Looking for “evidence” may be futile, as hunting for a European genetic marker in a 99.99% pure-blood Amerindian may be looking for a needle in a haystack. What one needs to do is model (via conjecture) migrations.
In the old thread my mention of “consensus” is exaggerated, but colibri suggests that post-Columbian Amazonians aren’t as isolated as one might think:
Thanks.
Conjectures like the “3% of breeders” seem like truly enormous assumptions to me–positing that every haystack must have a certain number of needles.
I’m not sure what you’re saying. Nuclear and chemical plants couldn’t be designed without statistical diffusion laws. For human migration one postulates a broad range of plausible parameters and uses the range of results to gauge what’s likely.
In my judgment, Colibri’s observation made the recent-MRCA hypothesis very likely, but still not fully certain.
One area where “certainty” is possible is Y-chromosome studies, where the genes of one’s patrilineal ancestor are not diluted. Recently an amazing fact has come to light: The patrilineal ancestor of most Western Europeans lived in West Asia or Central Eurasia a mere 5500 years ago or so! Humans do get around!
They know the names written down in the family geneology. However, it is well known that official parentage is often not the same as biological parentage, even for mothers. There are plenty of cases of grandmothers secretly raising their teenage daughter’s children. And of course, cases where the biological father of a child isn’t the mother’s husband too common to mention.
Statistical diffusion laws are based on observations of (portions of) actual diffusions. I’m just saying that until there is some observed evidence–in this case, actually finding a few of those European genetic markers in Amazonian populations–there is no applicable law.
Yes. But the post-Columbian period is a lot shorter than that. In the absence of any actual evidence, it seems perfectly plausible to me that quite a lot of indigenous South Americans have no post-Columbian European ancestry.
In other words - even if there is documentation you won’t accept it. The question is pointless, as no evidence will be accepted.
I think there’s a distinction between can it be proven and is it possible - yes, it’s possible there are quite a few people of 100% undiluted Native American ancestry walking about the Americas right now. But can they be proven to be such? No - as you have demonstrated, there is no documentation possible that will prove this to doubters. Even if you had the genealogy the argument immediately comes up that it can’t possibly be accurate due to questions of paternity and yes, sometimes maternity as well.
However, just because it can’t be proven in objective terms doesn’t mean it’s impossible for such people to exist. The probability is low, but even one half of one percent of a population could still add up to a noticeable number of people.
As already noted, the most plausible assumption is that there are none. Even the remotest village will have, over hundreds of years, bred with less remote villages and thus experienced gene inflow from some European at some point.
But why is that most plausible? What basis is there for thinking so, assuming septimus is correct in implying that the relevant markers have not actually been found in some populations?
Show me the genes!
Before the advent of the USA most native american tribes did not put a lot of importance on ‘blood purity’. They adopted, intermarried, etc. since long before European colonization. The US government invented thenotion of measuring someone’s percentage of ‘full blooded’ native American-ness for the purposes of determining eligibility for federal funds, reparations, etc. Expressions like “I’m 1/32 Cherokee” or “I’m 1/4 Apache” or “I’m pure blooded native American” were born with this system.
Since it became a legal measure of eligibility to get a share of the money allotted to the tribe, suddenly native tribes starting getting selective about who could claim native ancestry too. Some are stricter than others with the Uteallegedly being the strictest - requiring proof of 3/4 blood quantum for tribal membership.
Our statistical models tell us that most likely none exist. We can’t measure everyone’s genes, so the only thing we have is the model or our guess. I’ll go with the model as the more likely option to be correct.
You could have one European ancestor 10 generations back, and there would be no way to determine that by looking at your genes (at least with our current technology).
So, as a practical matter, we can’t prove this either way. Again, that leaves us only with the statistical models.
Quoth Broomstick:
Do they know their full ancestry? That’s not unheard-of, but pretty rare. Most folks, when they say they’ve traced their ancestry back that far, really just mean that they’ve traced one main line of their ancestry back that far (usually the pure paternal one), plus a smattering of side branches.
And complicating the lack of written records in many Native American tribes is the problem that what records exist might not correspond to what’s being asked about here. Consider, for instance, a white guy who gets wanderlust and heads west on his own, or maybe he falls in love with a native woman, or is enthralled by one of the cultures, or whatever, and who goes through the tribal initiation process to become “one of them”. Maybe the tribe’s lorekeeper would regard him as a white man who lives among us, or maybe the lorekeeper would consider the initiation process to be absolute and that he’s now a full member of the tribe. Any kids he has, then, have a member of the tribe for their mother and their father, and so are recorded as being “full blooded”.
How does this square with the (apparently well accepted) notion that Tasmania was isolated for just over 10,000 years?
The Wikipedia article cited above states that the MRCA was in the distant Paleolithic until the Age of Exploration and Conquest carried European genes throughout the world. Still, Europeans encountered Tasmania much more recently than they did America…
Although it might blunt the effect, a statement like
“The MRCA of 99.99% of today’s people lived only about 3000 years ago.”
would be much more believable to me than
“The MRCA of ALL of today’s people lived only about 3000 years ago.”
I don’t know how anyone has 100 per cent of a given heritage. That’s tracing your ancestors back to the beginning of humankind, no?
I don’t know what it takes to be 100 per cent anything. That’s why I asked.
edit: When I said ‘go south’, I meant South America.
I am sure that there are some - if not many - but they are not in North America. In South America, Native American communities are large. For instance, Quechua is spoken by some 10M people. Many are probably “contaminated” by European genes. There are also remote tribes who have been discovered, but have not yet mingled.
And they intermarried much more fully and the effect of disease was much more complete and cultural destruction was absolute.
Nobody disputes the fact that there are no full-blooded Tasmanians left. Nobody claims to be a full blooded Tasmanian. Someone did do a search for individuals with a high proportion of Tasmanian ancestry about 15 years ago. The best they could find, based on genetics, was approximately 1/8th.
The time since contact is really irrelevant for calculating degree of ancestral admixture. In the case of the Tasmanians, European introgression was complete within 200 years, and very probably within 150 years.
No.
A Native American is someone who was living in the Americas in 1492, or the descendant of such people. You obviously only need to trace ancestry back to 1492.
Having no other contribution from any other source. That is what 100% means
:dubious:
So basically you are saying, “Before white contact/all who are not white”? Are you just grouping all the brown folk together? Because I don’t think native tribes appreciate that kind of thought. In North America, they were not entirely homogenous, but they didn’t group themselves into one ‘category’, either.
Quichua would probably be the answer you are looking for.
Oh yeah. First tribes in Alaska.
No. Why would you think that?
No. Why would you think that?
The good thing about facts is that they don’t change depending on what somebody thinks.
So what? The term “Native American” has a specific meaning. How people grouped themselves doesn’t change that meaning.
Did I even ask a question?
The term “Native American” refers to several hundred different peoples. “100 per cent Native American” to you means ‘an infinite amount of tribal contributions to my DNA that excludes white people’.
As far as my ‘answer’ to your ‘non question’, I apologize. I was trying to help dispel some of your ignorance (post #9) on the subject. Apparently you didn’t want to know.
I won’t do it again. 