Polynesian Trans-Pacific

CNN: Ancient Bones may rewrite theory of earliest Americans

The three bones were discovered 40 years ago on the Channel Islands, on a ridge called Arlington, just off the California coastline. Now, technological advances are offering new clues into just how far back in history the bones may reach. Using radiocarbon dating to analyze the bone protein at the molecular level, scientists at the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History say they've dated the remains at 13,000 years old.

L.A. Times: Discovery Casts Doubt on Bering Strait Land Bridge Theory

Using radiocarbon dating, scientists found that the Ushki site, the remains of a community of hunters clustered around Ushki Lake in northeastern Russia, appears to be only about 13,000 years old, 4,000 years younger than originally thought. The new date places the Ushki settlement in the same time period as the Clovis site, an ancient community found in New Mexico, making it highly unlikely that people could have traversed the thousands of miles from Siberia in such a short period.

Originally posted by Byrd
. Although hominids have been in Australia and New Zealand for upwards of 4 million years

Look, I usually really enjoy reading what you have to say because you have been out and about and 'done it' rather than being an armchair enthusiast and generally your posts are 'on the money'.

However, I must take exception to this excerpt as it is patently untrue. Could you please provide me with citations regarding this claim?

Cheers

Originally posted by aorAki

Originally posted by Byrd
. Although hominids have been in Australia and New Zealand for upwards of 4 million years

Look, I usually really enjoy reading what you have to say because you have been out and about and 'done it' rather than being an armchair enthusiast and generally your posts are 'on the money'.

However, I must take exception to this excerpt as it is patently untrue. Could you please provide me with citations regarding this claim?

Cheers

Recent find (2006) :

The fossil, a chance discovery, further supports Rex Gilroy's belief that our Aboriginal people were preceded on this continent by earlier races, principally Homo erectus.
bega.yourguide.com.au...

It competes with the material from Chad:
www.talkorigins.org...

Originally posted by Skyfloating
CNN: Ancient Bones may rewrite theory of earliest Americans

The three bones were discovered 40 years ago on the Channel Islands, on a ridge called Arlington, just off the California coastline. Now, technological advances are offering new clues into just how far back in history the bones may reach. Using radiocarbon dating to analyze the bone protein at the molecular level, scientists at the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History say they've dated the remains at 13,000 years old.

I think if I read one more "rewrite history" article on CNN, I'll go smack the reporter over the head with my anthropology textbook.

The current working theory is that humans have been here for over 20,000 years (Monte Verde site in South America.) The presence of sites (like the next article you cited) on both sides of the Bering Strait isn't disproof of anything. People live in Boston -- and Dallas. That doesn't mean that when they founded Dallas, everyone moved from Boston and deserted the East Coast.

Generally it's the younger males who went off exploring (and would come back to tell people about better places to live... and take women with them once they'd found a good place.) But others would stay "at home" or move elsewhere.

These articles read as though they thought there was some sort of "forced march" with Large Monsters chasing people from Asia all the way into South America some 20,000 years ago. There wasn't that kind of migration -- and the patterns of the language families tell us that. Although they still bicker over it, the "migration" took place over thousands of years, with the latest arrivals coming across about the time the Pyramids were being built.

Sorry for the ARRRRGH! It seems that no matter how many times we say it, the press treats humans as though they suddenly appeared in the Garden of Eden some 6,000 years ago and ran across the planet within 200 years and produced over a million descendants in that time.

There's some suggestion that humans may have been here in the Americas as early as 30,000 years ago.

[edit on 7-3-2009 by Byrd]

reply to post by Byrd


Yes, I can accept that regarding Australia, but there is no way it was so in New Zealand. By four million years ago we had we and truly separated from the Australian continent (which occurred c.80 mya +- from memory).

There is a researcher in Canterbury University called Dr Richard Holdaway
link (he is also active in the Geology Department). I have been on Moa 'digs' with him,(notably at Bell Hill in North Canterbury, near Pyramid Valley, where a full faunal and vegetative census was undertaken during excavation). He is 'famous' for finding rat bones in a cave beneath the Taupo ignimbrite, without evidence of tunneling. That would put a human presence in New Zealand at before 1800 BP. However, this is treated as 'contentious' and there are other researchers who have done different studies (DNA etc) and place the 'earliest' human presence at c. 1200 CE.

Then you have Dr Barry Brailsford, who started out as an Anthropologist and did some interesting work regarding early New Zealand habitation. He has since, it seems, been 'hijacked' by the New Age crowd and published books which contend that there WAS contact between peoples across the Pacific and that Pounamo (Greenstone/Jade) was one of the precious items that was traded between peoples. I've seen these books and there is a lot of supposition and I'm not convinced. It is interesting to get another perspective however, but one needs to be aware of mumbo jumbo!
However, there is one book which piqued my interest because it was endorsed by Dame Whina Cooper, who was a matriarch of Maoridom and, it turns out, one of the Waitaha elders. The book is 'Song of the Waitaha' and it cobbles together myths etc and tries to suggest that there was an early presence (before 2000 BP) with trans-Pacific contacts. I didn't give this book much stock until I found out about Dame Whina's involvement.

However, as a Pakeha, I'm not certain about any of this, and I'm not privy to 'knowledge' held by Kaumatua. There is no 'hard' evidence of earlier cultures than Maori in New Zealand, though the Waipoua Forest structures sound interesting (Northland, 'beehive' huts and stone walls. I haven't been there yet and apparently it is very difficult to get permission to visit the site from the local Iwi (tribe). Apparently, too, there was an archaeological survey carried out with an embargo on the release of information until 2050, which makes me curious.

Cobbled with Maori legends about Patupaiarehe, Turehu, Urukehu, Te Tini o Toi and more, and this is a very interesting subject.

However, hominids in New Zealand c. 4 mya is, in my opinion, bunkum!

[edit on 7-3-2009 by aorAki]

I would like to add to this discussion, the finds at Serra da Capivara, in Brazil, where archaeologists have excavated remains that indicate that humans were in the "New World" 50,000 years ago.

Until now, native Americans were believed to have descended from Asian ancestors who arrived over a land bridge between Siberia and Alaska and then migrated across the whole of north and south America. The land bridge was formed 11,000 years ago during the ice age, when sea level dropped.

However, the new evidence shows that these people did not arrive in an empty wilderness. Stone tools and charcoal from the site in Brazil show evidence of human habitation as long ago as 50,000 years.

BBC : Ancient Voices -Tracking The First Americans

Please read further.

Pre-Siberian American Aborigines

Americas Settled by Two Groups of Early Humans, Study Says

On youtube, the whole episode is available in 6 parts. Links to these 6 parts are available on my profile under comments.

Disclaimer : What is Quoted is from Other Websites and I Do Not stand as Guarantor for the truthfulness of the quoted matter. If anybody wants to verify it, Go ahead!

reply to post by Byrd


I guess it doesnt really matter when migration across the Bering Straits happened.

What does matter to me is the idea that thats the only way migration could have happened, which - without knowing all the research done on it - seems unlikely in such an enormous amount of time. Hence this thread.

Just a thought I've had. Has there been any tests carried out on various Jade 'implements' as this will give provenance (almost like separate species, they have a distinctive 'signature' indicative of origin)?

Ive done a little readin in the last few days and Ive found out a copuple of things, that humans are divided into two types of dentition(teeth)
sinodonts, and sundadonts.
There are specific differences in in tooth structure between the two.
Sinodonts comprise native americans( both north and south), han chinese, mongolians, siberians and the sami among others.

Sundadonts are africans, caucasians, Jomon, phillipino's thia's and indonesians.


coredrill:

I would like to add to this discussion, the finds at Serra da Capivara, in Brazil, where archaeologists have excavated remains that indicate that humans were in the "New World" 50,000 years ago

The skull found at this dig was a sundadont
as is kennewick man.
They are not from a siberian ancestory
There have been some early remains found in tierra del fuego, that show austronesian skeletal morphology.

The significant differences between sinodonts and sundadonts, to me , indicates different lineages.
In sinodonts the upper incisors are angled inward and the tooth is shovel shaped. And the upper first pre molars have one root whereas the sundadonts have two roots, in the lower first molar sinodonts have three roots and sundadonts have two.
I find this difference between us very fascinating, to me it would indicate a different lineage for various form of modern humans.
Such a difference of of tooth structure is not something that happens in a few thousand years, but over the course of hundreds of thousads of years.

reply to post by coredrill


According to mtDNA, the Tierra Del Fuego population is Amerind, not Australian:

The analysis of both mtDNA and Y-STRs revealed DNA from Amerindian ancestry. The observed polymorphisms are consistent with the hypothesis that the ancient Fuegians are close to populations from south-central Chile and Argentina, but their high nucleotide diversity and the frequency of single lineages strongly support early genetic differentiation of the Fuegians through combined processes of population bottleneck, isolation, and/or migration, followed by strong genetic drift. This suggests an early genetic diversification of the Fuegians right after their arrival at the southernmost extreme of South America.

The source is the abstract only of a published scientific paper from 2006.

SOURCE
Your source is seven years older than that.

Harte