Old DNA extracted from chewn-up wads of yucca, women's aprons

[semillama]

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/09/070905161208.htm

The really cool news in this article is this part:

"The Harvard study brings other good news for historians of ancient times. LeBlanc said the DNA captured from quids and aprons shows — in a preliminary way — that early farming populations in the Southwest descended from farmers in what is now central Mexico. That helps answer an old question among those who study the ancient Southwest: Was the idea of farming imported, or was it adopted by indigenous populations?

More broadly, archaeologists interested in migration patterns anywhere now have a new source for the DNA that can be used to track the movement of ancient people — though LeBlanc cautioned that the methods have to be retested and refined.

The origins of the earliest North American farmers are still officially a puzzle, and center on a now-lost tribe known as the Western Basketmakers. More than 2,000 years ago, these indigenous Americans started growing corn in what is now southeastern Utah and northern Arizona. "

so it looks like a expansion north into the Southwest of a Mexican population for the farming communities, instead of farming being solely developed in place by ancestors of the hunter-gatherers that were there prior to the Western Basketmakers.

[Jed Dilligan]

1. Very interesting.

I wonder if they were displaced persons. The historical records suggest a series of barbarian invasions upsetting settled farming life in Central Mexico.

Many people are quite unaware of how far "primitive" people can travel. Wasn't the first Thanksgiving delayed after the harvest because the chief was walking to Florida for a funeral?