing attention to it.

The Clovis obviously don't get mentioned until the very end. I recall from a series of BBC documentaries that there is a Clovis burial site somewhere in Montana. If anyone has a link to that subject then do please let me know.

[muriel_volestrangler]

6. I saw a repeat of the BBC Solutrean-Clovis documentary just last night

on UKTV History (originally made in 2002 - I don't know if there's been further discoveries since then). Here's the website, including a transcript: http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/horizon/2002/columbus.shtml

[OhioNerd]

11. When I watched that I found myself wondering...

When I watched that I found myself wondering if they got ahold of some of my work. They certainly COULD have gotten it through Ken Tankersley when he was running the anthro dept at Kent.

I hypothosised an entire coastal culture in both major ocean areas, based in part on the Clovis and Solutrean technology being almost identical, and I did it in December of 1998. It was part of some work I was doing to try and find proof of a pre-40,000bp migration to the new world. I found a lot of circumstantial evidence and I definitely feel that the first migration was in the 40kbp range, but I failed at my main objective.

[dipsydoodle]

13. You obvioiusly have considerable knowledge of this subect

and as such I would be very appreciative of any links you are able to provide. The BBC Horizon program is not the one I recalled which was at least 3 hours long in 3 episodes. That series started with the grave in Montana and had a lot of computer animations of the native population killing small faced bears and giant sloths etc

[OhioNerd]

18. Oh, I don't have links, but...

Oh, I don't have links, but I could try to find my old thesis and send you the footnotes for the stuff I thought was most compelling.

I've moved a few times since then, but it has to be SOMEWHERE. I made a point of saving it.

[dipsydoodle]

20. I found the original BBC program

It was called Prehistoric America and it's 300 minutes long. They've got used copies of the DVD listed on amazon.com for $14. I've ordered a new one through amazon.co.uk. For some obscure reason it's region 1 <for USA use> only but I've got multiregion player anyway.

[dipsydoodle]

12. Was actually on 3 times Wednesday

missed all 3 showings but thanks for mentioning it - I'll keep an eye open for when it's repeated again which is bound to happen.

[OhioNerd]

3. They are disappointingly behind the times.

Humans entering the new world between the Cordilleran and Laurentine sheets?

At least they gave up on Clovis first.

[dipsydoodle]

4. This is a reasonably informative link on the subject

http://www.teamatlantis.com/yucatan_test/research_iberia.html

Don't change the fact that initial migration across the Bering Straits is more plausible than sufficient migration from southern europe.

[OhioNerd]

9. I don't have any doubt that Europeans were in the new world Circa 9000bp.

I don't have any doubt that Europeans were in the new world Circa 9000bp. However, that would be post-Clovis. I was referring to migrations prior to that. Monte Verde definitively pushes it back to the mid-teens BP and Meadowcroft pushes it back to about 20kbp. If you look at the genetic data showing population distributions it becomes blindingly obvious that the earliest migrations were along the coast, with a crossover to the Gulf/Atlantic region in the area of present day Panama.

[Odin2005]

5. There are older sites, but...

That still doesn't mean they DIDN"T take the traditional route. The site has a quote from a Native American legend that sounds very much like a mythologized story of going between the two ice sheets.

[OhioNerd]

8. The problem with the "Traditional" route is...

The problem with the "Traditional" route is that it wouldn't have been passable until MUCH later than Clovis. There were either three or four migrations, depending on whose genetic data you accept and the inter-glacial route would only have been available for the last one.

[Odin2005]

16. My hypothesis is that there were 4 waves starting no earlier than 16,000BC

The first wave was by boat from coastal NW Asia, possibly by people resembling the Ainu of Japan, and are responsible for the pre-Clovis sites. Kennewick Man was probably from a population that hadn't yet mixed with the more "mongoloid" people of the 2nd wave and lived before the 3rd wave arrived.

The second wave were the classic "mongoloid" inland Siberian hunters that crossed Beringia and settled through the gap in between the retreating ice sheets, the Clovis people.

The third wave occured 8,000 years ago and was similar to the first wave, but the NE Asian migrants had mixed with a population of coastal peoples comming up from SE Asia carrying the Y marker M130. This migration brought the Na Dene languages (such as Navajo) to the New World.

The last wave consisted of a population on the arctic coast of Eurasia that gave rise to the Inuit.

[OhioNerd]

17. Sorry, but Meadowcroft is older than that. n/t

[depakid]

7. I don't know if I'm prepared to dismiss multi-regionalism yet

At least not in Asia and Australia.

The out of Africa geneticists still have trouble explaining Mungo- and comparatively recent finds of homo erectus suggest to me that there's more going on. Their explanations are getting more powerful, however, as they're moving away from basing their analysis on mitochondrial DNA mutation rates.

Very cool presentation.

[OhioNerd]

10. Are you taking Toba into account? n/t

[depakid]

14. Of course

Mungo (Australia) as I recall is dated at 60,000 years and Swisher et al. 1996 have erectus in Java between 51,000 and 27,000 years- meaning that at the very least, they co-existed with sapiens.

http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/274/5294/1870

[Odin2005]

15. Multiregionalism is dead.

I rember reading that Mungo Man is similar genetically to modern Australian aboriginals. Most multiregionalists I've heard of, like Wolpoff, seem to place a SUBJECIVE interpetation of skelatons (and are probably seing what they want to see) over the genetic evidence, which is far more objective. If there was interbreeding between Moderns and other humans there wasn't enough to affect our MtDNA and Y chromosome DNA, and so is probably insignificant compared to the rest of the human gene pool. Modern Humans apear in Africa 200,000 years ago, at least 100,000 years before there were any moderns outside of Africa and 140,000 years before there were any moderns outside Africa and the Near East.

[depakid]

19. Wolpoff actually looks a little like a Neaderthal

himself, LOL.



However, that it's been disproven for Neanderthal in Europe (both by DNA and certain extraordinary morphology- the structure of the nasal pasages, I believe) doesn't mean that there was not convergent evolution in Asia.

[Boomer]

21. I ordered my DNA test results

I ordered the Genographic DNA kit a few months ago and have received my results. If you're female, the DNA tests follow your mitchondrial DNA; if you're male, the Y chromosome DNA is used as a marker.

As I had hoped, I can trace my matrilineal line back from Oaxaca, Mexico, one of the stops on the migration routes southwards through the Americas. Too bad I can't follow my patrilineal line, which was European and would make an interesting contrast to my Indian heritage.