DNA study bolsters disputed view of migration into North America

[bemildred]

Personally, I think the default assumption should be that there were many waves, not just one. That singularity would seem to me the thing that is unlikely and needs proof.

Supporting a controversial view of how humans might have populated the Western Hemisphere, geneticists have found that groups from Asia traveled over the Bering Strait into North America in at least three separate migrations beginning more than 15,000 years ago — not in a single wave, as has been widely thought.

"We have various lines of evidence that there was more than one migration," said Dr. Andres Ruiz-Linares, a professor of human genetics at University College London and senior author of a report on the findings that was published Wednesday by the journal Nature.

The discovery was made possible by the sheer volume of genetic material the team was able to assemble and analyze, he said.

http://www.latimes.com/news/science/la-sci-native-american-migrations-20120712,0,1827103.story

[bemildred]

1. The Clovis First Theory Put to Rest at Oregon’s Paisley Caves

Who were the first humans to enter the North American continent? Were they humans who founded what is known as the Clovis culture over 13,000 years ago? Or did other, totally unrelated peoples precede the Clovis immigrants? This issue has been intensely, if not bitterly debated for decades. The Clovis culture has been seen as the cradle of North American indigenous culture. Now new international research shows that people of another culture and technology were present concurrently or even previous to those of Clovis. Scientists have added a new and dramatic chapter to the history of the peopling of the Americas striking a deadly blow to the “Clovis First” theory that has dominated pre-historic American archaeology for so long. The sensational results are published in the international journal Science.

Evidence that a non-Clovis culture was present in North America at least as early as Clovis people themselves and likely before is presented by an international team of researchers from the USA, the UK, and Denmark.

http://www.dailydisruption.com/2012/07/the-clovis-first-theory-put-to-rest-at-oregons-paisley-caves/

[LiberalFighter]

2. Does that mean Native Americans can't be called Native Americans?

[bemildred]

3. Nothing to do with nomenclature, as far as I can see.

I'm pretty sure that you can call them whatever you like, just as in the past.

[DavidL]

4. Patterns repeat in history, whether today or

back 15000, or 14000 or 12000 years ago.

It is likely several, maybe almost annual migrations happened, over and over again, for several years in a cycle, and then paused, and re-started 50-1000 years later.

It is in the nature of human beings that efforts done once are done again, over and over, some with success, some with utter failure. It is the nature of human exploit, from the beginning of time, right up until today, with Rich Republicans trying to own the world.

[Bucky]

5. Depends on how you define "wave" of course.

Two migrants from Asia could have traveled over Beringia a couple of thousand years apart from each other and still end up being counted as coming in the same wave.