The recent discovery of the bones of Homo floriensis (nicknamed “Hobbits”) suggests that cryptozoologists might not be crazy after all, at least, not when they talk about the possibility of surviving non-human hominids such as Yeti or Bigfoot. OTOH – one thing that’s always bothered me about so-called sightings of Bigfoot in North America: If they’re living here now, then there must have been a breeding population for thousands of years. And if so, they should have left some bones or fossils. But so far as I know, none have ever been found – not of Bigfoot or anything arguably similar. In fact, we’ve never had anthropoid apes (e.g., gorillas, chimpanzees, bonobos, orangutangs – our closest living non-human relatives) in the Western Hemisphere, have we? Only monkeys. So far as we know from the fossil record, the Siberian ancestors of the Indians were the very first humans, the very first hominids, and the very first anthropoids to come to this hemisphere, ever.
Am I wrong about any of this? Have identifiable remains or fossils of anthropoid apes ever been found in the Western Hemisphere? Or of non-human hominids? Or of pre-Indian humans?
This doesn’t directly address your question, but one of my biology profs., while discussing evolution and the out-of-Africa theory, said that there is a ‘considerable’ amount of evidence that humans evolved independently in Australia. So I’m guessing that there must be at least some sort of fossil evidence supporting this. I never pursued the issue or followed up on it though, so I don’t really know anything about the subject other than that one statement. I’m sure somebody who can explain what I’m talking about will come along soon.
No, no ape fossils have ever been found in North America.
Prosimian-grade primates existed in North America during the Eocene, but appear to have become extinct there by the end of that period.
In South America, the earliest monkeys are known from the Oligocene. It is unclear whether their ancestors came from North America or Africa. There have never been any apes in South America.
With the formation of the Panama land bridge in the late Pliocene, about 3 million years ago, South American monkeys moved into Central America, but did not reach temperate North America.
It is now generally believed that the Americas were colonized by humans around 15,000 years ago, although some anthropologists believe it could have taken place as early as about 30,000 years ago.
Who the earliest colonists might have been is open to conjecture. There are few if any skeletal remains from the earliest period. Genetic evidence indicates that the only surviving lineages are those corresponding to the ancestors of modern Indians. However, some finds such as the well-known Kennewick Man suggest that other groups, not ancestral to modern Indians, may have been present as well.
There is no such evidence. You may have misunderstood your prof. Australoid-type humans may have developed their distinctive features within Australia after having migrated there from Asia, but humans themselves definitely did not evolve independently in Australia.
To elaborate a little, there is no evidence that Homo erectus (the supposed ancestor of Flores Man) ever made it to the Americas. As far as we know, modern humans (Homo sapiens sapiens) were the first to colonize the Americas. It is possible (thought unsupported by any solid evidence) that the earliest colonists were not the ancestors of modern Indians, but were replaced by ancestral Indians after about 11,500 BP.
You mention the Panama Land Bridge. Is there any body of evidence to support the theory I’ve read now and again of influx across the Bering Peninsula from Southeast Asia, up through the Mongol region and across to the Asian side of the Peninsula ?
Is there any DNA evidence linking “Native American” peoples with Asians opposed to South Americans? Hmmm. Then again, if Thor Heyerdol’s theory is correct, either way the peoples peopleing the Americas are Southeast Asians, aren’t they. :dubious:
Very possible—it was several years ago, so my memory of what he said might also be failing me. I run into him occasionally—next time I see him I’ll ask for clarification.
So where does that leave us in terms of an explanation of the existence of humans in the Americas? We’re all familiar with the theory that a land bridge once connected Siberia and Alaska, of course, but are there any other reputable theories which seek to explain how we got to the Western Hemisphere?
I think I may know what’s going on here. Alan Thorne, backed by Milford Wolpoff, has a variant on the multiregional hypothesis involving Homo forms making the transition from late erectus to early sapiens in at least three distinct locations, one being Australia. Misrepresentations of his thinking call it “separate evolution”; what he actually suggests is that the erectus forms were tending toward sapiens status as they dispersed across the Old World, including Australia, and completed the transition to the new species after separating. It’s easy to misunderstand though.
There are, I believe, four New World sites apparently occupied by man and dated prior to 12,000 BC, one going back to 23,000 BC. The problem is that while the dating is probably accurate, there’s no definite way to tie the human remains to the datable material at any of them. The major migration, however, appears tied to the 12,000 B.C. date.
In any case, it seems likely that the cross-Beringia/down-the-Corridor migrations that gave rise to New World populations were considerably more complex than “Whoomp! Here’s the Amerinds!” But information is tantalizingly scarce.
I’m not sure what you mean from your description of the route, particularly about “across to the Asian side of the Peninsula.” However, I presume you are talking about the Bering Land Bridge. During the last Ige Age, when a great deal of water was locked up in ice caps and glaciers, a land bridge existed between Siberia and Alaska across the Bering Strait. It is virtually certain that the first colonists into the Americas used this land bridge in some fashion. One difficulty for the idea of early colonization has been that the way south through the Yukon was blocked by glaciers before about 12,000 years ago. However, many archeologists now believe that the first colonists could have made their way south along the Alaskan coast, partly by boat, at a much earlier date.
A more radical idea, based on similarities of stone tool types, is that the earliest colonists might have come from Europe by moving along the edge of the ice pack in the North Atlantic. But this idea at present doesn’t have a lot of support, although I have seen some reference to genetic data that may back it up.
DNA evidence indicates that both North and South American Indian populations are descended from Asians, most likely from Siberia, and that at least four separate migrations were involved. There is apparently some recent genetic evidence that some groups, related to Australoid groups, may have come from Southeast Asia at a very early date, either across the Pacific or via the Bering land bridge, but this is still very controversial.
Well, either way Polynesians are ultimately of Asian origin, whether directly or via a roundabout route through the Americas.
This article outlines some of the current ideas about the colonization of the Americas.
I would venture to guess not. As much as I too would like to fantasize that there exists an undiscovered surviving clan of H. neanderthalensis somewhere in Himalayas or even the Siskiyou Range, the sad fact of the matter is that it is in all probability just wishful thinking.
If both species were to meet, it would probably be the saddest day in the history of both. I can’t even begin to imagine what would transpire. What would happen if we were to encounter a clan of 30 or 40 Neanderthals? Would they be accorded the same rights as humans? Or would they be given the same legal rights as chimpanzees—i.e., virtually none? If the latter, what would we do with them once we were done experimenting on them and decided that they held no further value to us as specimens? Would they be euthanized? Or would we build a sanctuary for them where they could live out the rest of their lives? Would we sterilize them so as to avoid the financial burden of successive generations? Or would we encourage them to reproduce so that we could charge admission to ‘Neanderthal Park’?
For their sake, I sincerely hope they became extinct a long, long time ago.
I’m curious…what kind of experiments do you think those evil scientists would do on such creatures…painful unneccessary ones? And do you really think we would exterminate them because all 5 billion or so of us (H. sapiens sapiens) couldn’t find enough change in all our collective sofa cushions to keep a small population of, say, Neanderthals, going indefinitely?
I could see them being wiped out accidentally by, say, diseases we had that they have no immunity to but I’m curious why you assume we would exterminate them on purpose.
No, I was just being facetious. There are about 150 chimps at Holloman Air Force Base which were used in rocket research in the 50’s and 60’s, or are descendants of those chimps. The Air Force considers them to be a considerable financial burden, but has never been able to figure out a good way to get rid of them. Every time the idea of euthanasia is brought up, it is quickly shot down, because chimps are just too much like humans. So I know that we wouldn’t really exterminate Neanderthals if they really existed. I was just trying to bolster the thread by injecting a new twist on the noble savage/white man’s burden dilemma. What would probably actually happen is that they would be given an astonishing amount of care and protection. They could easily wind up leading a lifestyle that would make Hugh Hefner green with envy. The only real tragedy that would occur is that the average citizen would regard them as some sort of prehistoric cavepeople, and the commercial exploitation which would ensue would be an insult to their value as a species. They would no longer be the noble savage, but would necessarily become the ‘white man’s burden’ simply because they wouldn’t integrate well into our society, and we would have no choice but to turn them into museum curiosities because our own meddling forced us to assume the obligation.
RE: pre-Indian humans - from a site in South Carolina, there’s some recent evidence that people were in North America as long as 50,000 years ago, possibly longer (you can’t go much further back than 50k with radiocarbon dating). The dating was just announced late last year, and is set to be published this year, so it’s still quite tentative. There’s a bit more on it here.
BrainGlutton, where exactly are you going with this? Are you planning to capture a harem of female Bigfeet for your own personal recreational activities? Or are you scheming on pimping them out to really, really horny Japanese businessmen? If you’re looking at this from a money making angle, might I suggest that you pursue more traditional avenues of entrepreneurial endeavor? I mean, if it’s a good time with a big hairy girl who hasn’t bathed in a month that you’re after, a fifth of Jack Daniel’s is generally all that is needed to expedite the requisite negotiations. And you won’t have to deal with any sticky cross-species ethical issues, either. Sorry, but I just don’t see the angle here.
Keep the faith!