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Post Info TOPIC: First Americans


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Clovis point
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A spear point found in a central Ohio field by a farmer has been identified by archaeologists as being used by hunters to kill mastodons about 15,000 years ago.
Forty-four-year-old Don Johnson of Heath found the Clovis point about four years ago while on a walk.

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RE: First Americans
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Did a relatively small number of people from Siberia who trekked across a Bering Strait land bridge some 12,000 years ago give rise to the native peoples of North and South America?
Or did the ancestors of todays native peoples come from other parts of Asia or Polynesia, arriving multiple times at several places on the two continents, by sea as well as by land, in successive migrations that began as early as 30,000 years ago?
The questions featured on magazine covers and TV specials have agitated anthropologists, archaeologists and others for decades.
University of Michigan scientists, working with an international team of geneticists and anthropologists, have produced new genetic evidence thats likely to hearten proponents of the land bridge theory. The study, published online in PLoS Genetics, is one of the most comprehensive analyses so far among efforts to use genetic data to shed light on the topic.
The researchers examined genetic variation at 678 key locations or markers in the DNA of present-day members of 29 Native American populations across North, Central and South America. They also analysed data from two Siberian groups. The analysis shows:

    * genetic diversity, as well as genetic similarity to the Siberian groups, decreases the farther a native population is from the Bering Strait adding to existing archaeological and genetic evidence that the ancestors of native North and South Americans came by the northwest route.
    * a unique genetic variant is widespread in Native Americans across both American continents suggesting that the first humans in the Americas came in a single migration or multiple waves from a single source, not in waves of migrations from different sources. The variant, which is not part of a gene and has no biological function, has not been found in genetic studies of people elsewhere in the world except eastern Siberia.
The researchers say the variant likely occurred shortly prior to migration to the Americas, or immediately afterwards.


We have reasonably clear genetic evidence that the most likely candidate for the source of Native American populations is somewhere in east Asia.  If there were a large number of migrations, and most of the source groups didnt have the variant, then we would not see the widespread presence of the mutation in the Americas - Noah A. Rosenberg, Ph.D., assistant professor of human genetics and assistant research professor of bioinformatics at the Centre for Computational Medicine and Biology at the U-M Medical School and assistant research professor at the U-M Life Sciences Institute.

Rosenberg has previously studied the same set of 678 genetic markers used in the new study in 50 populations around the world, to learn which populations are genetically similar and what migration patterns might explain the similarities. For North and South America, the current research breaks new ground by looking at a large number of native populations using a large number of markers.
The pattern the research uncovered that as the founding populations moved south from the Bering Strait, genetic diversity declined is what one would expect when migration is relatively recent, says Mattias Jakobsson, Ph.D., co-first author of the paper and a post-doctoral fellow in human genetics at the U-M Medical School and the U-M Centre for Computational Medicine and Biology. There has not been time yet for mutations that typically occur over longer periods to diversify the gene pool.

In addition, the studys findings hint at supporting evidence for scholars who believe early inhabitants followed the coasts to spread south into South America, rather than moving in waves across the interior.

Assuming a migration route along the coast provides a slightly better fit with the pattern we see in genetic diversity - Noah A. Rosenberg.

The study also found that:

    * Populations in the Andes and Central America showed genetic similarities.
    * Populations from western South America showed more genetic variation than populations from eastern South America.
    * Among closely related populations, the ones more similar linguistically were also more similar genetically.


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History of Spaniards in Georgia
What a high school girl found in 6 inches of South Georgia dirt last year may help rewrite the history of Europeans' earliest forays into the great, green New World that greeted them half a millennium ago.
The discovery is a glass bead no larger than a pencil eraser. It and four other beads, plus two ancient slivers of iron, may prompt historians to reconsider the presence of Spaniards in Georgia five centuries ago.

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Archaeologists working in south-central Oregon's sagebrush steppes have found signs of some of the region's earliest inhabitants.
Researchers from the University of Oregon and U.S. Bureau of Land Management have uncovered four fluted projectile points and related artefacts at a remote site near Riley. The obsidian points could be 12,000 years old, but the archaeologists are being cautious about giving an exact age until they're able to obtain radiocarbon dates from the site.

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In a Canadian archaeological project that could revolutionize understanding of when and how humans first reached the New World, federal researchers in B.C. have begun probing an underwater site off the Queen Charlotte Islands for traces of a possible prehistoric camp on the shores of an ancient lake long since submerged by the Pacific Ocean.
The landmark investigation, led by Parks Canada scientist Daryl Fedje, is seeking evidence to support a contentious new theory about the peopling of the Americas that is gradually gaining support in scholarly circles. It holds that ancient Asian seafarers, drawn on by food-rich kelp beds ringing the Pacific coasts of present-day Russia, Alaska and British Columbia, began populating this hemisphere thousands of years before the migration of Siberian big-game hunters -- who are known to have travelled across the dried up Bering Strait and down an ice-free corridor east of the Rockies as the last glaciers began retreating about 13,000 years ago.

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Relics from ancient American Indian tribes
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Volunteers working with a University of Notre Dame archaeologist have unearthed tens of thousands of artefacts, including relics from ancient American Indian tribes and 19th-century European fur traders, at a site along the Kankakee River.

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Mauvilla
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It's out there. Somewhere underneath cat claw briars or mud flats or even modern subdivision tracts, there are shards of Spanish metal, burned clay and a palisade wall waiting to be found, answering one of the South's famous mysteries: Where is Mauvilla?
Historians gleaning descriptions from written accounts of Spanish explorer Hernando De Soto's expedition across the South say the earliest and bloodiest battle between Europeans and Indians happened at Mauvilla, a fortified village that researchers spell a variety of other ways, including Mabila and Mavila.
It sat between two rivers likely somewhere in Alabama. The accounts describe the landscape, the village, the day-long battle and the weeks of recovery that the Spanish spent there after Mauvilla burned to the ground.

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Madoc's voyage
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The story of a Welsh prince beating Christopher Columbus to it by 300 years was the stuff of myths and legends.
Stories of Madoc's voyage to the New World in 1170 didn't make it into the school curriculum when I was growing up in North Wales in the 1960s, but that didn't matter. Madoc was our hometown son who had made history, or so the story went.
The Madoc story gained recognition in North America more than a decade earlier when in 1953, Washington D.C.- based Daughters of the American Revolution erected two plaques one in Rhos-on-Sea, the other in Mobile, Ala. commemorating Madoc's voyage.

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Ancient artefact
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Squirrels unearth ancient artefact in California
An amazing discovery has been unearthed in Placer County (California, USA). Amazing because of its historical significance, and amazing because of how it was found. Archaeologists did not carefully unearth the 8,000 to 10,000 year old artefact, but it appears some curious squirrels dug it up. Now, folks at the Maidu Indian Interpretive Centre are trying to preserve what the squirrels unearthed. The centre allows people to learn how Native Americans lived thousands of years ago. And it was here that the squirrels made their find in what could be called an ancient compost pile.

"You can see where little tiny flakes have been knocked off to sharpen this or to give it a certain shape" -  Cultural Interpreter Rick Adams who stumbled up the unearthed artefact along the Maidu Nature Trail.

It's a carefully carved tool or ceremonially object dating back that many years. Experts say it appears to be partially volcanic and may have originated in the Rancho Murietta area about 20 miles from where it was discovered.

 "We only find what the squirrels are giving us right now. And that's OK. We don't want to dig" - Park Specialist Chuck Kritzon.

While the officials running the Maidu Centre know there are probably more artefacts in the park, it is illegal for humans to dig them up on the protected land.

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RE: First Americans
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Archaeologist Forms Group to Address Issues Raised by Clovis Point Find
The archaeologist at the Malibu location where an auth­enti­ca­ted Clovis cultural era spear point was found in 2005 has an­nounced the formation of a group to try to protect the site that could date back 11,000 years, as well as raise public consciousness about the need for ways to address conflicts over site access with private property owners.
Dr. Gary Stickel said the first aim of the organization, called Friends of Farpoint, is to immediately save the Farpoint site for its proper preservation and conservation.

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