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Ancient Human Remains Found in Mexico Suggest Bilateral Immigration to the Americas

It has long been the theory that human population of the Americas resulted from northeast Asians eventually migrating south after having crossed the Bering Strait prior to 20,000 years ago during the last ice age. Now fossil remains thought to be between 10,000 and 12,000 years old discovered in Mexico suggest that southeast Asians populated the Americas at approximately the same time. Because the evidence is founded in the facial characteristics of the fossil and not DNA it is not conclusive.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/38384521/ns/world_news-americas/

Although there is no DNA evidence supporting the finding there has long stood a scientific theory that southeast Asians populated the Americas as early as northeast Asians.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Settlement_of_the_Americas#Southeast_A...

Tags: Americas, Indians, Jubinsky

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Permalink Reply by Scott Bidstrup on July 25, 2010 at 7:35am

This is really nothing new, actually - the skeletal remains found some years ago in Washington State proved to be 9,000 years old and genotypically identical to a group of Asians that were replaced by modern Siberians several thousand years later - the last remnant of that ancient group is the Ainu people of Japan. The genotypes still exist in the New World, and are found most abundantly in the indigenous peoples of Tierra del Fuego.

There is some scattered but intriguing (if controversial) evidence from Chile that the Americas may have been inhabited as long as 30,000 years ago.

We do know from genetic evidence that the modern Inuit/Aleut and Athabaskan/Dene/Navajo represent a distinctly different and more recent migration from Asia from most other North American indigenous groups, so there have been no fewer than three major migration events in the peopling of the New World, and may have been as many as five. So this new find is simply more corroborating evidence for something that has been known for a long time.

Permalink Reply by John Jubinsky on July 25, 2010 at 8:26am

Here is what might have happened:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Settlement_of_the_Americas#Southeast_A...

Permalink Reply by Scott Bidstrup on July 25, 2010 at 8:58am

Well, of course, we know from the Book of Mormon that none of this is true. The New World was, of course, peopled by a remnant of ancient Israel who came here prior to the destruction Jerusalem, in 600 BC. They came in wooden submarines guided by a magic compass given them by God himself...

So I don't understand what all this controversy is about. We know the answer. It was given to us by God himself through a man convicted of digging for lost treasure for hire. He was chosen by God himself to lead us out of our ignorance... We just need to listen to the Prophets of God, and we'll have all the answers we ever need...

Permalink Reply by John Jubinsky on July 25, 2010 at 10:16am

Of course. Why should we waste our time with fossils?

Permalink Reply by Bryon on July 25, 2010 at 11:04am

I thought it was a yellow submarine...and Utah was an octopuses garden in the shade. Oh wait that was another LSD induced fable. Nevermind

Permalink Reply by Susan Stanko on July 25, 2010 at 12:16pm

I have that song in my head now.

Permalink Reply by ɟǝןıx dǝʇɹɐɹ on July 25, 2010 at 10:40am

There is some scattered but intriguing (if controversial) evidence from Chile that the Americas may have been inhabited as long as 30,000 years ago.

May I ask please more data about this?

Permalink Reply by Scott Bidstrup on July 25, 2010 at 11:27am

http://www.unl.edu/rhames/monte_verde/monte_verde1.htm

Permalink Reply by John Jubinsky on July 25, 2010 at 1:26pm

Here is more on the Monte Verde site in Chile. It references the possibility of a culture there 33,000 years old.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monte_Verde

There is even speculation that a culture referred to as Topper South Carolina is 50,000 years old.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Topper_(archaeological_site)

The existences of the 33,000 and 50,000 year old cultures are supposedly very debatable (and understandably).

Permalink Reply by ɟǝןıx dǝʇɹɐɹ on July 25, 2010 at 4:34pm

Thank you both Mr Bidstrup and Mr Jubinsky. This is very interesting although I have doubts about that piece of charcoal at Topper site. They could go back and date the rest of the organic material at that layer.

Permalink Reply by Scott Bidstrup on July 25, 2010 at 5:00pm

My suspicions are that there have been several ancient colonizations of both North and South America in the past, but for whatever reason, the colonies were never successful in establishing a permanent population.

It is quite possible that ancients may have made their way here, too. I recall reading in my youth many years ago about a Roman coin that was found in Virginia, and "rune stones" found in New England. Such a navigation of the Atlantic may have been attempted; the Greeks knew the earth was round and successfully calculated its circumference; if the Greeks knew this, the Romans certainly did, and they had ships quite capable of crossing the Atlantic ocean should such an expedition to explore the "Western Sea" have been well planned.

We know that the Vikings tried unsuccessfully to establish a colony in Newfoundland, and there have been hints of other unsuccessful Viking colonies in the New World.

Thor Heyerdahl, back in the 1940's proved that simple, primitive ship technology was quite capable of delivering a cargo of live humans across as vast a distance as the Pacific; that such a ship could have crossed the much shorter distance across the Atlantic is certainly feasible. So it is quite possible that the Monte Verde site and even the South Carolina site happened to have been examples of such unsuccessful colonies.

So I, for one, do not find incredible the notion that humans, in small numbers, made it across either ocean on several, possibly even numerous instances in the past, but simply failed to establish a permanent population.

Permalink Reply by John Jubinsky on July 25, 2010 at 9:41pm

This article (from Wikipedia) although somewhat vague seems to proclaim that DNA testing of a 9,200 year old North American specimen showed that it had both north and south Asian ancestry. If true this would be pretty strong evidence that north and south Asians interbred here 9,200 years ago. That is, it would be pretty strong evidence that south Asians were here 9,200 years ago. The following is from the article:

To further investigate the mystery of the Kennewick man and determine if the skeleton belonged to the Umatilla Native American tribe, an extraction of DNA was analyzed but at first could not be completed because it contradicted Native American values protected under NAGPRA. Anthropologist Joseph Powell of the University of New Mexico was finally allowed to examine the remains and his conclusions were contradictory. He said that Kennewick Man was not European but rather resembled South Asians and the Ainu people of northeast Asia.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kennewick_Man