"We still have a lot to learn"

[Charl]

Well, I guess that will always be the case....


https://www.newsweek.com/ancient-skulls-early-settlers-north-america-scientists-1484918?amp=1



https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0227444

 

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[Tony in SC]

Good read. I have always believed that many paths were taken to get here and the time line goes back much farther than previously thought.

 

[justonemore]

To be considered but taken with a grain of salt. As you stated we have a lot to learn.

 

[uniface]

Thanks for the link, Charl. A Nixonian "limited, modified hang-out" for sure.

previous research, which suggested the first people to arrive in the Americas were a relatively homogenous group.

conveniently neglecting to remind people that while most paleoindian skulls are easily taken to be those of Caucasians, the dogmatic insistence that they were Asians via Beringia never wavered. Homogenously Caucasian-like Asians ?

Looks like they decided it's OK now to come partially clean about Latin America. But I'm not holding my breath waiting for them to follow suit with Windover Bog & Red Paint Culture remains in North America.

Heck, I'd settle for Kennewick Man as a good faith gesture while they worked on the rest.

 

[uniface]

Whenever they're backed into a corner by the evidence, they just either 1) misinterpret it, or 2) outright make stuff up (tell lies).

1)

Kennewick Man
National Park Service (NPS), U.S. Department of the Interior
​

Report on the Osteological Assessment of the "Kennewick Man" Skeleton
Joseph F. Powell and Jerome C. Rose, March 1, 1999​

Summary
The Kennewick skeleton is a male who died between 45 and 50 years of age. He was approximately 175 cm (5' 9") tall, based on an average of all stature estimates. The geologically correlated age for the skeleton is 6700-9000 yr. B.P. Like other early American skeletons, the Kennewick remains exhibit a number of morphological features that are not found in modern populations. For all craniometric dimensions, the typicality probabilities of membership in modern populations were zero, indicating that Kennewick is unlike any of the reference samples used. Even when the least-conservative inter-individual distances are used to construct typicality probabilities, Kennewick has a low probability of membership in any of the late Holocene reference samples. Similar results were obtained by Ozolins et al. (1997) for Upper Paleolithic samples from Asia, Africa, and Europe and Paleoindian groups, and are not surprising considering that Kennewick is separated by roughly 8,000 years from most of the reference samples in Howells (1989) and Hanihara (1996). The most craniometrically similar samples appeared to be those from the south Pacific and Polynesia as well as the Ainu of Japan, a pattern observed in other studies of early American crania from North and South America (Steele and Powell 1992, 1994; Jantz and Owsley 1997). Thus Kennewick appears to have strongest morphological affinities with populations in Polynesia and southern Asia, and not with American Indians or Europeans in the reference samples. Powell also said that dental analysis showed the skull had a 94% chance of being of the Sundadont group, like the Jomon, Ainu, Australians, and Polynesians.

Fast forward to 2015 and notice the fancy footwork :

Most surprisingly, anthropologists measured his skull and concluded its shape tied him more closely to the modern-day Polynesians or the indigenous Ainu people of Japan than to modern-day Native Americans.

Which agrees with the National Park service (above). (NPS turns out quality work). But that just can't BE !

The relatives of a much-debated 8,500-year-old skeleton found in Kennewick, Washington, have been pinned down: The middle-age man was most closely related to modern-day Native Americans, DNA from his hand reveals.



The new analysis lays to rest wilder theories about the ancestry of the ancient American, dubbed Kennewick Man, said study co-author Eske Willerslev, an evolutionary biologist at the Natural History Museum of Denmark at the University of Copenhagen.

"There have been different theories, different mythology, everything from him being related to Polynesians, to Europeans, to [indigenous people] from Japan," Willerslev told Live Science. "He is most closely related to contemporary Native Americans."

Who you gonna believe ? Us or those lying bones ?

Otherwise known as imposing dogma on evidence to the contrary, using DNA 101a-level assumptions still being continually revised.

In the new study, which was published today (June 18) in the journal Nature, Meltzer, Willerslev and their colleagues took a second look at DNA from a sliver of Kennewick Man's hand bone. They then compared that DNA with that of several modern-day Native American populations, as well as Ainu and Polynesian populations. The team also reanalyzed the skull and concluded that, because it was just one sample, it was well within the range of variation that could have been found among ancestral Native American populations.

This is truly priceless. Skull shape is the one constant most widely relied-on for well over 100 years to distinguish genetically different populations. But when you want it to be flexible enough to make your claim look plausible, you just assume that it is (like with the Red Paint Peoples' skulls), and announce that as settled fact.

"There's no getting around it, Kennewick Man is Native American," Meltzer said.

 

[Charl]

There you are, uni! I had you in mind when I started this thread, knowing it would be right up your iconoclast alley!

I think this is a better and more detailed summary then the Newsweek article I posted originally. For those who want more detail, but don't wish to read the entire published study:

https://www.livescience.com/skulls-from-first-north-americans-diverse.html

 

[MAMucker]

Well, my my!

Thanks for posting that link.
I think that study has the potential to ignite a fire or two.

 

[uniface]

There you are, uni! I had you in mind when I started this thread, knowing it would be right up your iconoclast alley!

Objection, Your Honor.

Not an iconoclast.

Allergic to bullsh*t.

 

[redbeardrelics]

Every time I read one of these articles or reports I can’t help but think of what I like to call
'A politically incorrect case of déjà vu all over again”.
It seems when we boil it all down that we have two basic schools of thought and points of debate, regarding the early peopling of the Americas. One group argues that people started arriving in what we now call the America’s well over 14,000 years ago. They say the people probably came from several different regions, via several different paths, and in several different journeys.
The other group argues that people first arrived via an overland opening in the ice sheets covering what is now northwestern Canada, roughly 14,000 years ago, and that those were the only migrants to these continents and that it was those people, and only those people who were here when people from the rest of the world arrived roughly 500 years ago.
I say they both can be somewhat correct if we are not afraid to confront the huge woolly mammoth in the room. What do you imagine would have happened if there were diverse groups of people already scattered about the Americas when the land bridge in northwestern Canada opened, and large scale overland migration to these continents became possible? We really don’t need to imagine what would have happened, since we already have a politically correct version of what happened under a similar scenario just 500 years ago or so. Why can we not just apply the same politically correct scenario we are all familiar with, to the earlier proposed migration?
Let us quickly review the Hollywood version of what happened starting roughly 500 years ago. We find that “Native Americans” had been living peacefully amongst themselves and nature for thousands of years, when uninvited invaders from the east landed upon the shores of these continents. The uninvited warlike intruders brought with them superior weapons for hunting and war; guns, cannons and the like to overpower the bows and flaked stone tipped arrows. Bringing with them different cultures/cults from which they learned their strange morals, values and ethics. With these superior weapons and strange values they managed, and desired, to kill, push and displace the Native Americans from east to west. The strange new diseases brought by the invaders from the east often outpaced the invaders themselves, decimating the Native American populations. Within less than 500 years the Native Americans were nearly extinct surviving on reservations, much like the displaced and nearly extinct native bison. Species such as the carrier pigeons were not so fortunate, and no longer exist as result of this invasion. The eastern invaders damaged not only the peoples and creatures already here, but also decimated the landscape, cutting trees for their homes, blocking rivers with their dams, and building large unnatural structures where they congregate for their religious rituals. Gathering religiously on winter Sundays, surrendering their ticket tithes to enter their stadium congregations to watch grown men dressed in costumes and uniforms depicting mythical creatures, or wild animals of the jungles and forests, Lions & Tigers and Bears oh my… Lions & Tigers and Bears oh my…Faithfully turning their headwear inside out and backwards, or their beverage bottle labels towards the playing fields as part of their devout dogma as a rally cap prayer, or to supernaturally empower a grown man to better kick a toy ball through a toy goalpost.
Why should this largely accepted, politically correct, scenario not also apply to the proposed migration 14,000 years ago? If so, we find that roughly 14,000 years ago there was an unwanted, uninvited and warlike group of invaders coming down through the land bridge, bringing with them superior weapons for hunting and war, and cultures/cults that were strange in this land. The invaders possessed powerful atl atl weapons, tipped with sharp chipped flint points that easily dominated the hand held wooden or bone tipped hunting spears of the earlier occupants. These earlier occupants who lived in true peace and harmony with each other and nature, and who left no scars or unnatural impacts upon the land whatsoever. With these advanced weapons and strange moral desires to spread themselves across new lands they forced the earlier occupants from west to east. The devastating new diseases brought by the northwestern invaders, outpacing the invaders themselves, often painfully killing the peaceful existing occupants before personal contact was made. Within 500 years the invading Clovis people had moved across most of the continent, leaving the original occupants nearly extinct, similar to the woolly mammoth which only temporarily survived extinction from the invaders by existing on isolated islands. Many other mega fauna species, not being so fortunate, were wiped out by the unwanted invasion through the ice free corridor. The northwestern invaders decimated not only the peaceful previous peoples and native mega fauna, but they damaged the environment. Instead of living in peace and harmony with each other and nature as the previous people did they dug holes into the earth to mine stone to fashion their weapons of death and war, holes that can still be seen scaring the landscape thousands of years later. They dug large areas of earth and mounded it into temples to their culture in the form of serpents and other objects significant to their cults. They manipulated natural water courses to build weirs to entrap fish. They damaged forests by cutting trees to build their homes and canoes, and torched other areas of the forest to chase out and kill the animals that lived there, etc. etc.
For anyone possibly upset by what I have wry fully written here, take solace in that it was written half tongue in cheek, and the other half with tongue fully exposed in a loud wet raspberry towards our current pop culture cults reliance on political correctness. My point is not to profess the above as my belief, but rather just to get folks to think about things in a way they might not have before, and to make their own judgements.
I would like to note that I find it rather naïve to read too much into the DNA or skull shape findings, as referenced in the linked reports, at least in regards to the debate about the earliest peopling of the Americas.
Think about it… here we have a small sample of a dozen or so skulls and DNA samples dating from roughly 8000 to maybe 13,000 years ago, which by my calculations is roughly 1000 to 6000 years after the proposed migration through the ice free corridor. What is this supposed to tell us about people who might have been here before 14,000 years ago? Is it not the statistical and mental equivalent of taking a small number of DNA and skull shape samples from people living here about 5000 years in the future, and proposing that those samples should tell us something about the peoples that lived here more than 500 years ago before the invasion from the east?? In other words, if you were to open a US phonebook in the 1950's, and take DNA or skull shape samples from the dozen or so folks you pinpointed in the phonebook, how many of those do you suppose would show Native American DNA or skull shapes?
IMO, we will not have any meaning full DNA or skull info about people that might have been here more than 14,000 years ago, until we get a decent sample of skulls and DNA that is well more than 14,000 years old.

 

[Charl]

Objection, Your Honor.

Not an iconoclast.

Allergic to bullsh*t.

The first definition of an iconoclast is "a person who attacks established beliefs or institutions" And you want to call me mistaken? Lol, love ya bud, mean that, but, as long as I have known you, across several forums, you have laid into established beliefs. And, in the case of the Smithsonian, established institutions. And there is nothing wrong with that. I certainly do not mean it as an insult. I'm an iconoclast fundamentally. I do not subscribe to scientific materialism, for instance, which is at the heart of how science interprets reality. I like to think I am way, way ahead of my time, in that respect, and that things like consciousness studies will eventually shake scientific materialism to its core. For the betterment of our understanding of reality.

Obviously, I digress, and don't mean to sound like an arrogant know it all. I'm just wise enough to know I do not really know anything at all.(Thank you, Socrates).

But, of course you are as entitled to your own self opinion as any other person. I'm not challenging your take. Just remembering threads from days gone by.....

 

[uniface]

You can get that out of it, Amigo, but the beliefs are founded on bogus "facts" and misconstrual of evidence.

IMO, I'm attacking the root of the problem. The beliefs are secondary and derivative.

No ?

 

[sandchip]

Whenever they're backed into a corner by the evidence, they just either 1) misinterpret it, or 2) outright make stuff up (tell lies)...

You forgot 3) Cover the site with huge boulders to prevent anyone from discovering the truth.

 

[uniface]

An in-depth cranial analysis of 452 skulls, taken from 10 different early American populations, showed that "the ancient skeletons from the Yucatán (including the newly discovered Chan Hol 3) had skulls that were different than any of the other places we compared to," Rennie said. He noted that Chan Hol 3 had a slightly longer and narrower brain case (the part of the skull that holds the brain) and a slightly narrower face than other ancient people in Mexico.

In effect, this suggests that there were at least two different groups of humans living in what is now Mexico at the end of the last ice age, Rennie said. This finding reinforces the conclusions of another recent study in the journal PLOS One, which also looked at the remains of ancient people (although not Chan Hol 3) who lived on the Yucatán Peninsula.

In addition, all of the Tulum cave skulls, including the newfound woman's skull, had cavities in their teeth. This suggests that this population had a diet high in sugar, likely from tubers and fruits, sweet cactus, or honey from the native, stingless bees, Stinnesbeck said. In contrast, other populations of early Americans tended to have worn teeth without cavities, indicating that these people likely ate hard foods that were low in sugar, the researchers said.

These dental and cranial differences suggest that "the Yucatán settlers formed a group which was isolated from the hunters and gatherers that populated central Mexico at the end of the Pleistocene," an epoch that ended about 11,700 years ago, Stinnesbeck said. "The two groups must have been very different in aspect and culture. While the groups from central Mexico were tall, good hunters, with elaborate stone tools, the Yucatán people were small and delicate, and to date, not a single stone tool was found."

https://www.sott.net/article/428766...sterious-isolated-group-found-in-Mexican-cave

 

[Fred250]

I bet the tools are there, just not recognized as such.

 

[uniface]

You forgot 3) Cover the site with huge boulders to prevent anyone from discovering the truth

I bet this is where they got that idea from :

Underwater Exploring Is Banned In Brazil 1985-06-25, New York Times

http://www.nytimes.com/1985/06/25/science/underwater-exploring-is-banned-in-b...
A dispute between the Brazilian Navy and an American marine archeologist has led Brazil to bar the diver from entering the country and to place a ban on all underwater exploration. The dispute involves Robert Marx, a Florida author and treasure hunter, who asserts that the Brazilian Navy dumped a thick layer of silt on the remains of a Roman vessel that he discovered inside Rio de Janeiro's bay. The reason he gave for the Navy's action was that proof of a Roman presence would require Brazil to rewrite its recorded history, which has the Portuguese navigator Pedro Alvares Cabral discovering the country in 1500. All ... permits for underwater exploration and digging, a prolific field in Brazil, have been canceled as a result of the Marx controversy ... Navy officials said. The story goes back to 1976 when lobster divers first found potsherds studded with barnacles. Then a Brazilian diver brought up two complete jars with twin handles, tapering at the bottom, the kind that ancient Mediterranean peoples widely used for storage and are known as amphoras. According to Elizabeth Will, a professor of classics and specialist in ancient Roman amphoras at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, the jars are very similar to the ones produced at Kouass, a Roman Empire colony that was a center for amphora-making on the Atlantic coast of Morocco. Reached by telephone, Professor Will said of the fragments she had studied: ''They look to be ancient and because of the profile, the thin-walled fabric and the shape of the rims I suggested they belong to the third century A.D..''