A fascinating report in New Scientist tells of common ancestry between Amazonian and Australasian peoples, dating possibly back more than 10,000 years. How could Australasian people crossed the ocean to arrive at the Amazon?
The genomes of 15 ancient Americans, including six that are more than 10,000 years old, have been sequenced. The results reveal how people first spread through the Americas – and also throw up a major mystery.
The big picture is clear. Around 25,000 years ago during the last ice age, the ancestors of modern native Americans moved across the Beringian land bridge into what is now Alaska. They remained there for millennia because the way south was blocked by ice. Once a path opened up, groups of hunter-gatherers moved south very quickly.
[...]
Southern native Americans split from northern ones around 16,000 years ago, the results suggest, and reached South America not long afterwards.
The genomes reveal many more details about this process. For instance, it appears some previously unknown group split away from northern native Americans at some point and then moved into South America around 8000 years ago, long after the initial migration.
But the study also adds to a big mystery: some groups in the Amazon are somewhat more closely related to the Australasians of Australia and Papua New Guinea than other native Americans are. The genomes show this "Australasian signal" is more than 10,000 years old. So where did it come from?
If another group of people more closely related to Australasians crossed the Beringian land bridge at some point and moved down to the Amazon, why is there no trace of them in North America? And in the exceedingly unlikely event they somehow managed to cross the vast Pacific long before the Polynesians, how did they end up in the Amazon, on the other side of the Andes?
Based on shape of their skulls, it has also been claimed that many ancient humans found in the Americas cannot be the ancestors of present-day native Americans and instead belonged to a distinct group dubbed the "Paleoamericans". "But we see again that they are most closely related to present-day native Americans," says Moreno-Mayar.
This finding has led to the remains of one of the early humans, the 10,000-year-old Spirit Cave mummy, being returned to the Fallon Paiute-Shoshone Tribe after a long legal battle.
In 2015, Moreno-Mayar's team showed that another supposed "Paleoamerican", called Kennewick Man, was closely related to present-day native Americans.
Also at Smithsonian magazine
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Thexalon on Wednesday March 11, @03:29AM (5 children)
People in southeast Asia and Australia would become the Polynesians, who became the best damned sailors on the planet and treated the Pacific Ocean as a highway. They had boats. They knew how to use them to get places, and explored huge swaths of the Earth. There's lots of other evidence they visited the west coast of the Americas at least occasionally, e.g. signs of technology and language exchange, as well as exchange of plants.
So I'd be more surprised if there wasn't any genetic exchange.
"Think of how stupid the average person is. Then realize half of 'em are stupider than that." - George Carlin
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 11, @07:29AM (1 child)
Bing bing. More than a few potato species have near identical names in South America and polynesia.
Long ago, had a flatmate explain that during a visit to Vietnam, a professor pulled out (figuratively) literal receipts of trader's voyages to South America, some going back a millenium.
Historians are great in general, the field tends to winnow out those with short attention spans, but their blind spots are pure facepalm.
(Score: 4, Touché) by Thexalon on Wednesday March 11, @11:31AM
The blind spots in question aren't anything new, e.g. describing Christopher Columbus as the first person to discover America, and Marco Polo as the first person to visit China, and James Cook as the first person to discover Hawaii, all of which are patently untrue statements that are regularly taught to schoolchildren in history classes.
"Think of how stupid the average person is. Then realize half of 'em are stupider than that." - George Carlin
(Score: 3, Informative) by pTamok on Wednesday March 11, @12:19PM (2 children)
So Thor Heyerdahl [wikipedia.org] was right (for values of 'right' that include 'wrong'), other than he got the direction of the traffic incorrect,
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Wednesday March 11, @07:26PM (1 child)
Heyerdahl is right that oceans aren't the impassable barrier a lot of historians thought they were, and that it's entirely possible for traffic to have gone both ways across the Atlantic and Pacific with relatively primitive boats.
He's probably wrong about the specifics about who crossed which oceans when and why, and the details of what they did when they got there. That's a very thorny problem, and the record-keeping wasn't exactly great for a lot of that time period.
"Think of how stupid the average person is. Then realize half of 'em are stupider than that." - George Carlin
(Score: 2, Interesting) by pTamok on Wednesday March 11, @08:28PM
I'd agree that he showed that oceanic navigation was possible, even if he didn't get the details right. There's very much an idea that "primitive people's" couldn't have done it: and he showed that non-modern technology was entirely adequate.
The navigation abilities of Polynesian sailors is now reasonably well acknowledged, and L'Anse aux Meadows is an existence proof of the abilities of Norse sailors.
As for Kon Tiki - I don't think anyone would have left South America in the direction of Polynesia unless they were either:(a) desperate; or (b) knew how they could survive indefinitely or return; or (c) subject to an accident.
Heyerdahl was interesting, and somewhat driven. If you've read and like The Kon-Tiki Expedition [wikipedia.org] you might like his book on living in Polynesia before the Kon-Tiki expedition; Fatu-Hiva [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 11, @05:20PM
Strong currents too, could probably carry a boat from Sydney to Tierra del Fuego in less than a week. Kidding of course. But I gotta ask, didn't any Polynesians drift over to India and southern/central Africa? It's a relatively short trip from Dakar to Brasil