Subject: Re: original Americans - off topic
Date: Dec 17 23:15:27 1998
From: Eugene Hunn - hunnhome at accessone.com


Michael and others hanging by the Kennewick Man thread,

I'm not a human paleontologist [physical anthropologist] or archaeologist so
can only report what I've read. There has been a long thread on this issue,
at times quite heated on both sides, by "experts" in the Anthropology
Newsletter, organ of the American Anthropological Association. I also
attending the annual AAA convention last week in Philadelphia and the
Distinguished Lecture was by a Canadian physical anthropologist whose name
escapes me, and her topic was a critique of the mitochondrial DNA and other
DNA evidence of the relationships of contemporary Native American
populations with those of NE Asia. Her conclusion was that there was a
complex skein of genetic similarities that suggested that all Native
American populations, including Esimo-Aleut and Na-Dene [arguably including
Tlingit and Haida] were one major subgroup with all the rest a second, but
that all were distinct from contemporary Asian populations. She interpreted
this as strong evidence that the American double continent was populated
from a single base population most likely established on the Bering Land
Bridge perhaps 25000+ years ago. Linguistic evidence seems to support this
basic outline, though Greenberg's controversial theory of three distinct
migrations: the first before 12000, the second that of the Na-Dene
(Athabaskan + Navajo/Apache), and the third that of Eskimo-Aleut, overstates
the degree of isolation of these three linguistic units. She also noted that
though linguistic and genetic markers appear to correlate closely amongs
Na-Dene and Eskimo-Aleut and more or less throughout Native America north of
Mexico, that correlation breaks down south of the contemporary USA,
suggesting the impact of empires, etc., in Mesoamerica.

As for the suggestion that some earlier form of hominid (e.g., Homo
erectus...) might have lived in the Americas, the evidence is overwhelmingly
against it. First, Homo erectus had an average cranial capacity of ca.
950cc, about 2/3 the value of Homo sapiens. Homo erectus in one form or
another did apparently spread from Africa to China (i.e., Pekin "Man") and
Java (i.e., Java "Man") but such finds are associated with very crude stone
tool technology, some use of fire, but no evidence of more efficient
hunting, fishing, gathering, or food processing technological capacity. Some
argue that Homo erectus (as well as the later and near-modern Neanderthal)
could not have had fully modern human linguistic capacity. This is based on
inferences about the shape of the larynx, pharynx, and oral cavity, etc.
Dates are from ca. 1,000,000 BP to maybe 100,000 BP. Fully modern humans may
date to 100,000 BP, but evidence of rapid progressive elaboration of stone
tool manufacture, cave art, etc. date to less than 50,000 BP. Apparently
Australia was colonized by then, so rafting across the Wallace Line must
have occurred. It is very difficult to imagine a scenario that would bring
humans to the Americas before then, which brings us to the latter stages of
the Ice Ages. North America was alternately covered by a great sheet of ice
across virtually all of modern Canada. It is possible a narrow coastal
ice-free margin remained open. In any case, lower sea levels exposed the
Bering Land bridge only when the ice sheets were at their maxima, acting
like an "air lock." The ice sheets would have been an even more formidable
barrier to any conceivable migration from northern Europe. Subsequent to ca.
11,500 BC (13,500 BP) the ice sheets retreated, opening a broad corridor
south through the interior. This date coincides quite well with a dramatic
multiplication of human remains throughout the Americas, all the way to the
tip of South America. The rapidity with which the two continents fill up
suggests to me that there were perhaps humans in small numbers south of the
ice sheets when last the ice-free corridor was open, ca 40,000 to 25,000 BP.
If you're suspicious of these dates, complain to the glaciologists. Finally,
as to the possibility that Homo sapiens evolved independently in the
Americas from some primate ancestor, consider that all new world primates
(Homo sapiens excepted) belong to a superfamily quite distinct from that
which includes all old world monkeys, apes, and humans.

As for connections in Asia, it is recognized that Japanese, Korean, and, I
believe, the Ainu of Hokkaido speak languages not clearly related to
Chinese, Tibeto-Burman, or Australasian and may be related to the
Ural-Altaic phylum of languages that includes Finnish and Hungarian as it's
westernmost outliers. If our Kennewick Man were descended from some
ancestral proto-Ural Altaic speaking population it might explain the
"caucasoid" features.

Several experts writing in the Anthropology Newletter have argued that
Kennewick Man is not so different from other known Native American skeletons
(by which one can only legitimately refer to the remains of individuals who
lived in North or South America prior to modern (Viking/Columbus/etc.)
migrations. Compare the physiognomies of, for example, a Yucatec Maya, a
Kayapo, an Iroquois, a Navajo, an Inuit, a Tlingit, a Pomo, and then try to
pick out the "caucasoid," considering that "caucasoid" might include a
Swede, an Italian, an Amhara from Ethiopia, Saddam Hussein, and a Hindi.
These racial epithets are generally rejected as misleading, even dangerous,
abbreviations for complex patterns of statistical variation in a mosaic of
characters that do not sort out into nice neat geographical units. So one
more skeleton simply adds to the known range of variation of Native American
types.

As I said, it's rather too complicated for a brief sound bite. Furthermore,
to do it justice would require several weeks research, at least.

Gene Hunn.