The Clans
Richard Calmit Adams
(1864-1921)
When the waters were so
mighty
As to reach the mountains high,
And it seemed that all
creation
Surely then was doomed
to die,
Came the turtle to our rescue,
Brought us safely unto
land,
For the Manitou had sent him;
Now we’re called “The
Turtle Clan.”
The Wolf band comes
from children,
Whom a she-wolf nursed with care,
And thus
restored the children
Who were giv’n up in despair.
Her
wailing brought the hunters
To the babies where they lay;
So a
band among the people
Is the Wolf Clan of today.
When the tribe was once
in danger,
A wild turkey gave alarm,
And the warriors met the
foeman
With the fury of a storm,
To a maiden, in a
vision,
Did the turkey show the plan,
And we call all her
descendants
To this day, the “Turkey Clan.”
Are you like me? Have you
wondered whether the first Native Americans migration
really came from Asia across the Bering Land Bridge 20,000 to 40,000
years ago? Or, were the first inhabitants from someplace else? Some
researchers have argued that Alaskan glaciers would have blocked
entry into North America; thus, no settlement from the land bridge
would have been possible at that time.
The “Beringia standstill
hypothesis” suggests that human populations would have remained
stranded on this land bridge for some 15,000 years before ice melt
finally allowed clear passage into the continent. From there, this
main emigrant population would have split and diversified into many
different first cultures.
(Tia
Ghose. “Humans May Have Been Stuck on Bering Strait for 10,000
Years. LiveScience. February 27, 2014.)
New research suggests
entry via other routes. From where? Read on.
Researchers recently dated
a set of animal bones found in Coxcatlán Cave to around 30,000 years
ago – completely upending previous estimates of when humans first
arrived in the Americas. A team of anthropologists from Iowa State
University now believe that humans arrived in America 30,000 years
ago – and they did so by sea.
Radiocarbon-dating of a
set of bones found in a cave used by early man suggests humans
arrived in America 20,000 years earlier than believed, long before
the migration across the Bering Land Bridge.
Coxcatlán Cave in Mexico
is believed to have once been inhabited by early man. Anthropologists
are studying the origins of farming in the Tehuacán Valley of
Mexico, where early humans first began experimenting with
agriculture. Several domesticated plants have been found there in
previous studies, including the bones of animals believed to have
been hunted by early man, which were found back in the 1960s, but not
radiocarbon-dated until recently
After radiocarbon-dating
the samples, the researchers learned that the bones found in
Coxcatlan were between 33,448 and 28,279 years old.
“We were just trying to
situate our agricultural study with a firmer timeline,” Iowa State
anthropologist Andrew Somerville said. “We were surprised to find
these really old dates at the bottom of the cave, and it means that
we need to take a closer look at the artifacts recovered from those
levels.”
(Leah
Silverman. “Discovery In Mexico Indicates The First Americans
Arrived 20,000 Years Before We Thought.” allthatsinteresting.com.
June 4, 2021.)
Previous studies dated
only plant and charcoal remains which, according to Somerville,
provide a far less accurate age than bones. Somerville added that
even though previous studies had not dated the artifacts found at the
bottommost layer of the cave, he never anticipated that they would be
this old.
Though anthropologists
believed the bones were the remains of a human feast, more evidence
is needed to prove that. Somerville said the kind of evidence he and
other researchers will be looking for includes cut marks in the bones
as well as evidence that they have been boiled or held over a fire in
order to indicate whether they were handled by humans.
And if all that evidence
suggests that humans were, in fact, settled in that Mexican cave up
to 33,000 years ago, then that means they could not have possibly
arrived on the continent by land.
Lead author of that study,
Loren Davis, said at the time that his team’s findings lend “great
support to the idea that people came down the Pacific Coast instead.”
It’s thought that if
humans did come by boat, then they likely would have sailed from Asia
across the Pacific, landing on the western side of America and then
moving eastward by foot. Of course, more evidence is needed to
support this theory.
(Leah
Silverman. “Discovery In Mexico Indicates The First Americans
Arrived 20,000 Years Before We Thought.” allthatsinteresting.com.
June 4, 2021.)
Somerville isn’t the
first to posit that early man arrived by sea. A study conducted in
Idaho and published in 2019 suggested that humans were already living
in the region 16,000 years ago, about a millennium before the Land
Bridge was accessible.
Cooper's Ferry Site and
Others
Artifacts recently
unearthed at a site in western Idaho called “Cooper’s Ferry”
indicate that humans were living there 16,000 years ago, pushing back
the timeline of human habitation in North America. It is now believed
that the Cooper’s Valley location is “one of the oldest
archaeological sites in the Americas” reports National
Geographic.
In recent years,
archaeologists have found numerous sites and artifacts older than
that migration timeline, suggesting that early humans didn’t travel
through the ice but followed the coast, likely using boats. A site
called Monte Verde at the southern tip of Chile is at least 15,000
years old, a sinkhole in Florida recently yielded a knife and
butchered mammoth bone more than 14,500 years old and the Gault site
in Texas has yielded thousands of artifacts that could be 16,000 to
20,000 years old.
Cooper's Ferry has yielded
a cache of stone points, known as “western stemmed points” that
were used as weapons and tools and dated to 13,500 years ago.
Archaeologists also found “work spaces for making and repairing
tools, butchering sites, and fragments of animal bone” reports
National Geographic. A
layer of charcoal was found, and this was carbon dated and to the
amazement of all it was dated to 14000 years ago.
Radiocarbon dating and
Bayesian analysis were carried out on other organic material found at
Cooper’s Ferry. These results “indicate that people repeatedly
occupied the Columbia River basin, starting between 16,560 and 15,280
calibrated years before the present.” The academic consensus is
that the Clovis People, who were “big game hunters” according
to Science, were the first people to settle in the Americas and
they came from North-East Asia.
(Ed Whelan. “First
Americans Arrived by Sea Over 15,000 Years Ago, Surprise Finding
Suggests.” Ancient Origins. August 30, 2019.)
The finds at the Cooper’s
Ferry site are the final nail in the coffin of the Clovis theory
argues Todd Braje of San Diego State University, who reviewed the new
paper in the journal Science
“[T]he Clovis-first model is no longer viable,” he says.
From Where Did the First
Americans Originate?
There is a controversial
theory that the first humans to people the Americas came from the
Pacific Islands. Another theory is that they came from North-East
Asia by a coastal route. Oregon Public Broadcasting reports that they
possibly arrived by “following a coastal “kelp highway” full of
sheltered bays and rich with food.”
(T. J. Braje, T. D.
Dillehay, J. M. Erlandson, R. G. Klein, T. C. Rick. “Erratum for
the Perspective “Finding the first Americans” Science,
Vol. 358. November 03, 2017.)
The simplest explanation
is that the earliest migrants to North America traveled up river to
reach Idaho. “The Cooper's Ferry site is located along the Salmon
River, which is a tributary of the larger Columbia River basin. Early
peoples moving south along the Pacific coast would have encountered
the Columbia River as the first place below the glaciers where they
could easily walk and paddle in to North America,” says Loren
Davis, Oregon State University anthropologist and lead author of the
study.
“Essentially, the
Columbia River corridor was the first off-ramp of a Pacific coast
migration route. The timing and position of the Cooper's Ferry site
is consistent with and most easily explained as the result of an
early Pacific coastal migration.”
(Jason Daley. “Idaho
Site Shows Humans Were in North America 16,000 Years Ago.” Smithsonian
Magazine. August 30, 2019.)
Lizzie Wade, contributing
correspondent for Science, writes, “... It's tempting to
envision such a migration as a race from beach to beach. But as
people expanded into the uninhabited Americas, they had no
destination in mind. They stopped, settled in, ventured beyond what
they knew, and backtracked into what they did. So the first step for
archaeologists is to figure out where, exactly, those early mariners
would have chosen to stick around.
Loren Davis of Oregon
State University has been painstakingly mapping the probable courses
of ancient rivers across the now-drowned coastline, hoping that those
channels are still detectable, despite now being filled with sediment
and covered by deep ocean.
Davis says …
“The decision likely
came down to one resource: freshwater. Water is the lifeblood of
everything.”
(Lizzie Wade. “Most
archaeologists think the first Americans arrived by boat. Now,
they’re beginning to prove it.” Science. August 10, 2017.)
The Cooper's Ferry site
revealed a style of stone projectile point that resembles artifacts
of similar age on the Japanese island of Hokkaido. So that supports
the idea that the migration that led to the first Americans may have
begun in that area, when Hokkaido was part of a larger land mass,
Davis said. Or it could have started somewhere else in northeast
Asia, but still reflect a cultural contribution of the Hokkaido area,
he said.
A migration from the
Hokkaido area could have skirted the southern coast of Beringea
before heading south along the Pacific, Davis said.
Dennis Jenkins, senior
research archaeologist at the University of Oregon's Museum of
Natural and Cultural History, said the Idaho site appears to go back
16,000 years. He also said the paper provides "a major advance"
by linking early Americans to Japan more firmly than before.
Michael Waters of the
Center for the Study of the First Americans at Texas A&M said he
prefers an age of between 14,200 years and 15,000 years ago. That
would put it in the time frame of several sites in Texas, Wisconsin
and Oregon, he said. As for the Japan connection, "I think
they're on to something there."
(Malcolm Ritter. “Idaho
artifacts suggest Pacific entry for first Americans.” Associated
Press. KHOU-11 TV. August 29, 2019.)
However,
paleoanthropologist John Hoffecker at the University of Colorado at
Boulder reports previous analyses of genes and teeth "do not
support an origin for Native Americans out of northern Japan, beyond
any reasonable doubt.”
Archaeologist Ben Potter
at the University of Alaska at Fairbanks suggested the similarities
between the Cooper's Ferry and ancient Japanese artifacts were
superficial, and that microblades and other artifacts typically seen
at ancient Japanese sites were not found at Cooper's Ferry or
elsewhere in North America.
(Charles Q. Choi.
“Mounting Evidence Suggests People First Came to North America by
Boat.” Inside Science. August 29, 2019.)
Ancient skeletons can reveal the history of migration.
What's DNA Say About
People in Central and South America?
South and not north –
here is research about migration into the region.
Findings published online
in the journal Cell, report
people genetically linked to the Clovis culture, one of the
earliest continent-wide cultures in North America, made it down to
South America as far back as 11,000 years ago. Then, they
mysteriously vanished around 9,000 years ago, new research reveals.
Where did they go? It
appears that another ancient group of people replaced them, but it's
unclear how or why this happened, the researchers said.
To unravel the genetic
mysteries of the these ancient Americans, researchers reached out to
indigenous peoples and government agencies all over Central and South
America, asking for permission to study the remains of ancient
peoples that have been discovered over the years.
In all, the international
team of scientists was given permission to do genomewide analyses on
49 ancient people whose remains were unearthed in the following
Central and South American countries: Belize, Brazil, Peru, Chile and
Argentina. The oldest of these people lived about 11,000 years ago,
marking this as a study that takes a big step forward from previous
research, which only included genetic data from people less than
1,000 years old, the researchers said.
Co-lead author Cosimo
Posth, postdoctoral researcher of archaeogenetics at the Max Planck
Institute for the Science of Human History in Germany, reports …
“DNA associated with the
North American Clovis culture was found in people from Chile, Brazil
and Belize, but only between about 11,000 to 9,000 years ago.
"A key discovery was
that a Clovis culture-associated individual from North America dating
to around 12,800 years ago shares distinctive ancestry with the
oldest Chilean, Brazilian and Belizean individuals. This supports the
hypothesis that the expansion of people who spread the Clovis culture
in North America also reached Central and South America.
“The Cell study also
revealed a surprising connection between ancient people living in
California's Channel Islands and the southern Peruvian Andes at least
4,200 years ago. It appears that these two geographically distant
groups have a shared ancestry.”
"It could be that
this ancestry arrived in South America thousands of years before and
we simply don't have earlier individuals showing it," study
co-lead researcher Nathan Nakatsuka, a research assistant in the
Reich lab at Harvard Medical School, said in the statement. "There
is archaeological evidence that the population in the Central Andes
area greatly expanded after around 5,000 years ago. Spreads of
particular subgroups during these events may be why we detect this
ancestry afterward."
(Cosimo
Posth et al. “Reconstructing the Deep Population History of Central
and South America.” Cell. November 08, 2018.)
It's unlikely
that people living in the Channel Islands actually traveled south to
Peru, the researchers said. Rather, it's possible that these groups'
ancestors sallied forth thousands of years earlier, with some ending
up in the Channel Islands and others in South America. But those
genes didn't become common in Peru until much later, around 4,200
years ago, when the population may have exploded, the researchers
said.
Native
American (Indians)
If you ask Native American
Indians where the first people came from, they insist “out of the
ground.” These are stories related to origin and creation stories
all over the Americas. Native tribes have clear stories about how
they got here, coming out of caves or up through springs and
underground sources. The idea of coming from somewhere else might
threaten the notion that they have primacy on the lands.
Scientists looking at
Indian DNA say the DNA of the Ancient Paleo-Siberians is remarkably
similar to that of Native Americans. A skeleton in Siberia nearly
10,000 years old has yielded DNA that reveals a striking kinship to
living Native Americans.
In 2015, a study using
advanced genetic techniques came to a similar conclusion. Rasmus
Nielsen of the University of California, Berkeley and colleagues
found that the "vast majority" of Native Americans must
have originated from just one colonization event.
(Maanasa Raghavan et al. “Genomic evidence for the
Pleistocene and recent population history of Native Americans.”
Science, 21. August 2015.)
The
California study found that the ancestors of all present-day Native
Americans, including Athabascans and Amerindians, entered the
Americas as a single migration wave from Siberia no earlier than 23
thousand years ago and after no more than an 8000-year isolation
period in Beringia. After their arrival to the Americas, ancestral
Native Americans diversified into two basal genetic branches around
13 (thousand calendar years ago) one that is now dispersed across
North and South America and the other restricted to North America
At
the end of the Last Glacial Maximum, temperatures began to rise and
the glaciers that covered North America slowly began to melt. The
first peoples to enter the Americas from Beringia are thought to
have done so shortly after a route opened up along the west coast,
about 15,000 years ago.
Travel by boat would have
allowed very rapid southward movement, making it possible for people
to establish themselves at the early site of Monte Verde in Chile by
14,220 YBP, as well as a number of other sites in North America of
similar ages. Whether there was southward travel by Clovis peoples
via the ice-free corridor once it opened remains unresolved.
(Jennifer Raff. “What
the ancient DNA discovery tells us about Native American ancestry.”
The Guardian. January 03, 2018.)
Dr. Eske Willerslev, a
geneticist at the University of Copenhagen and a co-author of the
2019 study “The population History of Northeastern Siberia Since
the Pleistocene,” estimates that Native Americans can trace about
two-thirds of their ancestry to these previously unknown people.
(Martin
Kikora. “The population history of northeastern Siberia since the
Pleistocene.” Nature, 570. June 05, 2019.)
One reason that the
Ancient Paleo-Siberians were unknown until now is that they were
mostly replaced by a third population of people with a different East
Asian ancestry. This group moved into Siberia only in the past 10,000
years — and they are the progenitors of most living Siberians.
The Kolyma individual
lived long after the origin of the Native American branch. Dr.
Willerslev estimates that the ancestors of Native Americans and
Ancient Paleo-Siberians split 24,000 years ago.
The story gets more
complicated: Shortly after that split, the ancestors of Native
Americans encountered another population with genetic ties to Europe.
All living Native Americans carry a mixture of genes from these two
groups.
In its research on ancient
DNA, Dr. Willerslev’s team found evidence that a second wave of
Ancient Paleo-Siberians reached Alaska sometime between 9,000 and
6,000 years ago. They made contact with Native Americans there and
interbred.
Conclusions?
And, there's reason to
believe the first inhabitants of the U.S. came from everywhere.
To think of the arrival of
the first people as one group may be inaccurate. The story of the
first settlers in America has been derived from a complex history of
many people with many different stories. Exactly when
and who did what will likely be forever
debated.
