This study argues *against *migrations from other places than across the Bering Sea.
Thank you sir.
There are plenty of islands between Australia and the Americas, at least northern Australia.
In any case, I’m talking about Australoid-type peoples in general, not specifically the Aborigines. The Australoids include Aborigines, Papuans, Melanesians, and a bunch of small “Negrito” populations across South and Southeast Asia. These probably represent the first wave of modern humans to leave Africa.
Australoids colonized Australia by using boats, and penetrated even to the Bismark Archipelago by 36,000 years ago. But they didn’t make it past the Solomons until much more recently. Colonization of the more remote islands of the Pacific didn’t start until about 4,000 years ago, long after the Americas were already inhabited. It’s difficult to imagine Australoids somehow making it all the way across the Pacific while leaving no trace anywhere else in the Pacific for 12,000 years.
What about that part?
Is that because no DNA has been recovered from Australoid-type skeletons in the Americas? I thought that relatively recent (200 years old or less) Pericu bones from the Baja Peninsula had been analyzed for DNA, but I can’t find any cites now. Also, I don’t know if the Ainu of Japan are Australoid-type, but they are supposedly the closest match to Kennewick Man’s skull shape.
Paddling across the Pacific would be highly unlikely today, and maybe back then too. But just to play devil’s advocate, the lower sea level 15,000 years ago could mean that evidence of habitation on islands back then could be under water now, just as it probably is along the west coast of the Americas. Lower sea levels could also mean that there were more islands exposed back then, making for shorter hops. (I tried searching for “map of pacific ocean in ice ages” but didn’t come up with anything; maybe someone else’s google-fu is stronger.) All speculative, admittedly, and following the northern arc of coastline is more plausible. But however they got here, the main point I wanted to make was that there was apparently a migration to the Americas by people other than the North Asian ancestors of today’s Natives, and it’s looking more and more like they were the first ones here.
Which “Australoid type” skeletons are you referring to?
Hugging the coasts in glaciated areas (like Alaska) is quite different from hugging the coasts on islands. It makes little or no sense to do the latter.
Apparently “plenty” doesn’t consider that huge, several-thousand-mile gap on the right side of your map between Hawaii and North America, or Rapa Nui and South America to be significant.
I was mainly referring to the fact that there is no apparent genetic trace of any Australoid ancestry among modern Native Americans. Genetic lineages can be lost, it’s true, but at this point there’s no evidence to support this idea. I haven’t heard of any positive evidence from skeletal remains, either.
It’s less likely people would confine themselves to just the coast on small islands than on the mainland, just because there’s less habitable area. A lot more land was exposed during the Ice Ages around Australia, New Guinea, and the western Pacific, but very little in the central and eastern Pacific. The hops to the Americas would not have been appreciably shorter.
It’s an intriguing possibility, and I wouldn’t rule it out. However, personally I don’t think the evidence is really there yet.
I’m not sure we’re on different sides of the argument. My point is that, with so many islands in the intervening area in the western and central Pacific, one would expect some traces of an earlier colonization event in the islands if Australoids were in the habit of making long sea voyages and had reached the Americas via an oceanic route. They evidently didn’t colonize any of the islands of Polynesia, so the gap between Polynesia and the Americas would be even less likely to be crossed.
I guess we’re merely considering the chances, not hard evidence, and I certainly agree with you. The farthest East from Australia that we know Polynesians reached for sure is Rapa Nui, and the general thought is there may have been two migrations to there.
This is the latest settlement of those who came from a western direction, so it’s most likely that if they went further east, it would be after that, and then we’re bumping up to the European discovery of the Americas, when it’s unlikely that it would be a secret.
In any case, what sparse evidence we have suggests that extreme Polynesian expansion did not happen 10,000 years ago, but within the last 2,000 years, and never made it past Hawaii or Rapa Nui. Australian expansion is sparser yet – they seemed to have missed Rapa Nui altogether if even they went that far. To say they went 2000 miles farther into unknown, trackless ocean doesn’t hold much water unless you can find some solid artifacts.
There’s room for any number of random people or peoples to end up in America in ancient times. I’m morally certain that dozens, maybe hundreds of lost sailors from all over the world managed to wash up on the Americas just like the Vikings did.
However, even if these people lived in the Americas for generations, their genetic contribution to the American population by 1491 was miniscule. Of course the pandemics might have wiped out all the lost colonies of Polynesians, Romans, Phoenicians, Chinese, Australians, Basques, Africans, Israelites and on and on. However, we simply don’t find any actual archeological evidence for these colonies, neither skeletal remains or artifacts. The only pre-1491 colony that can be confirmed archeologically are the Vikings.
None of these cultures would have predated the Bering Strait crossers.
Possibly the best evidence we have that Polynesians reached the Americas is the apparent presence of pre-Columbian domestic chickens in South America.
Going the other way, the sweet potato is of South American origin but was cultivated throughout Polynesia, suggesting that at least one canoe or raft made it across from east to west.
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Okay, understood.
If that’s the case, I have to agree with that. Just trying to exhaust the possibilities.
Kennewick Man in Washington State and the skeletons in Brazil (the term “Australoid-type” is from Colibri’s link). Several years ago, I read about much more recent skeletons from the Baja Peninsula (from the Pericu and/or Guaycura tribes at the southern tip of the Baja) that were supposedly distinct from modern Natives but I’m having trouble finding anything about them now, so maybe that’s a dead end.
Finally found something on a Pericu DNA study…
Besides the Pericus’ physical difference that was noted by the early Spaniards, their language was also unlike any other in the area.
Damned if I remember where I saw this, but one theory is that the sweet potato made it around the globe the other way (Americans->Europe->Asia->Polynesia) in the 200-400 years or so between Columbus and later American explorations. I am not qualified to give an analysis as to how likely that is.
I haven’t heard that, and in any case remains of sweet potatoes have been carbon dated to 1000 AD in the Cook Islands, and on other islands to before 1500 AD. Given how important the crop is in Polynesian culture, it would be hard to believe it was a post-Columbian introduction.
However, the tomato was introduced to Europe only after 1492. Can you imagine Italian cooking without tomato sauce? They somehow made do without it and then ran full speed ahead with it to the point where it became an icon of Italian cooking.
I’m not understanding your point. The radio carbon dates put sweet potatoes in Polynesia before Columbus, so a post-Columbus introduction doesn’t make sense. There is no dispute about the origin of tomatoes and how they were introduced to Europe.
I think he’s conceding that the radiocarbon dating argument is convincing, but pointing out that “hard to imagine the culture without them” argument is not: cultures can adapt incredibly rapidly to new products (not just crops, though there are tons of examples there, but things like horses and the Plains Indians, or, hell, electronic technology and the U.S. today) and so the fact that something seems integral to a way of life is pretty meaningless in and of itself: it takes less than a generation for something to become completely integrated, if it’s useful enough.