From: derek gatherer (dgatherer2002@yahoo.co.uk)
Date: Tue 09 Dec 2003 - 16:29:06 GMT
> Concerning the origin of South American man, recent
> controversy was when did
> human beings cross the Berring Strait, hence
> populated first North America,
> then travelled down to South America, not where did
> they come from. I have not
> followed that one in details, there seem to have
> been a recent discovery of
> modern human bones in North America, dating quite a
> few thousands of years
> earlier than previously thought. All these were
> coming from what we now call China.
There is the standard theory that the Clovis people,
from whom the majority of Native Americans are
descended (with the exceptions of Inuit and Na-Dene),
came from northern China area - and that is supported
by the Y-chromosome data.
I think that Kenneth was alluding to various
non-standard theories of recent Chinese origin. These
theories would have it that the Clovis people came
form somewhere else (Australia, Polynesia, Europe and
Japan are all candidates depending on the flavour of
the theory) and that the ancestors of current Native
Americans are more recent. The problem with these is
explaining away the absence of any Y-lineages from any
of the above places, thus requiring theories of
genocide etc, and it all gets a little implausible.
The only hard evidence against the standard theory is:
1) An ancient European mitochondrial lineage exists in
a single great Lakes area tribe. (nowhere else)
2) Kennewick man.
3) There is something genetically unusual about the
native americans of the US eastern seaboard - but they
still have Chinese origin Y-chromosomes.
Of the above, 1 and 2 are single data points, so must
surely constitute anomalies. Number 3 can be
explained in other ways.
So on the whole, we need something a bit better in
order to abandon the traditional theory.
________________________________________________________________________
BT Yahoo! Broadband - Save £80 when you order online today. Hurry! Offer ends 21st December 2003. The way the internet was meant to be. http://uk.rd.yahoo.com/evt=21064/*http://btyahoo.yahoo.co.uk
===============================================================
This was distributed via the memetics list associated with the
Journal of Memetics - Evolutionary Models of Information Transmission
For information about the journal and the list (e.g. unsubscribing)
see: http://www.cpm.mmu.ac.uk/jom-emit
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Tue 09 Dec 2003 - 16:38:29 GMT