Alvah Hicks’s Human Origins Bibliography (WIP)

This is work-in-progress and includes, as a start, the bibliographic references assembled over the years and oftentimes annotated/summarized by Alvah (Pardner) Hicks. Back in the 1990s Hicks was a human origins blogger before blogging became easy and mainstream: he annotated, summarized and commented on various papers, which he obtained at the UC Santa Barbara library, and then circulated them electronically via the Mother Tongue mailing list.

I personally have never tracked publications on human origins and American Indian origins to the same systematic extent as I have been compiling an interdisciplinary bibliography of kinship studies. John Hawks has a rather comprehensive, 11,500-entry-strong bibliography originating with Milford Wolpoff on his website.

I will be working on organizing and growing Hicks’s bibliographic database as time allows to match and complement Hawks’s bibliographic database. Wherever available, a Digital Object Identifier (DOI) or a ISBN link will take you to the journal website where the abstract (and sometimes the whole paper) will be available for free.

HICKS’S BIBLIOGRAPHY

Binford, Lewis R. 1991. In Dillehay Tom D. and David J. Meltzer 1991. The First Americans: Search and Research. PP. 275-284, CRC Press, Boca Raton, Florida.

——–.1983b.Working at Archeology. Academic Press, Inc.

——–.1984 Faunal Remains at Klasies River Mouth. New York: Academic Press.

Dillehay, Tom D. 1984. “A Late Ice-Age Settlement in Southern Chile.” Scientific American 251(4):106-117.

Dragoo, D.W. 1980. The Trimmed-Core Tradition in Asiatic-American Contacts in Early Native Americans, editor D. Browman, The Hague New York Mouton.

Hanke, Lewis 1951. Bartolomé de las Casas: An Interpretation of His Life and Writings. The Hague: M. Nijhoff.

Harihara, Shinji, Momoki Hirai, Yumiko Suutou, Koji Shimizu, and Keiichi Omoto 1992. Frequency of a 9-bp Deletion in the Mitochondrial DNA among Asian Populations. in Human Biology, April Vol. 64, no. 2 pp. 161-166

Harington, C.R., R. Bonnichsen, R.E. Morlan 1975. Bones Say Man Lived in Yukon 27,000 years Ago. Can Geographical J 91:42-48.

Hrdlicka, Ales 1912b. Remains in Eastern Asia of the Race that Peopled America. Smithsonian Misc Coll No. 16, LX.; 1920. Shovel-shaped Teeth. Am J Phys Anthropol 3:429-465.

——–. 1925. “The Origin and Antiquity of the American Indian.” Annual Report of the Smithsonian Institution for 1923, 481-94. Washington, D.C.

Hrdlicka, Ales, and others 1912. Early Man in South America, Bureau of American Ethnology, Bulletin 52. Washington, D.C.

Irving, William N. 1987. New Dates from Old Bones: Twisted Fractures in Mammoth Bones and Some Flaked Bone Tools Suggest that Humans Occupied the Yukon More than 40,000 Years Ago. Natural History. 2/87

Jelinek, Arthur J. 1992. Perspectives From The Old World On The Habitation Of The New. American Antiquity 57(2) pp. 345-347

Laughlin, William 1980. Aleuts: Survivors of the Bering Land Bridge. Holt Rinehart and Winston, New York.

——–. 1986. Comments in the Settlement of the Americas: A Comparison of the Linguistic, Dental, and Genetic Evidence in Current Anthropology Vol. 27 No. 5.

Lummis, Charles F. 1925. Mesa Canon and Pueblo. The Century Co., New York and London

Lynch Thomas F. 1991. The Peopling of the Americas— A Discussion. in Dillehay, Tom D. and David J. Meltzer The First Americans: Search and Research. pp.231-264 CRC Press, Boca Raton, Florida

Mandryk, Carole A. 1992. Paleoecology as Contextual Archaeology: Human Variability of the Late Quaternary Ice -free Corridor, Alberta Canada. Doctoral Dissertation. from an article titled, Paleoecologist Finds Corridor ICE- FREE but Forbidding. in Mammoth Trumpet Vol. 7 no. 2 March 1992 edited by Don A. Hall. Oregon St. U.

Mellars, P.A. 1973. The Character of the Middle-Upper Paleolithic Transition in South-west France. In The Explanation of Culture Change: Models in Prehistory, edited by Colin Renfrew. London: Duckworth. Pp. 255-276.

——–. 1991 editor and preface in The Emergence of Modern Humans, An Archaeological Prospective. Cornell University Press, Iyhica, New York

Mirambell, L. 1978. Tlapacoya: A Late Pleistocene Site in Central Mexico. In A.L. Bryan ed.: “Early Man in America: From a Circum-Pacific Perspective.” Occas Papers 1, Dept of Anthro, Univ of Alberta, pp 221- 230.

Mochanov, Ju. A. 1980. Early Migrations to America in the Light of a Study of the Dyuktai Paleolithic Culture in Northeast Asia, in Early Native Americans, editor Browman, D.

Mochanov, I.A. 1978b. The Paleolithic of Northeast Asia and the Problem of the First Peopling of America. In “Early Man in America: From a Circum-Pacific Perspective.” Alan L. Bryan editor, Occas Papers 1, Dept of Anthro, Univ of Alberta, p 67.

Mochanov, Yuri 1978. “The Paleolithic of NE Asia and the Problem of the First Peopling of America,” in Early Man in America: From a Circum-Pacific Perspective, Alan L. Bryan editor, Edmonton, Alberta.

Morlan, Richard E. 1970. “Wedge-shaped Core Technology in Northern North America,” Arctic Anthropology, vol. 7, 17-37.

——–. 1980. Taphonomy and Archaeology in the Upper Pleistocene of the Northern Yukon Territory: A Glimpse of the Peopling of the New World. National Mus. of Canada, Mercury Series, Arch. Survey of Canada Paper 94.

——–. 1983. “Pre-Clovis Occupation North of the Ice Sheets” in Early Man in the New World, edited by R. Shutler, Jr., pp. 47-63. Sage Publications, Beverly Hills.

——–. 1987. The Pleistocene Archaeology of Beringia. In The Evolution of Human Hunting, Edited by M.H. Nitecki And D.V. Nitecki, pp.267-307. Plenum Press, New York.

Szathmary, Emoke J.E. 1985. Peopling of North America: Clues from Genetic Studies. in Out of Asia: Peopling the Americas and the Pacific. edited by R.L. Kirk and E.J.E. Szathmary. Journal of Pacific History, Canberra, pp. 79-104.

Tang, Chung and Pei Gai 1986. Upper Paleolithic Cultural Traditions in North China. in Advances in World Archaeology, Academic Press

Turner, Christy G., II 1976. Dental Evidence on the Origins of the Ainu and Japanese. Science 193:911-913.

——–. 1987. Telltale Teeth: From the Mouths of Prehistoric Indians Comes Evidence Tracing Their Northeast Asian Ancestry. Natural History. 1/87

Turner, C.G., II, Bird, J. 1981. Dentition of Chilean Paleo-Indians and Peopling of the Americas. Science 212:1053-1054.

Turner C.G., II, Hanihara, K. 1977. Additional Features of Ainu Detention. V. Peopling of the Pacific. Am J Phys Anthropol 46(1):13-24.

Harpending, HC 1994. Signature of Ancient Population Growth in a Low-Resolution Mitochondrial DNA Mismatch Distribution. in Human Biology, August, v. 66, no. 4, pp. 591-600

Harpending, H.C., S.T. Sherry, A. R. Rogers et al. 1993. Genetic structure of ancient human populations. Curr. Anthropol. 34:483-496.

Kunz, Michael L. and Reanier, Richard, 1995. The Mesa Site: A Paleoindian Hunting Lookout in Arctic Alaska, Arctic Anthropology, Vol. 32, No. 1, pp. 5-30

Laurent Excoffier and Andre Langaney 1989. Origin and Differentiation of Human Mitochondrial DNA Am. J. Hum. Genet. 44:73-85

Lum J. Koji, Olga Rickards, Clara Ching, and Rebecca L. Cann 1994. Polynesian Mitochondrial DNAs Reveal Three Deep Maternal Lineage Clusters. Human Biology, August v. 66, no.4, pp. 567-590

Melton, Terry, Raymond Peterson, Alan J. Redd, N. Saha, A.S.M. Sofro, Jeremy Martinson, and Mark Stoneking 1995. Polynesian Genetic Affinities with Southeast Asian Populations as Identified by mtDNA Analysis. Am. J. Hum. Genet. 57:404, 409, 410.

Merriwether, Î. Andrew, Rothhammer, Francisco, and Ïerrell, Robert E. 1995. Distributioin of the Four Founding Lineage Haplotypes in Native Americans Suggests a Single Wave of Migration for the New World., American Journal of Physical Anthropology 98:411-430

Monsalve, M.V., H. Groot de Restrepo, A. Espinel, G. Correal, and D.V. Devine 1994. Evidence of mitochondrial DNA diversity in South American aboriginals. Ann. Hum. Genet., 58, 271.

Ousley, Stephen D. 1995. Relationships between Eskimos, Amerindians, and Aleuts: Old Data, New Perspectives, Human Biology, June, v. 67, no. 3, pp. 427-458.

Passarion, Giuseppe, Ornella Semino, Guido Modiano, and A. Silvana Santachiara-Benerecitti. 1993. COII/tRNA Lys Intergenic 9-bp Deletion and Other mtDNA Markers Clearly Reveal That the Tharus (Southern Nepal) Have Oriental Affinities. Am. J. Hum. Genet. 53:609-6l8

Reanier, Richard E. 1995. The Antiquity of Paleoindian Materials in Northern Alaska, Arctic Anthropology Vol. 32, No. 1, pp. 31-50

Schoenberg, Kenneth M. 1995. The Post-Paleoarctic Interval in the Central Brooks Range, Arctic Anthrolopology Vol. 32, No. 1, pp. 51-61

added to Sibieria paper

For Human Biology Sib admix..

Ackerman, R. ´. 1982. The Neolithic-Bronze Age cultures of Asia and the Norton phase of Alaskan prehistory, Arctic Anthropol. 19:11-38

Ackerman, R. E. 1992. Earliest stone industries on the north Pacific coast of North America. Arctic Anthropol. 29:18-27

Arima, E. Y. 1988. Notes on Nootkan sea mammal hunting. Arctic Anthropol. 25(1):16-27

Arutiunov, S. A. 1988a. Even: Reindeer herders of eastern Siberia. In Çrossroads of Continents, W. Fitzhugh and A Çrowell, eds. Baltimore, MD Smithsonian Institution Press, 31-15.

Boas, F. 1905. The Jesup North Pacific Expedition. In Proceedings of the Thirteenth International Congress of Americanists. Easton, PA: Eschenback Printing, 91-100

Boas, F. 1910. Ethnological problems in Canada. J. R. Anthropol. Inst. Gr. Br. Ireland 40:529-539.

Dumond, D.E. 1983. Alaska and the Northwest Coast. In Ancient North Americans, J.D. Jennibngs, ed. New Your: Freeman, 69-113.

Heizer, R.F. 1943. Aconite poison whaling in Asia and America: An Aleutian transfer to the New World. Bull, Bur, Am, Tthnol. 133:415-468.

Leer, J. 1991. Evidence for a northern Northwest coast language area: Promiscuous number marking and periphrastic possessive construction in Haida, Eyak, and Aleut. Int. J. Am. Ling. 57(2):158-193.

McCartney, A.P. 1984. Prehistory of the Aleutian region. In Handbook of North Americans Indians, v.5, Arctic, D. Damas, ed. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution, 119-135.

Rousselot, J.L., W.W. Fitzhugh, and A. Crowell. 1988. Maritime economies of the North Pacific rim. In Crossroads of Continents, W. Fitzhugh and A. Crowell, eds. Baltimore, MD: Smithsonian Institution Press, 151- 172.

Merriwether, Andrew D., Francisco Rothhammer, and Robert E. Ferrell, 1995. Distribution of the Four Founding Lineage Haplotypes in Native Americans Suggests a Single Wave of Migration for the New World. In AJPA, 98:411-430.

Bailliet G, Rothhammer F, Carnes FR, Bravi CM, and Bianci NO (1994) Founder mitochondrial haplotypes in Amerindian populations. Am. J. Hum. Genet, 54:27-33.

Dixon E. James, 1993. Quest for the Origins of the First Americans. University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque.

Binford Lewis R., 1991. There is Always More We Need To Know. In Dillehay and Meltzer Editors: The First Americans: Search and Research.

Williams, R.C., A.G. Steinberg, H. Gershowitz et al. 1985. GM allotypes in Native Americans: Evidence for three distinct migrations across the Bering land bridge. Am. J.Phys, Anthropo.. 66:1-19.

American Indian Origins

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Adovasio, J.M. and Ronald C. Carlisle. 1986. Pennsylvania Pioneers: Meadowcroft Rock-shelter Adds a Long Lost Chapter to American History Books. in Natural History. 12/86

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——–. 1911. “Une Noubelle Industrie Lithique.” Anales del Museo Nacional de Buenos Aires, vol. 13, ser. 3, 189- 204. Buenos Aires.;

——–. 1915. La Antiguedad de los Hombres en El Plata, Obras Completas Correspondencia de Florentino Amighino, vol. 3. La Plata.

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Ballinger S.W., T.G. Schurr,, A. Torroni, Y.Y. Gan, J.A. Hodge, K. Hassan, K-. H. Chen and D.C. Wallace. 1992 Southeast Asian Mitochondrial DNA Analysis Reveals Genetic Continueity of Ancient Mongoloid Migrations. in ………….

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Bengston John D. 1989. Notes on Sino Caucasian. Unpublished paper

Berkhofer, R.F. 1978. The White Man’s Indian, From Columbus to the Present. New York: Vintage Books, Random House.

Binford, Lewis R. 1962. Archaeology as Anthropology. American Antiquity 28:217-225.;

——–. 1968b. Theory and Method. In New Perspectives in Archaeology, edited by S.R. Binford and L.R. Binford.; ———. 1968c. Some Comments on Historical Versus Processual Archaeology. Southwestern Journal of Anthropology 24(3):267-275.;

——–. 1972. “Contemporary model building: Paradigms and the current state of Paleolithic research,” in Models in archaeology. Edited by David L. Clark, pp. 227-54. London: England;

——–.1981.“Bones: Ancient Men and Modern Myths.” New York: Academic Press. 28:2:137-153.;

——–.1983a. In Pursuit of the Past. Thames and Hudson, London and New York.;

——–.1983b.Working at Archeology. Academic Press, Inc.

——–.1984 Faunal Remains at Klasies River Mouth. New Tork: Academic Press

Binford, Sally 1968. Variability and Change in the near eastern Mousterian of Levallois facies. In New Perspectives in Archaeology , S. L. Binford and L. R. Binford, eds., pp.49-60 Aldine Publ. Co., Chicago.

Bonnichsen, R., Young, D. 1980. Early Technological Repertoires: Bone to Stone. Can J Anthropol 1:123-128.

Bordes, François 1968.The Old Stone Age. Weidenfeld, London, McGraw-Hill, New York.

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Bowdler Sandra 1990. Peopling Australia: the ‘Coastal Colonization’ Hypothesis re-examined. in The Emergence of Modern Humans, An Archaeological Prospective. Cornell University Press, Iyhica, New York

_____. 1977. The coastal colonization of Australia. in Sunda and Sahul, Edited by J. Allen, J. Golson, and R. Jones, pp. 205- 246 Academic Press, London

Brace, C.L., P.E. Mahler 1971. Post-Pleistocene Changes in the Human Dentition. Am J Phys Anthrop 34:191- 203.

Brace, C. L., M.F. Ashley Montagu 1965. Man’s Evolution, An Introduction to Physical Anthropology The MacMillan Company, New York

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Bryan, Alan L. 1987. Points of Order: Excavations in Venezuela and Colombia Put the Ice Age Hunters of North America in a New Perspective. Natural History. 6/87

——–. 1991. The fluted-Point Tradition in the Americas–One of Several Adaptions to Late Pleistocene American Environments in Current Research in the Pleistocene Oregon St. U., eds. Robson Bonnichsen and Karen Turnmare

Butzer Karl W. 1991. An Old World perspective on Potential Mid-Wisconsinan Settlement of the Americas in Dillehay Tom D. and David J. Meltzer; The First Americans: Search and Research. pp. 231-264 CRC Press, Boca Raton, Florida

Burch, E.S., Jr. 1972. The Caribou; Wild Reindeer as a Human Resource. American Antiquity 37(3):339-368.

Campbell, Lyle 1986. Comment on the Settlement of the Americas. Current Anthropology 27 p. 488

Campbell, Lyle and Ives Goddard 1990. American Indian Languages and principals of Language Change. Linguistic Change and Reconstruction Methodology, edited by Phili Baldi, pp.17-32 Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter

Cann, Rebecca L., M. Stoneking, and A. C. Wilson 1987. Mitochondrial DNA and Human Evolution. Nature 325:31-36

Carter, George F. 1980. Earlier Than You Think: A Personal View of Man in America. Texas A and M Univ Press.

Casas, Bartolomé De Las 1909. Apologética Historia de las Indias, in M. Serrano y Sanz, ed. Madrid: Bailliere.

Chakrabority, Ranjit and Kenneyh M. Weiss 1991. Genetic Variation of the Mitochondrial DNA Genome in American Indians is at Mutation-Drift Equilibrium. American Journal of Physical Anthropology 86:497-506

Ciochon R.L. and A.B. Chiarelli. 1980. Paleobiogeographic Perspectives on the Origin of the Platyrrhini. in Evolutionary Biology of the New World Monkeys and Continental Drift. Edited by Russel L. Ciochon and A. Brunetto Chiarelli. pp.459-493. Plenum Press, New York.

Cinq-Mars, Jacques 1979. “Bluefish Cave 1: a Late Pleistocene Eastern Beringian Cave Deposit in the Northern Yukon,” Canadian Journal of Archaeology, vol. 3, 1-32.

Collins, M.B. 1981. The Implications of the Lithic Assemblage from Monte Verde, Chile, for Early Man Studies. in Early Man in the America from a Circum-Pacific Perspective. edited by Alan L.Bryan pp 63-65. U. of Maine, Orono

Cook H. J. 1927. New geological and paleontological evidence bearing on the antiquity of man in America. Natural History 27:240-247

Cook, J., C.B. Stringer, A.P. Currant, H.P. Schwarcz, A.G. Wintle 1982. A Review of the Chronology of the European Middle Pleistocene Hominid Record.Yrbk Phys Anthropology 25:19-65.

Delson, Eric and A.L. Rosenberger. 1980. Phyletic Perspectives on Platyrrhine Origins and Anthropiod Relationships. in Evolutionary Biology of the New World Monkeys and Continental Drift. Edited by Russel L. Ciochon and A. Brunetto Chiarelli. pp.445-458 Plenum Press New York

Dikov, Nikolai N. 1988. On the Road to America: Ice Age Sites in Siberia Provide Glimpses of the Asians Who May Have Crossed the Bering Land Bridge. Natural History. 1/88

Dillehay, Tom D. 1984. “A Late Ice-Age Settlement in Southern Chile.” Scientific American 251(4):106-117.;

_____. 1987. By the Banks of the Chinchihuapi. Natural History. 4/87

——–. 1989. Monty Verde, A late Pleistocene settlement in Chile, Smithsonian Institution Press.

Dillehay Tom D. 1991. Disease Ecology and Initial Human Migration. in Dillehay, Tom D. and David J. Meltzer 1991. The First Americans: Search and Research. pp.231-264 CRC Press, Boca Raton, Florida

Dillehay Tom D. and David J. Meltzer 1991. The First Americans: Search and Research. CRC Press, Boca Raton, Florida

Dincauze, Dena F. 1984. An Archaeo-Logical Evaluation of the Case for Pre-Clovis Occupations. in Advances in World Archaeology. edited by Fred Wendorf and Angela E. Close, Academic Press

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——–. 1896. On Pithecanthropus Erectus: A Transitional Form Between Man and the Apes. Sci Trans R Dubl in Soc. 6:1-18.

Dumond, D. 1977. Science in Archaeology: The Saints Go Marchin In. American Antiquity 42(2):330-349.

Eggert, M. 1976. “Archaeology as Anthropology” and its case; remarks on reasoning in prehistoric archaeology.Western Canadian Journal of Anthropology 6(4):42-61.

Eldredge, N. Ian Tattersal 1982. The myths of human evolution. New York: Columbia University Press

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Erdoes, Richard and Alfonso Ortiz 1984. American Indian Myths and Legends. Pantheon Books, New York

Ericson, J.E., R.E. Taylor, R. Berger eds. 1982. Peopling of the New World. Los Altos, CA: Ballena Press.

Farb, Peter 1968. Man’s Rise to Civilization as Shown by the Indians of North America from Primeval Times to the Coming of the Industrial State. E.P. Dutton, New York.

Fagan, Brian M. 1987. The Great Journey: The Peopling of Ancient America. Thames and Hudson Ltd., London. ——–. 1990. Tracking the First Americans. in Archaeology magazine (November/December)

Fleagle, John G. 1988. Primate Adaptation and Evolution. Academic Press Inc.

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_____. Dinosaures in the Haystack. Natural History 3/92

Gould, S.J., N. Eldredge 1977. Punctuated Equilibria: The Tempo and Mode of Evolution Reconsidered. Paleobiology 3:115-151.

Grayson, Donald K. 1987. Death by Natural Causes: Did Human Hunters Extinguish the Legendary Ice Age Animals of North America? Natural History. 5/87

Greenberg, Joseph H. 1987. Language in the Americas; Stanford University Press.

Greenberg, Joseph H., Christy G. Turner II, Stephen L. Zegura, 1986. The Settlement of the Americas: A Comparison of the Linguistic, Dental, and Genetic Evidence in Current Anthropology Vol. 27, No. 5.

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——–. 1988a. Linguistic Evidence in Support of the Coastal Route of Earliest Entry into the New World. Man. 23:77-100

Guidon, N. and G. Delibrias 1986. “Carbon 14 Dates Point of Man in the Americas 32,000 Years Ago,” Nature, vol. 321, 769-771.

Guidon, Niede 1987. Cliff Notes: Rock Artists May Have Left Their Mark in Brazil More than 30,000 Years Ago. Natural History. 8/87

Grayson, Donald 1986. “Eoliths, Archaeological Ambiguity, and the Generation of ‘Middle-Range’ research,” in David J. Meltzer, Don D. Fowler, and Jeremy A. Sabloff (eds.), American Archaeology Present and Future. Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington, D.C.

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Hanihara, Tsunehiko 1992. Negritos, Australian Aborigines, and the “Proto Sundadont” Dental Pattern: The Basic Populations in East Asia, V. American Journal of Physical Anthropology 88:183-196

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Harington, C.R., R. Bonnichsen, R.E. Morlan 1975. Bones Say Man Lived in Yukon 27,000 years Ago. Can Geographical J 91:42-48.

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——–. 1969a. The Earliest Americans. Science 166:709-715.

——–. 1980a. Paleoindian Charcoal from Meadowcroft Rockshelter: Is Contamination a Problem? Am Antiq 45:3:582-587.;

——–. 1987a. Clovis Origins Update, Kiva.

——–. 1988. Geofacts and Fancy. Natural History 2/88

Haynes, G. 1983. Frequencies of Spiral and Green-bone fractures on Ungulate Bones in Modern Surface Assemblages. Am Antiq 48:1:102-114.

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Hershkovitz Philip 1977. Living New World Monkeys (platyrrhini), with an Introduction to the Primates. Vol. 1 Chicago: University of Chicago Press

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Howell, F.C. 1957. The Evolutionary Significance of Variation and Varieties of “Neanderthal” Man.

Q Rev Biol 32:330-410.

——–. 1984. Preface to The Origins of Modern Humans: A World Survey of the Fossil Evidence. New York: Alan R. Liss, Inc.

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——–. 1980. Homo Erectus–Who, When and Where: A Survey.Yrbk Phys Anthropol 23:1-23.

Hrdlicka, Ales 1912b. Remains in Eastern Asia of the Race that Peopled America. Smithsonian Misc Coll No. 16, LX.; 1920. Shovel-shaped Teeth. Am J Phys Anthropol 3:429-465.

——–. 1925. “The Origin and Antiquity of the American Indian.” Annual Report of the Smithsonian Institution for 1923, 481-94. Washington, D.C.

Hrdlicka, Ales, and others 1912. Early Man in South America, Bureau of American Ethnology, Bulletin 52. Washington, D.C.

Huddleston, Lee E. 1967. Origins of the American Indians; European Concepts, 1492-1729. Austin: University of Texas Press.

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Sherry, Stephen T., Alan R. Rogers, Henry Harpending, Himla Soodyall, Trefor Jenkins, and Mark Stoneking. 1994. Mismatch Distributions of mtDNA Reveal Recent Human Population Expansions. Human Biology v. 66, no. 5, pp. 761-775.

Shields, Gerald F., Andrea M. Schmiechen, Barbara L. Frazier, Alan Redd, Mikhail I. Voevoda, Judy K. Reed, and R. H. Ward 1993. mtDNA Sequences Suggest a Recent Evolutionary Divergence for Beringian and Northern North American Populations. Am. J. Hum. Genet. 53:549-562

Smith, Anita 1995. The need for Lapita: explaining change in the Late Holocene Pacific archaeological record. World Archaeology Volume 26 No. 3 pp. 369, 372, 374.

Stoneking, M., S. Sherry, A. Redd et al. 1992. New approaches to dating suggest a recent age for the human mtDNA ancestor. Philos. Trans. R. Soc. London 337:167-175.

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Szathmary, Emoke J. E. ,1993. INVITED EDITORIAL mtDNA and the Peopling of the Americas. Am. J. Hum.Genet. 53:793-799

Templeton, Alan R. 1993. The “Eve” Hypotheses: A Genetic Critique and Reanalysis. in American Anthropologists 95 (1):51-72

Torroni, Antonio and Douglas C. Wallace 1995. mtDNA Haplogroups in Native Americans. Am J. Hum. Genet. 56:1234.

Torroni, Antonio, Rem I. Sukernik, Theodore G. Schurr, Yelena B. Starikovskaya, Margaret F. Cabell, Michael H. Crawford, Anthony G. Comuzzie, and Douglas C. Wallace. 1993Am. J. Hum. Genent. 53:591-608.

Torroni, Antonio, Yu-Sheng Chen, Ornella Semino, Augusta Silvana Santacchiara-Beneceretti, C. Ronald Scott, Marie T. Lott, Marcus Winter, and Douglas C. Wallace 1994. mtDNA and Y-Chromosome Polymorphisms in Four Native American Populations from Southern Mexico. Am. J. Hum. Genet. 54:303-318

Torroni Antonio, Yu-Sheng Chen, Ornella Semino, Augusta Silvana Santachiara-Beneceretti, C. Ronald Scott, Marie T. Lott, Marcus Winter, and Douglas C. Wallace 1994. mtDNA and Y-Chromosome Polymorphisms in Four Native American Populations from Southern Mexico.Am. J. Hum. Genet. 54:303-318

Torroni Antonio, Theodore G. Schurr, Margaret F. Cabell, Michael D. Brown, James V. Neel, Merethe Larsen, David G. Smith, Carlos M. Vullo, and Douglas C. Wallace 1993a. Asian Affinities and Continental Radiation of the Four Founding Native American mtDNAs. Am. J. Hum. Genet. 53:563-590

Torroni Antonio, Rem I. Sukernik, Theodore G. Schurr, Yelena B. Starikovskaya, Margaret F. Cabell, Michael H. Crawford, Anthony G. Comuzzie, and Douglas C. Wallace 1993b. mtDNA Variation of Aboriginal Siberians Reveals Distinct Genetic Affinities with Native Americans.Am. J. Hum. Genet. 53:591-608

Torroni, Antonio, Maurizio Petrozzi, Piero Santolamazza, Daniele Sellitto, Fulvio Cruciani, and Rosaria Scozzari 1995. About the “Asian”-Specific 9-bp Deletion of mtDNA. Am. J. Hum. Genet. Letter 57:507.

Torroni, Antonio, Marie T. Lott, Margaret F. Cabell, Yu-Sheng Chen, Leo Lavergne, and Douglas C. Wallace 1994. mtDNA and the Origin of Caucasians: Identification of Ancient Caucasian-specific Haplogroups, One of Which Is Prone to a Recurrent Somatic Duplication in the D-Loop Region. Am. J. Hum. Genet. 55:760, 772

Trachtenberg, E.A., H.A. Erlich, O. Rickards, G.F. DeStefano, and W. Klitz 1995. HLA Class II LinkageDisequilibrium and Haplotype Evolution in the Cayapa Indians of Ecuador. Am J. Hum. Genet. 57:421, 422, 423.

Trembly, Diane L. 1995. On the Antiquity of Leprosy in Western Micronesia. International Journal of Osteoarchaeology, Vol. 5: 383.

Vigilant, L., M. Stoneking, H. Harpending et al. 1991. African Populations and the evolution of human mitochondrial DNA. Science 253:1503-1507.

Weisler Marshall I. 1994. The Settlement of Marginal Polynesia: New Evidence from Henderson Island. Journal of Field Archaeology/Vol. 21

Zago, Marco A., Melo Santos, Eduardo J., Clegg, J.B., Guerreiro, Joao F., Martinson, Jeremy J., Norwich, Jemma, and Figueiredo, Mauro S. 1995. a-Globin Gene Haplotypes in South American Indians, Human Biology, v. 67, no. 4, pp. 535-546.

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Annotated Bibliographies

Excerpted Anthropological Research Articles: 1995

compiled with notes by Alvah M. Hicks: AMH

(please see original article s for proofs)

Alvah M. Pardner Hicks

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Nurturing A Human Evolutionary Consensus:

The Search for an Alternative Paradigm

Background

The following collections of quotes were gathered as part of a research strategy aimed at exploring a New World alternative to human origins. They represent a diverse array of anthropological studies and subjects helping provide background information for perspectives held by the compiler. Primarily, they represent “warranting evidence” in support of the compiler’s contention that; Amerindian populations should be examined as a potential source for both recent and ancient Homo sapien radiations into what we have come to accept as the “Old” World. More specifically, separate Amerindian radiations are proposed to have led to, (i) the “total replacement” of Old World Hominids beginning less then 50,000 years ago, (ii) subsequent post Holocene Amerindian migration into Siberia resulting in admixture with northeast Asians, and (iii) the initial arrival of man (American Indians) into Polynesia ~3,600 years ago.

These articles are broken down into geographic areas of study. I am deeply indebted to the subjects studied, to the authors who have acknowledged their contribution and, to the researchers themselves who have compiled and analyzed the data used in furthering this present study. However, it has come to my attention that many of the ideas and opinions represented as supporting my (the compiler) contentions are not optimistically pursued by the original authors. By this, any inconsistencies that might be found in this compilation should not be attributed to those researchers and/or the publication they were drawn from. Moreover, further use of these quotations should not be made without referencing the material directly since a full appreciation and interpretation of these “selections” should be drawn from the original sources.

Table of Contents:

General Overview Page 2

North and South America Page 7

Siberia/Beringia/North America Page 16

Polynesia Page 22

Asia Page 28

Africa Page 31

Europe Page 38

Primate Research Page 42

Archaeological Research Page 46

New World Archaeology Page 47

Linguistics Page 49

________________________________________________________________________

General Overview

________________________________________________________________________

@ Willarmet, C. M., and G. A. Clark. Paradigm crisis in modern human origins research Journal of Human Evolution (1995) 29, 487-490. 1995

Despite the considerable efforts of many well-informed investigators, however, no resolution of the controversy is in sight. We think that the slow progress to resolution of the debate can be attributed to differences in metaphysical paradigms of modern origins researchers that in turn result in a biased selection of specimens and/or variables used in analysis.

How selectively biased are researchers? An extensive literature review of published multivariate data invoked in support of “continuity” and “replacement” positions produced some dramatic results (Willamette, 1993, 1994). A total of 680 data points were collected, representing 61 variables on 55 fossils. Of these, only 72 variables on 11 fossils, or 11% of the reported database, were common to both paradigms This means that in the sample, 89% of the data collected were used by members of only one paradigm (p. 488).

Given the construal of the paradigm just outlined, theories (more accurately the hypotheses deduced from them), can only be confirmed or discomfirmed according to the tenets of the metaphysic (the construal of “reality” defined by the biases and preconceptions of the paradigm). Outside a particular paradigm, its constituent theories (“hypotheses”) might appear nonsensical.

Despite assertions to the contrary (e.g. Klein, 1989), the venerable history of the debate suggests that simply acquiring more data will not help us choose between opposing paradigms. The reason is that data have no meaning or existence independent of a paradigm that defines and contextualizes them. In light of the plethora of articles and books that have appeared in the last 10 years, it is worth asking ourselves whether we are any closer to solving the question of our origins than we were a century ago. If there is a lesson to be learned from the debate, it is that students of human evolution must begin to confront the inferential basis for their knowledge claims. So far, they have not been much concerned to do so. The result is an interminable debate, now well into its second century, with no resolution in sight (p. 489-489).

NOTE and the beat goes on? This collection of quotes is aimed at exploring a long dismissed alternative. AMH

__________________________________________________________________

Barton Childs – The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine Baltimore – AMERICAN JOURNAL OF HUMAN GENETICS pg. 595 – BOOK REVIEW.

“Human ecology shares interests with physiologists, geneticists, epidemiologists, demographers, anthropologists, nutritionists, and others, all of whom are trying to explain “how we have adapted, adjusted and coped with our natural and social environment through time” (p. 445).

NOTE Pleistocene New World archaeological signatures may not have engendered refined stone tool industries. These bone tools may have given way to stone with the adoption of U. Paleolithic hunting during the accession to “Paleoindian Traditions” when introduced into the Americas at the end of the last Ice Age. AMH

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Stoneking, Mark. Ancient DNA: How Do You Know When You Have It and What Can You Do with It? 1995. Am. J. Hum. Genet. 57:1259-1261, 1995.

Archeologists are traditionally interested in the same sorts of questions about their skeletal populations that human population geneticists are generally interested in when surveying their contemporary populations, questions such as: Who are these people? Where did they come from? How long have they been here? How did they get here? How much variation is there in this population? How are they related to surrounding populations? Is there any tendency for males or females to marry into or out of the community? If there are recognizable social classes in the population, do they tend to be structured along kinship lines (p. 1261).

NOTE We should first measure our own data in accordance with the beliefs of those we study. AMH

__________________________________________________________________

@ Howell, F.C., 1984, “Preface” to The Origins of Modern Humans: A World Survey of the Fossil Evidence, Eds. Smith FH, F. Spencer, New York: Alan R. Liss, Inc. 1984

“There is now a near consensus among students of human evolutionary biology that the origins of our own species, Homo sapiens, is somehow intimately linked with the first intercontinental ancient hominid, Homo erectus. However, neither the transformation of erectus to sapiens nor the transformation of ancient (archaic) populations of Homo sapiens to their anatomically modern successors (H s sapiens) are matters of agreement in this scientific fraternity. Undoubtedly, there are many factors that make this the case, and any reader of this volume will discern some of those that are most obvious. In fact, there is no consensus among the authors represented in this volume, although the major issues are generally well delineated, and the limitations of the diverse and often disparate lines of evidence are usually apparent (p. xiii.).”

NOTE Are alternatives to H. erectus available? Amerindians? AMH

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Robert S. Corruccini, 1992. Metrical Reconsideration of the Skhul IV and IX and Border Cave 1 Crania in the Context of Modern Human Origins; AJPA April

“Skhul IV and IX, meanwhile, …join the cluster of supposedly early African/Mideastern AMHS (*my “pre-sapiens”), and then the above-described, increasingly heterogeneous Neandertal grouping. The Upper Paleolithic true AMHS exclusively cluster with one another, relatively far removed from these other groupings. Thus, the picture is one of overriding affinity among all the crania earlier than the European Upper Paleolithic, whether they be considered Classic Neandertal, Progressive Neandertal, AMHS, presapiens, or whatever.”…”Continued facile reference to Skhul and Qafzeh as craniometrically “fully anatomically modern” is not responsible to the craniometric data (pg. 437).”

The Border Cave cranium, so central to the course of “out-of-Africa” thinking despite its uncertain age, can support no special relationship to living African Homo sapiens.

(pg. 441)

“Qafzeh 6 as well as Skhul IV and V are well separated from later European AMHS. This calls into question blithe assumptions that Skhul and Qafzeh are, cranially, anatomical moderns.” (pg. 441)

NOTE Transitional forms where in the Levant and/or Africa — Corruccini casts doubt! AMH

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Pilbeam, David; In Major topics in Primate and Human Evolution, editors Wood, Martin, and Andrews, published by Cambridge (Cambridgeshire) New York 1986. pg. 335.

“Whatever the exact nature of the behavioral differences between modern humans and their ancestors, and of the transition between them there is a plausible case to be made for the argument that the biobehavioral gap was wide, that ‘archaic’ human behavior was different from the behavior of anatomically modern groups, and that we see in the ‘archaic’ the final representatives of a very long phase of human evolution, during which only limited changes took place… A case can be made that the nomen H. sapiens should apply only to hominids for which modern behavior patterns can reasonably be inferred: another name would then be needed for ‘archaic’ H. sapiens [Homo erectus].

__________________________________________________________________

Frank Spencer, The Neandertals and Their Evolutionary Significance: A Brief Historical Survey in Smith /Spencer , 1984 pg. 7

Another problem confronting late 19th century human evolutionists was the incipient argument for the relative stability of the human form. From accumulating skeletal evidence it appeared as if the modern human skeleton extended far back in time, an apparent fact which led many workers to either abandon or modify their views on human evolution. One such apostate was Alfred Russell Wallace (1823-1913). In 1887, Wallace examined the evidence for early man in the New World, and like the German anatomist Julian Kollman (1834-1918), who three years earlier had made a similar survey, found not only considerable evidence of antiquity for the available specimens, but also a continuity of type through time. In an effort to explain this, Wallace [1889, pp. 454-461] suggested that once man had become morphologically differentiated from his apish kin (during the mid-Tertiary period), he had remained physically stable. emphasis added

@NOTE Differing opinions can be found to support “multiregional evolution” and “rapid replacement,” the two main camps defining modern human evolutionary studies. The testing of hypotheses concerning the initial presence of humankind in the Western Hemisphere are however, first defined solely against the backdrop of migrations from Asia. These theories are often based on linguistic, genetic, dental, archaeological, or ethno-historical surveys, being cast from the nineteenth century British-school’s contention that Homo s.s. could not pre-date the Neandertals. The fact remains that all fossil man finds in the Americas are of anatomically modern humans. Since modern man is known to have replaced Neandertals the consensus has followed that anatomically modern man in the Americas could not predate the European antiquity of Cro-Magnon Man.

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Allman, William F., “Who WE Were” in U.S. News and World Report, 1991, Sept. 16

Research by University of Hawaii geneticist Rebecca Cann suggests that the newcomers’ germs may have played a divisive role as modern humans swept into Europe and around the world. Just as European colonists of the 15th century are thought to have killed off more American natives with smallpox and measles than with warfare, Cann believes that an influx of new diseases came with the arrival of the Cro-Magnons, contributing to the demise of the Neanderthals (pg. 57).

NOTE These mutational advancements in Old World people may have led to adaptations to pathogens that, when introduced into Amerindian Populations, led to similar catastrophe the a proposed New World origin and Amerindian arrival might have caused Neandertals. Bob Boker’s Dinosaur syndrome revisited! AMH

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Invited Editorial, Emoke Szathmary; Am. J. Hum. Genet. 1993b pg. 796

“If Chakraborty and Weiss’s (1991) findings apply in general to the Americas, it means that not only is there no evidence for the presence of major bottlenecks in the evolutionary history of the mtDNA in the New World but also that it is not possible to establish the evolutionary source of mtDNA mutations. They are as likely to be the product of new mutations as of ancient founder effects.”

NOTE The only cladistic evidence of an Asian/Amerindian affinity is to be found in the discovery of the four rare Asian mtDNAs. These proposed founding Amerindian lineages (see Schurr et al. 1990; Torroni et al. 1993a), are not descendent of the derived (post-nodal) Asian lineages, those described in the trees generated by Cann et al. (1987); Johnson et al. (1983) and Excoffier and Langaney (1989). The two subgroups common to Central and Southeast Asian populations are found in 36.1% of the Siberians studied while “surprisingly” they are not found in Native Americans. Contrarily, the presence of rare Asia mtDNA in the Americas does not specifically identify that their origin must be Asian in that admixture from the Americas could be suggested for some populations inhabiting Siberia (Hicks, in submission). An alternative explanation could be proposed in the movements of Amerindians into northeast Asia following or during the formation of contemporary Circumpolar peoples in post glacial times (Boas 1905; 1910, his “Eskimo wedge theory”). Should this be the case, then any evidence for an Asian (or for that matter, African or European), origin for the Eskimos, Na-Dene, and/or Amerindian would be, cladistically, unsustainable. AMH

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HC Harpending Signature of Ancient Population Growth in a Low-Resolution Mitochondrial DNA Mismatch Distribution. in Human Biology, August, 1994, v. 66, no. 4, pp. 591-600

…the absence of recombination in pedigrees of mtDNA sequences does mean that history is preserved in mtDNA sequences in such a way that it may not be in sequences from the nuclear genome. In particular, episodes of population growth and decline leave signatures in the distribution of differences among individuals in a population because population decline causes loss of sequence diversity and population growth causes the retention of sequences that otherwise would have been lost. Thus DNA sequence diversity may provide an instrument for examining prehistoric demography. (pg. 591)

If t = 1 corresponds to 60,000 years ago, then t = 0.2 corresponds to 12,000 years ago. The level of migration M = 1 is generally the most satisfactory fit to the human data described by Harpending et al. (1993), and Takahata (1993) suggests that this level of migration accounts best worldwide levels of FST among human populations. (pg. 597)

Distribution of raggedness in 1000 simulations of 5 populations, each of size Q = 0.2, that were stationary until t = 0.2 unit of mutational time ago, when they underwent a thousand-fold expansion. The number of migrants M is 1. The distribution looks like those of the stationary populations in Figure 2, suggesting that post-Pleistocene population growth in humans does not account for the smoothness of the mismatch data. (pg. 598)

Because a population consisting of only 5000 females could not have occupied all the temperate parts of the old World where remains of Homo erectus have been found, the demographic implications of our genetic diversity contradict the multiregional hypothesis of a widespread transformation of Homo erectus populations into modern Homo sapiens. (pg. 599).

NOTE Contrasting mtDNA studies, confirming evidence of a population “expansion event” in the Old World (see Johnson et al. 1983; Cann et al. 1987; Excoffier and Langaney 1989; Templeton 1993), have not found similar evidence for the same, in studies of New World peoples. Chakraborty and Weiss (1991), in their own earlier assessment of the Wallace et al. (1985; Schurr et al. 1990) data, have proposed that any evidence supporting a founding event, is not detectable since a steady-state of balance, characterized by the presence of mutational-drift equilibrium, is present in the mtDNA of the three Amerindian populations analyzed by the Wallace group. This situation, the presence of mutational-drift equilibrium in Amerindian tribal populations, does not indicate that the New World Amerindians are recently derived, while, contrarily, this same kind of evidence is central to the hypotheses supporting a “recent expansion event” for Old World peoples. AMH

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Vigilant, Linda, Mark Stoneking, Henry Harpending, Kristen Hawkes, and Allan C. Wilson 1991. African Populations and the Evolution of Human Mitochondrial DNA. Science, Vol. 253, pp. 1503-1507.

Cann et al. (7) used the midpoint method of rooting their tree, assuming that the rate of evolution has been the same in all lineages. If, however, mtDNA evolution were faster in Africans, then the deep African lineages would actually be shallow lineages along which more mutations had accumulated. Hence, the tree might not yield any information regarding the geographic origin of the mtDNA ancestor (12)(p. 1504).

NOTE Or that Africa was not the place from which H. s.s. began their colonization of the Old World. Many authors and geneticists have argued against the Out of Africa argument(s). Out of Asia would only follow an Amerindian inclusion into the debate concerning H. s. s. origins. Rebecca Cann, at one point, suggested up to 33 Eves in the Americas. AMH

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Pierre Darlu – Pascal Tassy – Nature Volume 329 10 September 1987 SCIENTIFIC CORRESPONDENCE.

“No single hypothesis is certain as long as there is a possible alternative that cannot be proved to be false. Many other interpretations of the data of Cann et al. are possible as long as multiple hypotheses exist about relative rates of evolution along the branches of the tree, and as long as selective pressures, admixture, migration and bottleneck effects cannot be included in intraspecific models.”

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Stephen J. Gould, 1992. “Columbus Cracks an Egg” Natural History, Dec. pgs. 4 – 11).

Do traditional methods “indicate a hidebound resistance to innovation?” This is an important perspective, one that seems to coincide with my own experiences. As Harvard Universities’ Stephen J. Gould iterates, “great intellectual revolutions are never simple infusions of knowledge into a previous void; they are always exercises in destruction and replacement.” My own efforts have been built upon the fruitful work of others by acknowledging past traditions with the understanding that, “the most historically potent and positive form of creativity must occupy the middle ground between strong respect for accepted norms and accumulated knowledge” (BOLD Typeface — AMH)

NOTE Mid-Pleistocene Paleoarchaic or pre-Clovis sites are seen as “Archaeo-Logiacally” unfounded (D. F. Dincauze 1986). Should the dating of human habitations in the Americas in mid-Pleistocene times be accurate (or greater then 33,000; or 47,000 yr. B.P.) then new theories should be designed that would challenge many earlier convictions defining today’s “conventional wisdom.” A contemporary Amerindian Pleistocene presence warrants alternatives that would delineate a resolution to the unresolved terms assigned to the Old World decadence of man. A new “warranted” perspective must follow the prospect of determining what should or shouldn’t be found in the earliest New World archaeological record. Simply, broad-minded paradigms need to follow in the wake of accepting mid-Pleistocene Amerindian habitations. AMH

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Lightman and Gingerich Smithsonian Magazine 1992 [Title and month unknown]

Science is a conservative activity, and scientists are reluctant to change their explanatory frameworks. Scientists may also be reluctant to change paradigms for the purely psychological reasons that the familiar is often more comfortable than the unfamiliar and that inconsistencies in belief are uncomfortable.When dissonance is present, in addition to reducing it, the person will actively avoid situations and information which would likely increase the dissonance. If unexplained facts can be glossed over or reduced in importance or simply accepted as givens, the possible inadequacy of the current theory does not have to be confronted. Then, when a new theory gives a compelling explanation of the previously unexplained facts, it is “safe” to recognize them for what they are (Lightman and Gingerich 1992 pp. 694).

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North and South America _____________________________________________________________

Emoke J.E. Szathmary 1993. Invited Editorial: mtDNA and the Peopling of the Americas Am. J. Hum. Genet. 53:793-799

It is clear that uncritical use of hypotheses under dispute can be unwise. (pg. 795)

If initial occupation of the Americas occurred in pre-Clovis times, for example, then the glaciers that eventually separated Beringia from the ice-free parts of the Western Hemisphere would have functioned as population-isolating mechanisms (Szathmary 1984; Rogers et al. 1991). Genetic differences between the descendants of the Beringians and the southerners could then be indigenous. (pg. 795)

The mtDNA trees would have to be trees of minimum length, and the branching order of all lineages in a tree would have to be stable. As the authors (Shields et al. 1993; Torroni et al. 1993a, 1993b) state, these criteria have not been met completely in the mtDNA trees that they generated. (pg. 796)

It may well be that all Native American mtDNAs did evolve from the four mutations that are said to be nodal in Torroni et al.’s (1993a) Native American tree. However, nothing precludes the Asian ancestral population from having been polymorphic for a variety of genes, some of which have been preserved in descendant populations on both sides of the Bering Strait. This may be the reason that AM43 and AM88 are shared by Amerinds and Siberians (Torroni et al. 1993b). The sharing, however, does not prove that these haplotypes–and no others–could have founded either group C or group D mtDNA varieties in Siberia and the Americas. (pg. 796)

Furthermore, migrations of groups carrying only certain ancestral haplotypes (e.g., a group B migration; see Torroni et al. 1993a) are not necessary if the Asian ancestral population or the first occupying American population was polymorphic for mtDNA. (pg. 796)

Another way to demonstrate that ancient founder effects remain detectable in modern populations is to document that the pattern of mtDNA variation deviates from the steady-state balance characteristic of mutation-drift equilibrium. The only published information that exists on the Americas was provided by Chakraborty and Weiss (1991), who demonstrated precisely the reverse situation: they found that mtDNAs were in mutation-drift equilibrium in three Amerindian populations. (pg. 796)

If Chakraborty and Weiss’s (1991) findings apply in general to the Americas, it means that not only is there no evidence for the presence of major bottlenecks in the evolutionary history of mtDNA in the New World but also that is not possible to establish the evolutionary source of mtDNA varieties. They are as likely to be the product of new mutations as of ancient founder effects. (pg. 796)

NOTE Szathmary provides a valuable set of options in addressing the presence of novel haplotypes in Amerindians. She points out that they need not be founding lineages. AMH

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Asian Affinities and Continental Radiation of the Four Founding Native American mtDNAs. Antonio Torroni, Theodore G. Schurr, Margaret F. Cabell, Michael D. Brown, James V. Neel, Merethe Larsen, David G. Smith, Carlos M. Vullo, and Douglas C. Wallace; Am. J. Hum. Genet. 53:563-590, 1993

However, because PCR segments of 200-400 bp could be routinely amplified from these samples, they were screened for the following eight mutations characterizing Native American mtDNAs (Schurr et al. 1990; Torroni et al. 1992): +HaeIII np 663; –AluI np 5176; 9-bp COII-tRNALYS deletion; +DdeI np 10394; +AluI np 10397; –HincII np 13259/–AluI np 13262; –RsaI np 16329; and +HaeIII np 16517. (pg. 567)

The African outgroup haplotype was obtained from a Senegalese mtDNA analyzed in our laboratory and is characterized by the presence of an HpaI site at np 3592 (Appendix). This site defines haplotypes which are African specific and observed in 70%-100% of the sub-Saharan Africans but are completely absent in Asians and Europeans (HpaI morph-3; Denaro et al. 1981; Cann et al. 1987; Scozzari et al. 1988). (pg. 572)

In the consensus tree, however, most of the relationships between haplotypes were unresolved, indicating that parsimony analysis is unable to resolve the deep branches of trees when the number of taxa and character states is particularly large (Hedges et al. 1991; Templeton 1991). (pg. 577)

The resulting data supported the hypothesis that the Na-Dene comprise only group A mtDNAs. The first tribe analyzed, the Haida, showed 96.0% group A mtDNAs, a distribution similar to that of the Canadian Dogrib (Torroni et al. 1992). However, a previous study of the Gm and Km allotype frequencies in the Haida suggested that this tribe could have derived from an amalgam of Na-Dene and Amerinds (Field et al. 1988). (pg. 577)

These observations confirm the expectation that the haploid nature and uniparental inheritance of mtDNA (Giles et al. 1980) allow genetic drift and founder events to play a more significant role in the stochastic extinction and fixation of mtDNA haplotypes in contrast to nuclear genes. (pg. 579)

The exception is represented by Boruca haploytpe AM52, which has the 9-bp deletion in association with the HaeIII np 663 site gain characterizing group A haplotypes and an MspI np 104 site loss observed in most of the group A haplotypes of the Chibcha speakers. (pg. 580)

The remainder of the other D-loop mutations were confined to either Americans or Asians and were individual specific. Therefore, Native American D-loop variation, like the restriction site variation, probably arose after Native Americans became separated from Asia. (pg. 581)

However, these polymorphisms are not observed in the Asian or Siberian D-loop sequences belonging to the same D-loop groups (table 5) (Torroni et al. 1993). Whether these mutations imply additional Native American founding mtDNAs or parallel mutations arose in the Americas remains to be resolved. (pg. 581)

The current study, together with previous studies (Wallace et al. 1985; Schurr et al. 1990; Torroni et al. 1992) confirms that all Native American mtDNAs fall into four distinct haplogroups (A-D). This results raises questions about which of the mtDNAs in each haplogroup represent the original founders. (pg. 581)

To clarify this ambiguity, group C haplotypes from aboriginal Siberian populations were analyzed. In that study, AM43 appeared at significant frequencies in Siberians, whereas AM32 was not found (Torroni et al. 1993). This observation suggested that haplotype AM43 was the founding group C haplotype for Native Americans. In summary, the distribution and frequency of mtDNA haplotypes in the Americas, and their phylogenetic relationships to Asian and Siberian mtDNAs, appear to indicate that haplotypes AM1, AM13, AM43, and AM88 were the founding haplotypes for all modern Amerind mtDNAs. (pp. 583-584)

Evidence in favor of the second scenario can be seen in the pattern of mtDNA variation. On further scrutiny, Amerind mtDNA mutations can be divided into three classes. . . . The second class of mtDNA mutations (haplotype specific) are present in only single Native American haplotypes. . . . The third class of mutations are shared by a subset of Amerind haplotypes of the same haplogroup. (pg. 584)

NOTE This represents the primary mtDNA data analysis to define Amerindian ancestors in Northeast Asia. The suggested conclusions are used as the basis for contrasting models by virtually every other scholar analyzing Amerindian mtDNAs. For us, admixture from the Americas during the formation of Circumpolar Peoples represents the most viable alternative explanation for the presence of these “proposed founding” lineages in Siberia (see Merriwether et al. 1995). AMH

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Ranajit Chakraborty and Kenneth M. Weiss Genetic Variation of the Mitochondrial DNA Genome in American Indians is at Mutation-Drift Equilibrium. in American Journal of Physical Anthropology 86:497-506 (1991)

The present work suggests that in three Amerindian populations (Pima, Maya, and Ticuna) a steady state has apparently been reached, and hence the initial found effect has probably dissipated during the evolution of Amerindians in the New World. (pg. 497)

We should also note that a consequence of founder-effect (or equivalently, population bottleneck) is reduced gene diversity. . . . These strengthen our conclusion that probably the past bottleneck effect in Amerindians has dissipated and the contemporary populations of Amerindians are now at a mutation-drift equilibrium state. (pg. 504)

NOTE Mutation-drift equilibrium is not detected in Old World people and is a primary determination in suggesting a recent founding event for Africans, Asians and Europeans. Clearly, this was not expected in Amerindian Population that are supposed to have been recently derived or the product of just four founding mtDNA lineages. AMH

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Graciela Bailliet, Francisco Rothhammer, Francisco Raul Carnese, Claudiio Marcelo Bravi, and Nestor Oscar Bianchi FOUNDER MITOCHONDRIAL HAPLOTYPES IN AMERINDIAN POPULATIONS; Am. J. Hum Genet. 54:27-33 1994

Our study confirms the existence of four major Amerindian haplotypes. However, we also found evidence supporting the existence of several other potential founder haplotypes or haplotype subsets in addition to the four ancestral lineages reported. Confirmation of a relatively high number of founder haplotypes would indicate that early migration into America was not accompanied by a severe genetic bottleneck (Page 27).

Table 2 shows the frequency of haplotypes A-D in populations corresponding to 21 different tribes of Amerindians. Ninety-seven percent of individuals showed one of the claimed four founding lineages, while 2.5% of the sample showed haplotype E (this haplotype is identified under the name “others” in Torroni et al. 1992, 1993a), and 0.8% of the sample showed a compound haplotype formed by the combination of two founder haplotypes.

Every individual not belonging to haplogroups A-D and not showing a compound haplotype is included in haplogroup E. Torroni et al. (1992, 1993a) consider this haplotype a marker of Caucasian gene admixture, on the basis that Haplotype E is very frequent (93%) in Europeans (Cann et al. 1987) and has been detected mainly in Amerindian populations with history of admixture. Haplotype E is also very frequent (75%) in Asiatics (Cann et al. 1987; Ballinger et al. 1992) and Siberians (27%) (Torroni et al. 1993b). Therefore, it seems evident that the possibility of an Asian ancestry for some of the Amerindian haplotypes E cannot be ruled out. . . .Recently, haplotype E was detected in a pre-Columbian Amerindian mummy from a series of 50 pre-Columbian mummies studied by Stone and Stoneking (1993) (haplotype E is identified as N in table 2 of Stone and Stoneking 1993). This finding would confirm the Asiatic origin of some of the Amerindian haplotypes E. (Page 28 and 29)

Torroni et al. (1992, 1993a) have reported that all Amerindians in haplogroup B also exhibit a HaeIII gain at bp 16517. . . Conversely, haplotypes A, Ç, and D may or may not exhibit the HaeIII gain at bp 16517. We shall identify as “A ,’ “C ,” “D ” the subset of haplotypes having the HaeIII gain, while “A 1,” “C1 ,” and “D1 ” will define the subsets lacking the HaeIII site. . . Torroni et al. (1993b) propose a phylogenetic relationship between Siberian and Amerindian populations. Thus, these authors propose that A , C , and D are founder Amerindian haplotypes, because of the fact that these subsets show high frequency in Siberians. On the other had, A1 , C2 , and D1 are assumed to result by mutations occurring in Amerindians and generating either the gain of a HaeIII bp 16517 site (A1 and D1 ) or the loss of the HaeIII site with subsequent reversion to the original state (C 2) (Torroni et al. 1993a, 1993B). (page 29)

Thus far, neither in Asiatics (Ballinger et al. 1992) nor in Amerindians has a single case of haplotype B with lack of the HaeIII site at bp 16517 been reported. Therefore, if we assume that C cases arise by reverse mutations, we have to explain why these mutations do not occur in haplotypes B. From the above considerations it seems that the alternative that best accounts for the subsets found in groups A-C is the assumption that A1, A2, C1, C2, D1, and D2 are all founder maternal lineages. (page 30)

However, what it is not yet clear is how many more founder haplotypes may be present in addition to the ones proposed. . . Haplotype II (table 5) is a case in point. Both transitions defining this haplotype are found in Asiatics; however, the combination of the two transitions in single individuals (haplotype II) is found in 28% of Amerindians but has not yet been detected in Asiatics.

The number of founder Amerindian haplotypes is a problem at the center of an unresolved dispute. According to Torroni et al. (1993b), the colonization from Asia into the American continent was accompanied by a severe bottleneck that markedly restricted the number of maternal lineages entering the New World. Ward et al. (1991) and Horai et al. (1993) propose an opposite view. The genetic diversity detected in Amerindians is, according to these investigators, too extensive and, consequently, does not support the hypothesis of the genetic bottleneck. Confirmation of the presence of more than four founder haplotypes in Amerindians would lend additional support to the positions of Horai et al. and Ward et al.

Haplotypes A and D are found not only in Asiatics, but also in a low number of Caucasians (Cann et al. 1987). Haplotype B has been found in Asiatics and also in some Nigerians (Merriwether et al. 1993). On the other hand, haplotype C has not been reported in Caucasians or Africans thus far. This finding seems to confirm the Asiatic origin of Amerindians; yet, the ancestral Asiatic population(s) from which the Amerindians derived is matter of speculation and debate. (page 31 and 32)

The possibility of identifying the ancestral founder haplotypes of Amerindians has been questioned by some investigators. Chakraborty and Weiss (1991) re analyzed Schurr et al.’s (1990) data on three Amerindian populations and proposed that mtDNA is in mutation-drift equilibrium and that it is not possible to identify ancestral lineages. Additional arguments casting doubts on the models derived from the existence of founder Amerindian haplotypes have been put forward recently by Szathmary (1993).

At this time it seems too optimistic to think that the mtDNA of extant Amerindian populations will serve either to resolve all doubts about the origin of Amerindians or to reconstruct the evolution of primitive populations, some of which may have become extinct because of epidemics, wars, and the forced resettlements that occurred during the conquest of America. (page 32)

NOTE This paper adds several more mtDNAs to the equation. Cann once suggested that the Americas harbored 33 Eves. “Few , if any” of the more common Asian mtDNAs are present in the Amerinds (Horai et al. 1992). AMH

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Torroni, Antonio and Douglas C. Wallace 1995. mtDNA Haplogroups in Native Americans. Am J. Hum. Genet. letter 56:1234.

This 3.4% of mtDNAs could have three different origins. First, they could be the result of a second mutational event that has abolished the preexisting Native American mtDNA marker. Second, they could be the result of recent genetic admixture with non-Native Americans. Third, they could represent additional Asian haplogroups carried to the Americas from the ancestral populations that gave raise to Native Americans (p. 1234).

NOTE “They” refers to the discovery of new mtDNA markers reported in Bailliet et al. 1994 as well as the Type E haplotype (a European mtDNA lineage) found in a pre-Columbian American. Cann (1995) suggests that a least ten Amerindian mtDNA lineages makes it even more difficult to surmise that bottlenecks occurred during the settlement of the New World. AMH

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Monsalve, M.V., H. Groot de Restrepo, A. Espinel, G. Correal, and D.V. Devine 1994. Evidence of mitochondrial DNA diversity in South American aboriginals. Ann. Hum. Genet., 58, 271.

Unlike previous studies (Torroni et al. 1992), we found no association between the frequency of individuals with the 9-bp deletion and the absence of the association between the frequency of individuals with the 9-bp deletion and the absence of the HincII site. This observation suggests that South American aboriginals descended from a larger number of founders than previously thought. Haplotype analysis using mtDNA polymorphisms in different regions and the 9-bp tandem repeat indicated the presence of two novel haplotypes (designated here I and IV) (Table 2). Neither of these haplotypes has been identified in Native Americans (Schurr et al. 1990; Torroni et al. 1992) or other Asian mongoloid populations (Horai & Hayasaka, 1990; Stoneking et al. 1990; Ballinger et al. 1992), suggesting that they originated in South America. … In studies of the Kaingang and Guarani from Brazil (Belich et al. 1992) and the Waorani Indians of Ecuador (Watkins et al. 1992), nine previously undescribed variants were found for the HLA-B gene, suggesting that these variations originated in the Americas after the initial dispersal of the founding populations (p. 271).

NOTE Again, the age and distribution pattern of the S. American aboriginal regarding the 9 bp deletion suggests that, “it is a “regionally specific” variant created in isolation in the Americas. Also, either this marker was 1) lost in the proposed ancestors of the Amerinds living in Beringia or 2) it was introduced into the Old World after it became a “regionally specific” Amerindian Variant. Could this marker have been carried into and throughout the Old World by Polynesian explorers? It is not found in more central Continental and Interior Ocenia Island Populations. It is a prominent founding lineage in Madagascar, coastal Southeast Asia, Micronesia, and even the Tharu of Nepal (~10%), who can be traced along with other “Oriental markers ” to a recent coastal origin south of Nepal. Also, local variants of the 9 bp deletion are found in the Tharu confirming the high mutation rate associated with this uniquely widespread Two World mtDNA marker (also see Stoneking 1996). AMH

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Titus-Trachtenberg, O. Rickards, G.F. De Stefano, and H.A. Erlich Analysis of HLA Class II Haplotypes in the Cayapa Indians of Ecuador: A Novel DRBI Allele Reveals Evidence for Convergent Evolution and Balancing Selection at Position 86 E.A. Am. J. Hum. Genet. 55:160-167, 1994

In the Cayapa, the unusually high frequency (50%) of DPB1*1401, an allele rare or absent in all other Amerindian groups studied to date as well as in other human populations, may reflect genetic drift or, more likely, positive directional selection, such as resistance to infectious disease pathogens. (pg. 166)

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O. Rickards, M. Tartaglia, C. Martinez-Labarga, and G.F. DeStefano Genetic Characterization of the Cayapa Indians of Ecuador and Their Genetic Relationships to Other Native American Populations, in Human Biology, April 1994, v. 66, no. 2 pp. 299-322

The great heterogeneity found at the protein level among the Amerinds is concordant with the observations of Ward et al. (1991) and Horai et al. (1993), who found extensive mitochondrial diversity within and between Amerind populations based on sequences of the hypervariable control region. Criticism of Ward et al.’s (1991) initial study with the Nuu-Cha Nulth, on the grounds that the tribe represented an abnormal or an unusual case of native American population dynamics, now appears unfounded. (pg. 309)

The discrepancy between the two analyses indicates that the blood group data alone cannot be used to explain satisfactorily the genetic relationships among the Amerind populations. Reliance on blood group markers alone will lead investigators to underestimate the true complexity of modern tribal populations. (pg. 313)

Although the most recent mitochondrial DNA data on Amerind populations seem to indicate that at least four major lineage clusters populated the New World (Torroni et al. 1992; Horai et al. 1993), the large number of lineages included (193), the crudeness of the algorithm used, and the relatively few number of informative sites used for the construction of the distance matrix (43) severely limits the reliability of a globally constructed phylogenetic tree for Amerinds (Jorde 1985). (pg. 313)

The last common maternal ancestor of all Amerinds examined may have lived as long ago as 154,000 years B.P., and divergences within the four “clusters” may be as old as 53,000 years. This potentially lengthy period of time coupled with the retention of ancient genetic polymorphisms in geographically distant human groups (Takahata 1993) suggests that further investigations are warranted to achieve a deeper understanding of the peopling of the Americas. (pg. 315)

NOTE These observations speak for themselves! AMH

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Antonio Torroni, Yu-Sheng Chen, Ornella Semino, Augusta Silvana Santachiara-Beneceretti, C. Ronald Scott, Marie T. Lott, Marcus Winter, and Douglas C. Wallace mtDNA and Y-Chromosome Polymorphisms in Four Native American Populations from Southern Mexico. Am. J. Hum. Genet. 54:303-318, 1994

Although in some cases it is still debated, the conclusion of most of these analyses is that Amerind mtDNAs cluster in only four mtDNA groups– A, B, C and D – each of which is defined by a specific set of mutations observed in both the coding and the control (i.e., D-loop) regions. This has been interpreted as indicating that a limited number of mtDNAs arrived in the Americas in one or, at most, two migrations from Siberia. (pg. 303)

Among them, haplotypes AM1 and AM9 have been described in many other Native American groups, and have been described in many other Native American groups, and haplotype AM1 is considered the founding Native American haplotype (Torroni et al. 1993a) because it is the most common group A haplotype in Native Americans and is also found in Asia. (pg. 306)

Haplotype AM9 only differs from AM1 at the hypervariable HaeIII site at np 16517 and was found in one subject of each of the four populations. This is consistent with previous data, indicating that it originated early during the tribal radiation of Native Americans (Torroni et al. 1993a). (pg. 306)

However, this method also has a limitation. These specific restriction sites that characterize each haplogroup (group A, +663 HaeIII, group B, 9-bp deletion and +16517 HaeIII; group C, +13262 AluI, +10394 DdeI, and +10397 AluI; group D, – 5176 AluI, +10394 DdeI, and +10397 AluI) originated in Asia long before the ancestral Paleo-Indian population migrated to the Americas and started to differentiate in the various Amerind tribes. Since these sites often represent a large proportion of the total number of site differences in the pairwise comparisons between haplotypes from different haplogroups, they also generate a large portion of the overall genetic distance values. Consequently, they tend to minimize the contribution to the genetic distances of the site changes that really occurred after the tribal radiation. (pg. 308)

Fragment A1, common only in African populations (Torroni et al. 1990; Spurdle and Jenkins 1992; Santachiara-Benerectti et al. 1993), was the only A fragment not observed in these Native America samples. (pg. 308)

This is the most common haplotype in Caucasians, representing 9%-28% of the Italians, 11.4% of the Czechoslovaks, 23% of the English, and 49% of the Europeans from South Africa, but it is rare or absent in Africans (Torroni et al. 1990; Perisichetti et al. 1992; Spurdle and Jenkins 1992; Santachiara-Benerecetti et al. 1993). (pg. 311)

NOTE A novel Y-Chromosome haplotype has been found in Eskimos and Na-Dene speakers further linking the populations of the North with their parent population, Amerindians. Again, Torroni et al’s. “founding Lineages” may represent Amerind admixture resulting from Holocene migrations out of the Americas (see Boas 1905, 1910 in Ousley this collection). AMH

________________________________________________________________________ Douglas C. Wallace, Katherine Garrison, and William C. Knowler Dramatic Founder Effects in Amerindian Mitochondrial DNAs American Journal of Physical Anthropology 68:149-155 (1985)

Though Amerindian mtDNAs are clearly Asian in character, the frequencies of Amerindian mtDNA HincII morphs 1, 2, and 6 are markedly different from those found in Asians. (pg. 53)

Several new mtDNAs have also been discovered in our Amerindian sample. It is possible that these represent new mtDNA mutations which have been fixed since the Amerindian mtDNA lineages became separated from those of Asia. (pg. 153).

NOTE “Regional subdivision” distinguishes people from their “proposed” parent populations, (see Templeton 1993). AMH

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Satoshi Horai, Rumi Kondo, Yuko Nakagawa-Hattori, Seiji Hayashi, Shunro Sonoda, and Kazuo Tajima Peopling of the Americas Founded by Four Major Lineages of Mitochondrial DNA in Mol. Giol. Evol. 10(1):23-47, 1993

Phylogenetic analysis revealed that most Native American lineages are classified into four major distinct clusters. Individuals belonging to each cluster share at least two specific polymorphic sites that are nearly absent in other human populations, indicating a unique phylogenetic position of Native Americans. A phylogenetic tree of 193 individuals including Africans, Europeans, Asians, and Native Americans indicated that the four Native American clusters are distinct and dispersed in the tree. These clusters almost exclusively consist of Native Americans–with only a few Asians, if any. (pg. 23)

Although only three to five individuals were analyzed from each local population (except for one individual from Apache), the range of nucleotide diversity (nucleotide differences per site) within populations is 0.7%-1.75%, indicating considerable genetic variation in the Native American populations (table 1). Average value of nucleotide diversity between the local populations is estimated as 1.30%. This is the same magnitude as the mean value (1.21%) for diversity within a population, indicating that considerable migration has occurred between populations after the settlement of each locality. Furthermore, the overall nucleotide diversity among the Native Americans is estimated to be 1.29%, which is slightly smaller than the value 1.44% from the total human population including Africans, Europeans, and Asians. (pg. 27)

However, it is useful for understanding the relationships of mtDNAs of Native Americans with those of other groups of humans. At any rate, figure 6 shows that the lineages of Native Americans fall into four different groups, i.e., G2, G4, G9, and G11–with the exception of two lineages, one appearing in G1 and the other in G10. This suggests that the four clusters within Native Americans, as shown in figure 3, are also distinct in the entire human population including Asians, Europeans, and Africans. (pg. 32).

Because of both the haploid nature of mtDNA and its complete linkage over the genome, we further examined correlation between the 9-bp deletion and unique polymorphisms in the major noncoding region (table 8). Of the 193 individuals, 13 Asians and 13 Native Americans exhibited the 9-bp deletion. All of the individuals with the deletion shared two polymorphic sites (C at 16189 and C at 16519). In addition, 20 individuals possessed another polymorphism at bp 16217 (C). However, 11 other polymorphisms were restricted to respective lineages consisting of one to five individuals. Six lineages of Native Americans exhibited additional polymorphisms at particular sites that are specific to each lineage, whereas seven Asian lineages showed other specific polymorphisms, indicating a clear separation between Asian and Native American lineages that possessed the 9-bp deletion. These observations suggest that, if the deletion event was once in the Asian ancestry, then it must have occurred a rather long time ago. (pg. 36)

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Trachtenberg, E.A., H.A. Erlich, O. Rickards, G.F. DeStefano, and W. Klitz 1995. HLA Class II Linkage Disequilibrium and Haplotype Evolution in the Cayapa Indians of Ecuador. Am J. Hum. Genet. 57:421, 422, 423.

The DPB1*1401 allele is absent or rare in most human populations (Imanishi et al. 1992), is found at very low frequencies (<5%) in North American Amerindians (Cerna et al. 1993; R. Castro, personal communication), and is found at moderate frequencies (~10%) in South American Amerindians from Brazil and Argentina (Cerna et al. 1993). The DPB1*1401 allele, however, has been discovered at unusually high frequencies in the Waorani Indians of Ecuador and nine isolated Colombian Indian tribes. Analysis of DPB1 in the Waorani samples revealed just two alleles, DPB1*1401 at .38 frequency (7/18) and DPB1*0402 at .62 frequency (11/18) (E.A. Trachtenberg, H.A. Erlich, and D. Watkins, unpublished data); analysis of DPB1 in the nine Colombian Indian tribes revealed DPB1*1401 frequencies ranging from .25 to .45 and found DPB1*0402 frequencies ranging from .28 to .80 (E.A. Trachtenberg, G.Q. Keyeux, J. Bernal, and H.A. Erlich, unpublished data). The low frequency of DPB1*1401 in virtually all other populations analyzed to date, including North American Amerindians, taken in conjunction with the presence of DPB1*1401 at moderate to high frequencies in Argentinean, Brazilian, Ecuadorian, and Colombian Indian tribes, suggest that this allele has increased in frequency for those South American populations since their separation from North American Amerindian groups (p. 421).

The Cayapa, like other Amerindians, have a reduction in available HLA polymorphism, which may be consistent with a population bottleneck in the putative ancestral Asian population that migrated across the Bering land bridge >10,000 years ago. The relative uniformity of the HLA class II allele frequency distributions in the Cayapa, however, points to a long history of balancing selection. In addition, while the overall allelic diversity is reduced in this population, the haplotypic diversity is increased with several novel haplotypic associations. This increase in haplotype diversity implicates recombination and balancing selection in the generation and maintenance of these novel combinations (pgs. 422-423).

The disequilibrium observed spanning the class II region for all of the major haplotypes points to the operation of more recent selection for specific combinations of class II alleles. Because of the constant rate of decay of nonrandom association between DRB1 and DPB1 (1%/generation), we conclude that selection maintaining these class II haplotypes must have been operating within the past few hundred years (p. 423).

________________________________________________________________________Zago, Marco A., Eduardo J. Melo Santos, J.B. Clegg, Joao F. Guerreiro, Jeremy J. Martinson, Jemma Norwich, and Mauro S. Figueiredo 1995. a-Globin Gene Haplotypes in South American Indians. Human Biology, v. 67, no. 4, pp. 535, 536, 542.

The a-globin gene haplotype distribution has some similarities to distributions observed in Southeast Asian and Pacific Island populations, indicating that these populations have considerable genetic affinities. However, the absence of several features of the a-globin gene cluster that are consistently present among the Pacific Islanders suggests that the similarity of haplotypes between Brazilian Indians and people from Polynesia, Micronesia, and Melanesia is more likely the result of ancient common ancestry rather than the consequence of recent direct genetic contribution through immigration (p.437).

Guerreiro’s findings reveal a close similarity of Amerindians to populations from Asia and the Pacific Islands, supporting the theory of a predominantly Asian origin of native Americans. The observed similarities to Oceanic populations most probably result from ancient common ancestry, although a direct contribution of Pacific Island immigration to peopling of the Americas cannot be excluded (Salzano and Callegari-Jacques 1988)(p. 436).

The similarities of a- and b-globin haplotypes between South American Indians and Southeast Asian and Oceanic populations suggest substantial genetic affinity between these populations and support the notion of a predominantly Asian origin of native Americans (p. 542).

NOTE Common affinities without the Central Asian Haplotypes might suggest rapid and early Old World colonization by H. s.s. with isolation from continental Asian populations evident in the lack of common Asian haplotypes in the earliest Melanesians. Similarities “between Brazilian Indians and people from Polynesia, Micronesia, and Melanesia” could be interpreted as evidence of a recent common origin rather than “ancient common affinities.” AMH

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JoAnn C. Gutin Who Peopled the Planet? Discover Magazine November 1992, pp. 108-113

On the other hand, if all the native American languages come from one language brought to the continent in a single migration, the language clock says it must have happened 50,000 years ago. [Johanna] Nichols cheerfully admits that the number is “off the wall.” More realistic, she thinks, is the idea of a number of linguistically distinct colonizations – perhaps ten – over the past 30,000 years or so. (pg. 113)

As Sherlock Holmes once said, when you’ve eliminated the impossible, whatever remains – however improbable – is the truth. Nichols knows full well that her results are unsettling, but she sticks by her grammatical guns. Exact dates are problematic, but linguistics is “absolutely unambiguous in regard to ballparks,” she says firmly. “The New World has been inhabited for tens of millennia.” (pg. 113)

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Mother Tongue Issue 22, May 1994, Harold Fleming

. . . is his [Merriwether] conclusion that Eskimos, Athapaskans and Amerind all go back to a single founding lineage before they join the rest of the world. (pg. 58)

At the moment, he seems to be saying that the three native American stocks are more like each other than they are like Asians but that the whole lot relates to eastern Asians more than to the rest of humanity. (pg. 58)

Stan Ambrose and Richard Klein tell me that there is so far little or nothing in the way of archaeological remains from Africa between 75,000 and 25,000 years ago. (pg. 59)

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Siberia/Beringia/North America

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Ousley, Stephen 1995. Relationships between Eskimos, Amerindians, and Aleuts: Old Data, New Perspectives. Human Biology, v. 67, no. 3, pp. 428, 431, 433, 434, 447, 451.

Based on data from the JNPE, Boas concluded that “comparisons of type, language and culture make it at once evident that the Northeast Siberian people are much more closely akin to the Americans than to other Asiatics” (Boas 1905, p. 99). Based on the greater biological diversity in the New World, Boas reasoned that Amerindians were in the New World earlier. Because the northeast Siberians represented a small part of the variation present in the New World, they could not have been there as long (Boas 1910). This pattern was confirmed recently by Torroni, Schurr et al. (1993), who found greater diversity in the mtDNA of Amerindian tribes than in native Siberian groups. To explain these observations, Boas proposed that Asians first migrated across a land bridge to America and were cut off from Siberia by glaciers, allowing differentiation of the distinctive American types. When the glaciers retreated, the land bridge was open once more and Americans flowed back into Asia until they encountered Mongoloids migrating from the south and west (Boas 1905, 1912). The peoples on either side of the Pacific were then separated at the Bering Strait by an Eskimo wedge, that is, by a people culturally and morphologically distinct. For Boas, and others the Eskimo originated east of Alaska: “The much-discussed theory of the Asiatic origin of the Eskimos must be entirely abandoned” (Boas 1910, p. 534). The central Canadian Eskimo, who were land and rivertine hunters, were thought by many to represent the ancestral condition of the maritime-oriented Eskimo (Hrdlicka 1930)(p. 428).

Boas’ theory took all his observations and assumptions into account, explaining why northeast Siberians were bordered by different peoples yet similar to Northwest Coast Amerindians (Ousley 1993). Boas based most of his conclusions on the ethnographic data, with which he was familiar. He never analyzed the Siberian anthropometric data that he made sure were collected, deferring to secondhand typologies and observations instead. This was no doubt partly due to the immense time required for statistical analyses in the precomputer era (p. 428).

With larger samples the picture becomes more complicated, as demonstrated by a tremendous time depth (78,000 years) for some Nuu-Chah-Nulth mtDNA lineages and relationships that contradict linguistically based waves (Ward et al. 1991, 1993). In addition, studies have shown that Amerindians have a relatively high amount of mtDNA variation compared with the rest of the world (Horai et al. 1993), especially Siberia (Torroni, Schurr et al. 1993)(p. 431).

Drucker (1955) saw a combination of Eskimo and Aleut cultural traits in Wakashan speakers, who also lacked significant cultural influences from the interior of North America. In contrast, the Haida, Tlingit, and Tsimshian showed greater interior influences and were the result of later population movements to the coast. Ritual autopsies were conducted by Aleuts, some south Alaskan Eskimo, Nootka, and many Koryak and Chukchi groups (Drucker 1955; Jochelson 1908)(p. 433).

Ethnographic studies also emphasize the minor role of language (and thus tribe) in population relationships on the Northwest Coast. Instead, socioeconomic organization was more important for what were essentially interactions on the village level. Clans included speakers of different languages and dialects (p. 433).

The diversity of American languages is remarkable. Austerlitz (1980) calculated that there are 71 genetic units (families and isolates) represented in North America and only 37 in continental Eurasia, South America could have as many as 70 more. Clearly, linguistic diversity alone cannot be used to date settlement times (p. 434).

As Boas noted, there is greater morphological diversity on the Northwest Coast than in northeast Siberia (p. 447).

The anthropometric analysis does support most of Hrdlicka’s conclusions. First, the Aleut affinity to some Amerindians is apparent. These results parallel the findings of Ossenberg (1992) and Szathmary and Ossenberg (1978), indicating a closer relationship of Aleuts to Amerindians than to Eskimos, despite their closer linguistic relationship. Second, northeast Siberians are the closest relatives of some Eskimos. The fact that the Labrador Eskimos are closer to nearly all Siberian groups than to any Americans points to Siberia as their homeland (p.447).

This morphological analysis groups together widely divergent linguistic phyla and reflects typical behavior among neighboring groups in Siberia, one of frequent assimilation and admixture independent of language (Arutiunov 1988a; Bogoras 1909; Dikov 1965; Dolgikh 1965; Jochelson 1908). The morphological data could also reflect village-level socioeconomic interactions, where language is less important (Moss 1992; Townsend 1979, 1980)(p. 447).

If it is thought that anthropometric data reflect environmental histories more than genetic histories, it should not be forgotten that gene flow affects phenotypic profiles much faster than selection does, especially in the presence of extensive cultural buffers for dealing with the environment. The real question is whether or not these anthropometric data, like other data collected from modern inhabitants, reflect relationships between large numbers of tribes with complex histories spread across a large area (p. 451).

NOTE Ousley’s paper contains valuable comparisons of anthropological data from Boas (1905) to Torroni et al. 1994) — anthropometric to mtDNA data — and most everything in between. It redresses the links that have long been reported to exist between the end of two Worlds. Ousley contrasts many newly discovered old ideas with consensus views concerning Amerindians in northeast Asia. Again; are A, C, and D ancestral mtDNA lineages or evidence of Amerindian admixture? AMH

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D. Andrew Merriwether, Francisco Rothhammer, and Robert Ferrell, 1995. Distribution of the Four Founding Lineage Haplotypes in Native Americans Suggests a Single Wave of Migration for the New World Vol. 89 Num.. 4 pp 411-430

“The fact that Native Americans all share variants of the same founding lineages indicates that they are likely to have come from the same source population, and that it is unlikely that multiple migrations from the same area would continuously choose the same four lineages from a subset of the lineages available in the parent population. Clearly, examination of contemporary Asian and Siberian populations indicate that these four lineages are not the only lineages present.”

“The current Native residents of Alaska and Siberia may be descendants of more recent migrations from the Siberian side of the Bering Strait (as suggested by Torroni et al., 1993b; and Shields et al., 1992, 1993), or from migrations back into the area from within the New World (Merriwether et al. 1995 pg. 424 ).” emphasis added AMH

NOTE Merriwether et al. 1995 suggests that it is implausible for the more common Asian specific haplotypes to all have been lost in the founding Amerindian population(s) and as-well, the later populations comprising the Inuit and Athapascans (see Table 5; Merriwether et al. 1995). Merriwether et al. (1995) suggest that separate migrations into the Americas for Eskimo and Athapaskans carrying the same “rare” Asian mutations as the Amerinds, themselves, is not tenable (1995).

Merriwether et al. (1995) are perhaps the first to use mtDNA analysis to directly address the likelihood of Amerindian migrations into Siberia, creating an alternative to the formation of the Circumarctic Peoples that would support the Boas data. AMH

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Antonio Torroni, Rem I. Sukernik, Theodore G. Schurr, Yelena B. Starikovskaya, Margaret F. Cabell, Michael H. Crawford, Anthony G. Comuzzie, and Douglas C. Wallace mtDNA Variation of Aboriginal Siberians Reveals Distinct Genetic Affinities with Native Americans Am. J. Hum. Genet. 53:591-608, 1993

Each haplogroup was shown to be defined by a specific set of linked polymorphisms, as follows: haplogroup A by an HaeIII np 663 site gain, haplogroup B by the 9-bp COII-tRNALys intergenic deletion (Cann and Wilson 1983; Wrischnik et al. 1987) and an HaeIII np 16517 site gain; haplogroup C by a linked HincII np 13259 site loss and an AluI np 13262 site gain; and haplogroup D by an AluI np 5176 site loss. Haplogroups C and D are almost always associated with DdeI np 10394 and AluI np 10397 site gains. (pp. 591-592)

About 63% of these mtDNAs were characterized by the DdeI np 10394 site gain, with a significant proportion of these, about 56%, also having the AluI np 10397 site gain. Previous studies have shown that mtDNAs with and without the DdeI np 10394 and AluI np 10397 sites define two subgroups of mtDNAs common in East and Southeast Asian populations (Ballinger et al. 1992). (pg. 598)

The Siberian mtDNAs were also screened for the absence of the RsaI np 16329 site, a mutation found in 29.0% of the Na-Dene haplogroup A mtDNAs but not in those of Amerinds (Torroni et al. 1992, 1993). This marker was not observed in any of the Siberian mtDNAs analyzed in the present study (tables 1 and 3), nor in the Alaskan and Siberian Eskimo, Aleut, and Chukchi mtDNAs analyzed by Shields et al. (1992). Consequently, this mutation appears to have arisen in the Americas after the ancestral Na-Dene separated from the modern aboriginal Siberians and Amerinds (Torroni et al. 1992, 1993). (pg. 598)

Finally, within the common haplogroups A, C, and D, only the nodal haplotypes are shared between Siberians and Native Americans. This result indicates that most of the Siberian and Native American mtDNA variation accumulated after ancestral Americans entered the New World. (pg. 601)

The common group C haplotype from the three population groups is designated S26/AM43/AS65, the common group D haplotype is S13/AM88/AS25, and the common group A haplotype is AM1/AS56 (Torroni et al. 1993). (pg. 603)

The D-loop sequences support these associations and reveal that population movements carried these mtDNAs from central east Asia to Siberia and then to the Americas. For example, the D-loop group A sequence associated with the Taiwanese Han haplotype AS56 has a C residue at np 16114, while Native American haplotype AM1 (identical to AS56) and virtually all of its Native American derivatives have a T residue at the same position. (pg. 603)

The Evenk group A mtDNAs have a C residue, as observed in the Taiwanese Han. Similarly, for haplogroup C, the Han haplotype AS65 and the Siberian haplotype S26 have a T residue at np 16325, while the Native American haplotype AM43 (identical to AS65 and S26) and all its Native American derivatives have a C residue at this same position. (pg. 603)

While the marked increase in group A, C, and D haplotypes in many Siberian populations implies a substantial population constriction, the constriction was probably not as complete as that which gave rise to Native Americans. This is apparent from the 36.1% of Siberian mtDNAs not belonging to haplogroups A, C, and D. These “other” mtDNAs show clear Asian affinities but are absent in Asiatic Eskimos, Na-Dene, and Amerinds. (pg. 603)

While they could have derived from recent admixture of Siberian and Asian populations, they are more likely to have been carried to Siberia by the Asian migration and subsequently to have been lost by the Native American migrations. (pg. 603)

The sequential reduction in complexity from Asia through Siberia to the Americas implies that each migration was accompanied by genetic bottlenecks. (pg. 603)

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Gerald F. Shields, Andrea M. Schmiechen, Barbara L. Frazier, Alan Redd, Mikhail I. Voevoda, Judy K. Reed, and R.H. Ward mtDNA Sequences Suggest a Recent Evolutionary Divergence for Beringian and Northern North American Populations Am. J. Hum. Genet. 53:549-562, 1993

The similarity of sequences found among the geographically dispersed Circumarctic groups, plus the small values of mean pairwise sequence differences, within Circumarctic populations, suggest a recent and rapid evolutionary radiation of these populations. In addition, Circumarctic populations lack the 9-bp deletion which as been used to trace various migrations out of Asia, while populations of southeastern Siberia possess this deletion. On the basis of these observations, while the evolutionary affinities of Native Americans extend west to the Circumarctic populations of eastern Siberia, they do not include the Altai of central Siberia. (pg. 549)

A “mitochondrial lineage” is defined by the unique combination of nucleotides in a particular sequence, whereas a “clade” refers to a cluster of lineages for which there is statistical support of a monophyletic origin (Ward et al. 1991). (pg. 552)

Table 1 presents within-population mean pairwise sequence differences for the Circumarctic populations. No transversions were observed, and, with the exception of the Inupiaqs, mean values for all groups are low, suggesting a recent origin for these populations. (pg. 553-554)

Five of the lineages found in the Yakima (lineage 27 and lineages 94-97) corresponding to 26 individuals (62% of the sample) possess the deletion. The Altai (Shields et al. 1992) possess the deletion at frequencies similar to those of southeastern Asians, as do the Buriats (present study) and Mongols (Sambuughin et al. 1991) of south-central Asia. (pg. 557)

Low values for pairwise sequence differences within and between the far-flung Circumarctic populations contrast with higher difference values for the three Amerind-speaking tribes localized to the Pacific Northwest. . . . Hence, the most plausible explanation for these observations is that the evolutionary radiation of these Circumarctic groups, in concert with the evolution of their mitochondrial lineages, occurred within a shallow time depth. Low sequence diversity, coupled with the broad geographic distances over which some Circumarctic populations (e.g., Alaskan Inupiaqs and West Greenland Eskimos) have become established, suggests that the establishment of these far-flung populations occurred during a relatively short period of time. By contrast, the mtDNAs of Bella Coola, Nuu-Chah-Nulth, and Yakima are broadly divergent, even though the present geographic distribution of these people is confined to a relatively small region. This suggests that these Amerind tribes are much older than the Circumarctic tribes and have undergone considerable localized genetic differentiation. . . . By contrast, most mtDNAs of Circumarctic individuals either are identical or differ from one another by only a few (0-3) substitutions. . . . Moreover, lineages observed in distinct populations are intermingled among the branches of the tree, with no obvious clustering of lineages by the geographic location, or linguistic affiliation, of the tribe from which they were ascertained. For example, individual lineages of Chukchi, West Greenland Eskimos, Athapaskans, and Haida are scattered throughout the tree. This pattern is exactly what would be expected for populations which have recently undergone a demographic expansion and which are in the early stages of evolutionary divergence. (pg. 558)

All three instances of lineage sharing (lineage 11 found in Haida and Alaskan Athapaskans; lineages 60 and 61 found in Alaskan Athapaskans and West Greenland Eskimos) involve lineages which are situated on nodes of the molecular phylogeny and thus appear to be ancestral. Hence, we interpret the occurrence of these lineages in multiple populations as indicative of common ancestry rather than of recent admixture. . . . Buch (1979) suggested an early association between Alaskan Inupiaqs and Athapaskans on the basis of archaeological finds, and Dumond (1987) suggests that the archaeological distribution of blades and microblades is a reflection of extensive cultural ties between Eskimos and groups to the south. . . . Alternatively, as suggested by the mitochondrial data, all Circumarctic populations had their genetic origins about the same time, and the cultural differences that subsequently occurred were accompanied by relatively little biological differentiation. . . . Hence, the overall affiliation of the unique Circumarctic lineages with the cluster II Amerind lineages suggests that these Circumarctic populations originated from an Asiatic population whose own ancestors had previously contributed to a substantial fraction of the lineage ancestry of contemporary Pacific Northwest Amerind populations. (pg. 559-560)

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Renfrew, Colin 1991. Archaeology, Genetics and Linguistic Diversity. Man (N.S.) 27, 470.

The final study that I wish to mention (Ward et al. 1991) involves mtDNA from sixty-three individuals of the Nuu-Chach-Nulth tribe of the Pacific Northwest, a group classified within the broader Nootka category, and thus within Greenberg’s Amerind linguistic superfamily (and not within the Na-Dene language family, as are certain other groups of the Northwest). Most interestingly, they found no fewer than twenty-eight lineages. Dating with a ‘genetic clock’, on the assumption of a constant mutation rate, suggests a latest date for the divergence of these lineages of between 41,000 and 78,000 years ago. On most recent chronologies, this predates the initial peopling of America. Ward et al. therefore conclude that the four main clusters they identified originated before humans entered the Americas, although much of the subsequent lineage diversification could have postdated the colonization (p. 470).

NOTE A large overview of what is accepted and not accepted concerning language distributions and, especially, Indo-European origins and migrations. Sited is a good example of conflicting Old and New World genetic comparisons that also have, similarly inclined linguistic scholars supporting interpretations suggesting great diversity in the Americas. (Campbell 1986; Nichols 1989). The consideration of Amerindian as a single linguistic unit are not explained, only referred to in, of course, Greenberg’ (1987) AMH

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INVITED EDITORIAL mtDNA and Native Americans: a Southern Perspective by Rebecca L. Cann, Am. J. Hum. Genet. 55:7-11,1994

Not only did authors publishing about aboriginal Americans disagree on the number of migrations, they also parted company on when people began moving, and from where (Page 7).

Researchers are asking, just how robust can the Siberian-model ancestor for all Amerinds be – and just how robust can the time scale associated with timing Paleoindian entry into North America be – if we cannot yet agree on the number of major lineage groups present in the initial colonization wave (Page 8)?

By focusing on a single segment of the mitochondrial hypervariable control region in one tribe, those authors discovered maternal genetic diversity that was equivalent to ~ 62% of that found in modern Africans and to ~81% of that present in urban Japan. The Amerind maternal lineages, moreover, traced back to a coalescent female who was projected to have lived ~60,000 ybp. Far from supporting the hypothesis of a genetic population bottleneck in the founding of Amerindians, this study argued that comparatively large groups were involved in the colonization of the New World, on the basis of both the large number of Nuu-Chah-Nulth lineages surviving today and the implied effective population size (Page 8).

First, Bailliet et al. eliminate, once and for all, the idea that a severe population genetic bottleneck took place in the process of continental colonization in the New world. . . . In focusing on three Argentine tribal populations (Mapuche, Huillilches, and Atacamenos) having minuscule to no evidence of genetic admixture with Europeans or African ethnic groups, they roughly doubled the number of new maternal genetic lineage clusters (Page 9).

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Rogers, Richard A. 1986. Language, Human Subspeciation, and Ice Age Barriers in Northern Siberia. Canadian Journal of Anthropology, Vol. 5, No. 1, pp. 11 – 22.

Isolation produced by geographic barriers prevents linguistic changes that accumulate with the passage of time from being shared, and thus produces linguistic divergence. A somewhat analogous phenomenon occurs in biology, when isolation produced by barriers prevents sharing of new mutations and changes in gene frequency resulting from natural selection and genetic drift (p. 11).

The location of the maximum NaDene linguistic diversity and the evidence for a lack of linguistic contact between NaDene and Eskimo-Aleut proto-languages is consistent with Nadene having a Wisconsinan homeland in an ice-free refugium on the Pacific Coast. The modern boundary between Athapaskan and Eskimo-Aleut speakers may simply represent the Holocene expansion of ancestral Athapaskans along with the forest to which they had become adapted in their ancestral homelands. The tundra-adapted ancestors of the Eskimo may have retreated from the encroaching Holocene forests and forest-adapted Athapaskans (p. 20).

NOTE “Paleoarctic” Eskimo-Aleut may be contemporary with interiorly migrating Athapascans into rivertine and coastal biomes of Alaska while “Paleoindian” Athapascans ancestors may have moved north from the High Plains Both may have originated from earlier Amerindian populations isolated by glacial barriers (Boas 1905; 1910). Also, could the Na-Dene speakers of the North have had descended from Navajo and Apaches currently occupying the American southwest? AMH

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Rogers, R.A., L.A. Rogers, and L.D. Martin 1992. How the door opened: The Peopling of the New World, Human Biology, Vol. 64, No. 3, pp. 281-302

“The key question is whether a rapid, widespread distribution of a cultural trait necessarily indicates migration or involves some other explanation, such as cultural diffusion” (pg. 297).

The Beringian land bridge was exposed during the last glaciation from approximately 75,000 to 45,000 years ago and from approximately 25,000 to 14,000 years ago. Human populations were present in Siberia and reasonably could be expected to have walked across the land bridge 25,000 years ago. However, they may not have needed a land bridge to cross. Two other ways of crossing into Alaska existed from 25,000 to 45,000 years ago: movement by boat and walking across the frozen Bering Strait (p. 285).

NOTE The Bering Sea was never as formidable a barrier as the expanse of glacial Ice that accompanies the return of the Land Bridge. The oscillating levels of the ocean during and following Glacial events has a similar impact in shifting the distances between Islands and Continents. This has a similar impact in isolating populations from mainland populations as was the case for the original inhabitants of New Guinea and Australia. AMH

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Lorenz, Joseph G. and David G. Smith 1994. Distribution of the 9-bp Mitochondrial DNA Region V Deletion among North American Indians. Human Biology, v. 66, no. 5, pp. 777-788.

The presence of the region V deletion in most North and South American Amerind groups surveyed thus far suggests that the deletion is an ancient trait that accompanied the ancestors of modern Amerinds on their migration(s) into the New World and that it is not the result of an intermediate migration that occurred between the Amerind and the Na-Dene migrations. Whether the region V deletion found among present-day Amerinds arose once or multiple times in different lineages requires further molecular data on the deletion genotypes (p. 786).

NOTE Could the marker have arisen entirely in the Amerindian populations. Might it not have been carried into Northeast Asia with the other A, C, and D lineages that are now found in Siberian populations. That is, could Amerindian living in Siberia have migrated from the Americas? This would require that Siberians with A, C, and D, mtDNA lineages be not the founding populations but rather recent descendants of earlier Amerindians populations. AMH

________________________________________________________________________Rogers, Alan R. and Lynn B. Jorde 1995. Genetic Evidence on Modern Human Origins. Human Biology, v. 67, no. 1, pp. 1-36.

So far, we have assumed that mtDNA evolution is selectively neutral, yet this may not be so. Suppose that a favorable mtDNA mutation occurred 50,000 hears ago and swept through the population. This would produce a wave like that in Figure 2. Our estimates would then refer not to the size of the human population but to the size of an expanding clade of superior mutants. Our time estimate would refer to the time of this selective sweep of the new allele through the population (p. 13).

However, we have already seen that this equilibrium is approached only slowly, with a half-life of NeF1n 2 generations. For a female population of 10,000 the half life would be 6900 generations, or 170,000 years. A larger population is more reasonable and implies even slower convergence. Yet we have already seen that the mtDNA mismatch data imply that the human population expanded from a small beginning within the past 150,000 years. Consequently, not enough time has elapsed for m to reach equilibrium. Thus m‘s low value must reflect some historical event, such as a bottleneck in population size, rather than a long history of moderate population size (Haigh and Maynard Smith 1972); Brown 1980; Jones and Rouhani 1986; Wills 1990). This hypothesis is perfectly consistent with the mtDNA mismatch data (p. 22).

NOTE If the bottleneck occurred as Amerindian left the New World then we might reason that extensive genetic diversity on the Tribal level, mutational-drift equalibrium, and little evidence of bottlenecks in the population history of the Americas would be found in Amerindian populations. The Wallace group’s “dramatic founding effect,” could rather, reflect a movement of Amerindians into Siberia, a second wave of people out of the Americas with resulting admixture in Siberian Populations. Bottlenecks are not evident in Amerindian Tribal and ethnic groups(see Chakraborty and Weiss 1991). Ward et al. (191) reported that the Nuu-Chal-Nulth Tribal mtDNA genetic diversity was exponentially diverse when compared with the Island Japanese or African’ KUNG, much larger Old World Populations. AMH

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Owen Roger, in the chapter “The Americas: The Case Against an Ice Age Human Population” in Smith/Spencer, eds. op. cit., pgs, 535-538.

Interdisciplinary work of the highest caliber in the Old Crow region has recovered, as of 1980, over 251 specimens of fractured or apparently cut, grooved, faceted, scraped, polished, or butchered elephant bone and ivory believed to have been worked by ancient humans [Morlan, 1978, 1980; Morlan and Cinq-Mars, 1982, p. 360; Irving, 1978; Bonnichsen, 1978; Bonnichsen and Young, 1980]. The researchers believe these apparently modified bones to comprise an ancient tool kit, perhaps of mid-Pleistocene age, but one totally lacking stone tools. As one investigator expressed: “. . . data for man’s presence found in these beds of Illinoian age are meager in number, but to our minds compelling” [Irving, 1982, p. 78]. Large numbers of microflakes of cherts and quartzites have been found in samples of soil and sand; Morlan proposes that they might be “microdebitage” from an as yet undiscovered lithic technology [Morlan, 1981, pp. 13-16].

NOTE In light of the fact that only ancestral haplotypes are to be found in the Americas (Johnson et al. 1983; Cann et al. 1987; Excoffier and Langaney 1989), it could be proposed that Amerindians are the ancestors of all Old World Homo sapiens. The common ancestry identified for Old World peoples dates back archaeologically to the beginning of the last Ice Age. But when did New and Old World peoples become isolated?. Since pre-Clovis and Upper Paleolithic sites are, or should be seen as, contemporary, could this indicate that the sophistication derived from the great journey was out of the Americas. Is there an explanation for the isolated nature and inconspicuous behavior patterns depicting the mid-Pleistocene Amerindian archaeological record found south of the ice sheets. AMH

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Ted Goebel, Anatoli P. Derevianko, and Valerii T. Petrin – DATING THE MIDDLE-TO-UPPER-PALEOLITHIC TRANSITION AT KARA-BOM pg. 452 – CURRENT ANTHROPOLOGY.

“In Africa transitional Middle-Late Stone Age industries are now thought to lie beyond the range of conventional 14C dating and likely date to between 50,000 and 40,000 years before the present (B.P) (Brooks et al. 1990 Grun and Stringer 1991). Likewise, transitional early Upper Paleolithic materials in Israel have been recently AMS 14C-dated to as early as 42,000 years B.P. (Bar-Yosef et al. 1992:517; Hedges et al. 1990:103), and in Europe AMS Willendorf II, Austria, and L’Arbreda and El Castillo Caves, Spain, now suggest that the Upper Paleolithic was well under way by 40,000 years B.P. (Allsworth-Jones 1990:231,;Bischoff et al. 1989,; Kozlowski 1988: 219,; Valdes and Bischoff 1989). In Siberia, new AMS 14C dates from Kara-Bom demonstrate that initial Upper Paleolithic industries appeared as early as 43,000 years B.P. or earlier”. (emphasis added) AMH

Note The conservative age (< 43,000-50,000 years) suggested for modern human archaeological contexts compliments the genetic evidence suggesting a Rapid Replacement of Old World Middle Paleolithic Industries and their makers. Goebel is a “Clovis First” proponent. AMH

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Polynesia

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Smith, Anita 1995. The need for Lapita: explaining change in the Late Holocene Pacific archaeological record. World Archaeology Volume 26 No. 3 pp. 369, 372, 374.

An apparent gap of around 800-1000 years exists between the appearance of Lapita in West Polynesia and the colonization of the islands to the east (Kirch 1984:52). This pause in island colonization is inferred from radiocarbon determinations from early sites in East Polynesia and the time deemed necessary for the development of a Polynesian group of languages and associated culture from a proto-Polynesian precursor (Kirch and Green 1987:435; but see Irwin 1992:73) or ancestral Polynesian society (Kirch 1984:68). Kirch (1986) has revised the length of the colonization ‘pause’, shortening it to possibly a few hundred years, which implies ‘a steady and continuing colonization process into East Polynesia’ (Kirch and Ellison 1994:319, original emphasis). This is supported by Irwin’s (1992:83) claim that there is no navigational threshold between west and east Polynesia significant enough to warrant a pause in colonization east of Somoa (p. 369).

The difficulty in making an argument for the distinctiveness of Lapita assemblages, or indeed in refuting it, is the paucity of aceramic sites dated immediately prior to or contemporary with the Lapita evidence, which might indicate continuity or discontinuity in Lapita material (see Spriggs 1993 for a review of sites). Of those dating to this period, the majority are cave sites (Spriggs 1993:191) and therefore differences between these and the mostly open Lapita sites may be argued to reflect site type rather than use by different cultural groups (p. 372).

Although the route for Polynesian migration had earlier been considered to be through Micronesia (Buck 1938; Howells 1979) the overall colonization narrative remained unchanged with the shift to Island Melanesia because of the presumed homogeneity and Southeast Asian origin of the Lapita cultural complex. However, continuities evidenced in aspects of Pleistocene, early Holocene and Lapita assemblages in Island Melanesia and the absence of a predecessor for Lapita elsewhere have ruptured the narrative, warranting a Lapita ‘homeland’ in Island Melanesia (Bellwood 1993; 158; Spriggs 1993: 187). This has significantly altered the beginning of the narrative of Polynesian colonization in an archaeological sense, but as the basic Polynesian culture is now considered to have developed in Polynesia (Green 1993:221)) the narrative of colonization in Remote Oceania remains largely unaffected (p. 374).

NOTE Lapita Pottery could have been a distinctive orientation, an in-situ development born in Polynesia and not traceable to an earlier southeast Asian origin. A rapid colonization of eastern Polynesia from Samoa is suggested. Other examples of in-situ culturally adaptive archaeological signatures include Paleoindian and Paleoarctic. AMH

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Giuseppe Passarino, Ornella Semino, Guido Modiano, and A. Silvana Santachiara-Benerecett COII/tRNALys Integenic 9-bp Deletion and Other mtDNA Markers Clearly Reveal That the Tharus (Southern Nepal) Have Oriental Affinities Am. J. Hum. Genet. 53:609-618, 1993

Ballinger’s classification of East Asian mtDNA haploytpes is mainly based on the phenotypes for the DdeI site at nt 10394 and the AluI site at nt 10397. Analysis of the entire Tharu sample revealed that more than 70% of the Tharus have both sites, the association of which has been suggested as an ancient East Asian peculiarity. (pg. 609)

An important marker to detect Oriental affinities is the 9-bp deletion of one of the two tandem repeats (CCCCCTCTA) between nt 8272 and nt 8289 in the COII/tRNALys intergenic region of human mtDNA (Cann and Wilson 1983; Wrischnik et al. 1987). This marker was found in Polynesians (Hertzberg et al. 1989), Native Americans (Torroni et al. 1992), and Pacific coastal peoples (Ballinger et al. 1992), and it is considered to be an indicator of Asian affinities in these populations. (pp. 610-611)

To summarize, Ballinger et al. (1992) postulated at least three deletion events and two cases of partial triplication, one of which had been described elsewhere (Cann and Wilson 1983). This survey has found what is probably a new deletion event (haplotype 2Tharu ), together with a complete triplication. The origin of the latter is most likely independent of that found in Siberia by Shields et al. (1992). Taken together, these findings suggest that this region of two 9-bp repeats is a hot spot of rearrangements.

The D* groups is also frequent in Asia and, in addition, encompasses all the deletion haploytpes found in Native Americans (Torroni et al. 1992) and in Papua New Guinea (Stoneking et al. 1990; Ballinger et al. 1992). On the other hand, no deletion haplotype of the Tharus falls within the D* group (fig. 5). This suggests that the Tharu mtDNA originated from an Oriental mtDNA that differed from that of the populations who migrated toward the Pacific Islands, and northward, through Siberia, to the Americas. (pg. 616)

In summary, (1) 74% of the Tharus (including all those individuals with the classical HaeII morph 5 Oriental mtDNA marker and three individuals with the 9-bp deletion) have the DdeI10394, AluI10397 (+ + ) phenotype; (2) all of the few encounters DdeI10394, AluI10397 (+ –) mtDNAs carry the East Asian deletion; and (3) one-third of the 22% DdeI10394, AluI10397 (– –) mtDNAs (7% of the total sample) are HpaI/HincII morph 1, one of the first recognized Oriental mitochondrial markers (Denaro et al. 1981; Blac et al. 1983). (pg. 617)

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Polynesian Mitochondrial DNAs Reveal Three Deep Maternal Lineage Clusters Human Biology, August 1994, v. 66, no. 4, pp. 567-590 J. Koji Lum, Olga Rickards, Clara Ching, and Rebecca L. Cann

Major group I lineages are common in Remote Oceania and include about 95% of the Native Hawaiian, 90% of the Samoan, and 100% of the Tongan donors in our sample. They contain the region V deletion and generally share three control region transition substitutions. This group also contains non-Polynesian individuals, such as Indonesians, Native Americans, Micronesians, Malaysians, Japanese, and Chinese. (pg. 568)

Fully modern humans colonized all of Sahul, inhabiting Australia by 50,000 yr B.P. (Roberts et al. 1990), New Guinea by 40,000 yr B.P. (Groube et al. 1986), New Ireland by 33,000 yr B.P. (Allen et al. 1988), and the Solomon Islands by 29,000 yr B.P. (Allen et al. 1989). The strings of atolls and islands of Remote Oceania [see Pawley and Green (1973)] were apparently beyond the simple navigational skills of the first modern people. Increasing distance between islands corresponds to a long pause of almost 30,000 years, documented in the archeological record, for the intentional spread of humans further across the Oceania. (pg. 582)

The ancestors of Polynesians and the Lapita complex attributed to them appear to be the first human culture to develop a system of navigation and two-way sailing sufficient to ensure successful deep-water passage over thousands of miles. Some of these passages may have been the result of drift voyages, but computer simulation (Irwin 1992) and direct experimentation have refuted the likelihood that settlement was primarily accidental (Finney et al. 1989). (pg. 582)

Their presumed route, based on archeological and linguistic evidence, appears to be from Mongoloid centers in East Asia south into Australo-Melanesia and then east across the Pacific. (pg. 583)

Lapita-associated skeletons from Mussau and Fiji are similar to Polynesians in nonmetric traits and are similar to Melanesians in skeletal dimensions (Kirch et al. 1989; Pietrusewsky 1989). Although direct gene flow is a possibility, the Lapita cultural complex could have been shared without mate exchange. The expansion of the Lapita people from the Bismarck Archipelago to western Polynesia is archeologically instantaneous (Kirch and Hunt 1988). (pg. 583)

Finally, the South American sweet potato is found throughout Polynesia, raising the question of two-way voyaging from Polynesia or drift voyaging from the west coast of South America (Hyerdahl 1950; Yen 1974; Irwin 1989). The presence of flotsam from North America in Polynesia and demonstration rafting from South America indicate that some limited contact may have been possible between eastern Polynesia and the Americas. (pg. 583)

Linkage of the DRB1*1,5,0,2 and DRB5*0,1,0,1 alleles (Gao and Serjeantson 1991), which are fixed in Papua New Guinea Highlanders and Polynesians but are absent in Chinese, suggests a New Guinea origin of Polynesian group II. (pg. 585)

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Marshall I. Weisler The Settlement of Marginal Polynesia: New Evidence from Henderson Island Journal of Field Archaeology/Vol. 21, 1994

The settlement of Oceania is “one of the long-standing puzzles of Pacific prehistory” (Finney 1985: 9), and the colonization of Remote Polynesia represents the culmination of this unprecedented process. In no other ocean were islands so far from continental land masses settled as early (Keegan and Diamond 1987). The Western Pacific was initially colonized in late Pleistocene times (Allen, Gosden, and White 1989; Wickler and Spriggs 1988). Within a few hundred years during the 2nd millennium B.C., nearly 4500 km of the SW region was settled by people carrying a distinctive dentate-stamped pottery known as Lapita (Bellwood 1979, 1987, 1989; Green 1979, 1982; Irwin 1980; Jennins 1979; Kirch and Hunt 1988; Spriggs 1984; Terrell 1986). Continuing the rapid W-E settlement trend, the remote islands of Polynesia and virtually every island within Oceania were colonized by A.C. 1000 (Kirch and Green 1987). The persistence of the Lapita colonists and their rapid spread throughout Near and portions of Remote Oceania imply that these groups had successful colonization strategies and remarkable voyaging skills (Finney 1979, 1985; Green 1982; Irwin 1989; Irwin, Bickler, and Quirke 1990). (pg. 83)

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Trembly, Diane L. 1995. On the Antiquity of Leprosy in Western Micronesia. International Journal of Osteoarchaeology, Vol. 5: 383.

The four radiocarbon dates obtained confirm the pre-Spanish context of these burials. Two hypotheses are possible: one, the Chamorros brought leprosy with them when they migrated to the Mariana Islands; or two, they acquired it through contact with China or Japan. If the Chamorro people came from Southeast Asia, as is believed by most researchers, then we may infer that cases of leprosy existed in that part of the world in the first millennium AD, but have not been found. If, as Brace believes, they are related to the Jomon, this places their emigration from Japan many centuries earlier than the oldest known cases of leprosy in Japan. In support of the second hypothesis is the report of Chamorro pottery sherds, dated by typology to ca. AD 1000, being found in archaeological contexts in Japan (H. Kurashina, pers. comm.) (p. 383).

NOTE Could Leprosy have been introduced into Southeast Asia by Polynesians? Its age in India is thought to be 600 BC while testing of “Chamorros’ who peopled western Micronesia might date to the early centuries AD, and possibly earlier”. Staff infections are easily acquired in the humid climate of the Polynesian Islands. AMH

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Melton, Terry, Raymond Peterson, Alan J. Redd, N. Saha, A.S.M. Sofro, Jeremy Martinson, and Mark Stoneking 1995. Polynesian Genetic Affinities with Southeast Asian Populations as Identified by mtDNA Analysis. Am. J. Hum. Genet. 57:404, 409, 410.

This 9-bp deletion is largely absent in Melanesian populations–for example, aboriginal groups of Australia and highland Papua New Guinea (PNG)–while it is present in coastal populations of PNG that are thought to be more recent arrivals to the island (Hertzberg et al. 1989; Stoneking et al. 1990). While the frequency of this deletion has been reported for many populations throughout Asia, the frequency alone does not reveal either the source of the deletion or the origin of Polynesians. However, patterns of variation in hypervariable segments of the noncoding mtDNA control region can provide insights into the evolutionary history of Polynesian mtDNAs (Hagelberg and Clegg 1993; Lum et al. 1994; Redd et al. 1995). In particular, Hagelberg and Clegg (1993) identified an apparently unique pattern of nucleotide substitutions in the control region of Polynesians. Three transitions, at nucleotide positions 16217, 16247, and 16261 (Anderson et a. 1981) have been seen together in modern Polynesians at high frequency (80%-100%) as well as in ancient DNA from sites in the Chatham Islands, Society Islands, Hawaii, and Easter Island dating from ≥400 years B.P. (Hagelberg et al. 1994; Lum et al. 1994). ….We have termed this trio of substitutions the “Polynesian motif.” These three changes are temporally embedded within each other and the 9-bp deletion–that is, the nucleotide change at 16217 occurred on the background of the 9-bp deletion; the nucleotide change at 16261 occurred on the background of the nucleotide change at 16217; and the nucleotide change at 16247 occurred on the background of the change at 16261 (Redd et al. 1995)(p. 404).

We observed that the Polynesian motif, this trio of nucleotide changes in the control region at positions 16217, 16247, and 16261 (CGT), occurred exclusively on the background of the 9-bp deletion. This motif, seen in 79.2% of Samoans and 73.9% of coastal Papua New Guineans, was observed in 20% of east Indonesians with the 9-bp deletion. These east Indonesians were from the islands of Alor, Flores, Hiri, Ternate, and Timor. Remarkably, it was not observed elsewhere in Southeast Asia (including Borneo and Java in Indonesia), except in 1 of 81 Malays, and probably 1 of 176 Filipinos (p. 409).

The above results can be interpreted to indicate that the Polynesian motif arose in east Indonesia, although an origin in Malaysia or the Philippines cannot be ruled out. Alternatively, the presence of this combination of substitutions in east Indonesia might reflect back migration that occurred from Polynesia and/or coastal New Guinea to this region. The amount of diversity associated with the Polynesian motif might distinguish between these competing explanations (pgs. 409-410).

NOTE American Indian mtDNA markers confirmed in Polynesia. The common motif found in most Polynesians is only one step away from the “Amerind” motif. The 9bp deletion — without the motif — is believed to be older in the Americas, that is, they predate the colinization of the Polynesia. The marker is found in coastal southeast Asians and not the interior populations. It is not popular to assume Amerindian origins for Polynesians and or Amerindian migration into Siberia. AMH

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Torroni, Antonio, Maurizio Petrozzi, Piero Santolamazza, Daniele Sellitto, Fulvio Cruciani, and Rosaria Scozzari 1995. About the “Asian”-Specific 9-bp Deletion of mtDNA. Letter to the editor Am. J. Hum. Genet. 57:507.

In conclusion, high-resolution mtDNA analyses reveal that the COII-tRNALYS 9-bp deletion has occurred multiple times during human evolution and that it has occurred in mtDNAs from all major human ethnic subdivisions. However, the proportion of mtDNAs that harbor this deletion varies widely among modern human populations. In Asia, one of the deletional events occurred on the ancestral haplogroup B mtDNA. Haplogroup B mtDNAs have subsequently expanded in Asia, the Americas, and Polynesia, carried by the populations that colonized these regions, and they represent a very large proportion of modern Asian-derived mtDNAs. In Europe and Africa, the mtDNAs that acquired the 9-bp deletion are usually observed as isolated cases and probably have a more recent origin (p. 507).

NOTE Polynesians discovered Madagascar, yes! Could not they have interpopulated other coastal areas? Admixture has been shown in the “Oriental” affinities of the Nepalese ‘Tharu’ while this expansion/exploration could be carried further in suggesting Polynesian admixture in the Mediterranean. Simply, if they discovered Madagascar, Nepal and Easter Island than why not the Mediterranean? The 9bp deletion’s been in the Americas longer then there have been Polynesians! AMH

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It is interesting that the six southern Indians with the 9-bp deletion found in this study share their mtDNA types most closely with those from China and Borneo, suggesting that migration from these regions west to India and Sri Lanka may be a possibility.

NOTE The age and disribution of this marker in coastal populations of the Old World does not rule out a source for them as being, the Americas. The Polynesian motif with the 9 bp deletion is only one mutation away from the same Amerindian lineage that is present in it’s unadulterated state, suggesting that this could have been the primitive type from which all other “Polynesian” motifs are derived. Amerindians in Polynesia (type B)? Amerindians in Siberia (Types A, C, and D)? Perhaps its time to take another look! As some scholars have hypothesized, seagoing Amerindians that are proposed to have been the first Polynesians (Hyerdahl 1952), would be candidates for the ancestors of type B haplotypes. Dare we hypothesis that the presence of haplotype B in coastal southeast Asian populations – in near fixation with frequencies as high as 100% of the Cook islanders and the New Zealand Maori – is further evidence of migrations from the Americas. Consider also, that Group B lineages indicate a recent Old World arrival since they were not part of the continental radiations depicting the mtDNAs of indigenous Africans, Asians, Europeans, or Australians (Hertzberg et al. 1989; Stoneking et al. 1986). AMH

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Irwin, Geoffrey 1992. The Prehistoric Exploration and Colonization of the Pacific. Cambridge University Press, p. 97

Irwin argues that exploratory voyages were systematic two-way (and, occasionally, three-way) journeys, which produced new knowledge but did not necessarily result in immediate colonization. Nonetheless, he contends, early Austronesian-speakers spread rapidly through the Pacific; and he disputes the “long pause” hypothesis commonly accepted by Pacific pre historians, which posits a thousand-year interval between the settlement of West Polynesia and exploration of the islands further east.

NOTE Was there early knowledge of the existence of land in the east i. e., the Americas? Were there ulterior motives for searching against the current for habitable lands? AMH

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Asia

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Denaro, M., H. Blanc, M.J. Johnson, K.H. Chen, E. Wilmsen, L.L. Cavalli-Sforza, and D.C. Wallace 1981. Ethnic variation in Hpa I endonuclease cleavage patterns of human mitochondrial DNA. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA Vol. 78, No. 9, pp. 5768, 5771.

Comparison with primate data shows that the morph with two fragments, found in 12.5% of Oriental and 4% of Bantu samples, might be the ancestral type common to all hominoids. These two conserved sites were localized in tRNA genes in the anticodon loop. Assuming that the two-fragment morph is ancestral, this finding is consistent with previous data suggesting that Asia is genetically central to the radiations that are thought to have given rise to the human ethnic groups (p. 5768).

The suggestion for these mtDNA data that the human ethnic groups diverged from an Asian origin is consistent with comparable data on nuclear gene frequencies. These results suggest that formation of human ethnic groups took place in the last part of the Pleistocene, starting in Asia and radiating towards the other continents, probably within the last 50,000-100,000 years (27). An estimate of the divergence of human ethnic groups based on mtDNA variation has been made in the range of 10,000-50,000 years (M. Nei, personal communication), correcting a previous estimate (12) and in agreement with an earlier estimate of 25,000-100,000, based on classical genetic markers (28). The hypothesis of an Asian origin of man has been independently advanced on the basis of the presence of type C virus in Asian apes and man (29)( p. 5771).

NOTE This was a preliminary paper to Johnson et al. 1983. They represent a valid challenge to the “mtDNA out of Africa” while the shared Asian primate morph could represent non descendent relationship or recent “regional subdivision” and an Asian specific selection mechanism. see Templeton 1993. AMH

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M.J. Johnson, D.C. Wallace, S.D. Ferris, M.C. Rattazzi, and L.L. Cavalli-Sforza Radiation of Human Mitochondria DNA Types Analyzed by Restriction Endonuclease Cleavage Patterns J. Mol. Evol. (1983) 19:255-271

Chimpanzees and Orangutans appear to have the same Bam HI site at 14258 (morph 1) but each has an additional site which is not seen in humans (Ferris et al. 1981). An ancestral pattern cannot therefore be unambiguously inferred. (pg. 256)

A phylogency of the seven Hae II morphs can be constructed (Fig. 2) wherein all morphs can be derived from morph 1 by the loss or gain of a single HaeII site. The presence of morph 1 in all four populations at high frequencies and the fact that all morphs can be derived directly from it suggests that it may have been central to mtDNA radiations. (pg. 259)

Explanations for this deviation other than non-random samples could be: 1) non-homogeneity within the species with respect to mutation rates; 2) natural selection for some of the morphs; 3) or lack of equilibrium between mutation and drift, which may not have been reached because of the major increase in population size that has taken place in the last 10,000 years (Coale 1974) with the adoption of agriculture. (pg. 265)

Brown et al. (1982) have suggested possible reasons why the mutation rate of mtDNA could be higher than that of nDNA, including oxidative damage, an error prone system of replication, a less efficient editing or repair system, and a higher rate of turnover. One or more of these reasons might also explain why mtDNA in Bushmen and some other populations appear to have a higher mutation rate. . . . Our previous estimate of 104,000 years for divergence of the human ethnic groups assumes that all groups separated from each other simultaneously. An alternative possibility is to consider that the split leading to Bushmen occurred prior to others. Using the order of separation suggested by the data (Table 4a) and a time scale of 5 x 106 years for the human–ape separation, we arrive at the following divergence times: Bushmen diverge at 220,000 y.a.; Bantus 65,000 y.a.; and Asians/American Indians diverging from Caucasians 5,500 y.a. . . . Both the first and last of these values are incompatible with present archeological evidence and more compatible with the idea that there can be substantial variation in evolutionary rates in the various human ethnic groups. . . . In conclusion, using five restriction enzymes and a sample of 200 individuals, we find that there is a high correlation between mtDNA types and the ethnic origin of an individual. This is particularly striking in our two African populations, where a distinct lineage separates these populations from both Caucasian and Oriental mtDNA types. (pg. 268)

________________________________________________________________________Kitagawa, Yoshikazu, Yoshitaka Manabe, Joichi Oyamada, and Atsushi Rokutanda 1995. Deciduous Dental Morphology of the Prehistoric Jomon People of Japan: Comparison of Nonmetric Characters. American Journal of Physical Anthropology 97: pp. 101-111

The protostylids of the deciduous lower second molars in the Jomon sample exhibited zero expression (grade 0 and 1) most frequently and divergence of the buccal groove (grade 2 and 3) next most frequently. This trait was expressed at an extremely high frequency in the Native American samples and at moderately high frequencies in the Jomon, Japanese, Ainu, and Australian Aboriginal samples. The frequency in the Jomon sample was 45.0%, significantly lower than those in the Pima Indian and Eskimo samples (p. 107).

A weak groove on the lingual surface of the metaconid (grade 1) occurs frequently in the deciduous lower second molars. The pooled incidence of cusp 7 (from grades 1 to 3) in the Jomon was 68.2%. This trait was expressed at extremely high frequencies among the Jomon, Japanese, Ainu, Native American, Polynesian, and Australian Aboriginal samples (p. 107).

NOTE Early spread and long-term retention of the Sinodont pattern. This implies that Sundadont patterns were derived and Sinodont are the ancestral type or that both are ancestral types. AMH

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S.W. Ballinger, T.G. Schurr, A. Torroni, Y.Y. Gan, J.A. Hodge, K. Hassan, K.H. Chenv and D.C. Wallace Southeast Asian Mitochondrial DNA Analysis Reveals Genetic Continuity of Ancient Mongoloid Migrationsin Genetics 130:139-152

Moreover, the coastal and highland PNG populations have become genetically differentiated (Stoneking et al. 1990), with coastal populations having the 9-bp COII/tRNALys intergenic deletion (Cann and Wilson 1983; Wrischnik et al. 1987) in about 40% of their mtDNAs while the highland populations lack this marker (Hertzberg et al. 1989; Stoneking et al. 1990). This marker is also associated with Pacific coastal and island populations, appearing at high frequencies in Melanesia and Polynesia, reaching fixation (100%) on some islands (Hertzberg et al. 1989). (pg. 5)

The data provide evidence that: 1) the Vietnamese are the most diverse and, hence, the oldest population; 2) Malaysians retain remnants of haplotypes found in PNG; 3) coastal Asians have a striking frequency cline for the 9-bp deletion; and 4) both insertion and deletion mutations in the COII-tRNALys intergenic region have occurred more than once. (pg. 5)

Haplotype group A (Table 1), which was present in six of the populations, further substantiates our previous proposal that the HincII/HpaI morph 1 polymorphism has been associated with some of the earliest Asian mtDNAs (Blanc et al 1983). This haplotype group is most frequent in the Vietnamese, (32.1%) and the Malay Aborigines (28.1%). In light of their language affiliation, [Austro-Asiatic family, (Bellwood, 1979)] these populations seem to be derived from a common stock. mtDNAs from haplotype group A were also found in the Taiwanese Han (10.0%), Malays (14.3%), Koreans (15.4%), and Sabah Aborigines (3.1%) substantiating the early appearance of this haplotype group. (pg. 11)

The overlapping AluI and DdeI sites at nps 10397 and 10394 appear to be ancient mutations. This pair of sites was prevalent in every Southeast Asian population and divided each of them into two major groups (Figures 2 and 3). The DdeI site has been found in mtDNAs from every racial group (Cann, Stoneking, and Wilson, 1987; Brown et al., unpublished data), and is present in the most divergent African haplotypes reported (Cann, Stoneking, and Wilson, 1987), indicating its antiquity. (pg. 13)

NOTE This combination of AluI site gains and losses at np 10397 and the 10394 DdeI is very old and may represent founding lineages in populations of the Old World. AMH

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Africa

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Alan R. Templeton Washington University The “Eve” Hypotheses: A Genetic Critique and Reanalysis in American Anthropologists 95 (1):51-72, 1993

Using an even larger data set than Excoffier (1990), Merriwether et al. (1991:552) concluded that “the evidence that human mtDNA variation is not in mutation-drift equilibrium is incontrovertible” and offered several possible explanations, including expanding population size and selection. (pg. 59)

This rejection of neutral equilibrium also invalidates the argument given in Cann, Stoneking, and Wilson (1987) and Vigilant et al. (1991) that African populations are the oldest because they have the most genetic diversity (a proposition that has not yet been proven, as discussed in the previous section). The diversity in a region does not necessarily reflect the age of the regional population but rather could reflect the age since the last favorable mutation arose in the population, the demographic history of population size expansion, the extent of gene flow with other populations, and so on. As argued by Merriwether et al. (1991:553), “Because it is clear that mtDNA diversity is not in equilibrium among human populations, estimates of population age based on coalescence time need to be interpreted. (pp. 59-60)

Hence, reasonable sample sizes exist for all geographical locations. Merriwether et al. (1991) recently presented an expanded version of this data set, but, unfortunately, much of the new data consists of New World populations, which are not relevant, or old World populations that were not scored for all the same restriction enzymes as the earlier samples used to construct the cladogram given in Excoffier (1990). Hence, the data set of Excoffier (1990) still represents the best data set available at this time for a cladistic analysis of population structure or history. (pg. 61)

The failure of the cladistic geographical analysis to detect an out-of-Africa population expansion cannot be attributed to inadequate sample sizes or to low genetic resolution, since the analysis could detect the much more geographically restricted expansion events that involved only a small portion of the cladogram and the samples. Hence, the geographical associations of mtDNA are statistically significantly incompatible with the out-of-Africa replacement hypothesis and instead strongly and clearly indicate that all old World human populations were in genetic contact with one another throughout the entire time period marked by the coalescence of mtDNA. (pg. 65)

In summary, the out-of-Africa replacement hypothesis is rejected by the properties of the mtDNA cladogram itself. Instead, the mtDNA data are consistent with a model of restricted but recurrent gene flow throughout the entire time period marked by the time to coalescence with a recent overlay of geographically restricted population-expansion events. The out-of-Africa replacement hypothesis is also incompatible with the overall pattern that emerges from the nuclear DNA data series. The nuclear DNA pattern only clearly offers support for restricted gene flow among Old World human populations. (p. 69)

Because of low but recurrent gene flow, both globally adaptive and neutral traits could eventually spread throughout the entire Old World. Accordingly, there is no need to postulate multiple independent origins of anatomically modern humans. All humans represent a single long-term evolutionary lineage with regional subdivision and always have throughout the entire time period marked by mtDNA. This is the lesson that we can learn by studying our common mitochondrial ancestor. (pp. 69-70)

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Laurent Excoffier and Andre Langaney Origin and Differentiation of Human Mitochondrial DNA Am. J. Hum. Genet. 44:73-85, 1989

A phylogeny of the mtDNA types found in 10 populations reveals that all types could have issued from a single common ancestral type. The distribution of shared types between continental groups indicates that caucasoid could be the closest to an ancestral population from which all other continental groups would have diverged. A partial phylogeny of the types found in five other populations also demonstrates that the myth of an African Eden was based on an incorrect “genealogical tree” of mtDNA types. (pg. 73)

Two measures of molecular diversity have been computed on all samples on the basis of mtDNA type frequencies, on one hand, and on the basis of the number of polymorphic sites in the samples, on the other. A large discrepancy is found between the two measures expect in African populations; this suggests the existence of some differential selective mechanisms. (pg. 73)

No other types could be linked to this subset by fewer than two missing intermediates, and there was no unique type to which they could be connected. Furthermore, the 106 other types could not be interconnected by a single substitution, except for types 130 and 131 and types 133 and 134, all found in New Guinea; therefore, further connections would have been highly speculative. Type 69 is the central type of the 133 types, according to our definition, and thus presents all restriction sites in their more frequent state. (pg. 77)

It is interesting to note that our partial phylogeny was clearly arrayed around type 69, to which types found in various continents connected directly. Even if this phylogeny would suggest to some people that the mitochondrial Eve was Australian, we would rather consider that these potentially old types were present in continental groups before the different population splits. The very precise type definition (12 endonucleases involved) and the limited sample sizes may have, as a consequence, confined each type to a particular “population.” (pg. 77)

Values found by estimates of t1 would have supported an African origin for human populations, but this was in contradiction to the values computed for t2. It is important to recall here that all these values greatly overestimate divergence times and depend on the degree of polymorphism of populations when they split as well as on the heterogeneity of present samples. (pg. 80)

The genetic constitution of early modern human populations may, then, have already been quite polymorphic prior to the first main continental splits. Among 10 intercontinental shared types, nine are found in caucasoid populations, the exception being type 8, which is present in Oriental, Amerindian, and African samples. The caucasoid samples share four types with the African samples and six types with the Oriental samples and thus seem to occupy an intermediate position between African and Oriental populations. (pg. 81)

This also indicates that these types may have been present in early populations of modern humans. Very differentiated types might have appeared later in isolated populations. This partial phylogeny does not indicate which population could have been ancestral to others, but it becomes clear that the hypothesis of the African Eve is based on a “genealogical tree” biased by topological errors–and that it thus cannot be supported by these data. (pg. 81)

It appears, then, that the high frequencies of type 1 found in most populations are incompatible with both the apparent high mutation rate of mtDNA and a neutral model. This suggests that a selective mechanism favoring certain types or eliminating others is at work. Johnson et al. (1993) as well as Whittam et al. (1986) have carried out homozgosity tests (Watterson 1978) on mtDNA which tend to show that the hypothesis of equilibrium under neutrality is not always supported. The exact nature of this selection, and why it does not occur in some populations, remains to be understood. (pg. 81)

Evolutionary schemes of human continental groups based on estimation of E(v) agree with those based on type phylogenies in challenging the idea of an evolution of the whole mitochondrial genetic stock from a single African-like ancestral population. (pg. 81)

Therefore, the most important goal may not be to identify one population or group of populations as being ancestral to others but to recognize which characteristic could be ancestral and what would have been the probable genetic pool of early populations. (pg. 82)

In light of the distribution of the shared types between continental groups, some caucasoid populations seem nevertheless to have a genetic background close to that of a primitive (sensu stricto) human population and also to occupy an intermediate place between African and Oriental populations. African populations, on the other hand, have very differentiated mtDNA types (see fig. 1), most of which have appeared only recently. (pg. 82)

________________________________________________________________________Chen, Yu-Sheng, Antonio Torroni, Laurent Excoffier, A. Silvana Santachiara-Benerecetti, and Douglas C. Wallace 1995. Analysis of mtDNA Variation in African Populations Reveals the Most Ancient of All Human Continent-Specific Haplogroups. Am. J. Hum. Genet. 57:133, 142, 143.

These haplogroups were more similar to those observed in Europeans and Asians than to haplogroup L mtDNAs, suggesting that the African mtDNAs without the HpaI np 3592 site could be the ancestral types from which European and Asian mtDNAs were derived (pg. 133).

The high frequency of these continent-specific mutations within one major continental group and their specificity to either Europeans, Asians, or Native Americans make them powerful genetic markers for inferring the ethnic and geographic origin of modern and ancient humans (Torroni et al., in press). Their geographic and ethnic specificity also indicates that these mutations arose after the genetic separation of the ancestral human populations that gave rise to the modern human ethnic groups (pgs. 133-134).

About one third of Senegalese mtDNAs lack the np 3592 HpaI site and tend to form four small haplogroups in parsimony analyses. These haplotypes are relatively similar to some haplotypes observed in Europeans and Asians, and two of them, AF2 and AF7, have been observed in Europeans. Because Senegalese populations had extensive cultural and economic interactions with Saharan and North African populations, the presence of these haplotypes could be partially or completely attributed to genetic exchange with European populations. However, although we did not observe haplotypes lacking the 3952 HpaI site in the Pygmies, haplotypes lacking the 3592 HpaI site are not limited to Senegalese populations. These haplotypes have been described in 36% of the Bamileke from Cameroon (Scozzari et al. 1994), 12% of the Khosian populations from Namibia (Soodyall and Jenkins 1992), and 23%-89% of several Bantu-speaking populations from southern Africa (Johnson et al. 1983; Soodyall and Jenkins 1993). The finding of mtDNAs without the 3592 HpaI site in sub-Saharan populations ,which are unlikely to be genetically admixed with European populations, suggests that at least some of the mtDNAs lacking the 3592 HpaI site in the Senegalese arose in Africa and are not the product of genetic admixture with populations from northern Africa, Europe, or Asia. Because of their widespread distribution in sub-Saharan populations, it is most likely that these mtDNAs have an ancient African origin. An African origin of the mtDNAs without the 3592 HpaI site, their similarity to European and Asian mtDNAs, and the absence of mtDNAs defined by the HpaI site at np 3952 in non-African populations, appear to suggest that African mtDNAs without the 3592 HpaI were the only mtDNAs that were carried from Africa by the Homo sapiens sapiens migrations, which ultimately gave rise to modern non-African populations (pgs. 142-143.

NOTE The Wallace group here go-so-far as to site Johnson et al. 1983 (since Wallace was also a co-author) as supporting the Out of Africa data. It did not! Also, why are so many markers in Africans, if they are supposed to be of great antiquity, not found outside of Africa. Perhaps theses mtDNAs are the result of “regional subdivision” with selective pressure following a proposed recent modern peopling of Africa, as evidence for the increased sequence diversity. Excoffier and Langalay 1989 warn us! Also lineages A, B, C, and D could represent “continent-specific mutations” in the Americas with these “regionally specific markers” carried into the north by Amerindians in post-Pleistocene times (Hicks in submission) AMH

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Jorde, L.B., M.J. Bamshad, W.S. Watkins, R. Zenger, A.E. Fraley, P.A. Krakowiak, K.D. Carpenter, H. Soodyall, T. Jenkins, and A.R. Rogers 1995. Origins and Affinities of Modern Humans: A Comparison of Mitochondrial and Nuclear Genetic Data. Am J. Hum. Genet. 57:523, 525, 528.

An evolutionary tree based on mtDNA displays deep African branches, indicating greater genetic diversity for African populations. This finding, which is consistent with previous mtDNA analyses, has been interpreted as evidence for an African origin of modern humans. Both sets of nuclear polymorphisms, as well as a third set of trinucleotide polymorphisms, are highly consistent with one another but fail to show deep branches for African populations. These results, which represent the first direct comparison of mtDNA and nuclear genetic data in major continental populations, undermine the genetic evidence for an African origin of modern humans (p. 523).

Long branch lengths are seen for most of the African populations. This pattern has been observed in most other mtDNA analyses and has been a major component of the argument for an African origin of modern humans (Cann et al. 1987; Vigilant et al. 1991; Stoneking 1993). The non-African populations have comparatively short branch lengths, and the nodes separating these populations are very close to one another

(p. 525).

[mtDNA and nuclear DNA and variation discordance]

1. Ascertainment bias in nuclear polymorphisms.–

2. Differences in substitution rates.–

3. Inadequate sample sizes.–

4. Differences in male-female migration rates or effective population sizes.– (pgs. 527-528)

The HVS-2 data analyzed here show a similar departure from neutrality in Asians and Europeans, although it is not statistically significant. These departures may reflect the action of natural selection, or they could be the result of past population expansions (Rogers and Harpending 1992; Rogers, in press). Since there is no recombination in the mitochondrial genome, natural selection on a coding gene will exert a substantial genetic “hitchhiking” effect, even on polymorphisms in the non-coding D loop. It is thus possible that the differences seen here in mtDNA and nuclear DNA may be produced by natural selection rather than population history.

Increased mtDNA diversity in Africans has been a linch-pin of the argument that modern humans originated in Africa and then replaced existing archaic populations on other continents. Proponents of this view argue that since Africa is more diverse genetically, its population must be older (Stoneking 1993). However, diversity can be strongly affected by events in a population’s history, such as the timing of major bottlenecks, and therefore does not necessarily reflect a population’s age (Rogers and Jorde 1995). Our findings further compromise the diversity argument by showing that nuclear DNA trees lack the deep branches (and thus the excess genetic diversity) observed in mtDNA trees. These results do not disprove the African replacement hypothesis. However, they weaken the genetic evidence in its favor (p. 528).

NOTE Regional subdivision and natural selection and drift could ultimately point to an Outside of Africa origin for H. s. s. who later replaced Homo erectus. That is, an Asian origin with bottlenecks supporting a recent common origin from there should be re-addressed. The American Indian data offers contrasting evidence where bottlenecks are not detected (see Chakraborty and Weiss 1991; Ward et al. 1991; Horai et al. 1992). AMH

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Rosaria Scozzari, Antonio Torroni, Ornella Semino, Fulvio Cruciani, Gabriella Spedini, and Silvana Augusta Santachiara Benerectti. Genetic Studies in Cameroon: Mitochondrial DNA Polymorphisms in Bamileke in Human Biology, February, 1994, v. 66, no. 1, pp. 1-12

Two morphs are frequent for both of these enzymes: morph 2 and the “African” morph 3 for HpaI and morphs 1 and 3 for AvaII. An absolute association AvaII morph 3/HpaI morph 3 ( and derivatives) was observed at a high frequency (about 0.30). This finding is consistent with what has already been found in other Negroids (Johnson et al. 1983; Scozzari et al. 1988) and stresses the importance of this combination of morphs as a valuable marker of maternal African ancestry (Semino et al. 1989). (pg. 6)

A tree relating all the African mtDNA types described so far (Johnson et al. 1983; Scozzri et al. 1988); Soodyall and Jenkins 1992; this paper was built using a parsimony method (Swofford 1992) (Figure 4). This tree is one of the 3000 maximum parsimony trees generated by the TBR branch-swapping algorithm. All the observed trees are defined by two major lineages. One of these lineages has types that were only found at high frequencies in the Khoisan and to a lesser extent in the Bantu from South Africa. This is consistent with the tree drawn by Merriwether et al. (1991), in which the three Khoisan lineages are group together in a separate branch. (pg. 9)

All mtDNA types from Cameroon and Senegal fall in the second main lineage (Figure 4). Seven types among the Cameroon types (1-2, 1-10, 8-1, 21-2, 39-2, 52-2, and 152-1) are characterized by the absence of the HpaI site at np 3592; together with similar haplotypes observed predominately in the Senegalese, these seven types define a specific sublineage radiating from mtDNA type 1. Most of the Cameroon and Senegal mtDNA types and the types that fall in the “Khoisan-Bantu” lineage are characterized by the presence of the HpaI site at np 3592 (HpaI morph 3). This finding suggests that the presence of this site is ancestral to the differentiation of the putative common ancestor into the Khoisan and Negroids. (pg. 9)

In a view of this contradictory evidence, genetic studies can clearly play a key role in defining the relationships between the Bamileke and other African groups. In fact, our study shows that a fine distinction can be made between the Bamileke and the Bantu, at least those from South Africa, on the basis of mtDNA data. However, studies of other markers and appropriate populations are needed before more definite conclusions can be drawn. (pg. 11)

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Klein, Richard G. 1995. Anatomy, Behavior, and Modern Human Origins. Journal of World Prehistory, Vol 9, No. 2 pp. 167-198.

Were Neanderthals fundamentally incapable of fully modern behavior? As I have outlined it, Out-of-Africa 2 postulates that the Neanderthals were replaced because they could not compete culturally with their modern human successors. The argument is bolstered over most of Europe by the relatively abrupt nature of the replacement. At many sites, Cro-Magnon/Upper Paleolithic occupations overlie Neanderthal/Middle Paleolithic layers with no evidence for a major break in time or for any transition between the two, suggesting the replacement took only decades, or at most, centuries (p. 183).

Chatelperronian stone artifact assemblages generally combine typical Middle Paleolithic “sidescrapers,” “denticulates,” and “backed knives” with numerous characteristic Upper Paleolithic “end-scrapers” and “burins” (Harrold, 1989) (p. 185).

The results are somewhat inconsistent, but a reasonable inference now is that the Chatelperronian existed for a millennium or two sometime between 42,000 and 36,000 years ago. It was during this same interval that the earliest undeniable Upper Paleolithic culture or culture complex, known as the Aurignacian, appeared widely in southeastern, central, and western Europe (Mellars, 1992; Straus, 1993/1994). The Aurignacian is marked by a multiplicity of highly formalized, distinctive Upper Paleolithic stone and bone artifact types and by a variety of art objects, including human and animal representations (Bahn, 1994; Mellars, 1993; R. White, 1989). At most sites where the Aurignacian and Middle Paleolithic occur together, the Aurignacian abruptly overlies the Middle Paleolithic, and in the version of Out-of-Africa 2 that I favor, the Aurignacian is a plausible artifactual manifestation of the Cro-Magnon invasion (p. 187).

@ Why were the earliest modern humans not as heavily built as the Neanderthals? Neanderthal limb bones are remarkably robust, with strong muscle markings, implying that Neanderthals of both sexes were exceptionally powerful people. In spite of this, they often broke their bones, they commonly developed arthritis or other senile pathologies in their 20s or 30s, and they seldom survived beyond age 40 (Berger and Trinkaus, 1995; Brennan, 1991; Trinkaus, 1995; Trinkaus and Shipman, 1993). The sum suggests that they led extraordinarily stressful lives. In contrast, their fully modern, Cro-Magnon successors were much less heavily built, they broke their bones much less often, and their maximum life expectancy was significantly greater. Since Neanderthals were culturally (artifactually) much less sophisticated, a reasonable explanation for the difference is that Neanderthals often accomplished physically what later people accomplished culturally (technologically) (p. 189).

For proponents of Out-of-Africa 2 the problem, then, is not that 60,000-year-old Australian dates imply an especially early, non-African emergence of art, but that they raise two other fundamental questions: (a) Is it possible that modern humans left Africa as much as 60,000 years ago? and (b) Assuming that they did, how is it that they reached the Far East (Australasia) 20,000 years before they reached the Far West (France and Spain)? In this context, it is important to note that the Middle Paleolithic/Upper Paleolithic interface in France and Spain cannot be much older than 40,000 years. This estimate is based not on radiocarbon dates, which provide only minimal ages in the 40,000 year range, but on thermoluminescence dates from Le Moustier (France) (Valladas et al., 1986) and uranium-series dates from Abric Romani (Spain) (Bischoff et al., 1988, 1994) which show that the Middle Paleolithic survived in western Europe until roughly 40,000 years ago.

@ NOTE The perspectives outlined here offer a conservative assessment of the age for the replacement of H. erectus populations. The idea that the replacement could have started in Asia could be suggested by the early Australian dates. At any rate the sudden appearance throughout the Old World has an unlikely New World comparison in the rapid colonization scenarios that have been put forth by Clovis First proponents. The alternative represents a diffusion of hunting technologies throughout pre-existing Amerindian populations. But why were the mid-Pleistocene Americas archaeological signature(s) so difficult to asses? Is it due to what we have assumed we should be finding (i. e. concerning an Old World lithic Industries), not in what we happen to find is missing? AMH

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Chen, Yu-Sheng, Antonio Torroni, Laurent Excoffier, A. Silvana Santachiara-Benerecetti, and Douglas C. Wallace 1995. Analysis of mtDNA Variation in African Populations Reveals the Most Ancient of All Human Continent-Specific Haplogroups. Am. J. Hum. Genet. 57:, pp. 133-149.

About one third of Senegalese mtDNAs lack the np 3592 HpaI site and tend to form four small haplogroups in parsimony analyses. These haplotypes are relatively similar to some haplotypes observed in Europeans and Asians, and two of them, AF2 and AF7, have been observed in Europeans. Because Senegalese populations had extensive cultural and economic interactions with Saharan and North African populations, the presence of these haplotypes could be partially or completely attributed to genetic exchange with European populations. However, although we did not observe haplotypes lacking the 3592 HpaI site in the Pygmies, haplotypes lacking the 3592 HpaI site are not limited to Senegalese populations. These haplotypes have been described in 36% of the Bamileke from Cameroon (Scozzari et al. 1994), 12% of the Khoisan populations from Namibia (Soodyall and Jenkins 1992), and 23%-89% of several Bantu-speaking populations from southern Africa (Johnson et al. 1983; Soodyall and Jenkins 1993). The finding of mtDNAs without the 3592 HpaI site in sub-Saharan populations, which are unlikely to be genetically admixed with European populations, suggest that at least some of the mtDNAs lacking the 3592 HpaI site in the Senegalese arose in Africa and are not the product of genetic admixture with populations from northern Africa, Europe, or Asia, because of their widespread distribution in sub-Saharan populations, it is most likely that these mtDNAs have an ancient African origin. An African origin of the mtDNAs without the 3952 HpaI site, their similarity to European and Asian mtDNAs, and the absence of mtDNAs defined by the HpaI site at np 3592 in non-African populations, appear to suggest that African mtDNAs without the 3592 HpaI were the only mtDNAs that were carried from Africa by the Homo sapiens sapiens migrations, which ultimately gave rise to modern non-African populations (p. 142-143).

Furthermore, most African mtDNAs are members of the African-specific haplogroup L. This haplogroup appears to be the most ancient of all continent-specific haplogroups, having arisen 100,000-130,000 YBP. Such an age would indicate that haplogroup L mtDNAs originated before modern Homo sapiens expanded from Africa. Yet, this haplogroups is virtually absent in non-Africans. Therefore, mtDNAs of haplogroup L must not have been carried from Africa by the migrations that ultimately gave rise to Asians and Europeans. On the contrary, the close similarities between the African haplotypes lacking the 3592 HpaI site and haplotypes observed in Asians and Europeans suggest that African haplotypes without the np 3592 site were the ones from which modern Asian and European mtDNAs were derived. Hence, further geographic localization of haplogroup L and non-L mtDNAs among various African populations could provide further insights into the origins of the first great migrations of our species (p. 145).

NOTE That the oldest lineages were not carried out of Africa creates doubt about Africa being the homeland for modern human. There are many other obvious links that have shown an Asian source for the spread of modern humans into the rest of the Old World. AMH

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Europe

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Knecht, Heidi: Anne Pike-Tay; and Randall White; editors.Before Lascaux: The complex Record of the Early Upper Paleolithic, CRC Press, Boca Raton, 1993 pg. 1.

“One of the most hotly debated topics of research in the past decade has been that surrounding the first appearance in Western Eurasia of hominids that can be considered anatomically and culturally modern. Between 50,000 and 30,000 years ago, the Neanderthals and Mousterian [Middle Paleolithic] industries were replaced, from the Near East to the Atlantic seaboard, by physically modern humans whose culture showed significant innovations, many of them never seen before on earth. These included graphic representations, true blade technology, personal ornaments, complex weapon and propulsion systems, long distance procurement of a variety of durable raw materials, subsistence systems based on strategically organized use of the landscape over the course of the year, rapid and continual technological change through time, and cultural systems that very greatly from region to region.

Although the Middle to Upper Paleolithic transition is viewed for purposes of this book as a Western Eurasian phenomenon, it is hard to deny its evolutionary import, especially when we see evidence for the above cultural changes as far afield as Australia.” emphasis added

(Note or the Americas AMH)

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Review Feature

Christopher Stringer & Clive Gamble. Cambridge Archaeological Journal 4:1 (1994), 95-119 The Neanderthal World: Flat Earth or New Horizons? in Cambridge Archaeological Journal 4:1 (1994), 95-119

The question of continuity or replacement involves three principal lines of evidence – anatomical, genetic and behavioral, and each of these is the subject of continuing debate (see e.g. Frayer et al. 1993; Stringer & Brauer, in press). (pg. 96)

When this spaghetti is cut with Occams’ Razor, the answer looks clearer – population replacement provides the most appropriate explanatory mechanism. Claims for multiregional continuity made from occurrences such as the French Chatelperronian are best explained as responses of Neanderthals to coexistence with modern humans. (pg. 96)

@ Our conclusion is that, while morphological and behavioural change had certainly started earlier, for behavioural change, the period from 60,000 to 40,000 BP is of the greatest interest. It can be regarded as a pioneer phase with, in one hemisphere, the first appearance of people in Australia while in the other, structures and constructed fireplaces are found for the first time. Clearly humans are on the move, both physically and mentally (a view which can be supported from recent interpretation of mtDNA data: Harpending et al. 1993). The technology of survival begins to reflect an extension in planning and organization. (pg. 96)

What is significant for those wishing to infer modern behavior from such finds is that nowhere have Neanderthal bodies been found in open sites. (pg. 96)

The Calm Before the Storm

Milford H. Wolpoff

@ Behavioural complexity is explained away by fiat. This in discussing the behavioral evidence found at Chatelperronian sites, associated in two caves with Neanderthal remains: the transition in this area to a blade-based technology (the Chatelperronian) and the appearance of structures at campsites (Arcy-Sur-Cure) only occurs long after the Moderns arrived in central Europe and the Iberian Peninsula. Imitation rather than invention therefore seems the most plausible explanation for the change in Neanderthal behavior. (p. 201, italics mine) (pg. 99)

McDermott et al. (1993, 254) write that ‘the conclusion that early modern Homo sapiens were probably coeval with . . . Neanderthals in the Levant now seems inescapable’. Also seemingly inescapable are the behavioural implications of this observation, as the Mousterian occurrences at the so-called early modern human and Neanderthal sites are very similar to each other. Bar-Yosef describes the various Levantine Middle Palaeolithic variations:

The Mousterian struggle for survival lasted over 100,000 years. The amount of typological and technological variability among the lithic industries and the nature of the sites is rather limited. (Bar Yosef 1992a, 208) (pg. 99)

The story that mtDNA tells us is that ‘all humans represent a single-long term evolutionary lineage with regional subdivision and always have throughout the entire time period marked by mtDNA’ (Templeton, 1993, 70). (pg. 102)

The European Evidence

Paul Mellars

@ What none of us has yet managed to do, of course, is to provide a clear and coherent explanation of how this dramatic transformation in behavioural patterns came about – evidently long after the initial emergence of distinctively anatomically modern humans in either Africa or Asia. Clive Gamble talks happily about ‘big surprises’ or ‘flicking a switch’ in human cultural development. These may be catchy and convenient labels, but they hardly help us to unravel the actual mechanisms by which these dramatic behavioural changes originated. This remains, in my view, by far the greatest challenge facing students of the ‘human revolution’ over the next decade. (pg. 104)

A Levantine Perspective

Anthony E. Marks

If behavioural differences are significant, then behavioural similarities must be equally significant. Within the limits of archaeological knowledge, therefore, the early ‘Moderns’ of Qafzeh and Skhul were ‘close kin’ to the Kebara Neanderthal but only ‘distant relatives’ of the European Upper Palaeolithic folk – hardly a position either author would willingly espouse. (pg. 104)

Having postulated that there was a movement out of Africa at about 100,000 BP, the obvious first step to confirm this archaeologically would be to document a spread of African materials into the Levant at that time. yet the authors are amazingly silent about what material culture the early ‘Moderns’ had when they moved into the Levant. They do note that Qafzeh and Kebara both ‘have Middle Palaeolithic tools’ (p. 153). They fail to mention, however, that the Levantine Mousterian cannot be traced back into Africa; that the strong African tendency for bifacilally retouched points and foliates is not seen in the Levant until the Neolithic! (pg. 105)

The ‘Aurignacian’ aspect of this level is limited to some carinated tools. There are no personal ornaments, no figurines, no engravings, and no evidence of any ‘well-organized’ campsite. Pierced bone and shell, as well as numbers of bone and antler tools, do appear in the Levant at c. 30,000 BP, some 10,000 years later than their appearance in Europe! (pg. 105)

The reality of Near Eastern prehistory raises some serious questions about the authors’ scenario. How can the ‘modern’ Aurignacian, as they define it, be associated with the spread of anatomically modern people into Europe from the Levant before 40,000 BP, when the ‘early’ Levantine Aurignacian does not include those elements which they consider evidence for ‘modern’ behavior? (pg. 105)

Where, how, and why did this ‘modern’ behaviour develop? It is merely stated to be part of the Aurignacian in Europe by 40,000 BP. Why, if anatomically modern people were around from 100,000 BP, did their potential ‘modernity’ not manifest itself for 60,000 years? (pg. 105)

The vast majority of those traits considered indicative of ‘modern’ behaviour are shown to begin only at 40,000 BP. The examples given for such ‘modern’ behavior as regional art, structures, well-planned campsites, storage pits, etc., however, date closer to 30,000 BP (even to 20,000 bp) than they do to 40,000 BP. Even these examples are mainly exceptions and in no way universally typical, even of Europe. (pg. 106)

Beyond Stone Tools

Ofer Bar-Yosef

According to one version (Davidson & Noble 1992), the earliest settlers crossed the 100km waterway by boat some 55,000 years ago (Roberts et al. 1990). Building boats would require the use of modern language. Thus, the crossing of a major waterway testifies to the existence of modern language among southeast Asian hominids around 60,000 BP. (pg. 108)

Reply: Confronting the Neanderthals

Christopher Stringer & Clive Gamble

Instead we agree with Bar-Yosef who reiterates a point he has made before (1987,34) that ‘it is not in the lithics, but in features such as hearths, the spatial distribution of debris, etc., that the emergence of modern humans is reflected’. (pg. 114)

END Review Feature

Cambridge Archaeological Journal 4:1 (1994), 95-119

The Neanderthal World: Flat Earth or New Horizons?

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Torroni, Antonio, Marie T. Lott, Margaret F. Cabell, Yu-Sheng Chen, Leo Lavergne, and Douglas C. Wallace 1994. mtDNA and the Origin of Caucasians: Identification of Ancient Caucasian-specific Haplogroups, One of Which Is Prone to a Recurrent Somatic Duplication in the D-Loop Region. Am. J. Hum. Genet. 55: pp. 760-776.

Consequently, though human evolution is brief, a large number of mtDNA variants distinguish the major racial groups, yielding powerful genetic markers for inferring the ethnic background of human subjects. For instance, 70%-100% of the mtDNAs from sub-Saharan African populations belong to an mtDNA group defined by a HpaI site at nucleotide pair (np) 3592 (Denaro et a. 1981; Scozzari et al. 1988, 1994; Soodyall and Jenkins 1992), which is found at very low frequencies outside Africa and only in Caucasian populations that historically have admixed with Africans (Bonne-Tamir et al. 1986; De Benedictis 1989b; Semino et al. 1989; Ritte et al. 1993. Approximately 60% of Asian Mongoloid mtDNAs have an AluI site at np 10397 (Ballinger et al. 1992; Passarino et al. 1993; Torroni et al. 1994b), which is absent in Africans and Europeans (p. 760).

Parsimony analysis suggest that all Caucasian mtDNAs are grouped into two major lineages (fig. 1) distinguished by the presence or absence of a DdeI site at np 10394. The NJ tree provides a less clear-cut subdivision of the haplotypes into these two lineages (fig. 2). However, it maintains the clustering of the large majority of the haplotypes lacking the 10394 DdeI site. The 10394 DdeI site is found in 26.3% of the Caucasian mtDNAs, a lower frequency than either the 66% observed in Asians (Ballinger et al. 1992; Torroni et al. 1993a, 1994b) or the 91% observed in sub-Saharan Africans (Y.-S. Chen, A. Torroni, and D.C. Wallace, unpublished data). This polymorphism is probably very ancient, since it also subdivides Mongoloid (Ballinger et al. 1992; Torroni et al. 1993a, 1994b) and African (Y.-S. Chen, A. Torroni, and D.C. Wallace, unpublished data) phylogenies into two major lineages (p. 762).

All Native American mtDNAs belong to one of only four haplogroups defined by a HaeIII site at np 663, a 9-bp deletion in the COIItRNALys intergenic region, an AluI site at np 13262, or the absence of an AluI site at np 5176 (Torroni et al. 1992, 1993a, 1994a: Torroni and Wallace 1994). These Native American mutations and the associated haplotypes have never been observed in Africans and Caucasians but are found in northeastern Asia and Siberia, from which the ancestral Native Americans derived from (Ballinger et al. 1992; Torroni et al. 1993b) (p. 760).

Our survey revealed that 64% of European mtDNAs fell into four Haplogroups: H-K. Since these haplogroups are characterized by Caucasian-specific mutations, they probably originated after ancestral Caucasians separated from the ancestors of modern Asians and Africans. Hence the ages of these haplogroups could provide lower and upper limits to the age of modern Europeans (p. 766).

NOTE My work suggests that the Amerindian lineages shared between northeast Asians and Amerindians is the result of admixture with gene clines pointing the way out of the Americas. Just read the first paragraph a couple time and repeat the DRIFT “there’s no place like home, there’s no place like home.” you’ll soon see; Eve is from Kansas! AMH

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A. Astrinidis and A. Kouvatsi 1994. Mitochondrial DNA Polymorphism in Northern Greece in Human Biology, August v. 66, no. 4, pp. 601-611, 1994

Human mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) is a circular molecule that has been completely sequenced (Anderson et al. 1981). Particular features, such as a high mutation rate (Brown et al. 1979), maternal inheritance (Giles et al. 1980), and absence of recombination (Zuckerman et al. 1984), have favored the use of mtDNA in studying the genetic structure of populations. (pg. 601)

The greatest variability was found for AvaII. Morph 1 represented 74.6% of the individuals; morph 9, 8.5%; morph 13, 6%; and morph 2, 5.1%. Morphs 3, 5, and 15 were also found at low frequencies. The remarkable frequency of morph 13 and the fact that it was found also in high frequencies in Italians and Jews suggest that it may be a Mediterranean morph. (pg. 604)

In comparison with other genetic markers an insufficient number of European populations have been studied for their mtDNA type. Thus more samples and different European populations are needed to have a better understanding of the geographic heterogeneity of mtDNA type frequency distribution throughout Europe. This could probably clarify the mechanism of mtDNA evolution, because there are still some different opinions. (pg. 608)

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Batsheva Bonne-Tamir, M.J. Johnson, A. Natali, D.C. Wallace 1986. Human Mitochondrial DNA Types in Two Israeli Populations–A Comparative Study at the DNA Level Am. J. Hum. Genet. 38:341-351

In contrast, the Israeli Jewish group is polymorphic, having four different morphs as follows: 57 exhibit morph 1; 37 exhibit morph 2, and the rare morphs 3 and 4 are represented by one individual each. Those exhibiting morph 2 in this group are all of Ashkenazi origin in whom, if regarded separately, morph 2 is exhibited at a frequency of 44%. Additionally, the rare morph 4, found originally in a person from Taiwan [8], was encountered in a Yemenite Jewish woman. Seven different patterns have previously been described for this enzyme, with morph 1 being the most common in all populations investigated and frequencies varying between 76% and 100%. (pg. 343)

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Eric Delson – ONE SOURCE NOT MANY NEWS AND VIEWS pg. 206.

“Modern humans are unknown from western Europe or Australia before about 35,000 years ago, when the fossils already have at least some regional characteristics the (the interpretation that the archaic appearance of some Australian crania may be due to cultural practices of deformation rather than persistence of H. erectus features is gaining ground”).

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Primate Studies

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Jalles-Filho, Euphly 1995. Manipulative Propensity and Toll Use in Capuchin Monkeys. Current Anthropology p. 664.

Their work suggests that capuchins use bone tools in a way functionally and formally similar to the way the early hominids are hypothesized to have used them, a finding with important implications for the genesis of tool use-and the development of the earliest technologies-in human evolution (p. 664).

NOTE This is consistent with mid-Pleistocene New World habitations that have continually been associated with bone tools rather than stone. The earliest modern humans in the Old World are also aliened with bone tool industries. Bonnichsen suggests in the New World that post Pleistocene occupations went from stone to bone. Clovis was a bone modification tool used to flute stone projectile point technologies, being “Paleoindian Traditions.” AMH

________________________________________________________________________Fleagle, John G. and Elwyn L. Simons 1995. Limb Skeleton and Locomotor Adaptations of Apidium phiomense, an Oligocene Anthropoid from Egypt. American Journal of Physical Anthropology 97: pp. 235-289

In general, Apidium lacks characteristic features of either cercopithecoid monkeys or hominoid apes. Overall, the skeleton shows greatest similarities to the same elements of small platyrrhines such as Saimiri and is also very similar to the hypothetical morphotype for the ancestral platyrrhine. The skeleton of Apidium phiomense is the most primitive anthropoid postcranial skeleton known (p. 235).

It also lacks the characteristic features of either suspensory (or slow climbing) species or terrestrial quadrupeds. The greatest number of similarities in functional features is to the New World monkeys Cebus apella and Saimiri sciureus among extant higher primates; however, both of these species are characterized by more slender limbs than Apidium. (p. 257).

Overall, the greatest phenetic similarities are with extant platyrrhines, especially the smaller genera such as Aotus, Saimiri, and some callitrichines. In many anatomical details, Apidium is more like platyrrhine monkeys than any other group of extant primates (p. 286).

The actual phylogenetic position of Apidium and the other parapithecoids in early anthropoid phylogeny will only come through broader comparisons of the entire anatomy of this family. Nevertheless, the fossil remains available thus far provide a remarkable glimpse into the skeletal anatomy of a most interesting and successful early anthropoid that is almost certainly very near the base of the radiation of Old and New World higher primates (p. 387).

NOTE New World primate-like features found in the earliest Old World primates. Makes you wonder! New World monkeys and modern humans are more gracial than Old World primates and their descendent hominoid groups. AMH

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Mark Stoneking, Stephen T. Sherry, and Linda Vigilant – GEOGRAPHIC ORIGIN OF HUMAN MITOCHONDRIAL DNA REVISITED – SYST. BIOL. 41(3):384-391, 1992.

“Maddison et al. raised the question that the chimpanzee control region sequence may be too distantly related to the human sequences to provide meaningful phylogenetic information”.

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Pepe G., O. Rickards, C. Jodice, and G. Modiano 1995. Allele and Haplotype Frequency Distribution of the EcoRI, RsaI, COLIA2 RFLPs among Various Human Populations. Human Biology, December 1995, v. 67, no. 6, pp. 905-920.

Furthermore, the only data presented in a suitable way for comparisons at this level are those referring to Italians and to a native American population (Pepe et. al. 1990, 1994) (Figure 3) (p. 916).

Figure 3 shows that the first of the two more common haplotypes (EcoRI-RsaI-MspI: + + + and – + +) seems to discriminate well the Africans from the Europeans, whereas the Asians and related populations show intermediate frequencies compatible with both of them. The – + – haplotype was found only in some African and European groups. The remaining five haplotypes were observed only among Europeans and Asians (p. 918).

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Kramer, Andrew, Steven M. Donnelly, James H. Kidder, Stephen D. Ousley & Stephen M. Olah 1995. Craniometric variation in large-bodied hominoids: testing the single-species hypothesis for Homo habilis. Journal of Human Evolution (1995) 29, 443-462.

Many researchers have suggested that the fossils attributed to H. habilis display magnitudes and patterns of variation that defy inclusion within a single species. For example, recent papers by Rightmire (1993), employing morphological comparison and ratio diagrams, and by Wood (1993), who utilized univariate and multivariate analyses, both concluded that early East African Homo was represented by another species in addition to H. habilis (p. 461).

As can be appreciated by the foregoing discussion, the position that there were at least two contemporary species of early Homo in eastern Africa, ca. 2 Ma, has been steadily gaining support since the mid-1980’s. However, there is still no consensus concerning this issue because some researchers, led by Tobias (1991), continue to present persuasive arguments for maintaining the integrity of H. habilis as a single species (p. 445).

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Yves Coppens 1994 East Side Story: The Origin of Humankind Scientific American May

It was not until the 1960s that the world eagerly turned its attention to eastern Africa. In 1959 Mary Leakey found at Olduvai an australopithecine skull equipped with all its upper teeth. . . . After that significant finding, expeditions started to arrive in abundance: a new team came each year for the first 12 years, and each one excavated for 10 or 20 seasons. Never before had such an effort been deployed by paleontologists or paleoanthropologists. (pg. 90)

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The current disposition countering New World hominid evolution is illustrated by Bruce MacFadden’s appraisal that “paleontologists studying the fossil history of primates have good reason to lament the fragmentary record that must be used to decipher the evolution of this important group. With the great strides that have been made in recent years in the Old World, it can truly be said that the paleontological record of the New World platyrrhines is indeed the weakest of the lot. There are many reasons for this, but these mostly stem from the fact that, with the push to find human ancestors, emphasis has been outside of South America”

(Bruce MacFadden, source misplaced 1990 pg. 7).

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Virginia Morell WILL PRIMATE GENETICS SPLIT ONE GORILLA INTO TWO Science 1995 VOL. ?

This study didn’t just examine gorilla DNA, however. Ruvolo also compared new DNA sequence data from several humans, chimpanzees, orangutans, and siamangs. Her findings support previous research showing that modern humans are remarkably less diverse genetically than are the great apes. ‘The most different humans on the face of the Earth are less different than two lowland gorillas from the same forest in West Africa.” Ruvolo says. This lack of human diversity indicates a small ancestral population. Page 1661

The implication is that our ancestors went through a population crunch, which restricted the gene pool. Harpending, using a different method of mtDNA analysis, came to similar conclusions last year (Science, 1 October 1993, p. 27). “Our low amount of genetic diversity suggests that most of the populations that were alive 200,000 years a go didn’t leave any descendants, “says Harvard paleoanthropologist David Pilbeam, who is married to Ruvolo. “And the question then becomes. why? What caused the bottleneck? It’s an issue that needs to be addressed.” Ruvolo and others suspect that some great catastrophe occurred, but its nature remains unknown. Page 1661

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Escalante, Ananias A., Eladio Barrio, and Francisco J. Ayala 1995. Evolutionary Origin of Human and Primate Malarias: Evidence from the Circumsporozoite Protein Gene. Mol. Biol. Evol. 12(4):616, 623, 624.

The human P. malariae is indistinguishable from P. brasilianum, and P. vivax is indistinguishable from P. Simium; P. brasilianum and P. simium are parasitic to New World monkeys. The human P. vivax-like is indistinguishable from P. simiovale, a parasite of Old World macaques. We conjecture that P. malariae, P. vivax, and P. vivax-like are evolutionarily recent human parasites, the first two at least acquired only within the last several thousand years, and perhaps within the last few hundred years, after the expansion of human populations in South America following the European colonizations (p. 616).

We tentatively conjecture that the switch has been in all three cases from nonhuman primates to humans and that these species have become human parasites only very recently, although the arguments we will now advance in support of this conjecture are tentative and may be proved wrong when gene sequences become available for other nonhuman parasites (p. 623).

It must also be noted against our argument that some malariologists, based on the worldwide distribution of P. malariae, have assumed that the New World quartan malaria of monkeys (P. brasilianum) came from humans rather than vice versa (Coatney et al., 1971, p. 210). … However, it is also plausible that vivax is an old human parasite (or perhaps recently acquired from catarrhine monkeys), which was transmitted to platyrrhine monkeys after human colonization of South America (pg. 624).

NOTE This paper suggests recent-host-switch conjecture for explaining the virulence of P. falciparum in humans. AMH

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Hershkovitz, Philip 1977 Living New World Monkeys (Platyrrhini)

…. (4) “Aotus and Alouatta are definitely platyrrhines according to the presence of an internarium. There is no similarity whatsoever with the catarrhine condition. (5) The division of the higher primates into platyrrhina and catarrhina is justified. This may indicate a very early evolutionary separation of the Old World and New World primates. (6) The internarium of the New World monkeys shows sinus hairs and is accordingly a sensorial area, at least on the sense of touch” (Hershkovitz 1977 p.1002).

The time of platyrrhine/catarrhine divergence and degree of relationship between them at this time, assuming a common ancestor is still speculative. Not speculative, however, is that the resemblance’s between living South American and African simians are to numerous and close to be products of parallel evolution alone (Hershkovitz 1977 p. 70).

NOTE This is the definitive work on New World Primates. It has some great comparisons that would make it seem the relationship between characteristics shared by Platyrrhini and humans is more then just simple evidence of “convergent evolution”

Although there are continuing debates as to the initial source for the Eocene (55-32 million years ago) presence of New World Primates the general consensus has been established that they must share an earlier common ancestor with other Old World higher primate species. AMH

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Ford Susan M. 1990 Locomotor adaptations in fossil platyrrhines. in Journal of Human Evolution 19, pp. 141-173

Reconsideration of the polarity of traits in light of recent analyses of parapithecid fossils indicates most if not all hard tissue traits previously believed to be platyrrhine synapomorphies are in fact ancestral anthropoid traits. Thus, it is not possible at present to determine with certainty if any particular fossil, either from South America or elsewhere, was a member of the Platyrrhini…. Thus, we cannot at present answer the question as to: (1) whether a non-platyrrhine stock reached South America, in conjunction with the entry of platyrrhine, or a pre-platyrrhine stock reached South America prior to diverging morphologically from other anthropoids; or (2) whether platyrrhines diverged morphologically from other anthropoids on some other continent, before migrating to South America, perhaps leaving some fossil record elsewhere of their presence or of a collateral platyrrhine line (now extinct) (Susan Ford 1990 p. 141 and 170).

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Brace, C. L., P.E. Ashley Montagu 1965. Man’s Evolution, An Introdution to Physical Anthropology The MacMillan Company, New York

However ,…the most interesting of the New World Monkeys is the spider monkey. Not only does it possess the most thoroughly prehensile tail of any primate, but, it is the only monkey in either hemisphere which makes more than occasional use of the mode of progression characteristic of the Apes–brachiation. As a consequence of this adaptation there has been some selection for modifications of the pelvis, chest, shoulders, arms, and hands, which show a striking degree of convergence toward the form visible in the same parts of the anatomy of the apes, particularly the gibbon, which, as the smallest of the apes, is not much bigger than the spider monkey. The spider monkey is the only New World monkey in which the thumbs have been reduced often to a mere tubercle. While the spider monkey, as an interesting example of evolutionary convergence, comes closest to the structure of the anthropoid apes of any of the New World monkeys, the possession of a tail, so useful that it is practically a fifth hand, would prevent one from ever confusing a spider monkey with a genuine ape (Brace 1965 pp. 73-75).

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Paabo, Svante 1995. The Y Chromosome and the Origin of all Us (Men). Science Vol. 268, May 26, 1995 Reference (4) Hedges S.B., S. Kumar, K. Tamura, M. Stoneking ibid 255, 737 (1992)

When the root of such trees was sought by connecting them to chimpanzee sequences, the root seemed to fall among African sequences. However, reanalyses of the data (4) indicated that there is very little information in the sequences to justify this conclusion, mainly because the chimpanzee sequence is so distantly related to that of humans that most of the information on its relation to human sequences has been erased by substitutions occurring multiple times at the same positions (Paabo 1995 pg. 1141).

________________________________________________________________________Archaeological References

________________________________________________________________________ Binford, Lewis 1983b.Working at Archaeology Academic Press, Inc.

“Although it is true that we frequently acknowledge that we would like to know what life was like in the past, it should have been clear that we sought to understand processes, particularly the processes that brought into being the facts of the archaeological record. In our view these processes were much more complicated than previously thought (or imagined)”

(Binford 1983b, p. 6).

By casting doubt we established the need for a way of testing the accuracy of alternative ideas. By showing that the traditional conventions could produce inaccurate results, we made it clear that we needed means for evaluating any interpretative conventions used for converting archaeological observations into statements about the past. Only by the use of such means would it be possible to evaluate either the alternative views advanced or the traditional views being questioned. In our view the testing of ideas was central to progress. This position led directly to the second, the investigation of the methods of inference and how to use them – in my opinion the most constructive component of the new archeology (Binford, 1983b, p. 7).

Explanation begins for the archaeologist when observations made on the archaeological record are linked through laws of cultural or behavior functioning to past conditions on events [Binford 1968c:270]. If we…. appeal to unstated perceptual propositions in explaining observations we can have little confidence in the historical reconstructions offered….If the propositions appealed to in explaining our observations of the archaeological record are correct, then we will have gained knowledge of the past [L.R. Binford 1968b:1](Binford, 1983, p. 9).

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Fryer, D.W. 1984. Chapter (?) in,The Origins of Modern Humans: A World Survey of the Fossil Evidence in Smith/Spencer Eds.

Probably the single most characteristic that is associated with the appearance of post-Mousterian groups is the wide usage of blade production techniques [Bordes, 1968]. Although blade tools are not absent in earlier periods, in the Upper Paleolithic and Mesolithic the prismatic core forms the nearly universal first step in stone tool production. Tools derived from these cores are a significant improvement over the earlier flake tools. Blade tools have extremely thin cross-sections and sharp edges, providing more effective cutting and scraping surfaces [Bordes, 1970; Semenov, 1964]. In some cases, the nonworking edge was even dulled before usage, presumably so that the implement could be used without damaging the hand. The significant feature of blade tools is that they can be modified into a variety of forms, designed for specific purposes. This specificity of tool function is a cumulative trend within the Upper Paleolithic. For example:

“Before the Solutrean, the evolution of lithic assemblages seems to lead to the more efficient adaptation of different kinds of tools to different kinds of primary operations (slicers become better slicers, crushers better for crushing, and so on) regardless of the nature of the specific resource on which the operation was performed. From the Solutrean onward, we have increasing evidence for the special tailoring of specific tools to particular resources” [Freeman, 1981, p. 153].

Although this conclusion is based only on archaeological sequences in Cantabrian Spain, the generalization is probably applicable to overall lithic trends in the sequence of Upper Paleolithic and Mesolithic industries. Through time, the variety of tool types increases [Issac, 1972] and more and more control over the intended form occurs. These innovations include thermal pre-treatment that facilitates better-controlled knapping [Bordes, 1969], progressive “microlithization” of tools [Semenov, 1964], and by the Mesolithic, regional tool types that are specifically designed for local ecosystems and subsistence/exploitive patterns [Rozoy, 1978] (Frayer 1984, pp. 213-214).)

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Irving William N. 1987. New Dates from Old Bones Natural History Magazine Feb. 1987

In Southeast Asia, an environment totally different from that of the Yukon, Geoffrey Pope has arrived at a similar formulation: he suggests, as have others, that bamboo served as a basic raw material for making edged tools of many kinds, replacing the need for certain stone tools. Because these tools were made of perishable material, the archaeological record is incomplete. Pope’s observations and the work at Old Crow seems to show that the paleolithic of southeast Asia and northern North America cannot be understood by paying attention only to implements made of stone (Irving 1987).

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New World Archaeological Sites

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NOTE AMH 1. Pedra Ferrad, Brazil (N. Guidon 1990) 33,000 (or more likely 47,000) y.b.p.; 2. Texas Street, San Diego, CA (George F. Carter 1979), 100,000 y.b.p.; 3. Buchanan Canyon, so. CA (Herb Minshall 1989) 100,000 y.b.p.; 4. China Lake (E.L. Davis), so. CA, 40,000 y.b.p.; 5. Pendejo Cave, NM (Richard S. MacNeish, 1989) 38,000-53,000 y.b.p.; 6. Tiama Tiama, Venezuela, (Alan L. Bryan, 1990) 13,000 y.b.p.; 7. Old Crow, Yukon 40,000+ y.b.p. (W.N. Irving, R.E. Morlan); 8. Monte Verde, Chile (Tom Dillehay, 1989) 13,000 and 33,000 y.b.p.; 9. Meadowcroft, PA (James Adovasio) 14,000-18,000 y.b.p.; 10. Calico Hills, CA (Leakey, Simpson 1971) 200,000 y.b.p.; and 11. Santa Rosa Island (Phillip Orr and Reiner Berger) 40,000+ y.b.p.

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Bryan Alan 1991 The Fluted-Point Tradition in the Americas– One of several Adaptations to Late Pleistocene American Invironments Current Research in the Pleistocene Oregon St. U., eds. Robson Bonnichsen and Karen Turnmare

Cinq-Mars and Morlan operate with the reasonable hypothesis that the microblades were mounted as lateral barbs into grooved antler or bone projectile points, like those in the Trail Creek Caves on the Seward Peninsula (Larsen 1968) and at various Late Paleolithic sites in Siberia. They also hypothesize that the microblade technology at the Bluefish and Trail Creek Caves is closely related to and possibly stems from the Dyuktai complex, well dated between 18,000 and 12,000 yr B.P. in Dyuktai Cave and possibly earlier at other sites on the Aldan River (Mochanov 1978) (Bryan 1991).

Several other sites in the Andean region have yielded artifacts in association with extinct fauna. These include Pikimachay Cave, where subtriangular ground-bone points and simple unifacial stone artifacts were found with sloth and horse bones in a context dated 14,150± 180 yr B.P. Earlier cultural contexts are possible, but more difficult to demonstrate (MacNeish et al. 1981). Simple flake artifacts were recovered with horse and mastodon at Tagua Tagua in central Chile from a layer dated 11,380 ± 320 yr B.P. (Montané 1968). Farther south in the sub-Antarctic rain forest, mastodon bones first attracted attention to the Monte Verde locality, but subsequent excavation of this unique wet site has indicated that the bones had simply been collected for use. . . .Despite the presence of extinct animal remains, none of these Andean sites has produced actual evidence that the occupants were specialized big-game hunters. Rather, these early Andean people appear to have been general foragers who occasionally took advantage of locally available large mammals in addition to smaller mammals. (Bryan 1991 pp. 26, emphasis added)

In order to cast doubt on any “pre-Clovis” report, skeptics operating with the conviction that Clovis constitutes the only demonstrated evidence for Pleistocene humans in the Americas and therefore must be the earliest apply what they claim is the scientific method of multiple working hypotheses by raising any imaginable question about the validity of the reported radiocarbon dates, the reported stratigraphy, or the report that artifacts and/or human-made features were recovered in proper contexts. In order to put a cloud over any reported “pre-Clovis” site, skeptics, most of whom have never visited the sites in question, suggest remote possibilities that might conceivably be true, such as that an object that looks like an artifact might have been flaked during a flood or an earthquake, or is the product of a waterfall; that the radiocarbon samples might have been contaminated by coal or ground water containing ancient carbonates; that people might have collected old wood to use in their fires; or that the artifacts might have been intruded from later deposits. Although all these “alternative hypotheses” might conceivably be true, in fact, the skeptics present no actual evidence to support their claim that they are true. Nevertheless, the skeptics insist that as long as at least one alternative hypothesis has been presented, then the original report must be considered as “equivocal.” A reader usually interprets this statement to mean that the original report is probably in error and therefore should be dismissed. (Bryan 1991 pp. )

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NOTE In a personal letter to me (Hicks) George Carter re-described the types of stone tools found in Pleistocene occupations and the systems deployed in their production. Anyone familiar with the debate regarding the antiquity of man in the Americas is well aware that Carter suggests that humans have been present in the Americas at least 100,000 years. His description of the stone tool industries follows: AMH

In the Great Basin – A. [There is an] Abundance of pre-biface projectile [used by] people on the shore of Lake Lahoutan. These are 11,000+ and NOT Clovis (also see Jennings – Danger Cave – Lake Bonneville) — 10,000 + and not fluted -. B. No bifacial points associated with the (extinction time). Lake Mannix: The cultural explosion in America (at least in the West) dates to <15,000, > 11,000. [there is] secondary pressure/percussion flaking with bifacial flaking with flakes driven across the face of the implement. Stone was certainly being broken for 10’s of millennia in America before the + 11,000 yr. explosion. But it was steep flakes, short, often one edge – clearly heavy percussion. True specialized stone hunting points were absent – pre 15,000 – and appeared close to 11,000. But there were strongly developed stone tool industries. The tools were simple cores (a cobble with 2 or 3 flakes removed) — and simple flakes. The flakes undoubtedly were used as general purpose tools; skinning, scraping, wood and bone shaping, etc. On the American scene, you are right on the equatorial “men”. They used scant lithic technology, but they did have stone work traditions.

uniface and flakes —- La Jollan

Blade and core and flakes —- Texas street and Calico

Pebble tools and flakes —- Wide over the Americas

La Jollan duplicates Soan in s.e. Asia and Kartan lithic tools in Australia (Carter pers. correspondence, 1992).

________________________________________________________________________Linguistics

________________________________________________________________________Campbell Lyle, 1990 (source lost)

Even Greenberg, Turner and Zegura (1986; 487) regard their ‘genetic’ data as “still without confirmation” and so as “supplementary.” Therefore, since their dental/genetic claims are not supported, correlation’s between such claims and Greenberg’s linguistic classification (also not substantiated) can be of little value, and postulated migrations to the New World based on such correlations are unwarranted. Finally, as persuasively argued by Rebecca Cann (this volume), the mitochondrial DNA evidence indicates that there were at least eleven lineages from which American Indians descended, perhaps thirty-three; this indicates either several migrating groups or large migrating groups with many unrelated females (cf. Morell 1990; 440 in Campbell 1990).

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Merit Ruhlen (source lost)

Soon after Sapir proposed the Na-Dene family he became aware of many striking similarities between the Na-Dene family and the Asian language family known as Sino-Tibetan. In his correspondence with Alfred Kroeber, Sapir left no doubt that he was absolutely convinced that Na-Dene and Sino-Tibetan belonged to an even more ancient linguistic family: “If the morphological and lexical accord which I find on every hand between Na-Dene and Indo-Chinese [Sino-Tibetan] is “accidental” then every analogy on God’s earth is an accident. It is so powerfully cumulative and integrated that when you tumble to one point a lot of others fall into line” (Golla 1984;374). …Owing to the recent discovery of this family (or re-discovery, in light of Sapir’s earlier proposal), there is not yet a consensus on precisely which language families constitute Dene-Caucasian. I believe that the following should be included: Basque, (North) Caucasian, Sumerian, Burushaski, Nahali, Sino-Tibetan, Yeniseian, and Na-Dene (Ruhlen 1989 pp.12-13).

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NOTE The Amerindians maintain a specific abundance of languages that do not appear to be descendent of any ancient Old World tongue but related nonetheless (Ruhlen 1987; Greenberg 1986) Does their extensive linguistic diversity supports a northern South American origin for the initial dispersal of Joseph Greenberg’s macro-phylum classification of “Amerindian?” That a majority of professional linguists are not in agreement with the methods determining the classification of “Amerind” — as a single linguistic unit comprising 12 distinct groups — is noteworthy considering that there is a fundamental agreement regarding Greenberg’s assessment that Africa contains but 4 language groups. AMH

Excerpted Anthropological Research Articles 1996

compiled with notes by Pardner Hicks; AMH

(please see original article s for proofs)

Alvah M. Pardner Hicks

335 Morro Ave.

Shell Beach CA 93449

phone (805) 773-1004

email # alvah@thegrid.net

Background

The following collections of quotes were gathered as part of a research strategy aimed at exploring a New World alternative to human origins. They represent a diverse array of anthropological studies and subjects helping provide background information for perspectives held by the compiler. Primarily, they represent “warranting evidence” in support of the compiler’s contention that; Amerindian populations should be examined as a potential source for both recent and ancient Homo sapien radiations into what we have come to accept as the “Old” World. More specifically, separate Amerindian radiations are proposed to have led to, (i) the “total replacement” of Old World Hominids beginning less then 50,000 years ago, (ii) subsequent post Holocene Amerindian migration into Siberia resulting in admixture with northeast Asians, and (iii) the initial arrival of man (American Indians) into Polynesia ~3,600 years ago.

TABLE OF CONTENTS:

INTRODUCTORY ARTICLES 2

BACKGROUND IDEAS AND OPINIONS 5

NORTH AMERICA 7

SOUTH AMERICA 19

SIBERIA 22

AFRICA 24

EUROPE 29

NORTHEAST ASIA 39

POLYNESIA 43

AUSTRALIA 46

GENETICS 49

SCIENCE GEOGRAPHY 55

SCIENCE 56

PRIMATES 61

INTRODUCTORY ARTICLES

The following two excerpted articles provide a superb backdrop to the New World Pleistocene archaeology debate. Understanding the essence of this debate is central in surveying genetic, linguistic, dental, and related anthropological information contained in this compilation of research articles gathered from throughout the world and published 1996. My own “Comments by the compiler” provide a backdrop for my theoretical interpretations. This is the second year I have provided my closest colleagues with “excerpted articles” from the UC Santa Barbara Library’s “current periodicals”‘ listings. You can find 1995’s and earlier “excerpted articles” on my “web page” soon. Enjoy them at your own risk!

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Archaeology Magazine, pp. 60-63, March/April 1997

Book Review by Brian M. Fagan

Monte Verde: A Late Pleistocene Settlement in Chile, by Tom Dillehay

Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1997.

For more than a century archaeologists have battled over when the Americas were first settled. The debate has been remarkable for its passion, rancor, and lack of hard archaeological data. Perhaps this is because conferences are easier to organize than excavations, but the fact remain that only a handful of archaeological sites document early occupation. Few are thoroughly published. Monte Verde is an exception.

Monte Verde is an open-air wetland residential site with bone and wooden artifacts, hut foundations, and ecological evidence preserved under a peat layer dating to about 13,000 years ago (p. 60).

The carbon dates place the main cultural component between 12,300 and 12,800 years ago. A much earlier layer, opened up on a limited basis and possibly of cultural origin, dates to between 32,840 and 33,900 b.p. (p. 61).

Later chapters study cordage and used ground surfaces, present-day and ancient plants, and stone tools. The latter include four simple bifaces, perforators and bola stones, and many expediently used stone fragments such as convenient, sharp-edged flakes picked up and used for such tasks as cutting hide or scraping wood. The closest analogies come from the Taima Taima site in distant Venezuela. Wisely, Dillehay does not pursue the general similarities closely. The Monte Verde team made microwear observations on 242 stone tool, finding evidence for processing of materials such as plants and softwoods. An exhaustive study of the animal remains, down to cut marks on individual fragments, identified six or seven mastodon, and paleo-lama, amphibians, reptiles, and birds, even bird eggshell. Animal tissue samples include shreds of hide associated with dwellings and pieces of mastodon flesh. Two concluding chapters summarize evidence for seasonal occupation, social organization, and economic diversification necessitated by spreading temperate forest (pp. 61-62). (all emphasis added)

In the epilogue, Dillehay stresses the diversity of early human settlement in the New World. Monte Verde paints a very different picture of first settlement from northern Paleoindian kill sites. . . The Monte Verdeans used a great variety of resources within three miles of their settlement. They combined foraging with specialized plant collecting. Interestingly, studies of different houses revealed variations in the use of local and nonlocal materials, as if the Monte Verdeans were exploring new and little-known habitats within their circumscribed territory. Dillehay believes the people used a simple technology to gather and experiment with diverse food resources. They exploited a large territory yet used minimal technology to do so. Perhaps they had what Dillehay calls a “learning economy,” with contacts with other groups living at some distance. Alternatively, they may have practiced a strategy common in later times-the exploitation of different ecological zones to reduce risk should the resources of any one zone fail (p. 62). (emphasis added)

Monte Verde was so unexpected that some archaeologists, this reviewer among them wondered if the site really was an undisturbed cultural layer. We were wrong, Dillehay has proved Monte Verde is a settlement, probably at the threshold of colonization of the Americas. He has also shown that we must think of the initial settlement of the New World not as a set of simple migrations, but as a process of complex and diverse adaptation to a myriad of unfamiliar environments. Monte Verde, a humble yet complex settlement, reveals the first Americans for what they really were: small, highly diverse human groups capable of adapting to almost any environment (p. 62). (emphasis added)

Dillehay and his colleagues—some 70 scientists from many academic disciplines and different nations— have been at pains to put any doubts about the authenticity of the site. This is how it should be, given the very early date of Monte Verde and its enormous importance to our knowledge of the first settlement of the Americas.

The Monte Verde monograph does far more than record and authenticate an archaeological site of international significance. Dillehay and his colleagues have set the standards to be expected when documenting a site which purports to chronicle early settlement (p. 63).

He has done brilliantly with Monte Verde, and this volume is a remarkable testimony to a fine archaeologist and to what modern archaeological teamwork can achieve. Would that others would follow Dillehay’s example (p. 63). (emphasis added)

Comment by the compiler “Would that others would follow Dillehay’s example.” “Wisely, Dillehay does not pursue the general similarities closely.” Both of these statements epitomize the same “rancor” Fagan has himself criticized. Perhaps a “TRUCE” should be called.

What Monte Verde provides is: a verified site to now compare other less well preserved potential habitations to. Certainly, everyone should have an archaeological site set in peat! The acceptance of Monte Verde as a late Pleistocene site must be attributed to not only the painstaking energy of the discoverer but to the viability of the archaeological signature left behind (preserved in the peat) by the inhabitants 13,000 years ago. Fagan suggests that discriminating archaeologists would believe that other – early New World – sites exist if researchers were as thorough as Dillehay’s team. That it has taken over 20 years – from the initial discovery in 1976 – for archaeologists to finally accept Monte Verde as a late Pleistocene human settlement does not surprise other archaeologists with “pre-Clovis” discoveries – not preserved in peat.

As for the activities associated with Monte Verde, could they represent a specialized form of subsistence economy born from generations of occupation of the Americas? The evidence shows little, if any, of the signatures suggesting contact with Old World hunter/gathers, in direct conflict with the now disproved theory being; “Clovis First.” A new theory must emerge from the “rancor” of the past century by developing a paradigm to test the relationships that now do not link the first Americans as descendants of Old World Paleolithic hunters. The subsistence behavior defining Monte Verde’s “learning economy” may represent the ancestral condition the human primate was born into. The untested hypothesis – offering an autochthonous isolation for the human species within the confines of the Americas – is compatible with Monte Verde’s Pleistocene definition as a definition supporting an ancient lifeway. The “replacement” of Old World hominids by modern humans from the Americas requires that we interpret the significance of a Pleistocene Amerindian presence. As Fagan asserts, the archaeological signatures from Monte Verde requires we deliberate their “international significance.” They also should allow Americanists a comparison for validating what are “simple technologies” being employed by “highly diverse human groups capable of adapting to almost any environment (p. 62).”

Monte Verde promises to offer to New World archaeologists what Jackie Robinson did for African American athletes and baseball. It will grow beyond these first steps – allow new sites onto the playing field – and provide a new measure for the verification of what we should and should not expect in accepting New World Pleistocene sites. The significance of Monte Verde may never be repeated in either, the magnitude its acceptance holds in dismantling barriers “consensus opinion” has brought mid-Pleistocene human occupation of the Americas, or, the treasure of scientific information the authors have uncovered in substantiating the early ecological balance man once held with-in this, as this author believes, his primordial niche.

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Fossils & the Folsom Cowboy

Natural History 2/97. by Douglas Preston, pp. 16-22

In September 1908, a cowboy named George McJunkin, foreman of the Crowfoot Ranch in eastern New Mexico, encountered a fencing problem. . . While pondering how to fix the fence, McJunkin noticed some freshly exposed bones at the bottom of the trench.

He climbed down into the arroyo and, using his pliers, dug out a couple of bones, which he tied behind his saddle and brought back to the ranch house.

Some four months after McJunkin’s death [January 1922] Carl Schwachheim and Fred Howarth decided to visit the McJunkin bone pit. …

In January 1926, Howarth had to deliver some cattle to a stockyard in Denver. He hired Schwachhgeim to look after the cattle on the train trip, and in Denver the two men carried the sack of bones over to the Colorado Museum of Natural History (now the Denver Museum of Natural History). They were ushered into the office of Jesse D. Figgins, the museum’s director, and unwittingly stepped into the center of one of the most controversial scientific questions of the day: the antiquity of human beings in the New World (p.18). (emphasis added)

At the time, Ales Hrdlicka, curator of the Smithsonian’s Division of Physical Anthropology, dominated the field of anthropology. In the nineteenth century, many unsupported claims had been advanced “proving” the Indians had been in the New World for tens and even hundreds of thousands of years. But by Hrdlicka’s time, a powerful reaction against such claims had developed. Hrdlicka became the leader of the skeptics, undertaking a crusade to debunk what he considered bad science. His view, based on skull morphology, was that Indians had arrived in the New World no earlier than 1,000 B.C. When any unfortunate archeologist made an assertion to the contrary, Hrdlicka reacted so vigorously that he sometimes ruined the career of his target. By 1925, the atmosphere was such that most archeologists were too intimidated to make a report. The subject of early humans in America was effectively taboo (p. 18). (emphasis added)

McJunkin’s bone pit was one of the most important archeological discoveries made in America, and it caused a permanent shift in the prevailing paradigm. All of a sudden, archeologists had another 7,000 years of human history account for. The find also made the search for early Americans respectable again, and it provided a time span that was sufficient to explain the bewildering diversity of languages and customs of Native American tribes.

Once such a shift occurs, a flood of new discoveries and a reevaluation of older ones often follow. In the tow decades after the Folsom find, dozens of Paleo-Indian sites came to light, and papers came pouring out of museums and universities across the country. The fluted Folsom points had been turning up for years-only nobody had recognized them for what they were. The Folsom find led directly to the discovery of an even older culture, the Clovis mammoth hunters, who were the immediate ancestors of the Folsom people. Hrdlicka found himself increasingly isolated, and yet the grumpy old warlord of physical anthropology would not admit his error. When the association of human artifacts with Pleistocene mammoths, horses, camels, and bison could no longer be denied. Hrdlicka suggested that these animals had become extinct far more recently than was supposed. Like the Swiss zoologist and geologist Louis Agassiz, who went to his deathbed denying Darwin’s theory of evolution, Hrdlicka never accepted the antiquity of human beings in the New World (20-21). (emphasis added)

Half a century after his death, McJunkin was still held in high regard by the citizens of Folsom, who, while knowing little about the scientific revolution he had caused, remembered with great affection the remarkable black cowboy with the telescope, bones, and scientific books.

Comment by the compiler The initial “settlement of the Americas” has long been set against the backdrop of the consensus paradigm: that Clovis hunters were the New Worlds first human inhabitants. This view has been in vogue for over 60 years while even this limit was difficult to establish at first, as Preston points out. Mirroring the difficulty Clovis proponents had in establishing an Ice Age presence of Mankind in the Americas are the researchers of Monte Verde, led by Tom Dillehay. The acceptance of even earlier inhabitants then the Clovis mammoth hunters has been gaining steam over the past century and, as the train finally arrives at the station – a little late and a little worn from the journey – these site’s discoverers are certainly ready to rejoice in the shadows of the pristine evidence substantiating Monte Verde. The first quarter of the century and the reputations that were both won and lost have no less of a parallel in today’s marketing of Amerindian Pleistocene occupations. Dillehay and his team may have won the battle of attrition as the growing acceptance of Monte Verde only promises to redirect the efforts others have championed in establishing a mid-Pleistocene occupation of the Americas.

BACKGROUND

IDEAS and OPINIONS

______________________________________________________________________________Journal of Social and Evolutionary systems 18(1):87-93 1996. J.C. Lester

Popper’s Epistemology versus Popper’s Politics: A Libertarian Viewpoint

Let us briefly recapitulate Popper’s scientific epistemology and methodology. As Hume showed, to support a universal theory with evidence is logically impossible. All corroborating evidence, even if accurate, is an infinitely small proportion of what the theory predicts. But one counter-example shows a universal theory to be false. Thus, the only rational way to pursue truth is to conjecture without evidence and then deliberately to seek refutation. The bolder the conjecture (compatible with background knowledge), the greater the chance of capturing more truth. The scientific community is more or less a libertarian anarchy: anyone can form a theory and test it, and the evidence can be accepted or ignored by other individual scientists (though the individual scientist seeks intersubjective agreement) (pg. 87). (emphasis added AMH)

If the scientific community were run democratically (say, in a majority-rules mode), it would be as great a disaster for the discovery of truth as democracy is a disaster for the promotion of liberty and welfare. Polanyi (1951) shows the deleterious effects on science of greater state-regulation (pg. 88).

Comment by the compiler We must accept the fact that a uniform theory conforming solely with an Old World origin for mankind has yet to resolve the issue of human origins. Certainly, we should never abandon what we have already learned in order to develop a new paradigm. I am not asking that we do this, i. e. the equivalent of shooting oneself in the foot. What I want others to explore is a new hypothesis, to build from the past a paradigm that can meaningfully adopt the lessons detected in previous endeavors. Understanding that there exists for many investigators unresolvable discrepancies – that this may be inherent with the Old World ideology used to define it as the source of our own humanity – should itself propel us to seek new choices. By endorsing the limitations gained in defining these interpretations they become part of the solution. An outline can be drawn, methodologically biased into the structure of a developing theory, by accepting that an unexplored alternative exists. This compilation aims to investigate (what has been a long dismissed alternative) the potential resolution a greater antiquity affording Native Americans offers the science of human evolution.

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Kenneth M. Weiss

Is There a Paradigm Shift in Genetics? Lessons from the Study of Human Diseases

MOLECULAR PHYLOGENETICS AND EVOLUTION Vol. 5, No. 1, February, pp. 259-265, 1996

Thomas Kuhn (1962) made the word “paradigm” a part of the working vocabulary of science. In his assessment, major progress occurs when an accepted theory, or paradigm, can no longer accommodate the accumulating facts in the field. Facts are always collected to work away at the edges of understanding. Mostly, these facts lead to incremental advances, but there are always some facts that do not easily fit the theory. For a time, scientists struggle to force these facts into the theory, but eventually a new way to view the data–a new paradigm–is proposed. Suddenly, all the existing facts fall into a new order, and a new phase of normal incremental science begins. The old model becomes a subset of the new. There has been a scientific revolution (pg. 259).

Continental drift, the Copernican astronomy, relativity, spherical geometry, and the atomic model of matter are other examples of transforming paradigm shifts (pg. 259).

______________________________________________________________________________In the Mind of the Beholder, Natural History, 2/94, pps. 14-23

Stephen Jay Gould

But scientists who make the discovery rarely follow the optimal pathway of subsequent logical reconstruction. Scientists reach conclusions for the damnedest of reasons: intuitions, guesses, redirections after wild goose chases, all combined with a dollop of rigorous observation and logical reasoning to be sure–context of discovery (p. 14). (emphasis added AMH)

In the most celebrated use in a social sense, T.S. Kuhn referred to the shared worldview of scientists as a paradigm (see his classic 1962 book, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions). Such paradigms, in Kuhn’s view, are so constraining, and so unbreakable in their own terms, that fundamentally new theories must be imported from elsewhere (insights of other disciplines, conscious radicalism of young rebels within a field) and must then triumph by rapid replacement (scientific revolution), rather than by incremental advance (p. 16).

But in so disproving the original claim, correction only dictated agnosticism, not a contrary conclusion–that is, the new trees are consistent with origin in a single place, but Africa cannot be affirmed as the clearly preferred spot, although Africa remains as plausible as any other place by this criterion (p. 21). (emphasis added AMH)

I can only suppose that we want to segregate humans off as something special. We wish to see our evolution, particularly the late expansion of our brain to current size, as an event of more than merely local significance. We do not wish to view our global triumph as so fortuitously dependent upon the contingent history of a small African population; we would rather conceive our exalted intellect as so generally advantageous that all populations, in all places, must move in adaptive unison toward the same desired state (p. 22).

For truth is the daughter of time (p. 23).

Maybe my horse is coming in. But maybe I am only riding a gelding named “fashion,” a nag destined to stumble at the gate next season at Hialeah as the Seabiscuit or Secretariat of deterministic gradualism comes thundering down the homestretch (p. 23).

(emphasis added AMH)

Comment by the compiler All these quotes come from the same article, being what I believe is Gould at his best.

NORTH AMERICA

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Native American Oral Traditions and Archaeology

Rodger Anyon, T. J. Ferguson, Loretta Jackson, and Lillie Lane

SAA Bulletin, Volume 14, March/April 1996, No. 2

Tessie Naranjo (1995, Thoughts on Migration by Santa Clara Pueblo. Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 14:247-250) recently pointed out that Native American oral traditions are often axiomatic rather than hypothetical. Whereas scientists search for exclusive and universal truth (pg. 15).

These methodologies need to be incorporated into archaeological method and theory to establish the scholarly basis for using oral traditions in historical research.

Good scientific research uses a methodology based on the falsification of hypotheses. In essence, archaeologists disprove what they can, and then create theories to explain the residual hypotheses (pg. 15).

Oral traditions and scientific knowledge both have validity in their own cultural context. Scientific knowledge does not constitute a privileged view of the past that in and of itself makes it better than oral traditions. It is simply another way of knowing the past.

Even in situations where oral traditions are not used in archaeological research, archaeologists should be sensitive to both the inherent limitations of scientific knowledge with respect to cultural heritage (pg. 15).

______________________________________________________________________________The Foraging Spectrum: Diversity in Hunter-Gatherer Lifeways, Robert L. Kelly. Washington D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1995, 446 pp. Reviewed in American Anthropologist, Vol. 98, No. 4, December 1996, p. 913

Reviewed by John M. Lindly and Geoffrey A. Clark

This is an important book, not because of path-breaking original research (there is little new here), but because Kelly presents a current, insightful, and well-written critique of the disparate approaches to research on what are known to anthropology as hunter-gatherers. He adopts the conceptual framework of behavioral ecology, defined by a focus on relationships between behavior and environment, firmly grounded in evolutionary theory, and distinguished from cultural ecology by an explicit concern with process questions. Since this foregrounds the relationships among human subsistence activities, biological reproduction, and learning in a social context, Kelly argues that behavioral ecology can best account for modern humans as biological and cultural animals and can best explain how we came to be the way we are today (p. 913).

Comment by the compiler The robust but simplistic archaeological signature uncovered from Chile’s “Monte Verde” just 13,800 bp may be atypical of the type of human subsistence activities delineating other mid-Pleistocene occupations of the Americas. It can be argued that this kind of behavior is unrelated to Paleolithic occupations from contemporary Old World sites. That these early New World activities do not appear to be descendent of Old World hunter /gatherer societies – 30,000 years in the making – does not require that we dismiss them, (because of the limited evidence supporting mid-Pleistocene occupations), as archaeological sites. As Owen points out in Smith/Spencer (1984), until we can define a theory to help guide us, the meaning and/or verification of pre-Clovis will be difficult to process. By arguing that mid-Pleistocene occupations represent a more simplistic behavior a new relationship can be suggested from these occupations. That relationship could represent an ancestral condition, a kinder/simpler human subsistence activity that remained isolated from specialized hunter/gatherer subsistence activities that we know evolved during mankind’s expansion into what was once a new Old World.

(All emphasis added by the compiler, AMH)

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Book Reviews, American Anthropologist, 1996, pps. 650-706.

John Mohawk

Review of Red Earth, White Lies: Native Americans and the Myth of Scientific Fact by Vine Deloria Jr., 1995.

His target is established anthropology and three of its theories: human migration across a Bering land bridge as the origin of all Amerindian populations of the Americas; the extinction of many species of North America’s megafauna at the hands of paleo-Indians; and the accuracy of radiocarbon dating technology. With the style of a lawyer–he is, foremost, a social historian with a law degree–he launches a barrage of attacks at anthropologists who have promoted or abided these theories. p. 650

He goes on to suggest that anthropologists should pay more attention to American Indian stories about what happened in the remote past for clues (p. 650).

By inference, all of his arguments may be denounced as mendacious anthropology-bashing. Although this seems certain to happen in some instances, it would be extremely unfortunate if mainstream anthropology leaves it at that and does not address the points he makes at the core of his argument.

When advocates of anthropology reply that Deloria’s characterizations of their profession as a narrow-minded intellectual hierarchy are overstated, they should also concede that dissent is narrowly tolerated and often heartily punished within the established order (p. 650).

It is more likely that when anyone saw one of those creatures he or she was more interested in getting out of its way than in killing it, and it is much more likely that climate changes or some kind of biological chain reaction set the stage for the extinctions (p. 651)

Comment by the compiler What effect, play-tell, does the introduction of hunting technologies from the Old World signify if, as the myth goes, ‘Native Americans were disobedient in going north, out beyond the Americas for the first time, nearly 40,000 years ago.’ As I see the Native American’ sees it, ‘some of us left the Americas and some of them stayed behind.’ That we met for the first time following this separation – at the end of the last Ice Age – cannot be denied if we test our theories in accordance with Native American beliefs including an Autochthonous origin for mankind from the Island that is – the Western Hemisphere. (emphasis added AMH)

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Late Pleistocene Human Friction Skin Prints From Pendejo Cave, New Mexico

American Antiquity, 61(2), 1996, pp. 357-376

Donald Chrisman, Richard S. MacNeish, Jamshed Mavalwala, and Howard Savage

As she screened the sediments of zone I, Vennes noticed a peanut-sized piece of burned clay that had unusual markings. Cunnar (1992), who supervised the entire excavation of Pendejo Cave, suspected that these markings represented a fingerprint. During the daily review of excavation results, MacNeish examined the clay, using tweezers and magnifying glass, and confirmed Cunnar’s suspicion (Figures 3 and 4). (361)

At the southern edge of this clay slab he found, in situ at E0.99S1.21, a piece of fractured horse phalange and a small crescentic burned clay fragment with a tiny imprint (Figures 5 and 6). Nearby was a worked flake of lithic material foreign to the cave (Clemons 1992). A second slab of burned clay had charred oak remains that were dated to 32,000 ± 1200 B.P. (charcoal, UCR 2645); a duplicate sample went to BETA (44296) and was dated at 35,960 ± 790 B.P. The party now believed it had all the elements Griffin had required–a very probable human fingerprint in situ in a definite stratum with a clear date. This specimen was, furthermore, associated with botanical and faunal remains of species no longer present in the area–Quercus sp., the middle phalange of extinct Equus alaskae–and cultural remains in the form of the worked flake (pg. 361).

In this area the ashy sediment of zone K was cemented; within the compacted fill we found two lithic artifacts and an Equus first phalange with a pointed bone fragment imbedded in it. Carbon in S2E2 yielded a radiocarbon date of >35,900 B.P. (charcoal, UCR 2647). Moreover, in the same zone K, carbon from square S2E1–1 m east of the print–yielded a bone with a probable human cutmark and a radiocarbon date of >35,600 B.P. (charcoal, UCR 2648); two samples of charcoal taken 1 m north gave radiocarbon dates of >36,400 B.P. (UCR 2591B) and >36,920 B.P. (BETA 43721) (pg. 363).

Twelve other friction skin imprints were found while cleaning the west niche; four of these prints came from zone C2 (Figure 1), which yielded radiocarbon dates of 12,240 ± 70 B.P. (UCR 3276B), 12,370 ± 80 B.P. (UCR 3276A), both from hair, and 12,970 ± 170 B.P. (UCR 2603) from charcoal in a square 4 m east of the prints (pg. 363).

A more unusual print was recovered from the gray soil of the middle of the west wall of square W4N1. This article will later show that this specimen not only bears a friction skin imprint, but also may have incisions and punctations that suggest it was an effigy formed of clay that was later fired. Although few faunal remains or artifacts occurred in these squares, we did recover hairs that microscopic examination showed to be human in origin. Also recovered were two pieces of cordage (pg. 3).

This chronometric sequence (Table 1) not only directly dates the zones where friction skin imprints were found, it also brackets them with a column of 46 radiocarbon dates, 36 of which are in chronological order–a better sequence than can be found for any other Paleoindian site (Haynes 1967; Waters 1985). These dates adequately meet the chronological requirement of Griffin (pg. 365, emphasis added).

The remains of fauna recovered from the various zones at Pendejo provide ample evidence of fauna–some now extinct–associated with friction skin imprints. In addition, this record reflects convincing evidence of climatic changes over the millennia (pg. 367).

These floral remains provided evidence that supported that of the fauna. Zones L to O had flora typical of a warm, dry climate–Opuntia (prickly pear), Echinocereus (hedgehog cactus), Prosopis (mesquite), Euphorbia (spurge), and Cucurbita foetidissima (buffalo gourd). In zone K the floral remains, like the faunal, indicate a shift to a more wooded vegetation and a cooler, wetter climate. Among these remains were Pinus edulis (pine), Celtis laevigata (hackberry), Quercus (oak), and acorn shells, three of which were found in the same square as the zone K friction skin imprint (pg. 367).

The lithic artifacts we have described from Pendejo Cave have been criticized as being so crude they cannot be accepted as artifacts. Nevertheless, the provenance of these lithic remains analyzed by the mineralogist, the late R. Clemons, is significant to the whole ecology of the cave. He found that about half of the stone objects recovered were exotics, that is, their composition was of minerals foreign to the cave. These lithics, especially the five anvils, one weighting over 4.5 kg, must have been brought to the cave by some agency. Their size points in the direction of transport by humans, not by wind, water, or an animal. Although most of these possible lithics are not skillfully worked, they may have served as expedient tools, and Clemons describes them as such in another publication (Clemons 1992) (pg. 368).

Of these tools, 19 were recovered from the southern activity zone associated with the friction skin imprint. In the same square (S2E2) as the print, only a horse phalange with an imbedded wedge and two convex worked unifaces were discovered (pg. 368).

When the phalange of the extinct horse was X-rayed and imaged three dimensionally by computerized tomography, the tip of a probable bone wedge or projectile point could be seen deep in its marrow cavity. In addition, a nearby fragment of a small long bone shows a long V-shaped line between its cut ends. Both these bones may exhibit human modification (pg. 368).

Zone C2. Cultural remains in association with the four imprints found in zone C2 included some 40 fragments of hair that forensic specialists H. Savage and A. Tessaralo have identified as histologically human. Among the 15 artifacts in the zone were 2 two-ply cords, S- and Z-twisted, both of yucca fibers (pg. 368).

Only the first two of the 16 nodules with imprints (eight pre-Clovis, eight post-Clovis) were discovered in the screen; the rest were found in situ. After that first experience, the excavating teams were alerted to the need to look hard for such small items as bits of clay, hair, and fibers (pg. 368).

The color, hardness, and consistency of these clay lumps were similar to what was obtained by baking wet clay from the gully in front of the cave to 150°-250°C in an oven. Comparison with modern molded clay obtained from the valley just below Pendejo Cave, baked at increments from 100° to 400°C, showed that the nodules were probably baked at temperatures between 120°C and 300°C (pg. 369).

The prints from Pendejo Cave measure 13 to 19 per linear centimeter; those of the great apes, Asiatic langurs, and the howler monkey (Alouatta) of Brazil measure 20 ridges per centimeter or more, but are near the human range (Cummins and Midlo 1943:32). However, no bones of great apes or New World monkeys have been found in Pleistocene excavations in New Mexico, nor were there tropical forests or suitable habitats to support them there. In the absence of other primates, the size of the prints and the patterns of ridges and sweat pores have led us to conclude that these friction skin imprints are probably human in origin (pg. 373).

Comment by the compiler AMH The mid-Pleistocene archaeological record has significant implications if we apply theory to help guide our observations. This record may be representative of a pre-Paleolithic habitation accordant with an in-situ evolutionary process conforming, in theory, with a human origin within the Americas. If this type of archaeological record is indicative of our ancestral condition then we cannot dismiss its simplicity by judging it against the backdrop of archaeological signatures of contemporary Upper Paleolithic Old World populations. The revealing archaeological proof — what we have come to expect in defining and accepting Old World Paleolithic behaviors — may be missing in the ancestral (> 50 ky) and contemporary (50-12 ky) Amerindian habitations because of isolation due to the resurgence of Glaciation (~45 ky). It is proposed that glacial isolation lasted until the end of the last Ice age when, for the first time following mankind’s inaugural exit from the Americas, glacial barriers separating the two worlds waned.

Mid-Pleistocene New World archaeological contexts (>12 ky) and the implications derived by accepting them suggest that; the behaviors of early early man in the Americas was not influenced by Old World modern human achievements – until the end of the last Ice Age. Could Mid-Pleistocene behaviors have been ancestral and thus, a forerunner to later evolving Old World hunter/gatherer behaviors? Simply, the modus operandi defining mid-Pleistocene Amerindian habitations should be lacking the level of sophistication found in , as I propose, descendent populations of the Old World. As modern man explored he left behind more advanced signatures of his adeptness in dealing with changing environments. Was it glacial expanse that delayed the Amerindians from leaving the New World until 50,000 years ago? Could the original People of the Americas (being also the ancestors of the first modern humans of the Old World) have remained isolated from evolving Old World advancements? Is it possible that the main problem facing archaeologists is: defining a paradigm to accept mid-Pleistocene occupations?

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Science, Vol. 274, October 4, 1996

Ann Gibbons

The Peopling of the Americas

Chalk up one more disagreement to one of the most contentious issues in human prehistory: the question of who settled the Americas (pg. 31).

Most anthropological studies use this mtDNA because it mutates faster than nuclear DNA, allowing researchers to distinguish populations that recently separated. The mtDNA is also inherited only from mothers and so avoids the gene shuffling that can obscure the evolutionary trail of most nuclear genes (pg. 31).

“You wont’ pick out the [same combination of] rare types three of four times if you reach in randomly (pg. 32).”

Once in America, this wave of settlers spread out. Some pushed south, but others stayed in the northwest, where their numbers were drastically reduced–perhaps by bitter cold during the last glacial period that ended about 11,500 years ago. As a result, the northern populations, the ancestors of the Na-Dene and Eskimo-Aleuts, lost their original genetic diversity. Their numbers eventually bounced back, but with fewer copies of haplogroups B, C, and D than carried by their southern relatives (pg. 32).

This scenario allows for either one or two migrations into North America, depending on whether the homeland of the surviving northerners was in North America or Siberia. Forster says: “We call it a re-expansion. It’s a matter of taste whether you call it a separate migration (pg. 33).

Even on the number of migrations, there is no consensus. Satoshi Horai of the National Institute of Genetics in Mishima, Japan, for example, notes that his analyses of the genetic distance among native American people suggests that there are four groups that have been isolated for a relatively long period of time. He concludes that there were four separate migrations (pg. 33).

Comment by the compiler The presence in Northeast Asia of common Amerindian mtDNAs could support Franz Boas “Eskimo wedge theory”, that is, a post Ice age (i.e. Holocene, <12,000 ky) movement of Amerindians into Siberia. This interpretation can also find support in Traditional Athapaskan and Eskimo mythologies and the genetic data linking Northeast Asians and Native North Americans. (ii) AMH

______________________________________________________________________________The Settlement of the Americas: A Comparison of the Linguistic, Dental, and Genetic Evidence, Current Anthropology, Vol. 27, No. 5, December 1986, pps. 477-495

Joseph H. Greenberg, Christy G. Turner II, and Stephen L. Zegura

Both the internal and the external evidence point to the original habitat of the Aleut-Eskimo as being on the southwestern coast of Alaska. Within Eskimo itself, the vast Inuit distribution from Central Alaska to Greenland with shallow internal differences suggests a very recent migration from the far western end of the present distribution. The other branch, Yuit, is found in the central and southwestern coastal areas of Alaska. It is also spoken in Siberia. If Sirenik, which in certain respects is drastically different from the rest of Eskimo, should prove to have separate genetic status, it even becomes plausible that Eskimo or even Aleut-Eskimo originated in northeastern Siberia. However, the position of Aleut suggests rather an origin east of Bering Strait with Siberian Eskimo as a subsequent reflux. p. 479

There are some indications that Eurasiatic and Amerind are closer-genetically than either is to Na-Dene. On the basis of a suggestion of Sapir, Shafer (1952) presented some evidence for a connection of Na-Dene with Sino-Tibetan. Both of these proposals require further investigation. If they should prove to be true, they would point to a more southerly ultimate place of origin in Asia. (p. 479)

[Comment by the compiler Why do the Na-Dene have to be descendent of the Tibetans. Language sharing and gene flow can emanate from either direction. This is an old paper now, while theories accepting the existence of New World isolation have not been tested. This may be because we have to first verify a set of sites before we can synthesize the corresponding data that might be found to collaborate them? AMH]

Glottochronology, the one available method for dating the separation of linguistic stocks in the absence of written records, was first devised about 1950 (Hymes 1960). By examining the rate of retention of a specific list of 200 words it was determined that slightly more than .80 of this list was retained over 1,000 years. If two languages diverged from a single ancestral language and evolved independently, after 1,000 years they would be expected to have related forms in approximately .802 of the list. The process was hypothesized to follow a decay function so that after n millennia the proportion of cognate forms between two languages would be .82n (p. 479).

The third observation, namely, that New World teeth are more like those of eastern Asia than like those of Europe, provides a solid basis for challenging the archaeological view that Paleo-Indians originated in Europe because their methods of stone tool manufacturing were like those used by late Pleistocene Cro-Magnon hunters such as the Kostienki or Sunghir tribes. The four European samples of table 1 and figure 1 are very similar among themselves and least like the New World groups. There is no support in this genetically sensible spatial pattern for theorizing that Native Americans originated in Europe or that they are some form of European-Asian hybridization (p. 480).

Comments

By Lyle Campbell

The dental and genetic correlations are unconvincing–at worst irrelevant, at best consistent with other interpretations. Repetition of the obvious seems required: there is no deterministic connection between language and gene pools or culture. A single language can be spoken by a genetically and/or culturally diverse community; a culturally and/or genetically homogeneous population can speak more than one language. That is, language shift and multilingualism are facts of linguistic (and cultural) life; genes neither cause nor cater to them (p. 488).

(emphasis added by the compiler, AMH)

The Northwest Coast has few attested Na-Dene groups and many others. It is a notorious linguistic (and cultural) diffusion area, with multilingualism, borrowing of linguistic traits, slaving, and intermarriage. Here, language and genetic traits should not be expected to match (p. 488).

Comments

by W.S. Laughlin

Compounding 11 subgroups into three, with a separate migration for each, Greenberg cogently notes that it is defensible to hypothesize that the Proto-Aleut-Eskimo community arrived as an internally undifferentiated unit before the coming of the Na-Dene. He discards the possibility of one migration with elapsed time so great that all traces of affinity among any of the groups have been effaced.

The dental evidence is displayed in a dendrogram that carries no hint of a triple division but rather is eloquent evidence of a single migration, with minor subdivisions in America. Clearly, dental evidence comprehends greater time depth than linguistic evidence (p. 490).

The differences between American populations are not large enough to postulate more than one migration; the taxonomic category of American Indian easily embraces all of them. A single small migration some 16,000 years go appears most parsimonious. Researchers who flirt with trinities should be reminded that Eskimos have walked on water for 10,000 years. They wait for it to freeze, and when on thin ice they avoid creating unnecessary waves (p. 490).

[Comment by the compiler Similariteis in Native Americans does not denote lateness if this is evidence of a population at “equilibrium” (Chakraborty and Weiss 1991)

(All emphasis added by the compiler)]

Comments

by Emoke J.E. Szathmary

Although their perspectives are offered in sections subtitled “The Linguistic Evidence,” “The Dental Evidence,” and “The Genetic Evidence,” very little evidence is presented. Rather, we are given conclusions based on research, their own and that of others, published elsewhere. This is legitimate if one regards Greenberg, Turner, and Zegura’s joint effort as a “position paper” that will generate more hypothesis-testing research on their much-debated subject. I think this is necessary, for the material presented here does not convince me that there have indeed been three waves of migration into the Americas (p. 490)

Turner’s equating the label “Na-Dene” with the Greater Northwest Coast group suggests that he is not prepared to question, let alone to reject, the three-migration hypothesis whatever the results of his calculations. Rather, he interprets his analytic results in the light of a preexisting hypothesis that he simply assumes to be true (p. 490).

It is worth noting that cluster analysis of the genetic distances derived from the same Gm data as used by Williams et al. (1985) shows that Athapaskan-speakers (Haida and Tlingit Gm distributions are unknown) are consistently intermixed with Eskimos and Chukchi (Szathmary 1986). Other Indians are consistently separate. This certainly does not support a tripartite-migration model but lends itself to the notion that Athapaskan-speakers are genetically closer to Eskimos than are other Indians (p. 491).

In my opinion, postulation of the precise number of “waves” is an exercise in hypothesis generation. May there always be creative individuals who propose models, and may there always be scientists whose testing will finally allow us to select the scenario that is most likely (p. 491). (emphasis added AMH)

Comments by Kenneth M. Weiss and Ellen Woolford

If one branch of a language group is in contact with an unrelated group, it is likely to change faster than its sister languages and in a different direction. It may thus appear by glottochronology to have diverged from its sisters at an earlier date than is actually correct. Renewed contact between branches of the same group can result in borrowings that will make the branches appear to have diverged more recently than is really the case. Extreme contact situations such as those which result in the formation of a pidgin can throw off the results of glottochronology entirely and may even create a false bridge between two unrelated language stocks. An application of glottochronology to English and the English-based pidgin of Papua New Guinea, Tok Pisin, gives a separation date of something like 2,000 B.P., but Tok Pisin has not existed a tenth of that time. Moreover, the fact that Tok Pisin contains words from Malay and Tolai as well as English might convince a scholar from the future that these stocks were closely connected (p. 491).

If there has been gene flow, as is reflected in the genetic marker pattern, why is this not also reflected in the dental traits? One reason might be selection–but if that has occurred, the rationale is lost for most historical-phylogenetic analysis, since selection can obscure migration and drift patterns. Indeed, O’Rourke, Suarez, and Crouse (1986) and Piazza, Menotti, and Cavalli-Sforza (1981) believe that gene-frequency patterns reflect climatic selection, resulting in latitudinal patterns which may be highly relevant in the American case (p. 492).

by Joseph H. Greenberg, Christy G. Turner II, and Stephen L. Zegura

We also concur with Weiss and Woolford’s call for more genetic data (especially from restriction-enzyme studies of DNA) collected from both sides of the Bering Strait. These nuclear and mitochondrial DNA fragments may provide the crucial genetic data test of our three-migration hypothesis, wherein substantial population diversity originated in Asia, against Laughlin’s plausible alternative of a single small migration 15,000–16,000 years ago with subsequent diversification taking place in the Americas. It is clear that Szathmary would heartily endorse such a test (p. 493).

Even if the Na-Dene are genetically closer to the Aleut-Eskimos than are the rest of the Amerinds, this by itself does not logically falsify our qualitative trichotomy or our three-wave model (perhaps the Na-Dene and Aleut-Eskimo shared a most recent ancestor in Asia before the bifurcation event) (p. 494).

As indicated in our paper, at least two East Siberian population systems can be proposed on archaeological grounds–blade-making sea-mammal-hunting and fishing folk of the lower Amur and Hokkaido and the terrestrial- and riverine-resource-based Diuktai people between the Amur and the Lena basin. It seems well established that members of both of these groups reached Alaska. The all-important stratigraphy of the Dry Creek site near Fairbanks, Alaska, demonstrates that both were almost certainly preceded by Paleo-Indians. If all Native American variation arose from a single founding population, then why is the Uto-Aztecan premolar never found in Na-Dene, Northwest Coast, Greater Northwest Coast (or whatever label one chooses to identify the far western prehistoric Canadian and Alaskan people), or Aleut-Eskimo crania?

(p. 494).

Until a different evolutionary scenario better explains our similar linguistic, genetic, and dental classifications, a multiple-, preferably three-, migration hypothesis most adequately accounts for the data presented by the commentators and ourselves (p. 494).

Comment by the compiler Because the “Uto-Aztecan premolar ” is older in them then is the time from when sea mammal hunting Eskimos and Boreal adapted – forest dwelling – Athapaskans came to inhabit their respected deglaciated Holocene locals. emphasis added AMH

______________________________________________________________________________Distribution of Four Foundling mtDNA Haplogroups Among Native North Americans, American Journal of Physical Anthropology, 101, 1996, pps. 307-323.

Joseph G. Lorenz and David Glenn Smith

Thus, assuming a recent mutation is not responsible, native haplogroups other than A, B, C, and D, while rare, apparently existed. A higher resolution screening of these other haplogroups might indeed show some to be Native American in origin, probably resulting from recent mutation at the diagnostic haplogroup restriction sites. However, haplotypes identified by high resolution analysis (e.g., see Torroni et al., 1993a) tend to be autapomorphies and hence of no use in determining relatedness among groups, and they were excluded from the analysis whose results follow (p. 313).

Haplogroup D, the rarest of the four haplogroups in North America at 7%, is the most prevalent in the northern Paiute/Shoshone, in which its frequency exceeds 40%. It is present at very low frequencies (<6.0%) everywhere except in the Northwest Coast and California/Great Basin Regions, where it reaches frequencies of 18% and 22%, respectively (p. 315).

The present analysis, while not designed to test Greenberg’s hypothesis, points to a fundamental split among the Eskimo/northern Na-Dene, Amerinds from the southwestern states of the U.S., and all other Amerinds. The clustering of the Eskimo and northern Na-Dene, who speak unrelated languages, together (cluster I) in the phenetic and q analyses is consistent with the conclusions of previous genetic studies (Szathmary and Ossenberg, 1978; Shields et al., 1993; Szathmary, 1996) and does not support the three migration hypothesis. Although most Amerind groups, including those in Central and South America (Merriwether et al., 1995), fall in clusters II-IV, the major division in the phenetic tree separated most Hokan-speaking and Uto-Aztecan-speaking Amerinds (cluster IV), whose languages are not regarded as closely related, from all other groups. Moreover, no two Amerind language families exhibited homogeneous haplogroup distributions. Thus, our data do not support “the unity of Amerind” (Greenberg, 1987) (p. 318).

(all emphasis added by AMH)

______________________________________________________________________________The Great DNA Hunt, Part II – Colonizing the Americas, Archaeology, November/December 1996, pps. 59-68

Tabitha M. Powledge and Mark Rose

They found that the Siberian populations had the A, C, and D lineages found in Native Americans but that they were slightly different, suggesting to Torroni and Schurr that mtDNA variations present today in Native Americans developed after they separated from an ancestral Siberian population (p. 60).

Comment by the compiler Perhaps Amerindian A, C, and D, lineages represent evidence of reverse migration at the end of the last ice Age. (emphasis added AMH)

Oddly, the Siberian populations lacked the B mtDNA group found in Native Americans. Torroni and Schurr concluded that either it had become extinct in Siberia after the split between the ancestral Siberian and Native American populations, or its presence in Native Americans represented a distinct migration (p. 60).

It was unlikely that the lineage could become extinct in all Siberian populations; furthermore, how could it spread throughout the Americas if it arrived in a later migration? The B lineage remained something of an anomaly (p. 62).

Geneticist Svante Paabo of the University of Munich also identified a variant, possibly X6 or X7, in the brain tissue of an Archaic-period Indian, more than 7,000 years old, found in 1988 in Little Salt Spring, Florida. Anne Stone, of Pennsylvania State University, has determined that an 8,000-year-old Paleoindian skeleton found in a cave in Colorado’s White River National Forest has the B lineage (p. 64).

Polynesians and Amerinds

Hagelberg’s group determined that certain mutations present in the DNA of Polynesians are not known from the New World, indicating that settlement from South America was unlikely (p. 65).

Cann concludes by posing a number of questions that seem to point toward Polynesian-Amerind contact. Why, she asks, is the B lineage, shared by Polynesians and Amerinds, not found in the north? Anne Stone of Pennsylvania State University has recently examined the mtDNA from an 8,000-year-old Paleoindian skeleton found in a cave in Colorado’s White River National Forest. The Colorado individual has the B lineage–strong evidence that the lineage is ancestral because Polynesia was not occupied until about 6,000 years ago and the far eastern Pacific Islands until about 1,000 years ago, both much later than the Colorado remains. The Paleoindian B lineage cannot have come from the Polynesians (p. 65).

Comment by the compiler “Certain mutations present in the DNA of Polynesians” could have developed after seperation from the Americas. Just the same, if these mutations were already present in Polynesians then they could not have been the descendants of the “out of Southeast Asia” hypothesis for iether the Amerindians with type B mtDNA or Polynesians.

______________________________________________________________________________

William S. Dancey, Editor. Reviewed by Michael J. Shott, University of Northern Iowa.

The First Discovery of America: Archaeological Evidence of the Early Inhabitants of the Ohio Area. American Antiquity [Vol. 61, No. 1, 1996]

Disturbingly, samples occur in a stratum dated elsewhere at Burning Tree to ca. 12,000 B.P. Somewhat uncertain dating and absence of stone tools render the argument plausible but inconclusive (pg. 171 emphasis added).

Five AMS dates from the postmold resolve, using an obsolete averaging method, into distinct populations ca. 12,150 and 10,980 B.P. Brose reasonably favors the latter to date the Paleoindian occupation. But two extensively dated features span several radiocarbon millennia, and the favored date is obtained by rejecting half the results from a feature. Paleo Crossing is a major Gainey Site that deserves the more extensive investigation sought (pg. 171).

Comment by the compiler Again note, the “absence of stone tools” confounds for many, what should be expected in hypothesizing a Pleistocene colonization of the New World. The inconsistency of the expected presence of stone tool traditions should be tossed out but not the baby as Amerindians, for one reason or another, did not manufacture stone tools to aid archaeologists in their discovery or understanding of the nature of – mankind’s earliest subsistence behaviors – those defining mid-Pleistocene Amerindian habitations. AMH

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Dental Variation Among Four Prehispanic Mexican Populations.

Rebecca Haydenblit

American Journal of Physical Anthropology 100:225-246 (1996)

When the four samples were compared to other Mongoloid populations, either univariately or multivariately, it was observed that the Mexican groups did not follow a strict Sinodont (characteristic of Northeast Asia)/Sundadont (characteristic of Southeast Asia) classification (Turner [1979] Am. J. Phys. Anthropol. 51:619-636). From the traits examined, 27% presented frequencies consistent with Sinodont variation, while 73% of the traits showed similar incidence to Southeast Asian groups. Multivariately, the Mexican populations were found to fit an overall Sundadont classification (pg. 225).

For the present study, observations of 28 morphological dental traits were made on more than 200 prehispanic Mexican Indians. In this paper, I have 1) described the morphological features of permanent teeth of prehispanic Mexican Indians, 2) compared the variability in dental morphology among four prehispanic groups, and 3) analyzed the..

(pg. 36, I lost pg. 327 see reference for more).

It should be pointed out that the Sinodont/Sundadont classification is largely defined on the basis of a few dental traits. Eight key morphological traits distinguish these two patterns: shoveling and double shoveling of maxillary incisors, enamel extension of maxillary first molars, root number of maxillary second pre-molars, peg/reduced/congenital absence of maxillary third molars, deflecting wrinkle and root number of mandibular first molars, and groove pattern of mandibular second molars. The Sinodont pattern exhibits these traits more intensively, whereas the Sundadont pattern exhibits simplification of these features (pg. 237).

The discriminate analysis examines whether it is possible to classify a number of cases into specified groups (in this case Sinodont and Sundadont) on the basis of a group of independent variables (the dental trait frequencies) and calculates how this classification compares with the actual group (Sinodont/Sundadont) each population belongs to. Therefore, this analysis had three aims. First, to assess whether it was possible to derive a discriminant function that separates Sundadont and Sinodont populations from Turner’s data; second, to assess which dental traits contribute most to his separation; and third, to use the discriminant function derived from Turner’s data to determine to which group (Sinodont/Sundadont) the prehispanic Mexican samples can be statistically allocated (pg. 237).

In other words, the following populations were classified in the Sinodont pattern: Amur, Archaic Canada, Athapaskan, California, Eastern US/Canada, Gulf of Alaska, Hong Kong, Japan, Lake Baikal, NE Siberia, NW Canada/US, Southwest US; and in the Sundadont pattern: Burma, Early Malay, Early Mainland (SeA), Indomalaysia, Jomon, Nepal, Philippines, South China 1 and 2, South East Asia, Thai, Taiwan; and Europe was classified as a group alone (pg. 237 and 239).

Again, Cholula was the only population that was classified as Sinodont. In summary, these results indicate that among New World populations there are some populations that fit the Sundadont pattern, suggesting extensive dental morphological variation among American Indians (pg. 239).

Previous studies have shown that American Indian populations follow the Sinodont pattern (Scott et al., 1983; Turner, 1983, 1985a 1986a). The results of the discriminant analysis performed indicate that certain New World populations show frequencies of dental traits most consistent with the Sundadont pattern, suggesting extensive dental morphological variation among American Indians (pg. 243).

Conclusions

This study describes and compares the dental morphology of four prehispanic Mesoamerican populations.

Two main conclusions are derived from this work:

1. Tlatilco, the oldest of the populations studied, exhibits a different dental morphology from the other Mesoamerican populations.

2. The prehispanic Mesoamerican populations follow the Sundadont dental pattern, suggesting that there is extensive dental variation among American Indian populations (pg. 243) (emphasis added AMH).

Comment by the compiler The finding of the “sundadont dental pattern” in Native Central Americans could draw new light concerning shared affinities, this being; an Amerindian contribution to the formation of Polynesian populations and a diffusion of these and other genetic traits into coastal regions of southeast Asia and beyond. This lateness of the expansion of Polynesian motifs should provide an alternative explanation for “Amerindian” characteristics found in coastal Melanesia, Borneo, aboriginal Taiwanese, Madagascar, and Hawaii; (see Background, migration iii). Interior continental migrations (of recent arrivals from the coast) into Nepal (10% of the Tharu) and from Madagascar into the Zimbabwe River populations of Africa (2%) can also be used to explain the presence of the isolated genetic marker, the 9bp Deletion. The detection of the sundadont dental pattern in pre-Hispanic Mesoamericans helps identity another genetic link possibly connecting Amerindians with Polynesians and they in turn with coastal southeast Asians and they in turn with possibly aboriginal Taiwanese, and other coastal peoples. AMH

(for more on this see Cann and Lum 1996 pg. of this collection)

______________________________________________________________________________

American Journal of Physical Anthropology 100:355-365, 1996

Edward D. Shields and Gregory Jones

Heterochronic Quantitative Microevolution: Dental Divergence in Aboriginal Americans

The dental traits were sexually dimorphic, the effect being more pronounced in aboriginal Americans, with male teeth having robust roots and thin enamel compared to the female. Southeast Asians were isometrically related. The prominence of sexual dimorphism and the importance of sex-linked genes in the determination of the dental phenotypes suggest that sexual selection was one evolutionary force acting on early Asian populations (pg. 355).

ANOVA, along with plots of canonical discriminate analysis distances of the metric traits for each tooth element, showed that the population samples were easily separable, the sexes assorted by ethnic stock, and all populations were sexually dimorphic. The general impression of the overall dental phenotype given by the canonical plots is that the stocks are equally distanced (pg. 358).

A fevered mind could generate numerous hypotheses, some even testable, as to how sexual selection for one seemingly unrelated trait could then influence another. This putative selective force would have subsequently been relaxed in the Southeast Asian population. If megafauna extinction (Vantanyan et al., 1993) and rapid environmental change (Allen and Anderson, 1993; Alley et al., 1993; Levesque et al., 1993; Roberts et al., 1993) were factors prior to Paleoindian immigration, environmental directional selection may have been an additional evolutionary force in the potential small founder population from which both the Paleoindians and the Western Eskimos were eventually drawn. Genetic bottlenecks and rapid population expansion and dispersion were clearly important in the genetic history of aboriginal Americans. Thus, the likelihood is high that much of the observed evolution between the American samples was the result of random genetic drift (pg. 364).

Comment by the compiler I couldn’t help but follow the last article suggesting “certain New World populations show frequencies of dental traits most consistent with the Sundadont pattern, suggesting extensive dental morphological variation among American Indians (Haydenblit pg. 2431996).” with this one implying virtually just the opposite.

SOUTH AMERICA

______________________________________________________________________________

Science, Vol. 273, pp 709-840, August 9, 1996

Fidias E. Leon-S., Amparo Ariza-Deleon, Martha E. Leon-S., and Adriana Ariza-C.

Peopling the Americas (_?_)

Our contribution, however, would seem to go further than that because we have pointed out that transpacific routes from Asia, and more specifically from Japonesia, toward South America could be important in understanding the differences between North American and South American Natives (SAN) (1).

People with the so-called “new” (according to Parham and Ohta) allele, such as the Cayapa or Chachi from Ecuador, also display an aldehyde dehydrogenase deficiency that is molecularly similar to that found in Southeast Asian and Japanese people, but absent in Northeast Asians (2).

Curiously, HTLV-I strains from Japan are related in their molecular structure to those found in South America (for example, Chile, Colombia, and Brazil), and HTLV-II present in SAN and in some Japanese groups is also absent in the far eastern part of Siberia (3).

On the other hand, the a-globin gene haplotype distributed in SAN—similar to that observed in Southeast Asian and Pacific Island populations—does not have a-globin gene deletions, and this suggests that malaria was not present in the ancient SAN (4). Further similarities in major histocompatibility complex type I (MHC-I), as well as type II, haplotypes and in mitochondrial DNA are observed in Japanese, Pacific (for example, Polynesians), and SAN (for example, Mapuches) populations, but are absent in the far eastern part of Siberia (5). These similarities add strength to the proposal that ancient voyagers could follow the Pacific sea currents that join Japan to South America, as well as other routes (1).

Peter Parham

Response

The theory of transpacific contacts expounded by Leon-S. and his colleagues (1, 2) holds that genetic differences observed between North and South American Natives may in part stem from an ancient admixture of the SAN with sea voyagers from the south of Japan. In the course of examining the HLA class I data, we have periodically confronted this possibility. For example, A*0211, which was first discovered in a Southeast Asian individual (3) and then found in the Guarani Amerindians of Brazil (4), initially provided a candidate for an allele that had arrived in South America by transpacific contact.

The potential for recombination between HLA class I alleles and genes makes it likely, perhaps inevitable, that certain recombinant alleles have been formed independently in different populations. In such instances, the sharing of an allele would be the result of convergent evolution and not shared descent.

The many linked, highly polymorphic genes of the HLA complex provide the potential for resolving the issues of time and place of population admixture that go well beyond simple observations of allele sharing.

Comment by the compiler The motifs linking the populations in southeast Asia with those from the New World could represent Amerindian (Polynesian) migrations into Asia. The FACT that numerous similarities exist does not, nor should not, predetermine that the relationship stems from movements of Asians into the Americas when it might better fit a model of Amerindian movements into, in this case, Polynesia and southeast Asia (iii).

As discussed earlier migrations from Polynesia into coastal expanses of the Old World provide an alternative explanation for source populations that may have admixed with earlier founding populations. Where islands are concerned the preservation of pre-existing populations following Polynesian contact can be demonstrated as a dichotomy between genetic markers in earlier and later populations can be confirmed. The examples best identifying this occurrence are found in studies differentiating Highland Populations in Borneo and New Guinea and as well, Australian Aborigines from coastal groups. Here the original Pleistocene populations are seen as remnant populations surviving the coastal pressures of later arriving people, migratory Polynesians. Taiwanese aboriginals may be primarily Polynesians and not a mostly remnant Pleistocene population, while in Madagascar, 70% of the population is Polynesian and 30% African in their mtDNAs, this because the Polynesians were the first to people Madagascar, an island that lies nearly 800 miles from the African coast. AMH

______________________________________________________________________________

Karen Olsen Bruhns

Ancient South America

Latin American Antiquity [Vol. 6 No. 4,1996]

Reviewed by Thomas F. Lynch

When she is not so good, it seems almost deliberate, as in chapter 18, “Intercontinental Movements before Columbus.” Here Bruhns is one-sided, even polemical, nearly branding all diffusionism as racist. Perhaps this is in reaction to editorial insistence that she say something about all those fascinating ideas on early oceanic traffic. Such reaction would be an understandable, if naughty, response to an editor who confused the Guiana Highlands with the Guinea region of western Africa throughout chapter 3 (pg. 375).

Comment by the compiler An ongoing problem that persists within academia, one that retards the exploration of potentially viable alternatives, is that one must conform to the consensus or suffer the pains of unbridled ridicule. AMH

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Marta M. Lahr

Who Were the First Americans?

Mammoth Trumpet – October 1996

There’s an argument going on regarding whether the eastern and western populations of Tierra del Fuego represent two separate dispersals, or whether their differences were acquired from an original point of colonization. The western group, the canoe Indians, are relatively more gracile, and there were important differences in terms of subsistence strategy, and the two populations were virtually isolated from each other. This argument still goes on, and really until there is material with associated dates that cover the Holocene, I don’t believe the issue will be resolved. From the recent bones, I’d say they represent the same population that has acquired certain differences in place (pg. 5-6).

For me, the actual source of the ancestors of Amerindians within Asia is still unknown. Along the Asian Pacific Coast there were generalized Mongoloid populations that could have been a source for the Paleoindians.

From more mainland areas, there were typical Mongoloid populations that could have been the source for such groups in the Americas. And, from Mongolia, in late-Pleistocene times, there were populations with Eurasian affinities that could have been yet another source, as the metric analyses of W.W. Howells and the genetic analyses of L.L. Cavalli-Sforza would point out. It should be noted, however, that other morphological and genetic sources don’t point to a Eurasian contribution in the makeup of Amerindians (pg. 6).

I have no strong feelings about the timing of entry to the Americas, and at the time I drew those maps I thought the evidence from Pedra Furada was pretty strong. I have since been told by several people that it is really not enough to make a case, and I have been treating the colonization of the Americas as a process of the last 15,000-12,000 years. The morphology can be accommodated either way (pg. 6).

Comment by the compiler (emphasis added) There exists in the American Indians a great deal of variance in cranial morphology. Do references to Eurasian or Asian types indicate primogenitor continental similarities due to small founding populations? If individual New World tribal affinities are as variant as many have come to believe then one could suppose greater time depth for geographic locals with the differences evidence of great time depth. This is concordant with linguistic isolates separating regional population differentiation. We will find in this — and my earlier compilation — that dental, genetic, and linguistic data can be seen to support individual differences where geographically isolated population retains a unique set of differences. Ryk Ward et al. (1991) suggested that the discovery of “extensive genetic diversity” represented in his published study of the mtDNAs of the Nu-Chal-Nulth was not unique to them in that the still unpublished data on the Maya mtDNA suggests that they too maintained extensive genetic mtDNA diversity. AMH

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Alan L. Bryan

Praehistoria No. 1

Latin American Antiquity [Vol. 6 No. 4, 1996]

Obsidian, basalt, chert, and other exotic stones had been carried into the cave. In a separate analysis of the flaking debris from the lowest component, Estela Cuneo, on the basis of her identification of bifacial thinning flakes, suggests that the occupants had made bifacial preforms and projectile points; but the lack of broken bifaces seems odd. The nearby Cueva Cuyin Manzano yielded a few retouched flakes and scrapers, but no finished bifacial artifacts in the oldest deposits dated between 10,000 and 8,000 B.P. Rita Ceballos (El Sitio Cuyin Manzano, Serie Estudios y Documentos, No. 9, Centro de Investigaciones Cientificas de Rio Negro, Viedma, Argentina, 1982) was most likely correct when she suggested that the earliest occupants of the region fashioned only unifacial artifacts (pg. 374).

Comment by the compiler Stone tool hunting industries developed later in the New world then it did in the Old World. This is consistent with my believe that the subsistence strategies found in the American mid-Pleistocene was not descendent of an Old World industry but that the sophistication derived from mans exploration of the Old World was isolated by the geographic barrier that did not wane until the end of the last Ice Age. AMH

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M.A. Zago, M.H. Tavella, B.P. Simoes, R.F. Franco, J.F. Guerreiro and S.B. Santos

Racial Heterogeneity of DNA Polymorphisms Linked to the A and the O Alleles of the ABO Blood Group Gene (pgs. 67-72)

Some restriction sites described here re common for the A and O alleles, indicating that they may predate the A-O divergence, while other polymorphisms may be more recent since they are different fro the two alleles (pg. 70).

The demonstration of polymorphisms linked to the ABO blood group in Amerindians is of additional interest, since these populations have only O blood group (Roychoudhury & Nei, 1988). We have recently demonstrated that the O mutation observed in Indians is the same that predominates among Caucasoids and Blacks, i.e. a single-nucleotide deletion in the glycosyltransferase gene (France et al. 1994). Our present results reveal that the O allele is polymorphic among the Indians, and the two haplotypes have different frequencies from those observed among Caucasians (pg. 71).

Comment by the compiler The scenario that best fits the explanation I endorse is; that the ancestral condition for our species was the O blood group. That Old World people would develop new polymorphisms linked to the ABO blood groups would follow the logical expansion of our species into a new set of environments, i. e., the continents of the Old World. The adaptations secured in the Old World could have led to resistance’s not accumulated in the ancestral populations of the new World. In the same vain, the polymorphisms already present in an isolated population’ might arrive into another hemisphere, unwelcome, and, as a result, might have led to the extinction of that worlds original Hominid populations. I am referring here to an accidental cause for the inevitable extinction of Homo erectus populations that may have resulted from an exodus of Homo sapiens from the Americas. AMH

SIBERIA

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Maureen L. King and Sergei B. Slobodin

A Fluted Point from the Uptar Site, Northeastern Siberia Science Vol. 273, pgs. 234-236

The earliest firmly documented tradition in the New World, the Paleoindian tradition (11,200 to 8500 years B.P.), begins with a distinctive series of fluted lanceolate bifacial points. Data from northeastern Siberia are too few to indicate much about the colonization of Beringia (3); however, the earliest firmly documented tradition in eastern Siberia (the Upper Paleolithic Diuktai culture from the Aldan basin, 35,000 to 10,000 years B.P.) (4) is thought (5-7) to bear little resemblance to Paleoindian traditions. The origin of fluting has been controversial and involves a debate not only about the source of a distinctive technology, but also about the peopling of the Americas (8) (pg. 634).

One of the bifaces is a fluted point (Figs. 3 and 4). The point is finished, although there is a lateral fracture across the blade. This break occurred sometime after the flute was removed. The two fragments were found directly beneath the tephra and were ~ 4 m apart. A longitudinal channel flake scar on one face of the point extends from the base to just below the tip where it terminates in a stepfracture. The channel flake appears to have been removed with sufficient force to cause most of the platform to collapse and to detach a small flake on the reverse face. Additional damage is evident at the tip, but this is recent.

Although the Uptar collection shares some affinities with early Beringian complexes, it does not fit squarely within any of them. The presence of lanceolate points offers a tempting link with the Paleoindian tradition in the Americas. However, the morphology of the points does not fit the classic Paleoindian form: they are smaller in size and lack grinding on the edges and base. Furthermore, other elements of the Paleoindian tool kit are lacking (for example, gravers).

Comment by the compiler The dominant paradigm that continues to be tested is the Asian origin for Paleoindian Traditions. The alternative explanation, that is striving to be fully tested, is a northern movement into deglaciating North America of populations who developed Paleoindian tradition from within the Americas.

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M. Ilyas Kamboh, Michael H. Crawford, Christopher E. Aston, and William R. Leonard.

Population Distributions of APOE, APOH, and APOA4 Polymorphisms and Their Relationships with Quantitative Plasma Lipid Levels among the Evenki Herders of Siberia

The complete absence of the APOA4*2 allele, which is a unique marker of white populations, provides further evidence that the Evenki are genetically isolated from other population groups of Russia. The near complete absence of the APOA4*2 allele in aboriginal populations of America has been noted previously (Kamboh et al. 1991; De Knijff et al. 1992). A relatively high frequency of the APOH*3, APOA4 HincII -, and APOA4 insertion alleles in the Evenki may have been attained through genetic drift.

______________________________________________________________________________The Four Founding Lineage Hypothesis for the New World: A Critical Reevaluation, Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution, Vol. 5, No. 1, February, pp. 241-246, 1996.

D. Andrew Merriwether and Robert E. Ferrell

The four lineages can be defined as follows (see Table 1): lineage A by a HaeIII site gain at nt 663; lineage B by a 9-bp deletion between the genes for cytochrome oxidase II and the tRNA for lysine; lineage C by a HincII site loss at nt13259 and an AluI site gain at nt13262; and lineage D by an AluI site loss at nt 5176. The mutations defining lineages A and B are largely Asian-specific, while those defining lineages C and D are found in both Asian and non-Asian populations. The mutations for lineages C and D are Asian-specific when accompanied by an AluI site gain at nt 10397 and a DdeI site gain at nt 10394. More recently, Bailliet et al. (1994), Bianchi and Rothhammer (1995), and Merriwether et al. (1994) have suggested that lineages A, C, and D may be broken into A1, A2, C1, C2, D1, and D2 by the presence or absence of a HaeIII cut at nt 16517 and that all these variants entered the New World, and not just one representative of each haplogroup as suggested by Torroni et al. (1992a, 1993a,b; Torroni and Wallace, 1995). p. 241

One can see in Fig. 2 that many of the populations have all four founding lineage types (a number even have all of the subtypes) and that all types can be found in North, Central, and South America. Multiple lineage variants are found in all three putative waves of migration (Amerind, NaDene, and Eskaleut). We believe that this distribution is most consistent with a single wave of migration. It is neither realistic nor parsimonious to believe that the same lineages ended up in all these populations, across two continents, by two, three, or more separate migrations. Further, Merriwether (1993) demonstrated that there was little or no gene flow between many of the Chilean and Peruvian samples in this study, indicating that there is considerable population structure in many New World populations, inconsistent with a panmictic model of Amerindian variation and dispersal. Therefore, the data can best be interpreted to support a model where a single migration peopled the New World (p. 245).

Because lineage B is absent from Siberian populations, and virtually absent from Alaskan populations, we do not find Siberia to be a likely home for the founding population for the New World. We hypothesize that the founding population for the New World should have had all these major variants, and that the present day descendent population in Asia which has the highest percentage of New World haplotypes is the best choice for the founding population (p. 245).

Comment by the compiler The choice of reflecting on witch direction gene flow emanates can be challenged here by adopting Boas’ “Eskimo wedge theory” (1905, 1910). By this, it is implied that Native Americans migrated north throughout the Holocene. The evidence for the presence of people south of the Ice Sheets 12,000 years ago must be entertained. The genetic evidence could be seen to dovetail with this direction in gene flow considering that (1) evidence for isolation is likely and (2) that the intersecting of post Ice Age populations was set primarily west of the Bering Strait. Simply put, in adopting the mtDNA findings into Franz Boas’ theory, we find that Amerindian migrations into Siberia should not be just entertained, but endorsed.

(All emphasis added by the compiler, AMH)

AFRICA

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mtDNA Control-Region Sequence Variation Suggests Multiple Independent Origins of an “Asian-Specific” 9-bp Deletion in Sub-Saharan Africans, Am. J. Hum. Genet., 1996, pgs. 595-608.

Himla Soodyall, Linda Vigilant, Adrian V. Hill, Mark Stoneking, and Trefor Jenkins

One wave of migration, associated with western Bantu culture, is thought to have arisen in the region of the Cameroon grassland ~1600-700 B.C., before spreading to parts of west-central Africa and southwestern Africa (Vansina 1984). If the 9-bp deletion was present in the founding population of western Bantu-speakers, then we would expect to find the deletion in southwestern Africa populations tested (fig. 1). However, the 9-bp deletion is rarely found in southwestern African and western African populations (fig. 1), suggesting that the deletion was not present in the Bantu homeland prior to the Bantu expansion. The presence of the deletion in some western Africans (Merriwether et al. 1994) could be due to recent gene flow or an independent origin of the deletion (p. 605).

In conclusion, the 9-bp deletion in sub-Saharan Africans and that in Asians have different origins, and, in fact, several lines of evidence suggest that the deletion arose in Africa more than once. The distribution and the frequencies of the 9-bp deletion in sub-Saharan African populations suggest that its spread in Africa may be due to the recent “Bantu expansion.” The 9-bp deletion, in conjunction with control-region sequence data, should thus be a useful mtDNA marker for examining the routes of migration of Bantu-speakers that have been hypothesized on the basis of linguistic and archaeological evidence (p. 606).

Comment by the compiler The Bantu have been linked with Phoenician Mediterranean populations while this sumation should not surprise readers of my work; that Phoenicians could be related to Polynesians since Phoenicians are known as the “People of the Sea” and the Polynesians Motif is found in the first people to settle Madagascar. That the background for African populations with the Polynesian motif is not indicative of other more direct Melanesian subset of mtDNAs is intriguing. The consequences of admixture in Africa and Asia, for expanding Polynesian populations, should be entertained.

(All emphasis added by the compiler, AMH)

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Diagenesis of bone from Border Cave: implications for the age of the Border Cave hominids, Journal of Human Evolution, 31, 1996, pps. 499-506

Andrew Sillen and Alan Morris

The Middle Stone Age (MSA) sequence at Border Cave (KwaZulu/Natal, South Africa) has been purported to contain very early examples of anatomically modern Homo sapiens (amHs), supporting the idea that anatomically and behaviorally modern people appeared first in Africa (Beaumont et al, 1978; Rightmire, 1979). A number of specimens are central to this argument including BC3, the well-preserved skeleton of an infant recovered in 1941 from a burial associated with MSA layers (Cooke et al., 1945), and BC5, an anatomically modern mandible also associated with the MSA excavated in 1974 (Beaumont et al., 1978; Beaumont, 1980; de Villiers, 1976). The bearing of these and other Border Cave hominids on the timing and location of the emergence of amHs depends upon the demonstration that they are of the same age as the sediments from which they were derived. Some investigators have argued that BC3 and BC 5 are somewhat better preserved than faunal remains from the MSA layers of Border Cave, suggesting that the human specimens might be derived from more recent intrusive burials (Klein, 1989; Parkington, 1990). Unfortunately efforts to directly date the BC5 mandible using AMS 14C dating have been unsuccessful because of insufficient collagen (Stringer, pers. comm.). (p. 499)

Comment by the compiler The evidence of “more recent intrusive burials” for the Border Cave amHs samples parallel’s similar findings of amHs from Klaisies River Mouth in southern Africa. This is worth noting. Contrarily, the indications of intrusion for evidence of human hearths and fingerprints in New Mexico’s Pendejo Cave is readily implied but far from proven. In contrasting these examples; the implications for a 90 to 200 ky presence for modern human occupations in the Old World are widely publicized (though scholars have “critiqued the evidence of the consensus view”) while comparable definitive proof of mid-Pleistocene Amerindian occupations are incontrovertibly brushed aside. Perhaps the presence of people in the Americas before they can be proven to be in the Old World (i. e. > 45 ky) is relevant and worthy of further scientific scrutiny into the significance such an occupation might warrant evolutionary theory.

(All emphasis added by the compiler, AMH)

______________________________________________________________________________Race and Three Models of Human Origin, American Anthropologist, Vol. 97, No. 2, June 1995, pps. 231-240.

Leonard Lieberman and Fatimah Linda C. Jackson

Studies of several Y-specific sequences (using polymorphic DNA probes) suggest that the smallest allele represents the original form of any sequence in question. The diminutive Bi-aka people of Central Africa were found to have retained the least derived (and hence most ancestral) form of the many Y-chromosome polymorphisms currently expressed in world populations

(p. 235).

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Current Anthropology, Vol. 27, No. 1, February 1986 pgs. 56-62

Ronald Singer and John Wymer

On Binford on Klasies River Mouth: Response of the Excavators

In his Faunal Remains from Klasies River Mouth, Binford (1984) aims at “evaluating the relative roles of scavenging versus hunting in the subsistence tactics of ancient hominids,” in this case the populations of the Tzitzikama Coast of South Africa in the Late Pleistocene. With an attitude of “healthy skepticism” he has questioned and contradicted the conclusions of Klein (1976) and considers these people of the South African Middle Stone Age not efficient hunters of large game but in a transitional stage between a virtual reliance on scavenging and the development of elementary hunting techniques that at least allowed them to take small antelopes. This is a surprising conclusion, but, as he stresses, our surprise may be conditioned by more than a century of equating in our thoughts “ancient man” and “man the hunter.” Perhaps it is true, and our ancestors were not truly equipped to bring down the larger mammals, including elephant, until the relatively sophisticated times of the Upper Palaeolithic. Alternatively, as the sharp-tongued Oliver Wendell Holmes expressed it in considering a person’s self-adjudged genius, “the contrary is, of course, possible (pg. 56).”

In the process of looking at the contexts of the faunal remains, Binford has (1) turned the stratigraphical sequence virtually upside down, (2) rejected the early date for the mandibular fragment of Homo sapiens sapiens, and (3) cast doubt on the ability of the Middle Stone Age knappers to make and use formidable projectile points. We think that he is wrong in doing so, and, clearly, on the first item his study stands or falls. We will take the three points in turn, recognizing that unless one consults our excavation report (Singer and Wymer 1982) much of the reference to particular parts of the site or archaeological levels and assemblages will be difficult to follow. We hope that serious students will not take our word or Binford’s but check for themselves (pg. 56).

2. The early date for H. sapiens sapiens. The above discussion vindicates the assignment of a very early date to a gracile mandible of H. sapiens sapiens in Layer 10 of Shelter 1B, in fact the earliest date for modern man so far from any site in the world and one corroborated to some extent by the material from Border Cave (Butzer, Beaumont, and Vogel 1978, De Villiers 1976). Thus we reject Binford’s statement (p. 242) that “there is simply no factual basis for any claims for great antiquity of the gracile human remains nor of the industrial facies called Howieson’s Poort (pg. 56).”

Reply by Lewis R. Binford

They present this property of the lithic assemblage as diagnostic of MSA I in spite of the fact that it occurs in Level 24 of Shelter 1A, which is classified as MSA II. I think it should be clear that they do so simply because they consider the bottom levels of Cave 1 and Shelter 1B roughly contemporary. In short, they select this property to warrant their position; it is not an independent fact demonstrating a temporal trend. We see here the operation of an assumption accepted as being “true” by the excavators, namely, that contemporary archaeological remains should be similar (pg. 57).

It should also be noted that shifts in proportional frequencies of denticulates and scrapers have repeatedly been shown not to be indicative of general temporal trends in early archaeological contexts (Volman 1981). Against this knowledge, should we uncritically accept this fact in support of the argument that the original chronological proposals of Singer and Wymer are the most probable? The rational answer to this question must be a resounding no; to do so would be to commit the logical fallacy of the affirmation of the consequent (pg. 58).

They assert that my chronological suggestions are based on “theoretical faunal seriation” and a higher 18O/16O ratio “on one shell” from Shelter 1B. The faunal seriation to which they refer is, however, not “theoretical”; it is controlled by the stratigraphy of Cave 1. Because Shelter 1B is not stratigraphically related to Cave 1, the only way to estimate its age is to compare its formal properties with properties of other assemblages whose chronology is controlled in a stratigraphically documented sequence, and I did just that for the relative proportions of bush-loving species versus grassland-loving species (Binford 1984:43). Moreover, as I have pointed out, the 18O/16O value for the only specimen tested from Shelter 1B does not correspond to the values obtained from other specimens submitted in order to date the MSA I assemblage and would as easily fit a sea-temperature condition after the Howieson’s Poort occupation of Shelter 1A. That the Shelter 1B specimen was lumped with the MSA 1 suggests that the only criterion for dating the Shelter 1B materials was the fact that they rested on the same shingle beach notch as the Cave 1 sequence. It is almost an archaeological truism that when geologically dated surfaces are used as chronological indicators, nothing predating the formation of the surface should occur on the surface but anything postdating the formation could occur on that surface. This fact is not inconsistent with a Howieson’s Poort-MSA III dating for the Shelter 1B deposits, and there is no compelling reason to accept the deposits as having accumulated contemporaneously with other deposits resting on similar surfaces. The excavators have assumed a continuous period of accumulation for the entire Klasies River Mouth site despite the fact that in their site description they recognize a phase of weathering of undetermined duration at Level 13a (Singer and Wymer 1982:24-25). The chronological lumping of stratigraphically distinct levels without analytical justification is a questionable strategy at best (pg. 61).

There is no demonstrable trend in the frequency of trimmed butts unless one first assumes a date for the Shelter 1B materials; relative frequencies of scrapers versus denticulates are notoriously unreliable as chronological indicators in other known sequences; and the simple analogous placement of deposits on a common surface does not indicate contemporaneity. I therefore conclude that all the evidence based on demonstrable trends (judged as reliable temporal indicators) through the Klasies stratigraphic units yields a consistent and reinforcing pattern in which Shelter 1B fits between Howieson’s Poort and MSA III (pg. 61).

The fascinating Howieson’s Poort assemblage yielded (in some of its expressions) tool forms that are generally unknown worldwide from assemblages dating prior to 35,000. Even more surprising is the occurrence of some tool forms that are generally unknown from most other parts of the world prior to 20,000 years ago. If future research sustains (a) that Howieson’s Poort is a temporal “phase” and not an alternating facies within a variable Middle Stone Age suite of assemblages and (b) that this “phase” is dated prior to 35,000 years ago, these findings will be surprising in and of themselves. In my book I suggested that the climatic interpretations of faunal frequencies that have been both used to date sites (given a vague and conflicting understanding of climatic changes through the last glacial era) and cited in support of Butzer’s environmental interpretations were quite likely to be erroneous, since the shifts in faunal frequency at Klasies River Mouth were related to directional changes in the way hominids exploited animals in their subsistence and not a direct reflection of climatic events as had been supposed.

The interpretive problems that have been created by the uncritical acceptance of propositions regarding the absolute age and the relative chronology at Klasies River Mouth will not quickly be resolved. I cannot help but be surprised by the excavators’ suggestion as to how this resolution might be achieved: by my digging the remnant deposits. First, this is already being done by Jannett and Hillary Deacon. More important, further excavation is not the answer. The problems we face have arisen from the meanings assigned to archaeogological facts by the excavators and their research collaborators. Collecting more archaeological facts does not impact the important act of inference, upon which depends the conversion of archaeological observations into statements of absolute age, the relative chronological placement of stratigraphically unrelated deposits, and the meanings given to frequency variations in artifacts, fauna, and molluscs. Those meanings are given by us, and their accuracy is dependent on how we use knowledge, on our general understanding, and on the state of the middle-range research to which we appeal for justification of our interpretations (pg. 61-62).

Comment by the compiler The primary reason I bring to this discussion Africa’s Klaisies River mouth site is that it is often identified as the quintessential early occupation for Homo sapiens sapiens in Africa. Accepting the evidence of a modern human occupation as defined by the Howieson’s Poort Industry is not a matter of dispute. However, what is disputed is the evidence behind suggesting that this occupation dates to 90 thousand y.b.p. Binford addressed this and other issues in his 1984 book, Faunal Remains from Klaisies River Mouth and in his “Response here to the excavators response to his book.. Binford and Singer and Wymer both identify that the HP Industry is a true example of modern human behaviors while contesting that this occupation is no more than a contemporary to modern human occupations of Europe or evidence for modern humans in Africa 50 thousand years earlier. Binford and others, including Parkington 1989, have challenged the “consensus view” that , following Singer and Wymers 1982 publication, would ask readers to accept an earlier time frame for modern man in southern Africa then can be truly established by archaeological evidence (90,000 y.b.p.). Binford and others have successfully established that Homo erectus was still occupying the site 36,000 y.b.p., while identifying that the modern human jaw bone found in the, supposed, earlier contexts was most likely the result of intrusion or mixing of Homo erectus’ Middle Paleolithic with the more recent modern human’ Later Stone Age archaeological contexts. I would find that the original excavators C-14 dating of the HPI levels, are a reliable indicators of the modern human occupation’s actual age, this being between 36,200 and 26,400 years ago.

While archaeologists are inclined to dismiss mid-Pleistocene occupations in the Americas we are, alternatively, less critical of earlier dates for modern human occupations from the Old World. Is there evidence of bias? This example is offered as case in point. AMH

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Francisco J. Ayala and Ananias A. Escalante

MOLECULAR PHYLOGENETICS AND EVOLUTION Vol. 5, No. 1, February, pp. 188-201, 1996

The Evolution of Human Populations: A Molecular Perspective

We evaluate studies of mtDNA, Y-chromosome, and microsatellite autosomal polymorphisms and conclude that they are consistent with the MHC result that no narrow population bottlenecks have occurred in human evolution. The available molecular information favors a recent African origin of modern humans, who spread out of Africa approximately 100,000 to 200,000 years ago (pg. 188).

The HLA Complex

The human leucocyte antigene (HLA) complex consists of about 100 genes located in chromosome 6, within a DNA segment of four million bp in length. The HLA genes specify molecules with a critical role in tissue compatibility and the defense against foreign substances. These genes are arranged in two distinct groups, class I and class II, separated by several score genes that have functions mostly unrelated to the immune response (Fig. 1) (pg. 188).

The HLA complex is homologous to the major histocompatibility complex (MHC) of mammals and other vertebrates (Kaufman et al., 1995; McDevitt, 1995; Schwaiger and Epplen, 1995). MHC molecules present on the surfaces of certain cells bind fragments of proteins (antigens) and present them to thymus-derived lymphocytes (T cells) expressing T-cell receptors on their surfaces. The clone of T lymphocytes that bear receptors matching a particular combination of protein fragment and MHC molecule is stimulated, by the contact with the antigen-presenting cells, to proliferate and to initiate the specific arm of the immune response, including the secretion of specific antibodies. The MHC molecules thus protect against pathogens and parasites in general (pg. 188).

Some proponents of this African replacement model argue further that the transition of archaic to modern H. sapiens was associated with a very narrow bottleneck, consisting of only two or very few individuals who are the ancestors of all modern mankind. Thus proposal is buttressed by an interpretation of mitochondrial DNA analysis showing that the diverse mitochondrial DNA sequences found in modern humans coalesce to one ancestral sequence, the “mitochondrial Eve” or “mother of us all,” that existed in Africa about 200,000 years ago (Cann et al., 1987; Stoneking et al., 1990; Vigilant et al., 1991). This conclusions has been challenged on grounds concerning (i) whether the coalescence is to Africa, (ii) the time of the coalescence, and (iii) the inference of a population bottleneck (e.g., Templeton, 1992) (pg. 195).

(All emphasis added by the compiler, AMH)

EUROPE

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A View of the Neolithic Demic Diffusion in Europe through Two Y Chromosome-Specific Markers, Am. J. Hum. Genet. 59:, 1996, pps. 964-968.

Ornella Semino, Guiseppe Passarino, Agnese Brga, Marc Fellous, and A. Silvana Santachiara-Benerecetti

By performing principal components analysis on numerous classical markers, synthetic maps were constructed for Europe and the Near East (Menozzi et al., 1978), which show the Near East as the center of concentric clines of decreasing gene frequencies and give value to the theory of demic spread of agriculture.

Further support to this theory is given by a large population survey we carried out on some Y-specific polymorphisms. Two markers have been found, the distribution of which illustrate well the process of “wave of advance.” p. 964

This makes the 8-kb allele an indictor of the neolithic demic diffusion of the farming culture in Europe. It is worth noticing that, outside Europe, this allele was only found in areas where migrations from the Near East took place, (Tunsia and Algeria for the Phoenician migration, India for the Indo-European, and Ethiopia for that of Geeze speakers) (Renfrew 1989; Cavalli-Sforza et al. 1994).

On the other hand, the 49a,f/TaqI-Ht15, which is only sporadically found outside Europe, shows a gradient of frequencies opposite in direction to that of the 8-kb allele, having its maximum value in northwestern Europeans. The geographic distribution of this haplotype is quite similar to the first sinthetic map for Europe, which, according to Cavalli-Sforza et al. (1994), is that of the preneolithic European gene pool. It is intriguing that its highest frequency (60%) was observed among Basques (Santachiara-Benercecetti et al. 1994), a very ancient European population that has been in the present place for a long time, evading contact with neolithic and subsequent migrations (Aranzadi 1889; Boshc-Gimpera 1943; Cavalli-Sforza 1988; Piazza 1988; Bertranpetit and Cavalli Sforza 1991). The 49a,f-Ht 15 can therefore be considered a proto-European haplotype, which was diluted by the gradual mixing with the neolithic newcomers. It is worth noticing that in ~300 observations of Ht15 we have never found this haplotype on Y chromosomes carrying the p12f2-8-kb allele.

In conclusion, this study has revealed two distinct Y-chromosome markers, the p12f2-8-kb allele, specific to Caucasoids and the 49a,f-Ht 15, specific to Europeans, which are valuable to detect genetic admixtures. They show an opposite gradient of frequencies from the Near East to western Europe, illustrating well the “wave of advance” of the neolithic demic expansion in Europe. Moreover, the haploid condition of the Y chromosome, and therefore the absence of recombination, makes the proto-European Ht 15 an important tool in evaluating the contribution of European paleolithic males in the present day populations in Europe (p. 966-967).

Comment by the compiler The expansion into Europe may have originated from Asia and not Africa. This conclusion can find archaeological support in the development of more refined Paleolithic tools across the russian steep westward as the upper Paleolthic become it’s distintive self. Subsiquent admixture during the neolithic might have gone iether direction when considering pre Neolithic expansion of Upper paleolithic europeans into northeast Asia. AMH

______________________________________________________________________________@ The First Europeans, Archaeology, January/February 1996, pps. 36-44.

Jean-Jacques Hublin

Neandertal skulls and mandibles display a singular morphology. Although some of their features can occasionally be found in other hominids, the combination of characteristic traits is unique. European Neandertals are rather short and sturdy, with a long trunk and short legs. The skeleton is robust, and the muscle attachments imply a powerful body. The head is remarkable. It is big, enclosing a brain comparable in volume to that of modern humans, but the braincase and face are very long, the forehead is low, and the browridges protrude. The mandible is strong and lacks a projecting chin. Seen from the rear, the braincase has a rounded, almost circular shape in contrast to the pentagonal shape observed in both the earlier Homo erectus and modern humans. The face is structured around a large nasal cavity, and its middle part projects forward. The bone below the eye socket is flat or even convex, receding laterally. The cheekbones are weak and oriented obliquely. This projecting face contrasts strongly with the short, flat face of the first modern humans. Other anatomical details of the ear area and rear and base of the skull are unique to Neandertals. The occipital bone, at the back of the skull, is marked by a conspicuous depression called the supra-iniac fossa (p. 38).

The long biological continuity is echoed in the archaeological record. For nearly a century, archaeologists separated the Middle Palaeolithic (then thought to be limited to between 80,000 and 40,000 B.P.) from an earlier, more primitive Lower Palaeolithic. With the excavation and study of new sites, this boundary has become more and more difficult to draw. In contrast, the arrival of modern humans in Europe is reflected in the sharp division between the Middle Palaeolithic and the beginning of the Upper Palaelothic (ca. 40,000 B.P.). The former, mainly represented by the Mousterian assemblages, are basically composed of side-scrapers, points, notches, and denticulates shaped from flint flakes. Bone objects are rare and very simple. The dwelling sites do not seem very structured. In the Upper Palaeolithic there is a large variety of flint tools, many shaped from elongated blades and bladelets. There are numerous bone and antler objects, especially spear points. It is the time of prehistoric art, of symbolism, of well-structured dwellings. It is quite likely the time of a new social organization (p. 43).

Comment by the compiler Recent verification of an old theme. Contriving amHs from these earlier European inhabitants is definitively more procrustean then is my theory that attempts to unify human origins to the Americas by supposing relative continuity of form over time in accordance with theories proposed by A. R. Wallace and Sir Arthur Keith. AMH (All emphasis added by the compiler, AMH)

______________________________________________________________________________Sequence Diversity of the Control Region of Mitochondrial DNA in Tuscany and Its Implications for the Peopling of Europe, American Journal of Physical Anthropology, 1996, pps. 443-460.

Paolo Francalacci, Jaume Bertranpetit, Francesc Calafell, and Peter A. Underhill

The results from various independent approaches point to a remarkable homogeneity among several European populations, namely Basques, Sardinians and Britons, but also reveal some differences caused by the geographic location and cultural past which have influenced their population history. As shown by different parameters (average number of individuals per haplotype and diversity coefficient, H’), the variability among individuals in Tuscany is intermediate between the more variable Middle Easterners and the European populations mentioned, the Basques having the lowest degree of heterogeneity. p. 457

The pattern found is compatible with the effects of a migration wave originating in the Middle East and reaching distant places in Europe including the western part and the islands. This pattern of expansion has been proposed with a very clear archaeological basis for the Neolithic expansion (Ammerman and Cavalli-Sforza, 1984) and for the expansion of anatomically modern humans, inferred from paleoanthropoligical data (Stringer, 1989) (p. 458).

(All emphasis added by the compiler, AMH)

______________________________________________________________________________Treasure of the Sierra Atapuerca, Archaeology, January/February 1996, pps. 45-48.

Paul g. Bahn

These bones represent about 90 percent of all pre-Neandertal bones ever found in Europe, and they provide an extraordinary chance for specialists to study such early humans. They seem to have been robust, with males between five feet, seven inches and more than six feet tall and weighing an average of about 140 pounds. The teeth are very worn from chewing plants, but there are not cavities and overall the bones show very few signs of illness or trauma. The remains include three remarkably well preserved skulls, found in July 1992, with large Neandertal-like browridges and projecting faces, though very different from Neandertals in overall shape. One skull has a capacity of 1,390 cubic centimeters, which is bigger than Homo erectus and early Homo sapiens and lies within the range (1,200-1,700 cubic centimeters) of modern populations (p. 48).

@Comment by the compiler Highlighted are examples of terms that have lumped inappropriately, anatomically modern humans with earlier European hominids that are certainly, in the view of most anthropologists, not the same species. Wolpoff would like us to lump all the hominids together into one taxonomy when the differences definitively confirm that we are anatomically and behaviorally, a separate species. (All emphasis added by the compiler, AMH)

______________________________________________________________________________@ Neandertals of the Levant, Archaeology, January/February 1996, pps. 49-50.

Erella Hovers, Yoel Rak, and William H. Kimbel

Base of infant Neandertal skull from Amud Cave, Israel, has oval foramen magnum, though which the spinal cord passed, a genetic characteristic indicating Neandertals did not evolve into modern humans, whose foramen magnum is round (p. 49).

X In the past decade innovative dating techniques have shattered the belief that Neandertals were precursors of modern humans. We now know that modern humans existed in Skhul and Qafzeh caves as long as 120,000 to 90,000 years ago, while the Neandertal skeleton from Kebara Cave dates to only 60,000 years ago. What was the relationship between the two groups? How different were they biologically? What were their behavioral differences and similarities? We began excavating at Amud in 1991, hoping to answer these questions (p. 50).

We discovered the Amud infant during our second field season. The child’s remains bear classic Neandertal traits. First, it has no chin. Second, the foramen magnum, the large hole at the base of the skull through which the spinal cord and blood vessels pass, is oval. This trait appears to be accentuated in Neandertal babies, less so in mature individuals, but in both cases it differs from the round foramen magnum of modern humans. Third, masticatory muscles left massive insertion marks on the inside of the jaws in a pattern characteristic of adult Neandertals in the Levant and Europe, but not found in modern humans (p. 50).

Comment by the compiler I and others beg to differ that we “now know that modern human existed in Skhul and Qafzeh caves as long ago as 120,000 to 90,000 years ago” when “Continued facial reference to Skhul and Qafzeh as craniometrically ‘fully anatomically modern’ is not responsible to the craniometric data (Corruccini 1992 pg. 437)” as it is confusing to everyone, both layman and specialist – to infer that they are the same species as our own by referring to them as early amHs, proto Cro-Magnons, archaic Homo sapiens or whatever (see Corruccini (1992) on page 2 of my compilations from 1995). (All emphasis added by the compiler, AMH)

______________________________________________________________________________The Great DNA Hunt, Archaeology, September/October, 1996, pps. 37-44

The Eve study was criticized almost immediately on methodological grounds. Alan Templeton, a geneticist at Washington University in St. Louis, pointed out flaws in the statistical tests and sampling methods used. Its results, he argued, were in part dictated by the order in which the information was fed into the computer. The same data could produce simpler trees, one of which also included Asians in the deepest root. Others questioned the reliability of “molecular clocks” and the rate of mutation in the human mtDNA used in calculating Eve’s date (p. 40).

Renfrew’s book sparked intense debate, receiving some acceptance among fellow archaeologists but rejection by many linguists. Even so, the peopling of Europe seemed to have taken place in two stages: the replacing of Neandertals by modern humans by about 30,000 years ago, followed by the spread of farming peoples, speaking Indo-European or not, beginning about 9,000 years ago (p.42).

Surprisingly, four of the five groups (1, 3, 4, and 5) date to well before the last glacial peak, with ages ranging from 35,000 to 25,000 years ago. The fifth group (2), however, is much younger in Europe (6,000 to 10,000 years Ago) but has clear affinities to Near Eastern mtDNA sequences (p. 44).

Sykes and his colleagues propose that these are genetic echoes of the spread of agriculture, and they are fairly weak. They conclude that , far from being overwhelmed by incoming farmers, the indigenous hunter-gatherer population remained intact and learned how to farm. (p.44).

Often thought to be a remnant of the Palaeolithic population, they speak a non-Indo-European language and have a relatively rare blood type, Rh negative, in a much higher percentage than other Europeans. According to Sykes, the evidence suggests that it was largely farming, not farmers, that spread across the continent (p.44).

(All emphasis added by the compiler, AMH)

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N. Cappello, S. Rendine, R. Griffo, G.E. Mameli, V. Succa, G. Vona and A. Piazza

Ann. Hum. Genet. (1996), 60. 125-141

Genetic Analysis of Sardinia: I. Data on 12 Polymorphisms in 21 Linguistic Domains

The first inhabitants of Sardinia were pre-Neolithic: a date for human settlement of 9120±380 years ago in the north-central part of the island (Spoor & Sondaar, 1986) is also the earliest date for any island in the Mediterranean (pg. 126).

______________________________________________________________________________Am. J. Hum. Genet. 59:185-203, 1996

Martin Richards, Helena Corte-Real, Peter Forster, Vincent Macaulay, Hilde Wilkinson-Herbots, Andrew Demaine, Surinda Papiha, Robert Hedges, Hans-Jurgen Bandelt, and Bryan Sykes

Paleolithic and Neolithic Lineages in the European Mitochondrial Gene Pool

Consideration of the diversities and geographic distribution of these groups within Europe and the Middle East leads to the conclusion that ancestors of the great majority of modern, extant lineages entered Europe during the Upper Paleolithic. A further set of lineages arrived from the Middle East much later, and their age and geographic distribution within Europe correlates well with archaeological evidence for two culturally and geographically distinct Neolithic colonization events that are associated with the spread of agriculture. It follows from this interpretation that the major extant lineages throughout Europe predate the Neolithic expansion and that the spread of agriculture was a substantially indigenous development accompanied by only a relatively minor component of contemporary Middle Eastern agriculturalists. There is no evidence of any surviving Neanderthal lineages among modern Europeans (pg. 185).

The overall topological similarity between the genetic map produced by the first principal component and an archaeological map of radiocarbon dates tracing the spread of farming from the Near East led to the formulation of the demic diffusion model (Ammerman and Cavalli-Sforza 1984). In this model, there is a slow expansion of people from the Neolithic source population into Europe that is driven by population growth resulting from agricultural surpluses and either displacing or absorbing the less numerous Mesolithic hunter-gatherer populations as it proceeds (pg. 185).

Its opposing model, cultural diffusion, proposes that, on the contrary, there was minimal intrusion of people from the Near East but that some of the local hunter-gatherer groups in Europe entered the Neolithic either independently or as a result of the diffusion of ideas and the trade of crops (Dennell 1983). An intermediate model, pioneer colonization, assumes some role for migrations from Western Asia to Europe but sees this in terms of selective colonization by fairly small groups (Zvelebil 1986; Willis and Bennett 1994; van Andel and Runnels 1995).

Here we examine which, if any, of these models best explains the observed distribution of mtDNA lineages in Europe (pg. 185).

Group 5 lineages are also uncommon but widespread in Europe, at around 7%, but are unusually common in Finland, where they reach 21%, possibly suggesting Saami influence (Sajantila et al. 1995). Like group 4, they are absent in other parts of the world sampled to date. Group 3 lineages are even less frequent in Europe, and 3A lineages are confined within our sample mainly to Britain. They are also found in the Middle East, and most 3A members share transitions at 129-223-311 with Papuan lineages (Sykes et al. 1995) (pg. 194).

It is striking that, in the Middle East, but not elsewhere in the world, we find the two missing ancestral haplotypes that link the western and central European clusters (pg. 194).

With this treatment, group 3 emerges as the oldest of the European lineage clusters, with a divergence time of 50,500 years, although whether this divergence occurred entirely in Europe is open to question, since this group includes several singly occurring outliers resembling modern African and Asian haplotypes (in the data of, e.g., Horai et al. 1991; Vigilant et al. 1991; Graven et al. 1995; Sykes et al. 1995) (pg. 194).

Among group 1 lineages there was a conspicuous absence of the root (CRS) haplotype in the Middle East sample, although a reduced median network for the Middle East (not shown) reveals that, even though not in the sample, it is present as an intermediate node separating groups 2 and 3. This suggests that, although the source of group 1 had its origins in the Middle East, the bulk of the current diversity arose in Europe and the correlation between age and arrival/expansion time is not unduly distorted (pg. 194).

Furthermore, no individual lineages in our extensive data set are sufficiently diverged to be realistically attributed to Neanderthal ancestors. We conclude (in agreement with Torroni et al. 1994) that there are no surviving Neanderthal lineages among the sample, supporting the view that Neanderthals became extinct (Mellars 1992) and, though coexisting in Europe with anatomically modern humans, did not interbreed to any significant extent (pg. 196).

However, these three lineage groups account for <20% of the modern European sample. The major groups, 1 and 4, which together comprise nearly 70% of European haplotypes, are considerably younger. Both show starlike patterns of expansion from their respective root haplotypes at some time since 25,000 years ago (pg. 196).

Of the three models for the spread of agriculture outlined earlier, our interpretation favors the pioneer colonization model, whereby there was selective penetration by fairly small groups of Middle Eastern agriculturalists of a Europe numerically dominated by the descendants of the original Paleolithic settlements. The ensuring conversion of this population from a hunter-gatherer-fishing economy to one based on agriculture would than have been achieved by technology transfer rather than large-scale population replacement (pg. 197).

It may be that the Basque population appears as a distinctive outlier in most classical genetic analyses not because it is the sole relict of a pre-Neolithic population but rather because of a long period of isolation and genetic drift that has accentuated allele frequency differences at some loci compared with other European populations. It is interesting that the small sample of Finns, who also speak a non-Indo-European language, do not resemble the Basque pattern but are distinguished by an unusually high frequency of group 5, which may be attributable to Saami influence, since group 5 includes a haplotype motif present at high frequency in the Saami (Sajantila et al. 1995), who also speak a Finno-Ugric language (pg. 197).

Comment by the compiler This represents a good example of the “Replacement Model” with evidence for the spread of agriculture overlying the original population makeup that originated outside of Europe. That is, Neandertals are not believed to have contributed to the formation of modern humans in Europe. I have italicized some major themes associated with the “Replacement Model.”

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@ Archaeology, Vol. 49 No. 1, January/February 1996 pg. 2

IN THIS ISSUEPeter A. Young, Editor-in-Chief

Hustling Hominids

Late nineteenth-century Europeans believed humans evolved on their continent and sought to identify a forerunner of the handsome Cro-Magnon hunters, they being a more honorable and acceptable ancestor than the brutish Neandertal. How far we have evolved in a mere hundred years (pg. 2).

Comment by the compiler Many turn-of-the-century Americanists championed the idea that Cro-Magnon predecessors originated in the Americas. Among these authorities were Alfred Wallace, Charles Lummis, Florentino Ameghino, J. D. Whitney, and Alexander Chamberlain the first student to graduate from an American university with a degree in Anthropology. Native Americans have long believed in an autochthonous origin though science has yet to adequately test this alternative. It has adequately dismissed any notion to test this alternative to this day despite nearly 170 years of human origin research that has focused solely on the Old World, continuing to find only, that no resolution is in sight. AMH

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Scientific American, April 1996

Science and the Citizen – Out of Food?

Although Neanderthals carved up corpses some 200,000 years ago–whether for food or ritualistic purposes is not known–the signs of butchery in the Spanish bones seem to indicate a gruesome early record of cannibalism (pg. 20).

Comment by the compiler The behavior of these non-humans would be that that many anthropologists would have us accept as our human ancestors. The alternative explanation of pre-Upper Paleolithic behaviors might be those defining the limited definitions supporting a more simplistic behavior akin to what is suggested from the peat bog of Chile’s mid-Pleistocene sight at Monte Verde. Here it is no longer presumed that humans lived along side Pleistocene fauna with no visible evidence for developed hunting technologies defining contemporary Upper Paleolithic occupations of Europe. A new modus-operandi for our earliest ancestors behavior, an alternative to that defined above. AMH

______________________________________________________________________________Robert R. Sokal, Richard L. Jantz and Barbara A. Thomson

Am. J. P. Anthro. 100:35-47 (1996)

Dermatoglyphic Variation in Europe

There is some support for demic diffusion from the southeast in finger patterns and ridge counts. We compare these results to those of previous studies and note that Lapps and Icelanders are outliers with respect to both genetics and finger tip variables, whereas Tatars are outliers with respect to craniometrics and dermatoglyphics (pg. 35).

Closer examination of the factor scores reveals that for most factors there is considerable concentration of values near the middle of the sample distribution and that there are only a few outliers. As we have seen, these outliers include Tatars, Faeroese, Lapps, Icelanders, Orkney Islanders, Aland Islanders, and various West Finnic populations (pg. 43).

The data from all three classes of variables in our studies are consistent in presenting most European populations as a central undifferentiated cluster (pg. 45).

Comment by the compiler Are the northern Europeans representative of the earliest Europeans, survivors of the Neolithic revolution, or both? AMH

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Elisabeth J. Manderscheid and Alan R. Rogers

Am. J. P. Anthro. 100:1-5 (1996)

Genetic Admixture in the Late Pleistocene

Contemporary human mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) is strikingly uniform. Published literature now includes data from several thousand mitochondria, all of them so similar that they might have come from a population of a few thousand individuals (pg. 1).

Consequently, if archaic mitochondria exist in the modern gene pool, they probably differ from other modern mitochondria at several times the number of sites that we are used to seeing in pairwise comparisons. We will refer to such mitochondria as “divergent,” and we emphasize that no one has ever found one (pg. 2).

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Eudald Carbonell, Marina Mosquera, Xose Pedro Rodriguez, and Robert Sala

Journal of Anthropological Research, vol. 51, 1995

The First Human Settlement of Europe

Human paleontologists have been researching and debating the place and age of the origin of our genus for decades. In the last years of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth, Asia was accepted as the birthplace of humankind (Dubois 1894). Later the focus shifted to South Africa (Dart 1925; Broom and Schepers 1946). In the 1960s, Central and Eastern Africa picked up the leadership position in terms of antiquity (Leakey 1971). Currently, few scholars doubt the African origin of humankind, with all its implications (pg. .

Once the place of origin was clarified, questions have arisen concerning the age of the first human occupations of the Eurasian continent.

Comment by the compiler No mention of the perspective endorsed by this compiler. If we looked into this alternative would the evidence from the Old World fall into place, i. e. two separate evolution of hominids isolated by oceans with replacement of one by another a viable alternative to punctuated equilibrium? AMH

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Guido Barbujani, Michele Stenico, Laurent Excoffier, and Loredana Nigro

Human Biology, April 1996, v. 68, no. 2 pp. 201-215

Mitochondrial DNA Sequence Variation across Linguistic and Geographic Boundaries in Italy

Analysis of Molecular Variance. Sequence heterogeneity among localities and between groups of localities was assessed by means of analysis of molecular variance (AMOVA) (Excoffier et al. 1992). In this method sums of squared sequence differences between individuals are compared within populations, between populations of the same (geographic or linguistic) group, and between such groups. The significance of the observed variances is calculated by a nonparametric randomization approach. Haplotypes are assigned to random locations, and the appropriate molecular variance is recalculated; the procedure is repeated until an empirical null distribution of variances is obtained. The observed variances are finally compared with the null distribution (pgs. lost).

Along the course of the Po River in a region where distributions of nuclear allele frequencies indicate barriers to gene flow, mtDNA sequences show a different spatial pattern. Localities separated by physical or linguistic barriers do not seem to have exchanged fewer migrants than random pairs of localities. Estimated allele genealogies do suggest a slight excess of migratory movements within the three areas defined by physical or linguistic boundaries; however, this excess is far from being statistically significant and can be accounted for by the effects of isolation by distance (pg. lost).

On the other hand, so far, most studies on DNA have compared samples collected at distant locations, such as the Near East and Sardinia (Di Rienzo and Wilson 1991); it comes as no surprise that substantial genetic differences between samples were detected. On a smaller geographic scale the picture is far from clear, but it is known that there is little mtDNA diversity between European populations (Excoffier 1990; Bertranpetit et al. 1995). Therefore it seems important to ask whether mtDNA sequence differences show significant structure in small areas, provided that these areas can reasonably be suspected to harbor substantial genetic diversity

(pg. lost).

Comment by the compiler The situation from New World genetic studies suggests that Amerindian populations maintain “extensive genetic diversity” with little evidence for “bottlenecks” unless you accept the evidence of a dramatic founding effect that the Wallace lab does not itself continue to endorse. The common genetic heredity for the founding population in the Old World better serves the perspective of a bottleneck there then in the New World where Rebecca Cann herself once stated there appears to be 33 Eves! AMH

______________________________________________________________________________Ancestry and interrelationships of the Indians and their relationship with other world populations: A study based on mitochondrial DNA polymorphisms, Ann. Hum. Genet., 60, 1996, 409-422.

S. Barnabas, R.V. Apte and C.G. Suresh

A comprehensive analysis of the mitochondrial DNA polymorphisms supports the identification of three major world ethnic groups, the Africans, the Asians and the Caucasians (Merriwether et al. 1991). p. 409

In his dendrogram, the Indians cluster closer to Sihalese, Iranians and Afghans than to Malays, Chinese and Bhutanese. p. 410

A study of the Indian mtDNA types observed by us points to a population which shares a common lineage with the Caucasians and Asians, rather than of a population which has been separated for a longer period. Thus it is possible that migrations of modern man into the subcontinent, from a lineage shared with the Caucasians would have given rise to the present day Indian populations (p. 420).

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F. Calafell, P. Underhill, A. Tolun, D. Angelicheva, and L. Kalaydjieva

Ann. Hum. Genet. (1996). 60. 35-49

From Asia to Europe: mitochondrial DNA sequence variability in Bulgarians and Turks

Current mutation rate estimates date this expansion in times ranging between
50 000 and 100 000 years ago and, thus, would correspond to the arrival of anatomically modern humans in Europe (pg. 35).

Most clusters contain strings of sequences linked by one or two base differences. This pattern would be expected if the central sequence were ancestral to the rest. In that case, the mean number of differences between the sequences in a population and their putative ancestor would follow a Poisson distribution with a mean l = mlt, where m is the mutation rate per nucleotide per generation, l is the sequence length and t is the coalescence time, e.g. the time (in number of generations) elapsed since the first mutation event created a sequence different from the ancestral (Hudson, 1990) (pgs. 44-45).

This may indicate that most of the Indian sequences sprang from an ancestral sequence that was different from the reference. The coalescence time mentioned above agrees with the replacement model for the diffusion of anatomically modern humans into Europe (Stringer, 1989), rather than with the multi-regional model advocated by Wolpoff (1989), which implies coalescence times of at least 500 000 ya (pg. 45).

Cluster 4 was again mainly Indian, and included nearly all the sequences with a T at position 16223. This substitution is found in frequencies of 4•4% in Basques, under 20% in other Europeans, up to 60% in Asians and Oceanians, and between 60% to 100% in Africans (pg. 45-46).

Two major East-West expansions could account for the observed pattern: the occupation of Europe by anatomically modern humans about 40 000 ya (Klein, 1989) and the diffusion of agriculture into Europe in the Neolithic, 10 000 to 4000 ya (Ammerman & Cavalli-Sforza, 1984) (pg. 47).

Our population trees allow only the distinction between Indian and non-Indian populations and reveal the close relationship between populations across the European continent. After the expansion of modern humans in Europe, high levels of migration, and especially the Neolithic demic diffusion might have contributed to the homogenization of the genetic landscape of Europe (Menozzi et al. 1978; Rendine et al. 1986; Cavalli-Sforza et al. 1993). Identical or closely related mtDNA sequences tend to occur in different European populations, revealing that sequence lineages have frequently moved from one population to another (pg. 48).

Comment by the compiler Europe seems more homogeneous when compared to populations of from the Americas. By themselves the “proposed founding lineages” that continue to grow in number, are much more divergent from each other then those that make-up continental populations of the Old World. AMH

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Human Biology, April, v. 68, no. pp. 217-229

Orosomucoid (ORM1) Polymorphism in Arabs and Jews of Israel: More Evidence for a Middle Eastern Origin of the Jews

S. Nevo, A. Picornell, A. Miguel, J.A. Castro, A. Joel, N. Heno, M. Liron, and M.M. Ramon

Another allele attaining polymorphic frequencies was observed mainly in East Asian populations (Japan, China, Taiwan, and others). This is a duplication of the *F1 and *S alleles, *dF1,S, also designated ORM1*2,1 (Yuasa et al. 1987). This allele reaches frequencies of up to 16% in Japan (Umetsu et al. 1988a,b; Yuasa et al. 1990a,b) but was observed as a rare allele in non-Asian populations (Sebetan and Sagisaka 1988; Umetsu et al. 1989a).

The finding of the *dF1,S Asian allele in three Amerindian populations (Salzano et al. 1990; Umetsu et al. 1989b) fits the Asian origin of those populations (pg. lost).

Comment by the compiler Alternatively, these links could be related to Amerindians by arguing recent migration from the Americas. Again, the Polynesians must be interpreted as having explored the Mediterranean and of having left an genetic impact there as they were the first people to discover Madagascar. There are simply to many genetic similarities shared between coastal southeast Asians, Polynesians, and Amerindians to continue to disregard alternatives to the consensus opinions linking of similarities shared by remotely related populations. AMH

NORTHEAST ASIA

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HLA Class II Alleles in Ainu Living in Hidaka District, Hokkaido, Northern Japan, American Journal of Physical Anthropology, 1996, pps. 1-8.

Makoto Bannai, Katsushi Tokunaga, Tadashi Imanishi, Shinji Harihara, Kiyoshi Fujisawa, Takeo Juji, and Keiichi Omoto

Principal component analysis of various populations based on HLA class II allele frequencies places the Ainu population midway between other east Asian populations, including Wajin, and Native Americans. These observations may support the hypothesis that the Ainu people are the descendants of some Upper Paleolithic populations of northeast Asia from which Native Americans are also descended (p. 1).

[Remember, Amerindians might have migrated into Northeast Asia in Holocene times and have admixted withh late Asian Upper Paleolithiooc decendents of the Ainu. AMH]

Although HLA antigens play a key role in the recognition of foreign antigens, there is evidence that each haplotype has been well conserved during human evolution (Tokunaga et al., 1988). Because of these features, HLA alleles and haplotypes serve as powerful markers in the field of human population genetics (Tokunaga et al., 1996). Accordingly, we also compare the similarity of Ainu to a number of Asian and American populations (p. 2).

The first four components were extracted, and contributed 44.7%, 13.0%, 10.9%, and 7.4%, respectively (76.0% cumulative), to the total variance. For the first PC (Fig. 2A), the Ainu had the sixth-highest score (0.19), following those of five Native American populations, Xavantes (2.07), Tlingit (1.71), Mataco-Wichi (1.55), eastern Toba (1.20), and North American Indians (0.77) (p. 4).

The Ainu were close to some Native American populations for the third PC and close to east Asian and some Native American populations for the fourth PC. On the whole, the Ainu did not constitute a cluster with any other ethnic group in this analysis. On the contrary, in terms of PC analysis, the Ainu were situated midway between Native Americans and a cluster of east Asian populations including Japanese (Wajin) (p. 4).

(emphasis added AMH)

[Comment Are the Ainu – another – Asian population admixed with Amerindian ? AMH]

It should be noted that a small tribe sometimes appears to be distantly related to closely related ethnic groups for certain reasons. . . . A similar situation was observed in Native American tribes, and possible reasons which have been proposed include a small number of founder individuals, selective advantage of some alleles in terms of resistance to illness, or random genetic drift in the gene pool in isolated tribes (Cerna et al., 1993). These genetic factors could affect the principal component analysis results (p. 6).

Comment by the compiler The evidence from the New World continues to indicate that Tribal populations are at least as diverse as the southern Basque and the Scandinavian Sammi are from each other in Europe. If separate waves can not be demonstrated for these earliest Europeans then we need not conclude that their age is any younger then is the duration of the Pleistocene – the time separating the initial European arrival of amHs – marking the dawn of the Upper Paleolithic – and the later Neolithic settlement 9,000 years ago. AMH

______________________________________________________________________________The Peopling of Japan in Archaeology September/ October 1996 pg. 43

Mark Rose – managing editor; Archaeology Mag.

Hybridization theories claim that modern Japanese are descended from both groups, in which case they should have genes deriving from both the Jomon and Yayoi people. Transformation theories posit that modern Japanese people gradually evolved from the Jomon. Proponents claim that much of the variation present today in Japanese existed in the original Jomon population. They believe the chief contribution of the Yayoi was cultural rather than genetic.

The ancestors of all men with Y2 were traced to Henan Province in northern China. According to Hammer and Horai, this indicates that people from northern China, the ancestors of the Yayoi, migrated through Korea to Japan, where they contributed to the genetic makeup of modern Japanese. This contradicts transformation theories that hold Japanese populations are derived solely from Jomon people with no Yayoi admixture.

The Ainu, who pursued a hunter-fisher life-style through the last century, may retain much of the genetic background of the Jomon. If so, Hammer and Horai predict that Ainu will genetically resemble the Okinawans.

______________________________________________________________________________A Discordance between mtDNA Diversity and Blood-Protein Heterozygosti yin Northern Siberian Populations, Am. J. Hum. Genet. 59, 1996, pps. 1167-1168.

Boris A. Malyarchuk

Jorde et al. (1995) reported a discordance between mtDNA and nuclear DNA (nDNA) sequence diversities among Africans, Asians, and Europeans. These authors noted that the degree of relatedness estimated for these groups, as displayed in neighbor-joining trees, differs depending on whether mtDNA or nDNA data are used.

A similar discordance is observed between northern Siberian aboriginal populations. Among northern Asian peoples, the greatest degree of heterozygosity in blood-protein genes is found in the northernmost groups, with decreasing nDNA diversity at these loci in the more southerly groups (Solovenchuk 1989) (p. 1167).

Sequence diversity in mtDNA control regions is low in circum-Arctic peoples (Shields et al. 1993). Significantly, however, this diversity increases in more southerly populations, in marked contrast to the pattern seen in nDNA (p. 1167).

Their data describe 11 RFLPs that define four mtDNA haplotypes. Diversity (simle h; Nei and Tajima 1981) calculated from table 1 of Torroni et al. (1993) ranges as follows: Eskimo (n = 50), .338 ± .077; reindeer Chukchi (n = 24), .796 ± .046; and Koryak (n = 46), . 819 ± .026. Differences between these diversity values were not determined, because of the small sample sizes involved, but the geographical trend toward higher nDNA diversity and lower mtDNA diversity in more northerly Siberian groups appears to be real and consistent (p. 1168).

As Jorde et al. (1995) note, mtDNA polymorphisms might not be selectively neutral, and it is possible that the loss of mtDNA diversity in northern populations reflects a greater degree of selection for optimal mtDNA haplotypes under more extreme conditions. Other models may be proposed. In any case, the problem of discordance between mtDNA and nDNA diversities will require further study.

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Am. J. Hum. Genet. 59:579-590, 1996

Satoshi Horai, Kumiko Murayama, Kenji Hayasaka, Satoe Matsubayashi, Yuko Hattori, Goonnapa Fucharoen, Shinji Harihara, Kyung Sook Park, Keiichi Omoto, and I-Hung Pan

mtDNA Polymorphism in East Asian Populations, with Special Reference to the Peopling of Japan

The intergenic COII/tRNALys 9-bp deletion was observed in every East Asian population with varying frequencies. The D-loop sequence variation suggests that the deletion event occurred only once in the ancestry of East Asians (pg. 579).

Of note is the finding that 50% of the mainland Japanese had continental specificity in which Chinese or Koreans were dominant, while <20% of either Ryukyuans or Ainu possessed continental specificity (pg. 579).

Many of the Chinese who inhabit Taiwan are known to be direct descendants of migrants from mainland China after the seventeenth century. Moreover, the present Chinese samples do not include those from Taiwanese aboriginal populations who show linguistic and physical affinity to the Austronesian-speaking populations of Southeast Asia (Bellwood et al. 1995) (pg. 280). (emphasis added AMH)

It is worth noting that the Ainu and Ryukyuans did not possess any sequence types in common, though these two populations are considered to be direct descendants of the Jomon people (discussed in Relationships between the Ainu and Ryukyuans) (pg. 582).

By contrast, 9.8% of the Ainu sowed both Chinese and Korean specificity. Ryukyuans showed almost the same breakdown in specificity (10% Chinese and 8% Korean). It is relevant to note that one third (17 individuals) of the Ainu exhibited the two dominant clusters (C1 and C16), and 50% of the Ryukyuans showed Ryukyuan specificity, indicating unique phylogenetic affiliation for the two ethnic groups of Japan (pg. 582).

A total of 34 East Asians exhibited the 9-bp deletion, and all of them were included in the C2 cluster in the phylogenetic tree based on D-loop sequences (fig. 2). This indicates that the deletion event occurred once in the ancestry of East Asian lineages (pg. 584).

These results lend support to the hybridization theory on the origin of mainland Japanese. The transformation theory contends that genetic variation in mainland Japanese derives solely from their Jomon ancestors and does not reflect a Yayoi admixture (Suzuki 1981; Mizoguchi 1986). Since the mtDNA sequence polymorphism found indicates that the mainland Japanese have been considerably influenced by a continental gene flow, the transformation theory obviously is incompatible with the present results (pg. 584).

A phylogenetic tree indicated that the Ainu and Ryukyuans are closest to each other and are also closely allied with the mainland Japanese and Koreans. However, the three Japanese populations were quite distinct from contemporary Southeast Asians in the phylogentic tree (pg. 584-585).

Nei (1995) favors a modification of the transformation theory (called the “out-of-northeast-Asia hypothesis”) that posits: (1) modern human first entered into Japan ~30,000 years ago from northeast Asia; (2) an occasional gene flow from northeast Asia continued until 12,000 years ago, when the Japanese archipelago disconnected from the Asian continent; and (3) the Yayoi migration, while making a large cultural contribution, had little influence on the gene pool of modern Japanese (pg. 585).

Substitution of the frequencies of continental specificity into this equation yields the following results: the proportion of mtDNAs derived from the Yayoi is 65%, and the proportion derived from the Jomon is 35%. Therefore, the mtDNA data support the hybridization hypothesis that migrations during the Yayoi Age (2,300—1,700 years ago) and the subsequent Kofun period (1,700—1,400 years ago) made a significant maternal contribution to the gene pool of modern Japanese (Yamaguchi 1982; Hammer and Horai 1995) (pg. 585).

The results strongly suggest that ancestral populations for the present Ainu and Ryukyuans must have existed as different populations when the Yayoi migration took place ~2,300 years ago. Analysis of shared sequence types showed that the Ryukyuans shared one type each with the mainland Japanese and Koreans, and two types each with both the mainland Japanese and Koreans (table 1). In contrast, the Ainu shared three types with the mainland Japanese and one type each with Koreans and Chinese. Furthermore, the common types shared among three populations observed in the Ainu and Ryukyuans are different. These results imply that, in the Yayoi Age, some ancestral Ryukyuans might have stayed in the western part of Japan, whereas the ancestral Ainu population already was inhabiting Hokkaido, even if some of the Ainu and Ryukyuans descended from a common ancestral Jomon stock (pg. 586).

Comment by the compiler The dominance of the Island’s Population (65%) by Yayoi people in less then 3,000 years suggests that similar displacement of the original Late Paleolithic populations may have occurred – elsewhere. The survival of – interior groups – in New Guinea, Australia, Borneo, and other previously occupied Islands may represent a lasting occupation of earlier Paleolithic peoples. The similarity shared between Taiwanese and the linguistic similarity to Austronesian speakers may represent replacement following the arrival of coastal oriented Polynesians into Taiwan. Replacement in Japan remains a different story altogether. AMH

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Am. J. of Physical Anthropology, 100:523-530, 1996

P.L. Tsai, J.W. Hsu, L.M. Lin, and K.M. Liu

Logisitic Analysis of the Effects of Shovel Trait on Carabelli’s Trait in a Mongoloid Population

The Mongoloid group selected for study was the Bunun tribe of aborigines who inhabit an alpine area in Taiwan. The effects of sex and age on Carabelli’s trait were controlled in this investigation, as was the association between tooth size and Carabelli’s trait. Results show that males were more likely to have Carabelli’s trait expressed on teeth than females. The buccolingual diameter of Carabelli’s trait teeth was larger than that of teeth without the trait. After adjusting for sex, age, and tooth size, the existence of the shovel trait increased the likelihood of having Carabelli’s trait by a factor of three, an effect that is significant (pg. 523).

Shovel trait occurs almost universally, and occurs particularly frequently in all Mongoloid groups, including Bunun aborigines, Chinese, Eskimos, and American Indians (Hrdlicka, 1920; Dahlberg, 1951; Hanihara, 1968). Carabelli’s trait is less commonly found in these populations (Lee and Goose, 1972). On the other hand, populations derived from Europe, such as American whites, have a low frequency of shovel trait and a high frequency of Carabelli’s trait (Hrdlicka, 1920; Lee and Goose, 1972; Mayhall et al., 1982). The literature shows that Caucasoid and Mongoloid population frequencies differ remarkably in the expression of Carabelli’s trait on the upper right first molar and shovel trait on the upper right central incisor teeth (Koski and Hantala, 1952; Moorrees, 1957; Lee and Goose, 1972). As a consequence of this, shovel and Carabelli’s traits have been regarded as dental markers of Mongoloid and Caucasoid ancestry. Understanding the real interaction between these two prominent dental markers is therefore of biological and anthropological interest (pg. 528). (emphasis added AMH)

Comment by the compiler Question, what is the relationship to be surmised when identifying derived traits and/or lost similarities due to adaptation, selection and/or the maintenance of “primitive characteristics? What does this tell us about other similarities when defining relationships based on common or divergent trait analyses.?

POLYNESIA

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The Hawaiian Journal of History, vol 26 (1992)

Hawaiian Customs on Kaho’Olawe

Dr. Noa Emmett Aluli

Oral traditions identify Lae O Kealaikahiki as the major departure point from where Hawaiians left when they traveled between Hawaii and Tahiti in the 13th century. The name translates into Point of the Pathway to Tahiti. The Hawaiians probably waited here for the ideal winds, currents, and other conditions to launch their voyages to Tahiti in the strong southerly Kealaikahiki Channel and current (pg. 243).

Peter Buck concluded through his research that Ke-ala-i-kahiki was the primary departure point for voyages to Tahiti:

The point of departure for the south was the passage between Kahoolawe and Maui which was named Ke Ala i Kahiki (the Course to Tahiti). In a translation from Kamakau, Alexander (181b) refers to the southern sailing directions. Holupaa, the North Star, was left directly astern; and when Hokupaa sank below the northern horizon on reaching the Piko o Wakea (the Equator), Newe became the guiding star to the south. No sailing directions were given for the return voyage to the north. (pg. 245)

Two known accounts also place Kealaihahiki as a point landing in Hawaii after the long journey from Kahiki. Placing Kealaikahiki as a point of arrival would coincide with the oral tradition related in the chant shared above from Harry Kunihi Mitchell (pg. 245).

The first caught fish were given as offerings on the ko’a, upon returning from a day of fishing as gratitude for the guidance of deity of the shrine. The ko’a serve as land markers for ocean fishing grounds. In some cases, the fish were fed at certain grounds to assure that they would be plentiful in those designated areas, and the ko’a serves as a land marker (pg. 247).

Comment by the compiler The use of “indigenous knowledge” and the maintenance of this through oral tradition can only continue to help scientific interpretations and the identification of novel ideas to test. Like the use of the sweet potato in providing a platform in moving the stone monuments of Easter Island, the verification of ancient history can be sustained when applying scientific testing to stories based on translations passed down by myth. Perhaps we should continue to test the believes of the people studied with more vigor. (emphasis added AMH)

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Am. J. Hum. Genet. 59:253-256, 1996

Sandro L. Bonatto, Alan J. Redd, Francisco M. Salzano, and Mark Stoneking.

Lack of Ancient Polynesian-Amerindian Contact

In the second, two mtDNA Polynesian sequences not related to the B lineage matched sequences from Amerindians and were postulated to be evidence of contact (Sykes et al. 1995) (pg. 253-254).

Among B lineage sequences, the CR variable sites in Polynesians are distinct from Amerindians. The suite of sites common in Polynesians (Hagelberg and Clegg 1993; Hagelberg et al. 1994; Lum et al. 1994; Redd et al. 1995; Sykes et al. 1995)–the Polynesian motif–includes three HVS-I substitutions: a C at position 16,217, a G at position 16,247, and a T at position 16,261 (relative to the reference [Anderson et al. 1981]). The Polynesian motif has been postulated to be of recent origin and to have increased in frequency together with the expansion of proto-Polynesian populations (Redd et al. 1995). In contrast, Amerindian CR sequences of the B lineage commonly have only one of these variable sites (C at 16,217), which is common in Southeast Asia (Melton et al. 1995). In our Amerindian sample no CR sequences have the Polynesian motif, although one individual from Amazonia has two of the variable sites but lacks the G in position 16,247. This Amerindian individual also lacks a C at position 146 in HVS-II, a polymorphism that is common in Polynesian motif sequences (Redd et al. 1995). (emphasis added AMH)

Two possible explanations for the sharing of identical sequences between Polynesians and Amerindians are (a) retention of an ancestral Asian sequence and (b) admixture (ancient or recent) (pg. 254).

The Tahitian lineage 47 (Sykes et al. 1995) is identical to an Argentine Mapuche (Ginther et al. 1993), a Central American Kuna (Batista et al. 1995), a Mongolian (Kolman et al. 1996), and a Siberian Chukchi (Shields et al. 1993). The B lineage Tongan 33 HVS-I sequence (Redd et al. 1995) is identical to one of the two most frequent Amerindian sequences and occurs in the three American subcontinents. However, the HVS-II sequence of this Tongan is different from all HVS-II Amerindian sequences described thus far. The last case of sharing is the Cook Island lineage 45 (Sykes et al. 1995). This sequence is different from all of the completely sequenced HVS-I Amerindians (~600 individuals) but is identical to a Chilean Mapuche (Horai et al. 1993), whose first 100 bp of the HVS-I were not sequenced. If we disregard these first 100 bases for all other known human sequences, this sequence is also identical to a North American Athapascan (Shields et al. 1993), two Siberians (Torroni et al. 1993b), a Mongolian (Kolman et al. 1996), and one Asian from Tibet (Torroni et al. 1993a). Therefore, all the shared sequences between Polynesians and Amerindians are much more likely explained as a retention of ancestral Asian sequences by both descendant populations than by an ancestral or recent post-divergence admixture (pg. 254-255).

The results (table 1) indicate that Polynesian populations have a much more recent origin than Amerindian populations and that the two diverged ~30,000 years ago. This divergence estimate is considerably older than the date of 3,500 years ago associated with early Polynesian archaeological sites (Bellwood 1989).

In conclusion, the presence of the B lineage and the mating of three other sequences between Polynesians and Amerindians probably reflect a shared Asian origin rather than direct contact (pg. 255). (emphasis added AMH)

Comment by the compiler The predilection of the authors; that the “the mating of three other sequences between Polynesians and Amerindians probably reflect a shared Asian origin rather than direct contact (pg. 255)” does not disprove the alternative (see my Background iii disposition) as the high mutation rate of mtDNA could explain the recent derivation of “the Polynesian motif.” That lineage B mtDNAs are associated with more ancient Amerindian distributions would identify the likelihood that this marker is evidence of a Amerindian founding population for the Polynesians. Post Polynesian expansion/exploration into coastal Asia (and other remote areas of the Old World) is a viable explanation for the widespread distribution of type B Amerindian mtDNAs. Here Bonatto et al. suggest that a single southeast Asian mtDNA – associated with the recent expansion of Austronesian speakers – would be the only founding marker associating an Amerindian derivation from the discernible pool of southeast Asians mtDNAs. Separate migrations from the Americas into Siberia and Polynesia continue to be ignored in light of conflicting evidence to the contrary. Rebecca Cann and others are now entertaining these long dismissed alternatives as the following “Reply” articulates. AMH

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Am. J. Hum. Genet. 59:256-258, 1996

R.L. Cann and J.K. Lum

Mitochondrial Myopia: Reply to Bonatto et al.

Further, they admit that their analysis cannot exclude sex-biased dispersal, which could be tested with additional nuclear genetic markers (specifically, short-tandem-repeat or Y-chromosome haplotypes) and sequences from viral isolates, such as HTLV-1 (Miura et al. 1994) (pg. lost ).

At best, Bonatto et al. can say only that their restricted subset of Polynesian lineages may not have been in direct contact with the Americas.

Even the “at-best” scenario is flawed, on the basis of sequences that we have detected in the Pacific. The common B-lineage sequence found in Amerindian populations (16217) is found in 3% of Samoans and in 74% of the Kapingamarangis whom we have studied. It is also found in 80% of the eastern Micronesian population (3%-33%) and in two of the three western Micronesian (7%-14%) populations that we have sampled. In addition, two substitutions found in an Amazonians (16217 and 16261) are also found in Pacific populations throughout Polynesia (Samoa at 20%, Kampingamarangi at 26%, Hawaii at 11%, and Rapa Nui at 7%). This lineage is also found in 9 of 10 eastern Micronesian populations (7%-50%) and in western Micronesians (2%-17%).

Therefore, the analysis may be consistent with either the retention of ancestral lineages in both groups or direct contact that spread the same lineages into both groups. Bonatto et al. clearly favor the first explanation, on the basis of the nodal position of shared lineages in the neighbor-joining tree. They ignore the frequency of those lineages within populations, yet we and Sykes et al. (1995) have found that the nodal lineages are the most frequent sequences detected in populations of the Pacific.

The neighbor-joining method (Saitou and Nei 1987) used here has the advantage of being computationally fast–but has the distinct disadvantage of occasionally performing the biologically impossible, in that it can assign a negative length to a branch (Swofford and Olsen 1990). Thus, the accuracy and precision of Bonatto et al.’s phylogenetic test remains open to question.

We think that it is wiser to admit that the hypothesis of direct contact has not been adequately tested. Why is the B-lineage clade, a clade most common on the western coast of the Americas, not found in Beringia? Why does the B-lineage clade have lower sequence diversity and a different mismatch distribution than do the major A, C, and D clades (as well as others recently documented by T. Schurr and colleagues) in Amerindians? Why are other lineages, not just in the B group, found in Pacific and Amerindian populations? Finally, how do we account for the prehistoric distribution of the sweet potato in Oceania (Yen 1974)?

Just as current mtDNA data alone may be insufficient to answer the question of “Neanderthal” gene continuity with modern European populations, the question of whether there was limited gene flow between Native Americans and Oceanic populations is unresolved.

Comment by the compiler Shared markers should not bias the scientific testing of where they originated. Simply put – who were first – the Amerindians or the Polynesians? And from what direction does the current flow across the Pacific – towards southeast Asia. Why do we test the similarities found between the two hemispheres’ Peoples against data that is compatible with western movements ONLY? Is there a case for separate Amerindian migrations into Siberia and Polynesia? “All is not well in Denmark!” AMH

AUSTRALIA

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Science, Vol 274, October 4, 1996

Constance Holden

Art Stirs Uproar Down Under

But that’s a big if. The significance of the site hinges on its age, and many scientists are skeptical about the dating, which was done with a relatively new technique called thermoluminescence (TL). “Unbelievable,” says archaeologist John Beaton of the University of California, Davis. These dates are wildly out of line with everything else we know.” Even archaeologist Rhys Jones of the Australian National University in Canberra, who last year made waves by dating two other Australian sites to 60,000 years with the same method (Science, 31 March 1995, p. 1908), warns that until more tests have been done, “we do not know how valid the present TL claims are (pg. 33).”

Comment by the compiler The evidence suggesting an earlier presence of modern human behavior in Australia requires a theory to go along with the TL dates as this type of human achievement is believed to be less then 50 ky old in Asia, Europe, or Africa, (let’s not mention the Americas).

(OK, if you insist) My hypothesis for accepting an in-situ origin for mankind within the Americas – collaborating the very early dates from Brazil, Chile, and North America – follows that, sophisticated behaviors archaeologically associated with the first modern peopling of the Old World was produced as a result of adaptation brought on by the exploration of the Eastern Hemisphere. The theory suggests that makinds earlier ancestral behaviors can be traced to the limited definitions associated with mid-Pleistocene Amerindian occupations, (not that Chile’s Monte Verde is a limited definition – though it would be if we didn’t have the abundance of eveidence preserved in the peat layer dating to 13,000 bp). The development of new subsistent stratagies – associated with modern human occupations of the Old World – were isolated from the Americas until the end of the last Ice Age when the refinments defining the PaleoLITHIC found there way into the Americas, distinguishing the dawn of Paleoindian Industries. AMH

______________________________________________________________________________J.M. Roberts-Thomson, J.J. MArtinson, J.T. Norwich, R.M. Harding, J.B. Clegg, and B. Boettcher

Am. J. Hum. Genet. 58:1017-1024, 1996

An Ancient Common Origin of Aboriginal Australians and New Guinea Highlanders Is Supported by a-Globin Haplotype Analysis

Australians have a haplotype repertoire that is shared with New Guinea highlanders, a fact that strongly supports a common origin of these two populations. Further, Australians and New Guinea highlanders have a different set of a haplotypes from Southeast Asians and a lower genetic diversity. This, coupled with the presence of many locally specific central Australian haplotypes, suggests that much of the original diversity was lost in a population bottleneck prior to or during the early colonization of Sahul and that subsequent recovery of diversity has been accompanied by the generation of new haplotypes. These conclusions contrast with some previous genetic studies suggesting links between Australians, coastal New Guineans, and present-day Southeast Asians. Much of this discrepancy appears to be due to more recent Southeast Asian [Melanesian/Polynesian] admixture on the north coastof Australia (pg. 1017). (emphasis added AMH)

At times of lowered sea levels due to glaciation, the islands of Java, Borneo, and Bali were joined with Vietnam and the Malayan peninsula to form the large continent of Sunda. For any expanding or displaced Asian population of modern humans with seafaring abilities, Sahul was accessible throughout the late Pleistocene, requiring, on occasion, a sea voyage of perhaps only 70 km. The archaeological record suggests that migration also continued eastward of New Guinea, resulting in the occupation of the Bismarck archipelago and the northern Solomon Islands by 30,000 years ago (Bellwood 1978; Gosden 1993) (pg. 1017). (emphasis added AMH)

A lack of association between aboriginal Australians and New Guinea highlanders was also observed for mtDNA (Stoneking and Wilson 1989; Stoneking et al. (1990) and in early studies on allelic variation at the HLA system (Serjeantson 1985) (pg. 1018).

In the present study, we have characterized the a-globin gene complex of Australians from one tribe in central Australia. In contrast to Tsintsof et al. (1990), we find convincing evidence of strong links with New Guinea highlanders, implying that migrations into ancient Sahul originated from a single source population. We suggest that more recent gene flow from island Southeast Asia, resulting in the aboriginal populations on of the north and northwest coasts of Australia becoming admixed, explains some of the ambiguous results of previous studies (pg. 1018. (emphasis added AMH)

This study demonstrates that the a-globin haplotype composition of central Australians is similar to those of the coastal and highlands populations of New Guinea. All these populations feature high frequencies of the IIIa Haplotype and the presence of IVa and IVb haplotypes. The distribution of group III and IV haplotypes is relatively restricted outside of Australia and Melanesia, although they are found in some African populations. The central Australian population is closest to the New Guinea highlanders, consistent with other genetic and archaeological data suggesting that the early occupation of Sahul included both Australia and New Guinea and that these people migrated from a common Southeast Asian source (pg. 1021).

The central Australians, by contrast, have negligible levels (1/200) of the most common haplotypes that characterize Southeast Asians, and, conversely, the rare haplotype groups found in central Australians have never been observed in Southeast Asia (authors’ unpublished observations). All these findings imply that central Australia has remained isolated from island Southeast Asia for many millennia (pg. 1022).

Both aboriginal Australians and New Guinea highlanders have notably low genetic diversity at a-globin and other loci, and this has been interpreted in previous studies as a result of isolation and long-term small population sizes. However, it is possible that the original diversity was lost in a population bottleneck prior to or during the occupation of Sahul. Also, it is likely that the genetic differences found between central Australians and the New Guinea highlanders are due to the accumulation of new haplotypes, generated by mutation and recombination, rather than to drift in generational sampling, as would be expected if population sizes remained small. There is no evidence that these rare haplotypes derive from populations now settled in island Southeast Asia. The presence of locally specific haplotypes suggests moderate population sizes and low rates of gene flow among these regions. The nonequilibrium distribution for the central Australian aboriginal sample is consistent with population expansion, generated by natural recruitment rather than immigration. Following the bottleneck that occurred in an ancestral population of both Australia and New Guinea, diversity has been recovering by the incorporation of new haplotypes (pg. 1023). (allemphasis added AMH)

Comment by the compiler There are several inferences I would like to draw from the data presented here. One is that coastal populations in Melanesia resemble Polynesians more than the interior groups discussed here. The second is that, the original Southeast Asians, New Guineas, and Central Australians are believed to have shared an earlier common ancestry that has diverged following the formation of the present interior populations, including interior Southeast Asians. Finally, the sharing of lineages with African populations does not require that we assume that the African populations were the ancestors of the Asian population that gave rise to New Guineas and Central Australians if the supposed “mitochondrial Eve” was not from Africa (see Johnson et al 1983; Templeton 1993). AMH

(All emphasis added by the compiler, AMH)

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David J. Betty, Amy N. Chin-Atkins, Lynn Croft, Michaela Sraml, and Simon Easteal

Am. J. Hum. Genet. 58:428-433 Letter to the Editor

Multiple Independent Origins of the COII/tRNALys Intergenic 9-bp mtDNA Deletion in Aboriginal Australians

The deletion occurred in 4 of 156 Aboriginal Australians from Western Australia: two (AK27 and AK1110) from the Kimberley region and two (AW218 and AW220) from the western desert population. None of the 134 individuals screened from the Northern Territory had the deletion, but it did occur in 4 of the 20 Cantonese (HK3829, HK3850, HK3919, and HK3992) (pg. 429).

None of the eight individuals we found with the deletion shares the “Polynesian motif” comprising the C at position 16217, plus G at position 16247 and T at position 16261 (pg. 429).

This result has several possible interpretations. If the AW222 mitochondrial genotype does form part of the major Asian-derived clade, then it may represent either an ancient divergence or a later introgression, or both. Alternatively, the few shared variable sites described above could represent homoplasy in a region with known high rates of mutation; in this case, AW222 could represent a third independent origin for the deletion (pg. 431).

In summary, analysis of control region sequences from four Aboriginal Australians with the 9-bp deletion indicates that three of them represent two independent origins for the deletion. These findings are consistent with the time depth of occupancy of the continent: humans have been in Australia and New Guinea for at least 50,000 years (Roberts et al. 1990; Flood 1995), with little apparent intermarriage with later Southeast Asian or Pacific populations. The fourth Australian mtDNA genotype with the deletion could be part of a widespread Asia-Pacific clade, representing either later introgression or an early divergence from the main Asian-derived clade with the deletion [or the source being Amerindians, see Cann and Lum 1996] (pg. 431).

Comment by the compiler The “Polynesian Motif” is not found in association with Continental Amerindian Populations indicating that it arose in Polynesians following the bottleneck that must have occurred during their initial expansion into Polynesia. This motif’s fixation proceeded subsequent Polynesian dispersals into Melanesia, coastal Southeast Asia, Taiwan, and Madagascar. The Region V mt DNA deletion does not appear to be a founding lineage for any Old World interior populations suggesting to me that it may be evidence of an Amerindian contribution to the founding population of Polynesia. There are many other genetic links (HLAs HVS-1 and other nuclear DNA markers) that distinguish the more recent coastal Melanesians with more native Central American populations AMH

(All emphasis added by the compiler, AMH)

GENETICS

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Ancient DNA, Book review in International Journal of Osteoarchaeology, Vol. 6, pp. 421-423, 1996.

Edited by Bernd Herrmann and Susanne Hummel. Springer-Verlag, 1994.

The author clearly notes the general advantages of using mtDNA in aDNA studies (high copy number, exclusive maternal inheritance, high rate of substitution) as well as the disadvantages (as a single molecule, phylogenetic analyses of mtDNA yields a gene tree, not necessarily a species tree (p. 421).

______________________________________________________________________________Mutational Analysis of the Human Mitochondrial Genome Branches into the Realm of Bacterial Genetics, Am. J. Hum. Genet. 59, 1996, pp. 749-755

Neil Howell

For example, it now may be feasible to analyze the effects of selection on transmission and segregation of this deletion and, perhaps, other mtDNA mutations as well. Second, and at a broader level, the approach of Shenkar et al. should find widespread applicability to the study of other mtDNA mutations. It has been recognized for several years that mammalian mtDNA mutates much more rapidly than nuclear DNA (e.g., see Brown et al. 1979), a phenomenon with potentially profound evolutionary implications (p. 749). (emphasis added AMH)

The conservative segregation model remains the most attractive explanation for the lack of variance in these experimental systems, because of its compatibility with the physical characteristics of organellar DNA molecules, but additional processes (e.g., intracellular selection or a high threshold for phenotypic expression) also may have been contributory factors (p. 751).

There is an intriguing parallel between mitochondrial genomes and endosymbiotic bacteria, which indirectly supports the possibility that the rapid rate of human mtDNA mutation may engage Muller’s ratchet. In her important, recent study, Moran (1996, p. 2873) has made the following statement: “cytoplasmically inherited endosymbionts have tiny populations; in most a bottleneck occurs each host generation when progeny are inoculated. They are effectively clonal since no recombination can occur between lineages sequestered in different hosts and since horizontal transfer between hosts appears to be either absent or extremely rare” (p. 752).

Rand and Kann (1996) have reached a similar conclusion, but they also have suggested that there are opposing evolutionary “pressures” that act on different regions of the mitochondrial genome and that there are differences in evolutionary processes among different taxa. Aris-Brosou and Excoffier (1996) have provided some interesting insights into both the complexity of evolution in the human noncoding D-loop and the difficulties of detecting significant departures from neutrality. (emphasis added AMH)

Finally, the hypothesis of Muller’s ratchet assumes that there is a negligible rate of mutations that have beneficial effects and that a substantial proportion of new mitochondrial mutations may increase fitness. Further experimental and theoretical analysis of these important topics–and of related questions of mtDNA evolution and genetics–may hinge on the implementation of the approaches that are reported by Shenkar et al. in this issue of the Journal. (p. 753).

(emphasis not added AMH)

Comment by the compiler That “new mitochondrial mutations may increase fitness” is intriguing when studying the divergence of mtDNA types and Regional population differences.

(all other emphasis was added AMH)

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The Promise of Plant and Animal DNA Archaeology September/ October 1996. pg. 41

Tabitha M. Powledge – contributing editor, Mark Rose – managing editor; Archaeology Mag.

These are startling results because cattle in the Near East were not domesticated until about 9,000 years ago, and cattle in India and Africa were genetically distinct before then. The latter two could not possibly be descended from domesticated Near Eastern cattle, as was thought, but must have been domesticated independently. This discovery may reignite an old debate in archaeology about whether plants and animals were domesticated in single locations and then taken from one culture to another (a “diffusionist” approach), or, as appears to be the case with cattle, were domesticated in more than one place (a “multiple centers” approach). (emphasis added AMH)

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Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution, Vol. 5, No. 1, February 1996 pp. 202-219

Maryellen Ruvolo

A New Approach to Studying Modern Human Origins: Hypothesis Testing with Coalescence Time Distributions

What does a molecular divergence time tell us? As we follow the history of genetic lineages back through time, all of the lineages in a population join up or coalesce into a common ancestral type, known as the coalescent (Kingman, 1982; Hudson, 1990), and the age of this common genetic ancestor is known as the coalescence time (pg. 203).

We can look forward to further improvements in how to extract information about the past from molecular data. Those who study humans will lead the way in the pursuit, because having a wealth of data forces one to think more about how to interpret the data and to develop new analytical methods (pg. lost). (emphasis added AMH)

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Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution, Vol. 5, No. 1, February 1996

David Pilbeam

Genetic and Morphological Records of Hominoidea and Hominid Origins: A Synthesis

This means that a hominid–chimp split at 5 or 6 Ma implies a monkey–hominoid divergence no greater than about 20 to 25 Ma, not the 40 Ma required by Andrews’ African hominoid radiation at 10 Ma. Andrews’ 24-Ma hylobatid and 13-Ma plus orang divergences imply a 35-Ma cercopithecoid-hominoid divergence. These estimates cannot be considered in isolation, for 35- to 4-Ma catarrhine ancestors imply a latest anthropoid common ancestry at 60 to 80 Ma. Preceding this would have to be a well-documented and lengthy common anthropoid stem following the divergence of tarsioids (well over 30% and perhaps closer to 60% of the time depth of the anthropoid radiation), implying primate origins implausibly far back in the Cretaceous (pg. 159).

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Science, Vol. 273, August 30, 1996

Adam D. Richman, Marcy K. Uyenoyama, Joshua R. Kohn

Allelic Diversity and Gene Genealogy at the Self-Incompatibility Locus in the Solanaceae

Balancing selection can maintain large numbers of alleles within populations (1, 2), and this polymorphism persists much longer than does selectively neutral genetic variation (3, 4). At the S locus, the transmission rate of an allele is inversely proportional to its frequency, and populations commonly harbor as many as 30 to 50 alleles (5, 6). Alleles at this locus can be extremely old, as reflected by their extreme sequence variability (7) and by phylogenetic analyses that have found that an allele from one species may be more closely related to an allele from another species or genus than to other alleles from the same species, a pattern called trans-specific evolution (3, 8). Thus, historical events such as changes in population size leave an impression that persists much longer for variation subject to balancing selection than for neutral variation (4, 9, 10). At the major histocompatibility complex loci of vertebrates, extensive trans-specific variation is found in both the cichlid fishes in Lake Malawi (11) and in humans and other primates (12), which indicates that severe population constrictions, such as those invoked by models of founder-event speciation, cannot have been important during speciation of these taxa.

Two estimates of Ne can be derived from S-allele variability (1, 9, 10, 13). The number of alleles present in a population reflects a short-term estimate because of strong selection for novel alleles in populations below equilibrium and rapid relaxation to an equilibrium of diversity after population restriction (9). In contrast, the number of trans-specific lineages inferred from allele genealogy evolves over millions of generations (1), because the loss of trans-specific lineages requires the extinction of all representatives of a lineage within a species. Nevertheless, in restricted populations the loss of alleles and of trans-specific lineages will be accelerated (9). After a bottleneck, newly generated alleles will lack the trans-specific evolutionary pattern, and the average sequence divergence among alleles within the species will be low relative to taxa that have not experienced a bottleneck event (pg. 1212-2114).

However, this origination rate is unable to support the extensive S-allel diversity observed in small, isolated populations (1, 10, 13, 26). In view of the data on allel number, which indicate a large recent Ne for P. crassifolia, we conclude that patterns of lineage persistence within species are most likely explained by a historic population restriction that resulted in the loss of most S-allele diversity in P. crassifolia, followed by rediversification after the bottleneck event (pg. 1215).

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Am. J. Hum. Genet. 59:501-509, 1996

Neil Howell, Iwona Kubacka, and David A. Mackey

How Rapidly Does the Human Mitochondrial Genome Evolve?

Segregation toward the homplasmic state can occur within a single generation in some of these descendants, a result that suggests rapid fixation of mitochondrial mutations as a result of developmental bottlenecking (pg. 501). (emphasis added AMH)

We describe here the use of one such empirical approach for the estimation of the rate of human mtDNA evolution in both the D-loop and coding regions and for the analysis of the origin and fixation of mutations within the mitochondrial genome (pg. 502).

Nachman et al. (1996) also concluded that pathogenic mitochondrial mutations may increase the ratio of replacement polymorphisms to silent polymorphisms, although not all of their “disease”-group individuals (Nachman et al. 1996, table 8) carried mitochondrial mutations whose pathogenicity has been unambiguously established (pg. 506).

If a rapid divergence rate of mtDNA is confirmed, previous studies that have used D-loop sequences for geographical and chronological studies of human evolution will have to be reevaluated. As noted earlier, phylogenetic or relative-branch-length approaches indicate that the time since the most recent common ancestor is in the range of 0.2–0.6 Myr. The present results, as well as those of Lundstrom et al. (1992), suggest either a much more recent origin of modern humans or that evolution of the mitochondrial genome is not a reliable “evolutionary clock” (on this latter point, see Donnelly and Tavare 1995) (pg. 507). (emphasis added AMH)

The present studies provide additional evidence that mitochondrial mutations are fixed rapidly in individuals because of “bottlenecking” during oogenesis (Hauswirth and Laipis 1982; Howell et al. 1992). According to this model, only a small subset of the mitochondrial genomes in the female germ-line pool are transmitted to an offspring. As a consequence of bottlenecking, therefore, only a fraction of new mitochondrial mutations will be transmitted to subsequent generations, but the rate of fixation for that transmitted fraction will be much more rapid than it would be if bottlenecking were absent. Thus, the rate of mitochondrial mutation is likely to be substantially higher than the rate of divergence, particularly if a significant proportion of mutations that are fixed in individuals are not fixed within the populations (see above). In our opinion, the evolutionary implications of bottlenecking have not received sufficient attention (pg. 507).

Comment by the compiler The worldwide distribution of the Amerindian/Polynesian Lineage B may be evidence of admixture into indigenous groups with retention of original mtDNA diversity retained in the primary population.

“Knowledge is inherent in all things.

The World is a library…”

Chief Luther Standing Bear

Ogala Sioux

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Am. J. Hum. Genet. 59:493-496, 1996

Svante Paabo

INVITED EDITORIAL

Mutational Hot Spots in the Mitochondrial Microcosm

The observation of two germ-line mutations among some 50 individuals studied suggests a mutation rate of 1 event/25 generations in a DNA segment where phylogenetic comparisons to the chimpanzee have suggested a frequency of ≤1 event/200 generations. In the same vein, Howell et al. elsewhere have described two mutations in coding regions of the genome in families, and they now describe a third one. This indicates a 200-fold-higher rate of mutations in the mitochondrial structural genes than has been derived from phylogenetic comparisons. These observations receive support from another group, which similarly has found a high rate of mitochondrial mutation (Lederberg et al. 1995), and from reports suggesting that heteroplasmy—that is, the occurrence of two or more types of mitochondrial sequences within an individual—may be more common in humans than previously had been thought (Gill et al. 1994; Comas et al. 1995; Ivanov et al. 1996). When these studies are pooled, the number of mutations observed is still very small, whereas the uncertainty of the rate estimates is correspondingly huge. Nevertheless, the high mutation rate represents an impressive discrepancy with the received wisdom among evolutionists (pg. 494).

The new rates that will emerge when more mutations have been detected in families are therefore not likely to revise our understanding of the origin of the human mitochondrial gene pool dramatically, but they may cause a reinterpretation of more recent events—for example, the population-size expansion that is indicated by a peak in histograms of pairwise sequence differences. This expansion has been dated to ~40,000 years ago (Rogers and Harpending 1992; Rogers 1995). Here, a faster rate may allow a more adequate approximation of the actual mutations having taken place and may indicate that this expansion is associated with the agricultural revolution that occurred some 10,000-5,000 years ago. Support for this idea comes from observation that the signature of the expansion is absent in groups in India, Scandinavia, and Africa that live from food gathering rather than from food production (Mountain et al 1995; Sajantila et al 1995; Watson et al. 1996) (pg. 494-495).

Thus, the biochemical basis for population variation can be studied, and the relative contributions that mutational processes and selection make to genomic change can be better understood. In this, developments in the mitochondrial microcosm will again be ahead of developments in the more complex macrocosm of the nuclear genome (pg. 495).

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Am. J. Hum. Genet. 59:437-444, 1996

Elizabeth Watson, Karin Bauer, Rashid Aman, Gunter Weiss, Arndt von Haeseler, and Svante Paabo

mtDNA Sequence Diversity in Africa

We suggest that this reflects subsistence patterns in that the populations that have expanded in size are food producers whereas those that have not are hunters and gatherers (pg. 437).

Much interest has focused on mtDNA variation as a tool to unravel the past of modern humans. The main reason for this is that the absence of recombination and the high evolutionary rate of the mitochondrial genome offer a resolving power unparalleled by any other single genetic locus in the human genome (pg. 437).

Among the groups analyzed, the Mbuti, Biaka, and !Kung rely on hunting and food gathering for their subsistence, whereas the other groups practice agriculture and animal husbandry. The data suggest that the genetic diversity and demographic history of these two groups are dramatically different in at least four respects.

First, the 3 food-gathering groups have bumpy distributions and a high proportion of identical lineages, whereas the 10 groups that rely on agriculture and/or cattle herding have bell-shaped distributions and few identical lineages (fig. 2). These patterns of distribution of pairwise sequence differences are reminiscent of the situation in other parts of the world (pg. 443).

Thus, it seems to be a general pattern that food-producing populations have bell-shaped distributions of pairwise sequence differences, whereas food gatherers have rugged distributions and many identical sequences443).

Second, the pattern of mitochondrial sequence variation in food-producing groups suggests that these populations have experienced an enlargement in size, whereas the food gatherers have been of constant population size for a long time (pg. 443).

(emphasis added AMH)

Third, the mitochondrial diversity in Africa indicates a substantial differentiation between food gatherers and food producers (Table 2) (pg. 443).

Consequently, the groups that are hunter-gatherers today can be expected to have persisted as such for a long time. This is reflected in their extensive genetic differentiation from food-producing groups and from each other (pg. 443).

Fourth, the data indicate that the food-gathering groups have been isolated from each other over a long period, whereas food-producing groups differ much less from each other. This may be due to the common origin(s) of food-producing groups, which is associated with both the domestication of major crops (Ammerman and Cavalli-Sforza 1984) and a lower amount of genetic drift in the larger populations. It may also be due to more extensive female gene flow between food-producing groups, whose larger numbers and, in some cases, pastoralist lifestyle may facilitate contacts over large geographic distances (pg. 443).

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Tabitha M. Powledge and Mark Rose

The Great DNA Hunt (pgs _______ lost)

The Eve study was criticized almost immediately on methodological grounds. Alan Templeton, a geneticist at Washington University in St. Louis, pointed out flaws in the statistical tests and sampling methods used. Its results, he argued, were in part dictated by the order in which the information was fed into the computer. The same data could produce simpler trees, one of which also included Asians in the deepest root. Others questioned the reliability of “molecular clocks” and the rate of mutation in the human mtDNA used in calculating Eve’s date.

(emphasis added by the compiler, AMH)

The Promise of Plant and Animal DNA

These are startling results because cattle in the Near East were not domesticated until about 9,000 years ago, and cattle in India and Africa were genetically distinct before then. The latter two could not possibly be descended from domesticated Near Eastern cattle, as was thought, but must have been domesticated independently. This discovery may reignite an old debate in archaeology about whether plants and animals were domesticated in single locations and then taken from one culture to another (a “diffusionist” approach), or, as appears to be the case with cattle, were domesticated in more than one place (a “multiple centers” approach). – T.M.P. and M.R.

The Peopling of Japan

(emphasis added AMH)

Often thought to be a remnant of the Paleolithic population, they [Basque] speak a non-Indo-European language and have a relatively rare blood type, Rh negative, in a much higher percentage than other Europeans. According to Sykes, the evidence suggests that it was largely farming, not farmers, that spread across the continent.

SCIENCE

GEOGRAPHY

______________________________________________________________________________Large Arctic Temperature Change at the Wisconsin-Holocene Glacial Transition, Science, Vol. 270, October 20, 1995, pps. 455-458

Kurt M. Cuffey, Gary D. Clow, Richard B. Alley, Minze Stuiver, Edwin D. Waddington, Richard W. Saltus

The low value of a that we find for the deglacial transition is well-constrained (Fig. 3) and insensitive to changes in ice dynamical parameters (Table 1). The average temperature difference between the Wisconsin Glaciation and the Holocene is therefore large (Fig. 1), 14° to 16°C, and the coldest periods of the last glacial were probably 21°C colder than at present (Fig. 1). The climatic deglacial temperature change (at constant elevation) may be 1° to 2°C larger than this because the Greenland ice sheet was probably thinner during the glacial as a result of a substantial reduction in accumulation rate. Geologic evidence suggests that the margins of the ice sheet retracted by about 100 km during the Wisconsin-Holocene transition (35). p. 456

By contrast, we have shown that the temperature change in central Greenland was three to four times larger than that in the tropics, a result that is consistent with borehole temperature analyses at Dye 3 in southern Greenland (42). Many models have suggested that initially minor changes in global temperature will be magnified in the Arctic, with possibly major consequences for sea level and planetary albedo (43). Our data not only confirm that such amplification happened in the past but also show this amplification to be larger than generally thought.

______________________________________________________________________________Ice Rhythms: Core Reveals a Plethora of Climate Cycles, Science, Vol. 275, October 25, 1996, p. 499.

A record of climate extracted from Greenland’s ice is changing all that by laying out the whole spectrum of midrange climate variations, from the well-known Milankovitch cycles of about 40,000 and 23,000 years, driven by the tilting and wobbling of Earth’s axis, down the scale to cycles of 11,100, 6100, and 1450 years (p. 499).

And for the 1450-year rhythm–which seems to cause abrupt shifts in climate–they make the intriguing suggestion that the waxing and waning of the sun may be the trigger (p. 499)

In addition to the 40,000- and 23,000-year Milankovitch cycles, the team found 11,100- and 6100-year cycles previously reported from marine sediments (p. 499).

For example, the 23,000-year cycle, driven by the wobbling or precession of Earth’s axis, redistributes sunlight so as to alternately intensify summer heat in the Northern and Southern hemispheres. Land masses straddling the equator might then pick up temperature maxima from both hemispheres, producing a maximum in the tropics every 11,000 years or so (Science, 14 January 1994, p. 174) (p. 499).

The New Hampshire group, however, has 12 peaks of this cycle in the past 70,000 years, and notes that seven of these peaks coincide with the seven great gushings of icebergs into the North Atlantic during the last ice age, called Heinrich events (Science, 6 January 1995, p. 27) (p. 499).

Comment by the compiler I don’t think we have investigated adequately the availability of Ice free corridors – in the 32,000 to 45,000 year rage – against the parameters Amerindian migrations into another new Old World might require we do so test. It’s not as if this window might not have anything to do regaurding human dispersals at this time – in – as most theories suggest or – out – of the Americas, as I’m am proposing. Certainly this time-frame is paramount in recognizing the rapid settlement by a new “modern” man of the Eastern Hemisphere. (emphasis added AMH)

SCIENCE

______________________________________________________________________________Smithsonian Perspectives, Smithsonian Magazine Secretary Heyman’s comments, p. 8

Anthropology is an embracive social science most broadly defined as the study of the origin of humans and of their physical, social and cultural development. Smithsonian anthropology started as the study of Native American cultures, languages and history. In 1846, the Regents asked that collections be procured for the Institution “illustrating the natural history of the country, and more especially the physical history, manners and customs of the North American continent.” Enormous collections followed (p. 8). (emphasis added AMH)

Meanwhile, the NMNH’s Department of Anthropology focused on adding to and caring for the enormous collections of cultural, physical and biological objects, and organizing exhibitions. Most of these had to do with the Americas. Starting in the 1950s, however, anthropological research and curatorship was extended to the Pacific, Asia and Africa (p. 8).

(emphasis added AMH)

This is illustrated by the groupings within the American Anthropological Association, which include, for instance, ones concerned with psychological, urban, visual, environmental, feminist and nutritional anthropology (p. 8).

______________________________________________________________________________17th-Century Issues, Science, Vol. 274, 15 November 1996, pp. 1148-1149

Book review of Steven Shapins book, The Scientific Revolution, by David C. Lindberg

Shapin concentrates on the overthrow of ancient cosmology and natural philosophy by Copernicus, Galileo, and their fellow heliocentrists; the creation of the mechanical philosophy by Descartes, Boyle, and others, and the mathematization of nature by Kepler and Newton.

Of course, Shapin joins everybody else who has ever written on the topic in considering the central question of how inference from particular observations can lead to knowledge of universal causes and the attendant question of the level of certitude thus achievable.

Shapin believes that science is “the contingent, diverse, and at times deeply problematic product of interested, morally concerned, historically situated people” (p. 165). It follows that the traditional view of science as an objective account of external reality, totally uncontaminated by human interests or passions, is untenable.

______________________________________________________________________________Anthropology and the Crisis of the Intellectuals, Critique of Anthropology, 1994, Vol. 14(3), pps. 227-261.

Anna Grimshaw and Keith Hart

It might be said that anthropology has been in crisis for as long as anyone can remember, certainly since the wave of independence movements shattered its empirical base and posed serious intellectual and political challenges to many of its fundamental assumptions. p. 227

Our impetus then comes from the desire to address a younger (and broader) audience, one drawn to the universalism of anthropology and yet so often frustrated by its narrow specialization and arcane professional language. This essay is animated by a commitment to rediscovering what was new and radical in anthropology at the turn of the century (p. 228).

Moreover, objectification of other people is linked to political hierarchy, an uncomfortable reminder of anthropology’s affinity for the world’s dominant classes, beginning with its association with European colonial rule (pps. 228-229).

Popular resistance to dominance by experts is manifested in negative beliefs which bid fair to replace their legitimating predecessors as common currency: that scientists endanger the environment, doctors are bad for your health, economists’ predictions are wrong, the law is an expensive farce and so on. Professors, who have long been known to be inarticulate and incompetent, are now suspected of having nothing to say at all. Certainly, the number of people who depend on humanist intellectuals as the arbiters of civilization and taste is dwindling.

Anthropologists suffer more than most from their own variant of this problem; for they have always derived their intellectual authority from direct experience of social life. From the beginning, anthropologists’ claim to special expertise rested on reporting the activities of unknown peoples to both lay and academic audiences at home (p. 229).

It is, therefore, not surprising that anthropologists today, even more than most other branches of the academic division of labour, find themselves in a quandary when asked to explain how they contribute to understanding the world we all live in (p. 230).

The method of scientific ethnography required the invention of a new literary form. The distinctive innovation of scientific ethnography was to make ideas seem to emerge from descriptions of real life. We may call this contradictory illusion the synthetic a posterior, being a hybrid construct of Kant’s famous distinction between the mental forms we bring to an enquiry, the synthetic a priori, and the empirical inferences we make subsequently, the analytical a posterior (p. 234). (emphasis is not added but original)

Over the years this commitment to go out and live has worn rather thin; and the balance now once more decisively favours the world of books (p. 259).

We hold that social life, for all its confining dividisons, is integrated and that the process of integration is ultimately global. It is anthropology’s great merit that it has the scope to increase our self-consciousness of human unity in diversity. This universality, however, must be conceived of anew, not as a form of Western dominance nor as a thoughtless merger of the general and the specific, but as a process of extension from the particulars of individual and collective experience.

It is entirely conceivable that the next century will have no place for a class of specialist intellectuals, called anthropologists, with a mission to tell people what is going on in their world. For academic anthropology has never succeeded completely in eliminating the early ethos of the amateur from its professional practices. Moreover, it might be said that, compared with the other sciences and humanities, anthropology has remained in important ways an anti-discipline, taking its ideas from anywhere, striving for the whole, constantly reinventing procedures on the move. Thus, as the boundaries defining specialist disciplines give way, anthropology contains within itself many elements of a more flexible, constructive approach to learning about the world. These are its strength and creative source.

Above all, we believe that the problem of devising new forms of anthropological enquiry has to be solved at the level of social practice, not ideas. In particular, it is time for anthropologists to rethink the wisdom of having committed the future of their collective project so completely to the institutions of academic bureaucracy (p. 259).

Comment by the compiler Lets get on with empowering the way we live (and choose to live) with the lessons we have learned.

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Human Evolution, 1995, by Milford H. Wolpoff, Book review by Henry M. McHenry

The ideas expressed in the text are often those developed by the author and not necessarily those of the majority of paleo-anthropologists. For an explanation of the consensus view among scholars on this field, the reader would do well to turn elsewhere.

Like the 1980 edition, the book is divided into four parts: the basis for human evolution, the appearance of the hominid line, the development of the human pattern, and the evolution of modern people (p. 301).

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Science, Vol. 272, May 24, 1996

Kim Peterson

Mammal Diversity Takes a 20-Million-Year Leap Backwards

The 70 fossils were sandwiched between two layers of ancient marine rocks preserving extinct species of oysters and bony fish. From dating at other sites, researchers knew that some of these marine species died by 85 million years ago, implying that Nessov’s fossils were at least that old. Says Archibald: “Everything about the site argues for late, but not the latest, Cretaceous (pg. 1102).”

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Science, Vol. 273, September 20, 1996

Frank von Hippel and Ted von Hippel

Past Life on Mars?

Given that life on Earth thrives kilometers deep of times atmospheric pressure living off hydrogen sulfides and that life thrives in boiling hot springs and far below the surface in Earth’s crust, the ubiquity of life in the universe should not be surprising.

Comment by the compiler We should be more open in choosing our primate forbears, Yes!

______________________________________________________________________________Virginia Morell

Genes vs. Teams: Weighing Group Tactics in Evolution

And although the idea of group selection was discredited more than 30 years ago, a growing number of researches say that it deserves a fresh hearing. Group selection, they say, may explain patterns ranging from how cells are kept in check in a developing organism, to the evolution of honeybee dancing, to the way plants grow in a crowded field.

But those who favor individual selection are dubious. “I don’t see how you can test his model against empirical data,” complains Brian Charlesworth, a population geneticist at the University of Chicago. In fact, says Charlesworth, that is a problem with all of the new theoretical models. “This group selection could be going on all the time, but since we have no way of documenting it, how do you know it’s ever happened?” (pg. 740)

“It’s very abstract and confused right now because there are a lot of different definitions about what group selection is,” says Harvard University’s Stephen Jay Gould. “But it is also vitally important to evolutionary theory; it will sort itself out.” Perhaps a few rounds of selection among competing bands of evolutionary biologists will do the trick. May the best group win.

(emphasis added AMH)

______________________________________________________________________________

Mehran Kardar

Which Came First, Protein Sequence or Structure?

Each protein is composed of a specific sequence of amino acids (its primary structure). However, its functionality is determined by its full three-dimensional structure (secondary and tertiary structure). The relation between the one-dimensional sequence and the final structure is part of the puzzle of protein folding. The possible number of sequences is enormous: 20400 potential proteins of length 400 can be constructed from 20 amino acids.

On page 666 of this issue, Li et al. (1) provide an alternative perspective: The observed protein structures are special because they can be easily coded (designed) and are stable against mutations in the sequence.

For example, considerable modeling has focused on polymers of length 27, occupying all sites of a 3 x 3 x 3 cube. [This model was first suggested by Shaknovich and Gutin (2) and is now considered standard.]

Thus, the direct association of designability to the structural elements such as “superfolds” (5) is a bold new direction for protein-folding studies.

Like most fertile concepts, it immediately suggests various tests and experiments to check its viability.

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Scientific American, August 1996

In Brief

Case Closed

After 84 years, the Piltdown hoax may be solved. In 1912 Arthur Smith Woodward–keeper of paleontology at London’s Natural History Museum–hailed bones from Piltdown, England, as the Missing Link. But some 50 years later it became clear that a criminal–and not evolution–had joined the human skull and orangutan jaw. Recently two scientists analyzed similarly stained specimens in an old trunk bearing the initials M.A.C.H. and, at last, fingered the perpetrator: Martin A. C. Hinton, a curator of zoology, who had warred with Woodward over wages (pg. 22).

Comment by the compiler I have always hoped it wasn’t Keith as he once championed the idea of “continuity over time for the modern human anatomy.”

(All emphasis added by the compiler, AMH)

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San Luis Obispo Telegram-Tribune (AP)

Anthropologists have a new snapshot for the human family album, and she’s got a face only a mother could love: gaping, squarish eyes, a protruding mouth and not much of a forehead.

But who looks attractive after being buried for 10 million years?

Ankarapithecus meteai, a 60-pound, fruit-eating ape that roamed the woodlands of central Turkey long before the evolutionary split that separated humans from chimps, actually looks pretty good to people who study human evolution (pg. lost).

The species is named for the city of Ankara, 30 miles south of the site where the fossil was found, and a geological sciences institute there. The “pithecus” part comes from the Greek word for ape.

The actual common ancestors of humans are thought to have lived in Africa at the time that Ankarapithecus meteai occupied Turkey. But fossils of those creatures may never be found, Pilbeam said. Fossil-preserving rocks of the proper age simply aren’t exposed on the ground surface anywhere in Africa (pg. lost).

Comment by the compiler Or the New World, for that matter! (All emphasis added by the compiler, AMH)

______________________________________________________________________________Eric Delson

Nature VOL. 332 17 MARCH 1988

One Source Not Many

Modern humans are unknown from western Europe or Australia before about 35,000 years ago, when the fossils already have at least some regional characteristics (the interpretation that the archaic appearance of some Australian crania may be due to cultural practices of deformation rather than persistence of H. erectus features is gaining ground) (pg. 206).

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Tatu Vanhanen. Reviewed by Iver Mysterud.

Book Reviews, (source lost)

Another look at . . . On the Evolutionary Roots of Politics

How can one, for example, ensure that the next generation will live within a democratic society and not an autocratic one? Vanhanen states that “it would be possible to create better environmental conditions for democratic political structures by distributing the same resources among competing groups and wide sections of the population. . . . People must have some basic security and independence from power holders before they can take part in politics independently. In other words, a certain level of resource distribution among individuals and social groups seems to be a necessary and sufficient condition for the emergence of democratic power structures” (p. 158) (pg. 203).

PRIMATES

______________________________________________________________________________

Alan Mann and Mark Weiss

Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution Vol. 5, No. 1, February, pp. 169-181, 1996

Hominoid Phylogeny and Taxonomy: A Consideration of the Molecular and Fossil Evidence in an Historical Perspective

“It is therefore probable that Africa was formerly inhabited by extinct apes closely allied to the gorilla and chimpanzee; and as these two species are now man’s nearest allies, it is somewhat more probable that our early progenitors lived on the African continent than elsewhere. (1871:520) pg. 169 (pg. 169).

Buffon, one of the great naturalists of the 18th century, recognized the anatomical resemblances that were being documented between humans and apes, but believed that humans should be considered as on an entirely different level compared with even these creatures. In his Histoire Naturelle (1749-1804), he remarked that:

This orangutan-outang or pongo [most likely a chimpanzee] is only a brute, but a brute of a kind so singular, that man cannot behold it without contemplating himself. . .

The tongue, and all the organs of speech, for example are here the same as in man; and yet the orangutan-outang enjoys not the faculty of speaking; the brain has the same figure and proportions; and yet he possesses not the power of thinking. Can there be a more evident proof than is exhibited in the orangutan-outang, that matter alone, though perfectly organized, can produce neither language nor thought, unless it be animated by a superior principle. . .

We have often remarked Nature proceeds in her operation by imperceptible degrees. This truth, which otherwise admits of no exception, is here totally reversed. Between the faculties of man and those of the most minute animal, the distance is infinite. (Quoted in Slotkin, 1965:182-183) (pg. 171)

The number of recognized primate species, including hominoids, increased markedly during the first half of the 19th century. For example, Tyson had referred to the chimpanzee as Homo sylvestris, and Linnaeus was most probably referring to chimpanzees in employing the term Simia satyrus; others had called it Pongo, Jocko, or satyr. It was given its present genus designation, Pan, by Oken, in 1816, and by this time, it was clearly differentiated from the orangutan (Stiles and Orelman, 1927:28). The existence of the gorilla as a distinct genus, Gorilla, was recognized in 1847. (The final large-bodied hominoid to be classified, the pigmy chimpanzee, was officially recognized in 1929 (Reynolds, 1967) (pg. 171).

Genet-Varcin, in her 1963 edition of les Singes Actuels et Fossiles, described all of the large-bodied apes together, and after examining the fossil evidence, suggested that the divergence between the ape and human lineages occurred before the Oligocene (1963:223). She also presented an evolutionary chart of the primates (220-221) in which all the apes, including the gibbons, have a separate evolutionary origin from the line leading to humans. Neither chimpanzees, gorillas, nor orangs are more closely related to humans than any of the others (pg. 174).

However, as Rogers (1993) cautions, not all the data point to this conclusion, and there is still need for some caution. At a general level, one must realize that most of the sequence comparisons are based on single individuals and do not allow for polymorphic variation within living species. It may be possible to find other alleles within each that would imply alternative phylogenies. Ancestral species were undoubtedly polymorphic too. If one considers a situation where two of three extant species share a more recent common ancestor, it is possible that drift at any particular locus could obscure the true phylogenetic relationships. The true out-lier and one other population might actually have reached fixation for an identical allele, while the third population became fixed for an alternate allele. There is then room for contradictory and ambiguous results. The ultimate resolution is a statistical one (pg. 175).

(emphasis added AMH)

Excerpted Anthropological Research Articles: 1997 – June 1998

Compiled by Alvah M. Pardner Hicks

P.O. Box 671

Santa Margarita, CA 93453

Phone: 805) 438-4142

Cell: (805) 930-5490

e-mail: alvahhicks@gmail.com

Please see original article s for proofs

Forword

The following collections of quotes were gathered as part of a research strategy aimed at exploring a New World alternative to human origins. They represent a diverse array of anthropological studies and subjects helping provide background information for perspectives held by the compiler. Primarily, they represent “warranting evidence” in support of the compiler’s contention that; Amerindian populations should be examined as a potential source for both recent and ancient Homo sapien radiations into what we have come to accept as the “Old” World. More specifically, separate Amerindian radiations are proposed to have led to, (i) the “total replacement” of Old World Hominids beginning less then 50,000 years ago, (ii) subsequent Holocene and post Holocene Amerindian migration into Siberia resulting in admixture with northeast Asians, and (iii) the initial arrival of man (American Indians) into Polynesia ~3,600 years ago.

TABLE OF CONTENTS:

NORTH AMERICA 2

SOUTH AMERICA 6

SIBERIA and NORTH AMERICA 7 POLYNESIA 15 AUSTRALIA 21

EUROPE 23

ASIA 24

AFRICA 27

PRIMATES 36

GENETICS 37

NORTH AMERICA

Book Reviews of Quest for the First Americans; The Campus Site: A prehistoric Camp at Fairbanks, Alaska by Charles M. Mobley; and Late Quarternary Studies and Beyond, 1950-1993 Provincial Museum of Alberta Archaeological Survey Occasional Paper No. 35 By Alwynne B. Beaudion and Francis D. Reintjes. Reviewed by Aron L. Crowell, in Arctic Anthropology Vol. 33, No. 2, pp. 137-139.

The emerging archaeological synthesis is intriguing because it suggests that populations representing at least three different and distinctive cultural traditions–Paleoarctic (Denali Complex), Nenana Complex, and Paleoindian–occupied interior Alaska during the late Pleistocene to early Holocene periods. Firm radiocarbon age estimates for all three traditions are now available, extending back more than 11,600 years for Paleoindian and Nenana and 10,700 years for Paleoarctic (Kunz and Reanier 1994, 1995; Holmes and Yesner 1992; Powers and Hoffecker 1989). All three persisted until at least 8500 BP. Relationships among these cultures and to external regions, including connections between Paleoindian populations in Alaska and the High Plains region of the western U.S., are the subject of renewed debate. p. 137

Unlike Dixon, the author [Mobley] does not undertake to place his research in historical or intellectual perspective, and confines the discussion to relatively narrow, site-specific issues of interpretation. p. 139

Comment by the compiler Alvah M. Hicks (AMH): The continuing question of the relationship and direction of movements of people between the New and Old World at the end of the last Ice Age are discussed in the following passages. Since people were in Chile before the events occurring at the end of the last Ice age, this should require researchers to entertain the plausibility of migrations by Amerindians into Siberia at the end of the last Ice Age as radio-carbon dates suggest that “Paleoindian Industries” were invented in southeastern North America before they were carried north into Alaska. The implications of a movement out of the Americas has profound implications on Bio-geographic and linguistic studies if Amerindians migrated into northeast Asia after the last Ice Age. Boas (see this compilation pg. 9?) 1905, 1910 identified this alternative where some Siberians are seen as descendants of Native Americans and not (as initially believed) the ancestors of them.

Santos, S.E.B., Ribeiro-Dos-Santos, A.K.C., Meyer, D., and Zago, M.A. Multiple founder haplotypes of mitochondrial DNA in Amerindians revealed by RFLP and sequencing. Ann. Hum. Genet. (1996) 60. 305-319.

The NJ tree was more fully resolved than the parsimony tree, but this does not indicate that the NJ analysis is more reliable: it is simply a consequence of the fact that the NJ method is designed to produce a single tree from the distance matrix.

Therefore, at this point, the safest conclusion to be drawn from the phylogenetic analysis is that there are at least 4 haplogroups. However, the relationship between the major haplogroups and the history of the haplotypes contained within each remain difficult to ascertain. p. 313

Joint analysis ruled out this possibility for all cases of our sample, revealing that the percentage of unusual haplotypes among Amerindians may be higher than indicated by available data. Are these discrepancies autochthonous or have they originated at a time preceding human migration to the Americas? The most likely possibility is that both events occurred. p. 316

The prevalence of E haplotypes in pre-Columbian populations and the percentage of these haplotypes among contemporary Amerindians (7% of our sample from the Amazon Region) permit us to propose that the American continent was settled by individuals prevalently belonging to haplogroups A-D but with appreciable haplotype diversity. p. 316

Therefore, we have investigated the number of mutations that are found in more than one haplogroups and compared their frequency with the total number of mutations in the data set. For RFLP, our data together with those of Torroni et al. (1992, 1993a, 1994) reveal 133 polymorphic sites, of which 21 (16%) are present in two or three haplogroups. Sequencing of the D-loop region identified 100 polymorphic sites in our data and those previously published (Horai et al., 1993; Kolman et al., 1995; Santos et al., 1994; Ward et al., 1993), of which 26 (26%) are present in two to four different haplogroups. The percentage of identical changes occurring in different haplogroups, which originated obligatorily by parallel mutations, seem too high to accept the opinion that they accumulated by recurrent mutations after the settlement of the Americas. At least part of this diversity was probably present in the original pool of founding haplotypes. p. 316-317.

Torroni et al. (1993a) suggested that haplogroup B was introduced into the Americas by a later migration, distinct from that which brought haplogroups A, C and D. Our results with D-loop sequencing showing a high diversity in haplogroup B do not support this view. p. 317

The distribution of pairwise differences among 229 Amerindians belonging to representative tribes of North, Central and South America show a trimodal distribution. A similar distribution was interpreted by Horai et al. (1993) as evidence that there was neither a severe bottleneck effect nor a rapid population expansion during the settlement of the Americas. We interpret this distribution in a different manner, assuming that i) a proportion of the differences observed today between sequences of different haplogroups were already present at the beginning of the settling process; ii) because recombination is absent in mtDNA, the occurrence of bottlenecks or population expansion during the settlement of America can only be perceived on the basis of the distribution of differences within haplogroups. 318

Comment: The possibility that proposed founding haplotypes A, B, C, and D represent evidence of a “Dramatic Founding Effect” can be dismissed if we can entertain the idea that Native Americans have differentiated due to Glacial isolation in the Americas and that the discovery of certain rare Asian mutations in Siberia and east Asia is evidence of Holocene migration into the far north and beyond by Amerindians. The relationship between Sino-Tibetan and Na-Dene may represent a contribution by Amerindians to the make-up of northern east Asian Tribal groups, as identified by Boas in 1905 and 1910. Genetic similarities could link, descendant, northeast Asians with, ancestral, Amerindian population of the Americas.

Boas, Franz. Introduction to Handbook of American Indian Languages. University of Nebraska Press: Lincoln. 1966.

The interior is also visited by the Eskimo for the purpose of hunting reindeer and other animals, though they rarely penetrate farther than 50 miles. A narrow strip along the coast, perhaps 30 miles wide, will probably, on the average, represent Eskimo occupancy.

Except upon the Aleutian Islands, the dialects spoken over this vast area are very similar, the unity of dialect thus observable being in marked contrast to the tendency to change exhibited in other linguistic families of North America. p. 148

These Eskimo profess entire ignorance of any inhabitants north of themselves, which may be taken as proof that if there are fiords farther up the coast which are inhabited there has been no intercommunication in recent times at least between these tribes and those to the south. It seems probable that more or less isolated colonies of Eskimo do actually exist along the east coast of Greenland far to the north. p. 148

Eskimo occupancy of the rest of the Alaska coast is practically continuous throughout its whole extent as far to the south and east as the Atna or Copper River, where begin the domains of the Koluschan family. Only in two places do the Indians of the Athapascan family intrude upon Eskimo territory, about Cook’s Inlet, and at the mouth of the Copper River. p. 149

Thus throughout the Arctic regions generally there is a total of about 34,000. p. 151

The author does not desire that his work shall be considered final, but rather as initiatory and tentative. The task of studying many hundreds of languages and deriving therefrom ultimate conclusions as contributions to the science of philology is one of great magnitude, and in its accomplishment an army of scholars must be employed. The wealth of this promised harvest appeals strongly to the scholars of America for systematic and patient labor. The languages are many and greatly diverse in their characteristics, in grammatic as well as in lexic elements. p. 215

The evolution of mind in the endeavor to express thought, by coining, combining, and contracting works and by organizing logical sentences through the development of parts and speech and their syntactic arrangement, is abundantly illustrated. The languages are very unequally developed in their several parts. Low gender systems appear with high tense systems, highly evolved case systems with slightly developed mode systems; and there is scarcely any one of these languages, so far as they have been studied, which does not exhibit archaic devices in its grammar. p. 215-216

Migration introduces a potent agency of mutation, but a new environment impresses its characteristics upon a language more by a change in the sematic content or meaning of words than by change in their forms. There is another agency of change of profound influence, namely, association with other tongues. When peoples are absorbed by peaceful or militant agencies new materials are brought into their language, and the affiliation of such matter seems to be the chief factor in the differentiation of languages within the same stock. In the presence of opinions that have slowly grown in this direction, the author is inclined to think that some of the groups herein recognized as families will ultimately be divided, as the common materials of such languages, when they are more thoroughly studied, will be seen to have been borrowed. p. 217

Stocking, George W. Jr. (Ed.). The Shaping of American Anthropology 1883-1911. Basic Books, Inc., Publishers: New York. 1974.

This question is of great interest theoretically. The American continent is widely separated from the land area of the Old World, so that the geographical conditions are in favor of the presumption that in the New World culture developed uninfluenced by causes acting in the Old World.

The differences in these types show that a long period was necessary for their development. They cannot be explained as due to the mixture of different races, because they all partake of the general characteristics of the American race, and because the members of each type show a remarkable degree of uniformity. The variability of each type is slight as compared to variabilities which we find in Europe, among the tribes of Asia or of the Polynesian Islands. The small variability is an indication of lack of mixture, and therefore of long-continued development by differentiation. p. 109.

Alvah’s Comment: The similarities that distinguish Native Americans, as a whole, suggests that they have been in the Americas long enough to have stabilized to the divergent environments that encompass the Americas. If the spread of modern humans began in the Old World 40,000 years ago then the regional characteristics that distinguish continental populations could have occurred as a result of regional adaptations to differing climatic and geographic forces. The similarities encompassing Amerindians could be ancient while the selective variance of Old World populations could have been accelerated by population bottleneck accompanying a recent founding effects.

** Letters to the Editor. Further Comments on the Characterization of Founder Amerindian Mitochondrial Haplotypes. Am. J. Hum. Genet. 61:244-246, 1997, from Nestor O. Bianchi and Graciela Bailiet.

Recently, Howell et al. (1996) made a direct appraisal of the mutation rate in human mtDNA and found an average of one nucleotide substitution every 25 generations. Accordingly, if this finding is confirmed, most mitochondrial mutations would be expected to be recurrent. p. 244

** Easton et al. (1996) confirmed our assumption, changed the letter “E” to “X,” and reported X6 and X7 as two forms of founder haplotypes corresponding to the haplogroups that we formerly had designated as “E.” Forster et al. (1996) also named as “X” one additional founder haplotype within what we formerly had called haplogroup “E.” However, since the X haplotype of Forster does not correspond to X6 or X7, we propose to name it “X8,” and we recommend using the letter “X” instead of the letter “E,” to avoid confusion with the haplogroups “E,” reported by Torroni et al. (1994) in Tibetans. It is worth mentioning here that we have found the X8 haplotype in 6 of 41 Sioux individuals studied. p. 245

Finally, there are still important gaps in our knowledge of the biology of mtDNA. By using pedigree analysis, Howell et al. (1996) found that mitochondrial mutation seems to be 200-fold higher than previously had been assumed (Howell et al. 1996). Haplotype changes in a given maternal lineage may occur rather frequently and in a few generations (Gill et al. 1994; Chen et al. 1995; Howell et al. 1996). There is now evidence showing that the occurrence of some mitochondrial deletions may be under the control of nuclear genes (Zeviani et al. 1989; Suomalainen et al. 1995). Moreover, it has been proposed that some mitochondrial mutations may have epigenetic effects changing the mutational rate at other mitochondrial positions (Howell 1996) and perhaps giving rise to mutational “frozen” sites. We believe that most of the disagreement among different groups of researchers working on mtDNA is due to the eagerness to use mtDNA beyond the limitations of the method. If the aforementioned findings are confirmed by other groups, the chronologies of human evolution that are based on mtDNA will need revision in the future. This opinion is shared by Howell et al. (1996) and was also expressed by us in a letter to the editor (Bianchi and Rothhammer 1995) in reply to Torroni and Wallace (1995), who, in another letter to the editor (Bailliet et al. 1994), had criticized our paper, proposing the existence of more than four founder Amerindian mitochondrial haplotypes. p. 245

**Comment from Alvah Hicks: The identification of Type E or, as suggested, Type X in northern Amerindian Populations could represent a Holocene migration from Europe of Upper Paleolithic-like Cultures and technologies that assimilated into pre-Clovis Amerindian populations. Since pre-existing pre-Clovis Cultures were already here in the Americas during Glacial times the removal of the formidable Glacier Barrier would have preempted contact between, once isolated, New and Old World people. If the populations of the Americas were in the Americas long enough to develop their own regional set of mtDNAs (i.e. A, B C, and D haplotypes) then a migration out the backdoor of the Americas could have followed contact and assimilation with peoples from the Old World carrying Type X haplotypes. Thus, Haplogroup X in northern Amerindians could be a signature of European contact while, the presence of A, C, and D lineages in northeast Asia could represent a migration, by once isolated “pre-Clovis” Amerindians, into Siberia following the invention of fluted Paleoindian styles. Archaeologically based chronologies confirm a northern migration of Amerindians carrying Paleoindian tools north into Alaska.

SOUTH AMERICA

Monsalve, M.V., Cardenas, F., Guhl, F., Delaney, A.D., and Devine, D.V. Phylogenetic analysis of mtDNA lineages in South American mummies. Ann. Hum. Genet. (1996), 60, 293-303.

The presence of the 9bp deletion in coastal Papua New Guineans (Hertzberg et al. 1989) and in Amerindians (Schurr et al. 1990) suggests association with at least two major migrations from Asia (Ballinger et al. 1992). p. 300

The presence of the substitution (CÆT) at position 16111 in Southeast Asian people could indicate that this mutation predates the colonization of Siberia (Stoneking et al. 1991). The ancestral population of the Tunebo (MO) may be Amerindians of Southeast Asian origin. p. 300

Comment: The evidence of numerous genetic sites in different classes could indicate a recent (~3,600 ybp) Amerindian migration into remote Polynesia and a later migration into southeast Asia and beyond all the way to Madagascar and the Mediterranean (Phoenicians?).

Dittmar, Manuela. Finger Ridge-Count Asymmetry and Diversity in Andean Indians and Interpopulaiton Comparisons. American Journal of Physical Anthropology 105:377-393 (1988).

The purpose of this paper is twofold: 1) to provide intraindividual and intrapopulational data on directional asymmetry, fluctuating asymmetry, the index of asymmetry, and the index of diversity of finger ridge-counts in Amerindians; and 2) to compare, at an interpopulational level, ridge-count asymmetry and diversity values of samples from different ethnic backgrounds in order to get an insight into population differences. p. 379

Most studies published on dermatoglyphic asymmetry and diversity are restricted to populations of Indo-European and African ancestry, while there is no information on how much local variation there may be in Amerindians. p. 387

The present interpopulation comparisons not only reveal ethnic differences in asymmetry and diversity, but also indicate geographical variation. There appears to be a cline through Europe, the Middle East, and Africa such that asymmetry and diversity values tend to decrease from the northern to the southern hemisphere. Accordingly, the highest values are to be found in populations of northern Europe (England, Belgium, Bulgaria), intermediate values in southern Europe (Italy) and northern Africa (Israel), and lowest values in sub-Saharan Africa (Mali, Senegal, Zaire). Here, populations of the northern hemisphere are characterized by greater ridge-count variability and heterogeneity among fingers than populations of the southern hemisphere. Nevertheless, the data are insufficient to say whether this trend also applies to populations of East Asia and America. Particularly, the Aymara of South America look more like northern hemisphere populations than southern ones in their asymmetry and diversity values. This is confirmed by the results of the discriminant analysis. p. 390

Different authors studied the variation of the indices of asymmetry and diversity in population groups of the same ethnic origin that have been living in different geographical regions for longer periods of time. For instance, Kobyliansky et al. (1979) studied Jewish Israelis from eastern Europe, central Europe, the Middle East, and northern Africa; Jantz (1975) examined black groups from Africa and America. In both studies, small intraethnic differences in diversity and asymmetry were found, indicating that genetic factors may possibly have more influence on these variables than environmental factors. p. 390

SIBERIA and NORTH AMERICA

Lorenz, Joseph G., and Smith, David G. Distribution of Sequence Variations in the mtDNA Control Region of Native North Americans. Human Biology, December 1997, v. 69, no. 6, pp. 749-776, 1997.

These data are not consistent with the hypothesis that the New World was settled by more than a single migration. Because lineages tended not to cluster by tribe and because lineage sharing among linguistically unrelated groups was restricted to geographically proximate groups, the tribalization process probably did not occur soon after settlement of the New World, and/or considerable admixture has occurred among daughter populations. p. 749

Later studies using 14 restriction enzymes (Schurr et al. 1990; Torroni, Schurr et al. 1993; Torroni, Chen et al. 1994) supported the hypothesis that the New World was founded by a limited number of mtDNA haplogroups, of which four remain common, and that “tribalization of the Amerinds was a relatively rapid process and that it was followed by extensive tribal isolation” (Torroni, Schurr et al. 1993, p. 585). If tribalization in the New World occurred according to this scenario, then one would expect to observe a high degree of correspondence between genetic and linguistic differences among groups. p. 750

Specifically, haplogroups B, C, and D are rarely, if ever, found in Na-Dene groups, and haplogroup B is absent and haplogroup C is rare in most Eskimo groups. p. 750

Ward interpreted this as evidence for a relatively recent split among the three populations, directly contrary to the hypothesis put forth by Wallace et al. (1985). p. 751

Historical events leading to admixture and/or stochastic effects on the size distribution of lineages within a language group or tribe can distort estimates of pairwise sequence divergence from their expected distribution and linearity in time (Marjoram and Donnelly 1994; Rogers and Harpending 1992; Slatkin and Hudson 1991). For example, recent gene flow can pose as shared ancestry between two groups, whereas subsequent rapid increases in the size of groups or any other lineages as a result of variance in reproductive success in groups of limited size can obscure close common ancestry to other groups. Because several of the studied groups have inhabited regions through which continuous migration probably occurred, contact among unrelated or very distantly related groups might have led to admixture, causing overestimates of genetic similarities among dissimilar language groups. p. 758

We also analyzed the rate of coalescence of lineages over time, measured as the number (or percentage) of gene substitutions, to assess whether or not expansion was constant (Nee et al. 1996), as assumed when gene divergence is calibrated to time. p. 759

Of the six remaining lineages that were shared by two of the language groups (none was shared by all three of the language groups), two (lineages 66 and 67) were shared between at least one of the two Eskimo groups and one Na-Dene group (the Alaskan Athapaskans), one (lineage 65) was shared between one Eskimo and one Amerind group, and three (lineages 15, 18, and 195) were shared between at least one Na-Dene (including Haida in all three cases) and at least one (but including Bella Coola in each case) Amerind group. p. 759-760

Lineage 18 was represented by the largest number of all individuals in this study and was shared by all five of the Na-Dene groups and all three of the Northwest coast Amerind groups. Most Amerind groups that share lineages with Eskimo or Na-Dene groups are located adjacent to or nearby Eskimo and/or Na-Dene groups. Moreover, a greater proportion of the Eskimo/Aleut and Na-Dene lineages (30%) than of the Amerind lineages (11%) were shared with another tribe, even though approximately equal average numbers of individuals (10.75 and 9.9, respectively) were sampled per tribe. p. 760

Although 83 of the 85 lineages clustered with other members of their haplogroup, lineages 177 and 178 did not cluster with the other haplogroup C lineages. Lineages 177 and 178 had been included in this study and assigned to haplogroup C based on the restriction enzyme data. Our sequence analysis revealed the presence in lineage 177 of the TÆC transition at np 16325, which is characteristic of haplogroup C, but this lineage lacked both of the other two transitions usually associated with this haplogroup. This circumstance is typically seen only in members of haplogroup D. Lineage 178 had two of the three mutations typical of haplogroup C but was one of only three (of 18) lineages assigned to haplogroup C (lineage 177 was another of these three) that lacked a TÆC transition at np 16298 and one of two lacking a CÆT transition at np 16223, traits that are also common to haplogroup D. Samples that were assigned to haplogroup C had tested negative for haplogroups B and A by restriction enzyme analysis, but after testing positive for haplogroup C, they were not tested for presence of the AluI site loss at np 5176 that is diagnostic of haplogroup D. Although it is possible for similar patterns of nucleotide substitutions in the rapidly evolving control region to emerge in different mtDNA haplogroups, lineages 177 and 178 might actually have the compound haplogroup C/D. p. 760-761

The absence of Eskimo-specific control region mutations (e.g., TÆC transitions at np 16093 or np 16311, a CÆT transition at np 16173, and an AÆG transition at np 16265) in Amerinds or Athapaskans and the absence of the Eskimo/Athapaskan-specific control region CÆT transition at np 16192 in Amerinds (Forster et al. 1996) suggest that recent admixture is not responsible for the unimodality of the sequence differences. p. 763

In our own study the Haida lineages did not form a distinct clade but rather clustered with the Bella Coola lineages, and in the three shared lineages that were found among the Haida (lineages 15, 18, and 195) 25 individuals had identical sequences to 9 Bella Coola individuals. Because the Bella Coola are geographically close to the Haida, whose oral traditions place their immediate ancestors in the Skeena River valley, just north of the Bella Coola (Drucker 1965), and because coastal Salishan-speaking peoples are probably recent emigrants from the interior of British Columbia, recent gene flow could be more responsible for genetic similarities between the Haida and both the Bella Coola and the Nuu-Chah-Nulth than recent divergence from a common ancestor. p. 769-770

That the divergence between Alaskan Athapaskans and the Haida is higher than all other intertribal estimates except that between the Bella Coola and Alaskan Athapaskans suggests that language adoption might be responsible. p. 770

The amount of sequence divergence within haplogroups A, B, and C, based on 284 nt sequences of the first hypervariable segment of the control region from 225 individuals, was more than an order of magnitude greater than that obtained by Torroni, Schurr et al. (1993) and Torroni, Neel et al. (1994) based on restriction enzyme analysis of the whole mtDNA molecule. This is because the rate of evolution of mtDNA, which varies from one region of the molecule to another (Vigilant et al. 1991), is greater in the noncoding control region than elsewhere and because mutations in that region are less subject to functional constraints. The date for the peopling of the New World has been estimated by calibrating the amount of divergence between paired sequences to time. This calibration assumes that divergence and the rate of lineage extinction, which is inversely proportional to the rate of population growth, proceed at a constant rate. The plots of the logarithmic transformations of the number of lineages at each node of the tree in Figure 1 (righthand y axes in Figure 2) against time to coalescence to a single lineage (measured as the number of base substitutions and read from right to left on the x axis), reflect early and late periods of rapid population growth (shallow, convex portions of the curves) separated by an interim period of slower growth (concave midsection of the curves). p. 770

In addition, pairwise estimates involving the Inuit (Table 7) were difficult to compare with those for the West Greenland Eskimos (Table 4), because the Eskimos exhibited no tribal-specific lineages and therefore could not be included in Table 7. However, the substantial increase in pairwise divergence for comparisons between both Eskimo populations with a Na-Dene tribe (83% and 85%, respectively) is consistent with that for the Eskimo/Na-Dene comparison in Table 7. Moreover, the widespread and unique sharing between Eskimos and Athapaskans, including the Navaho (Torroni, Sukernik et al. 1993) of a CÆT transition at np 16192 and an AÆG transition at np16265 suggests their common ancestry. It is less clear why the lowest mean pairwise intergroup comparison in Table 7 (3.2 ± 1.23) is that between the Haida and the Bella Coola, whose languages are regarded as being unrelated, whereas the second highest estimate is that between the Haida and Alaskan Athapaskans, both of whom speak related languages. Although admixture or language adoption, respectively, might be responsible for these observations, given that it has occurred far more commonly than is sometimes acknowledged [e.g., see Ward et al. (1993)], additional sequencing studies that include larger numbers of individuals from other Na-Dene tribes (studies now underway) are needed to resolve this issue and that pertaining to separate native American migrations. p. 773-774

Comment: Gene flow Vs common ancestors

Admixture Vs common ancestors

Comment by Alvah Hicks: The origins of Intuit/Eskimo and Athapaskan (Na-Dene) could be from Amerindian Populations not Asians? Compatible appraisals of mtDNA data must include the implications that afford an earlier ”pre-Clovis” occupation of the Americas, specifically, the possibility of Native American contributions to Siberian populations. The migration from northeast Asia of people carrying mtDNA types X-6, X-7 and X-8 lineages at the end of the last Ice Age could represent admixture into pre-existing Amerindian populations living in the northernmost regions of un-galaciated Americas. Similar finding in Ojibwa populations suggest admixture while the virtual absence of X-type markers in other North American and South American populations suggests that the X type was not a “founding lineage” or, for that matter, even present before its (here-in proposed) post Ice Age arrival from northeast Asia or Europe.

** Pucciarelli, Hector. The Zhoukoudian Upper Cave skull 101 as seen from the Americas. Journal of Human Evolution (1998) 34, 219-222.

** Since 1988 we have been systematically investigating the morphological affinities of the first Americans (Neves & Pucciarelli, 1989, 1991; Neves et al., 1993; Munford et al., 1995; Neves et al., 1996a,b) and the results obtained so far can be, in our opinion, of significance for this debate. We have detected in these analyses that the first South Americans do not show any special resemblance to modern Mongoloids of northern Asia, but instead they show a marked biological affinity with South Pacific modern populations. In the majority of the bivariate and multivariate analyses we have carried out, the first South Americans showed a remarkable similarity to Australians, and to a lesser degree to Africans. Consequently, we have suggested elsewhere that the first Americans cannot be described as mongoloids. Independent results using different methodologies and other paleoindian skull samples, this time from North America, amply confirmed the results we obtained with samples from South America (Steele & Powell, 1992, 1993, 1994; Powell & Steele, 1993).

When the first Americans were compared with a series of contemporaries of the Upper Pleistocene of the Old World, they showed some morphological similarity to Upper Cave hominids. When the first Americans were compared at the same time with modern populations and fossil hominids (Neves et al., 1993, 1996b; Steele & Powell, 1993, 1994), UC 101 occupied the same quadrant of the graph also occupied by South Pacific and African modern populations (Steele & Powell, 1993; Neves et al., 1993; Figures 1 and 2). This was particularly the case when the multivariate analyses were based on shape information alone. When size was not corrected, UC 101 always occupied an outlying position. ** Summarizing, we have found no morphological affinity between the first Americans and Mongoloids, or between Zhoukoudian Upper Cave hominids (including UC 101) and Mongoloids. We have, however, found some affinity between the Upper Cave hominids (UC 101 and UC 103) and the first Americans, and also between the Upper Cave hominids and South Pacific and African populations.

The most economic way of interpreting these results is in our opinion to assume that people very similar to the native populations that presently occupy most of South Asia and Australia once dominated all of Eastern Asia, and departed to the Americas before the differentiation of Mongoloids in the Old World, a conclusion also recently reached by Cornell & Jantz (1997). In this scenario, Zhoukoudian Upper Cave hominids (including UC 101) should be seen as part of this non-Mongoloid population. pp. 219-221

**Comment: The “Out of Asia” hypothesis (Johnson et al. 1983) can find warranting evidence in this re-appraisal of the upper cave Zhoukoudian hominids, Homo sapiens, that overlay Homo erectus populations. The direction of mankind’s migration into the Old World suggest that they arrived at Klaisies River in southern Africa 36,350 bp while the dates for the Zhoukoudian H. sapiens are at least that old and the modern from Niah Cave near Java is similarly dated (~39,000). This paper further suggests that the Amerindian has been in the Americas longer then their have been “Mongoloid” types since, as is suggested, they maintain the original morphological affinity associated with the earliest fully modern human types throughout the Old World.

Pika, Aleksandri I., (edited by Stern, Pamela R.). Reproductive Atitudes and Family Planning Among the Aboriginal Peoples of Alaska, Kamchatka, and Chukotka: The Results of Comparative Research. Arctic Anthropology Vol. 33, No. 2, pp. 50-61, 1996.

The temporal gap between the decrease in mortality and the decrease in fertility among Alaska Natives created a situation of extremely rapid population growth. This demographic explosion was analogous to that which has occurred in the developing nations of Asia and Africa. p. 51

In summary, for Alaska, the first half of the 1960s were years of rapid population growth of indigenous peoples creating the dangerous possibility of overpopulation in northern villages. As family planning programs were introduced in the second half of the decade, the birth rate began to fall. This was largely viewed as a desirable demographic goal by both social scientists and health care specialists. p. 52

** Crowell, Aron L., and Mann, Daniel H. Sea Level Dynamics, Glaciers, and Archaeology Along the Central Gulf of Alaska Coast. Arctic Anthropology Vol. 33, No. 2, pp. 16-37, 1996.

** The Gulf of Alaska coastline, located at the contact between the Pacific and North American tectonic plates, is a geologically unstable zone affected by frequent earthquakes, crustal movements (tectonism), and volcanic eruptions (Fig. 1). Glacial advances and retreats from ice fields in the coastal mountain ranges contribute to the physical dynamism of the region. The Gulf also is biologically and culturally rich, with resources of fish, sea mammals, shellfish, and birds that have supported maritime-adapted human populations since the beginning of the Holocene. p. 16

** A rise in relative sea level causes the submergence or erosion of shoreline habitation locales, whereas a drop in relative sea level leaves sites on protected backshore berms and terraces. Significant changes of relative sea level can occur instantaneously during major earthquakes, when the destructive effects of shoreline subsidence may be compounded by accompanying tsunami waves. p. 17

** Comment by AMH: The question of whether the coastal corridor was used as a migration route during glaciation must identify that the coastal shoreline was very narrow and that permanent settlement must have been impossible. Migration either into or out of the Americas would be much easier during deglaciation. The question is were the Americas with people before the onset of the Wisconsin (~35,000 bp) or were they peopled during glaciation when the coastal corridor would have been the only route available. At any rate, a permanent settlement of the corridor during glaciation seems unlikely.

Pitul’ko, Vladimir V., and Kasparov, Aleksey K. Ancient Arctic Hunters: Material Culture and Survival Strategy. Arctic Anthropology Vol. 33, No. 1, pp. 1-36, 1996.

The archaeological data (both the topographic characteristics of the sites and the specific stone and bone artifact assemblages) show that as far back as the Neolithic, some groups occupying the Polar territories were probably “semi-sedentary” (or seasonally settled). This was possible in these regions, where fishing provided a stable food source. Survival strategy based on reindeer hunting was characterized by seasonal migrations of the “shuttle” kind (Simchenko 1976), located within a constant area where a system of stationary camps might be created (Khlobystin 1972). Just the same pattern is described in Nganasan legends (Dolgikh 1952), which is rather interesting because Nganasans (as well as Yukagirs) retained many elements of the traditional culture of reindeer hunters moreso than other arctic peoples. pp. 1-2

However, the period of initial human occupation of the continental Asian High Arctic is usually assumed by researchers to go as far back as the Final Pleistocene, when extensive areas of the Siberian Shelf were drained due to regression of the Arctic Ocean, thus opening the vast littoral plain with tundra-steppe landscapes favorable to the mammoth faunal assemblage. Extensive territories of this vanished plain, as well as the modern New Siberian Islands which are relicts of it, were doubtless accessible to ancient arctic aborigines and were sporadically visited by hunting groups as far back as the Early Holocene (Makeyev and Pitul’ko 1991; Pitul’ko 1993; Makeyev, Pitul’ko, and Kasparov 1992). p. 2

These assemblages show that typical arctic tundra landscapes covered the territory of the modern New Siberian island chain, and this was the natural environment found by the hunters who visited the islands as far back as 7800-7900 B.P.

Pollen core assemblages excavated from the cross sections on Faddeyevski, Kotel’nyi (Makeyeve et al. 1989), Bennette (Verculich et al. 1989), and Zhokhov islands (Makeyev and Pitul’ko 1991) tend to show that the climate was noticeably warmer than the modern one during a very long period in the Holocene. The interval from 10,000 till 8500 B.P. was especially warm, and it was presumably the Holocene climatic optimum of the region (Makeyev et al. 1989; Makeyev and Pitul’ko 1991).

Kamboh, M. Ilyas; Crawford, Michael H., Aston, Christopher E., and Leonard, William R. Population Distributions of APOE, APOH, and APOA4 Polymorphisms and Their Relationships with Quantitative Plasma Lipid Levels among the Evenki Herders of Siberia. Human Biology, April 1996, v. 68, no. 2, pp. 231-243.

The well-established positive association between the APOE*4 allele and LDL cholesterol level reported in white populations was not seen in the Evenki despite a comparable frequency of the APOE*4 allele. Because the Evenki have significantly lower cholesterol levels than Westernized whites, this difference in allelic effect probably reflects gene-diet interaction, which modulates the effect of APOE polymorphism on LDL cholesterol. p. 231

Our data indicate that both the genetic and the environmental factors conventionally associated with cardiovascular disease risk in Western societies are different in the Evenki. p. 231

The complete absence of the APOA4*2 allele, which is a unique marker of white populations, provides further evidence that the Evenki are genetically isolated from other population groups of Russia. The near complete absence of the APOA4*2 allele in aboriginal populations of America has been noted previously (Kamboh et al. 1991; De Knijff et al. 1992). A relatively high frequency of the APOH*3, APOA4 HincII –, and APOA4 insertion alleles in the Evenki may have been attained through genetic drift. p. 239

Harkin, Michael. Past Presence: Conceptions of History in Northwest Coast Studies. Arctic Anthropology, Vol. 33, No. 2, pp. 1-15, 1996.

This view is the product of ethnographic methods, such as brief spans of fieldwork, work with only the most traditional elders, and reliance upon memory ethnography to reconstruct a baseline culture believed to predate contact. Rhetorically, these biases are extended and deepened by such tropes as “the ethnographic present,” and scientific objectivism. Clearly, all these traits are present in Boasian anthropology, and most of them in British functionalism. Whatever their strengths, such representations of indigenous peoples can only distance them from us. We cannot imagine them facing the same problems that we, in the modern world, so confidently face.

Clearly, such distancing techniques tend to make aboriginal people (whether or not they are still living in a traditional manner) politically marginal, even irrelevant. p. 1

There was among them little interest in ethnohistorical questions, but rather a desire to produce cultural and linguistic “inventories.” Such inventories were obviously related to the colonial project of possessing and “domesticating” lands, resources, and people. p. 2

Grahovac, Blazenka, Sukernik, Rem I., O’hUigin, Colm, Zaleska-Rutczynska, Zofia, Blagitko, Nadezhda, Raldugina, Olga, Kosutic, Tanja, Satta, Yoko, Figueroa, Felipe, Takahata, Naoyuki, and Klein, Jan. Polymorphism of the HLA class II loci in Siberian populations. Hum Genet (1998) 102:27-43.

We found a high number of HLA class II haplotypes in Siberian populations. More haplotypes have been found in Siberia than in any other population. Some of the haplotypes are shared with non-Siberian populations, but most of them are new, and some represent “forbidden” combinations of DQA1 and DQB! alleles. We suggest that a set of “public” haplotypes was brought to Siberia with the colonizers but that most of the new haplotypes were generated in Siberia by recombination and are part of a haplotype pool that is turning over rapidly. The allelic frequencies at the DRB1 locus divide the Siberian populations into eastern and central Siberian branches; only the former shows a clear genealogical relationship to Amerinds. p.27

Finally, *0601 is basically a Mongoloid and Oceanoid allele which occurs in Kets but not in any other Siberian population. p. 33

The *0101 allele is absent in the seven Siberian populations, as it is in most other Mongoloid populations, including Amerinds; it is present in the majority of other populations. p. 34

The tree also divides the Siberians into two branches, one bearing all the eastern Siberian populations together with the Alaskan Eskimos and the Amerinds, and the other bearing the two central Siberian populations (Evenks and Kets) together with the Polynesian populations. A third branch encompasses the remaining Mongoloid populations together with Southeastern Asian, Micronesian, and Melanesian populations. p. 34

The analysis leads to three extraordinary conclusions. First, although the tested populations are small, they contain astoundingly large numbers of haplotypes; second, most of the haplotypes found to be present in the Siberian populations have not been found in any non-Siberian population; and third, many of the Siberian-specific haplotypes represent unusual allelic combinations.

These observations can be illustrated by the example of the three-locus haplotype, DRB1-DQA1-DQB1. The six Siberian populations contain at least 148 such haplotypes (Table 5), as compared to 153 haplotypes reported for all non-Siberian populations together. While this proportion will undoubtedly change in favor of the non-Siberian populations as extensive surveys of world populations continue to uncover additional haplotypes, it will probably remain true that the seven Siberian populations contain more haplotypes than large ethnic groups, such as the European Caucasoids. p. 35

Generally, haplotypes shared between Siberian and non-Siberian populations occurred at higher frequencies than the Siberian-specific haplotypes. p. 35

These haplotypes have also been found at appreciable frequencies in Caucasoid and other Mongoloid populations (no data are available for Negroid populations). The total proportion of Siberian-specific haplotypes for the six populations was 83%, with a range for the individual populations of 69-81%. pp. 35, 38

The exact time the ancestors of the seven populations reached Siberia is not known, but both archaeological data (Dikov 1994; Goebel and Aksenov 1995; King and Slobodin 1996) and mtDNA typing data (Kolman et al. 1996; Sukernik et al. 1996) are consistent with an estimate of > 40,000 years before present (YBP). Even if this estimate proved to be inaccurate by several thousands of years, our data still allow us to conclude that the HLA class II alleles in the Siberian populations have not changed over a period that is longer than that available for HLA class I allele divergence in South American Indians. This conclusion is important in view of the recent studies on the diversification of HLA genes in South American Indians.

Belich et al. (1992) and Watkins et al. (1992) have reported the existence of “private” HLA-B alleles in several South American Indian populations and postulated that the new variants arose by intragenic recombination after the colonization of the New World by Paleo-Indians. There are three possible explanations for the discrepancy between these data and data presented in this report. First, the “new” alleles reported by Belich et al. (1992) and Watkins et al. (1992) could yet turn up in other non-Amerind populations. Second, the conditions in which the Amerind tribes live could favor retention of new alleles. (The existence of private variants in South American Indian tribes has also been reported for loci other than HLA; see Neel 1978). Third, the functional class I loci, specifically the HLA-B locus, may evolve faster than the functional class II loci. p. 39

The identified haplotypes fall into two categories: those found in both Siberian and non-Siberian populations (public haplotypes) and those restricted to Siberian populations (private haplotypes). The bulk (83%) of the haplotype diversity in the Siberian populations is constituted by the private haploytpes. Why are so many HLA class II haplotypes present in the Siberian populations? Since most of the Siberian haplotypes are found exclusively within Siberia, they could not have been introduced from other populations; they must have been generated in situ, by intergenic recombination. p. 40

We conclude, therefore, that all the rare private haplotypes now found in the Siberian populations have been generated in situ by intergenic recombination, whereas most of the public haplotypes were brought to Siberia with the founding population. In these considerations, we have ignored the effect of natural selection. Indeed, if the population size had been as small as N = 1000, selection would have had little effect on the persistence of the haplotypes. If, however, population sizes had reached larger values over extended periods of time, selection would have become effective and some of the haplotypes could have survived in the populations for a much greater number of generations than indicated by our estimates.

The situation described in the present communication is probably not restricted to Siberia. It may have been the case for most of the past history of H. sapiens in general, when the species was subdivided into a large number of small populations. The situation may have begun to change with the onset of the Neolithic when smaller groups began to coalesce into larger populations. The original status could then have been retained to the present day in those populations which until recently had resisted the tendency toward coalescence. Echoes of the original status may still be recognizable in some of the smaller populations that coalesced some time ago. p. 41

Based on the HLA-DRB1 frequency data, the seven Siberian samples can be divided into two groups which correlate with the geographical distribution of the populations but not with their linguistic affiliations. The two populations in the interior of Siberia, the Evenks and the Kets, are on a different branch of the phylogenetic tree (Fig. 4) than the five eastern Siberian populations. The Evenks speak a language belonging to the northern Tungusic branch of the Altaic language family (Ruhlen 1988). The Ket language is of undetermined origin, a language isolate. The Udegeys speak a language of the southern Tungusic branch, the Koryaks and Chukchi speak Paleo-Asiatic languages, the Siberian Eskimos speak Yupik, and the language of the Nivkhs is another isolate of unknown origin.

The clustering of the eastern Siberian populations with Alaskan Eskimo and Amerind populations supports the hypothesis that the colonizers of the New World originated in the Asian part of the North Pacific Rim. These results are in agreement with other genetic studies (Greenberg et al. 1986; Torroni et al. 1992, 1993; Horai et al. 1993; Shields et al. 1993; Sukernik et al. 1996). The HLA-DRB1 data also suggest that most of interior Siberia may have been populated long after the colonization of the New World. The significance of the clustering of the central Siberian populations with the Polynesians (Fig. 4) is not clear. It may be an artifact (other HLA class II genes, as well as the three-locus class II haplotypes tend to cluster all six or seven Siberian populations together) or it may reflect an ancient connection between the two population groups. More extensive typing of the Siberian populations and sampling of non-Siberian populations will be necessary to resolve this unexpected affinity. p. 41

Comment: The close relationship between eastern Siberians and Amerinds was seen by Boas as to indicate that they descended from Native Americans and migrated into Siberia. The Tungusic Language was seen as unrelated to the Eastern Siberian groups. Is the probable relationship of Na-Dene, Ket, and Sino-Tibetan perhaps representative of an western (out of the Americas) expansion into Siberia of Dene speakers? John, can you help me with this! The Polynesian marker found in one central Siberian could have come from Nepal where it is found in 10% of the Tharu who trace their own origins to the Indian coast where the 9bp deletion is found in association with Polynesian settlement.

Akazawa, Takeru, and Szathmary, Emoke J.E. (Ed.). Book Reviews. Prehistoric Mongoloid Dispersals. American Journal of Phsycial Anthropology 101:547-555 (1996).

“The pendulum is swinging back towards the notion that although Asian polymorphisms were carried into North America, time since initial colonization has been long enough to allow widespread occurrence of all haplotypes across both continents, and the bulk of the observed genetic diversity is indigenous” (p. 160). p. 547

Comment: This does not exclude the possibility that the same “rare Asian” “common Amerindian” mtDNAs where indigenous to the Americas and that their presence in Asia is the result of admixture with northeastern Asians in Holocene times.

POLYNESIA

** Terrell, John E., Hunt, Terry L., and Gosden, Chris. The Dimensions of Social Life in the Pacific. Current Anthropology, Volume 38, Number 2, April 1997, pp. 155-195

While they acknowledge that covariation of language, culture, and biology may not be perfect because of populations’ interbreeding and the horizontal transmission (e.g., between neighbors) of cultural elements, they do not doubt the wisdom of the phylogentic approach. “We shall have to accept, then, that a cultural phylogeny represents only broadly the cultural path that most of the ancestors of the majority of members of the culture followed” (p. 552). Others now see, however, that the qualifications they note are far more serious–that the history of languages may tell us less about the history of the people speaking those languages than has been believed (Terrell 1988, n.d. c; Terrell and Stewart 1996). p. 166

Accepting the view, for instance, that island peoples have actively maintained structured ties or valences (e.g., marriage, adoption, feasting, exchange, friendship, etc.) with others near and far for social and survival reasons and have tried to avoid situations that would lead to their isolation does not rule out the likelihood that people have been able to run their lives and conduct their affairs more or less as if other people did not exist. As Herbert Simon (1973:23) once observed:

To a Platonic mind, everything in the world is connected with everything else–and perhaps it is. Everything is connected, but some things are more connected than others. The world is a large matrix of interactions in which most of the entries are very close to zero, and in which, by ordering those entries according to their orders of magnitude, a distinct hierarchic structure can be discerned.

Hence giving up the notion that islands are isolated worlds may achieve little if we are unsuccessful at finding out how people, places, and events “on the outside” have influenced–sometimes decisively, sometimes not–what people “on the inside” thought, did, and accomplished. p. 175

While much information may be lost in the transformation from matrix to dendrogram, any reasonably complete data matrix can be reduced to such a diagram or picture, and it is then fairly easy to see how differing computational methods, differing clustering algorithms, and differing criteria of optimality, parsimony, and so on, generate different trees (Ruvolo 1987, Sankoff 1978, Wang 1978). Deciding what is a “good fit” between a given matrix and the multitude of possible trees that can be generated from it may be humbling for anyone who believes that data lead only to a single right answer; computing different trees from the same data set can also be an effective way to simulate alternative situations based on different modeling assumptions–which makes such an exercise similar to “what if” financial analysis using computer spreadsheets.

** One of the remarkable things about human beings is the complexity of human thought. Today it may be more obvious than it used to be that time-honored ways of thinking about people and the past did not look closely enough at how people construct and maintain social fields reaching beyond the limits of their own face-to-face community, their own “society.” Yet even this statement must be qualified. As the work of Alkire (1965), Harding (1967), and Sillitoe (1978) documents, this is not something that no one has said before. We do not need to throw away what has already been learned. It is time for more of us to look farther afield. We now need to favor historical realism over research convenience and deductive simplicity. We need to avoid sorting people into arbitrary types. We need to be wary about thinking that history and diversity in the Pacific can be reduced to a few grand moments of genesis and immigration. p. 175

Comments

From Peter Bellwood:

The authors say that lexical reconstructions do not pin down an Austronesian homeland without acknowledging that the comparative reconstruction of Austronesian language homeland and history also involves grammatical and phonological considerations (Tryon 1995). p. 176

Indeed, the aspect of this paper which disturbs me the most is that authors seem to care nothing about the Austronesian world west of New Guinea–they hardly acknowledge its existence and seem quite unaware that all but about 2 million of the 270 million Austronesian-speaking peoples live west of Irian Jaya. p. 176

** From Ben Finney

This is a most important work. The authors have done a magnificent job in analyzing a major shift in thinking about Pacific island prehistory from treating island cultures as isolates to realizing just how peripatetic the islanders actually were. After recalling the “1950s research agenda” for studying island societies as isolated “natural laboratories” of cultural differentiation, they concentrate on how archaeologists who had embraced this agenda in whole or in part are now abandoning it as evidence mounts for intentional settlement and for extensive postsettlement, two-way voyaging. p. 176

Although I excepted some skepticism, I was surprised by the vigorous opposition to our efforts expressed by some archaeologists who had a methodological stake in accidental, random settlement followed by isolation. One of them, for example, condescendingly informed me that this was the era of the “New Archaeology” and research such as mine was passé, as the scientific study of processes of local adaptation and change had replaced outdated cultural historical studies of migration and diffusion. He then went on to explain that he was considering switching his research focus to Polynesia because the extreme isolation of the accidentally settled islands meant that local processes could be delineated without worrying about outside influences during and after colonization.

As Terrell et al. point out, despite the appeal of supposed island isolation, findings from excavations from the Lapita voyaging corridor to the far reaches of Polynesia, along with practical demonstrations of how well indigenous canoes, navigation systems, and sailing strategies and skills are adapted to long-range voyaging, have led most archaeologists to realize that intentional and at times frequent interisland and interarchipelago communication played a major role in the development of island societies. p. 177

But the issue of whether the original colonizers of Hawai’i came from the Marquesas, Tahiti, the Cook Islands, or elsewhere in Polynesia did not strike these modern Polynesian sailors as particularly important. In meeting one another and sailing together it became obvious to them that their commonalties outweighed their differences and that their individual histories were so intertwined that unraveling who did what first was beside the point. Indeed, I got the impression that they would probably have been willing to accept that early voyagers from several of the groups, if not all of them, might have taken part in various settlement voyages to Hawai’i. Furthermore, as their voyage through French Polynesia to Hawai’i developed, the way the groups mixed and matched everything from sailing rigs to the rituals at the many ceremonies conducted along the way may be telling. However jarring such blurring of the cultural boundaries enshrined in our studies might seem, it may be indicative of past processes when voyaging for adze blades, red feathers, and other valued items or for romance, adventure, religious pilgrimage, and the like, joined together people and their ideas over wide stretches of the Pacific. p. 177

** Reply

But when isolation is not an absolute (and who believes it has ever been?) one must expect that people will learn languages, exchange genes (and mates), and transfer skills, beliefs, rituals, songs, fears, and objects in ways that are profoundly difficult to analyze after the fact, much less predict according to the dictates of a model as simple as the phylogenetic one. p. 184

** In light of what Goodenough, Bellwood, and Kirch say in their comments, we are beginning to think that it can never be said too often that the tree diagrams of historical linguistics are convenient analytical fictions. Some too readily accept the assumptions imbedded in such diagrams–for example, (a) that parent languages are uniform, (b) that such primal speech communities give birth to descendant traditions by sudden and clear-cut splitting, and (c) that these daughter traditions subsequently change in their own separate and isolated ways. As Bloomfield wrote, these are useful suppositions; they are not meant to be factual claims about historical reality, linguistic or otherwise. In spite of what common sense may tell us, the cautions raised by Bloomfield and others about these convenient simplifications are as applicable to Pacific populations as they are to any other on earth. p. 185

** Perhaps we do need to stress that we are not trying to say that free-wheeling interaction was the rule in the Pacific regardless of location, geography, voyaging skills, motivations, and the like. Of course some people in the Pacific have lived (and still live) more isolated lives than others. p. 185

** Our own research work–some of which is cited in our paper–illustrates our long-standing commitment to multidisciplinary research. p. 185

** They tell us that if we had paid more attention to Micronesia we would not have considered it significant that geneticists have now discovered that Polynesians, biologically speaking, cannot be derived directly from Southeast Asia. p. 186

The observation that modern Micronesian, Polynesian, and Southeast Asian populations are “mutually much closer affined to one another than to Melanesian populations” is a far cry from the old argument (which we reject) that Polynesians and Melanesians have divergent histories, separate cultural roots, and different biological origins. p. 186

** We wish that Kirch were right that the myth of the primitive isolate is a straw man. Unfortunately, as our review of the literature documents, the history of science shows that there is no such thing as a truly “dead horse” and “straw men” walk the earth (and intellectually reproduce). How else is one to understand the current heated debate, for example, about human genetic history (Terrell and Stewart 1996)? p. 186

The choice facing all of us is not simply to accept or defend our own views. One of the benefits of studying the Pacific is that life there is an affront to Western commonsense notions about the world and how things are. As Harms notes, part of our common sense is bound up with recent history of European colonization, and we have some cultural unlearning to do. p. 187

** Comment: by Alvah Hicks: The important work contained in Terrell et al. are based on multidisiplinary observations that ignitiate a change in the “given” dynamics of Polynesian history; that their migrations were not chance encounters with little if any subsequent contact following new discoveries of previously unknown atolls. Several points should be highlighted, 1) that there is little if any biological support for a southeast Asian source for the Polynesians, 2) that there was substantial knowledge of and verifiable interisland contact during and following colonization, 3) that the relationship between coastal Melanesians and Polynesians — conformed with an advanced maritime cultural proficiency — suggests that the original Pleistocene inhabitants of Oceania were pushed back into the interior. If the original Pleistocene inhabitants of Oceania were pushed back into the interior — and Polynesians did not have a southeast Asian origin — genetic affinities could link them with South American Indians. Further genetic, linguistic, and cultural links between coastal cultures of Borneo and the original inhabitants of Madagascar could indicate that the explorations of the Polynesians was not limited to the Pacific and may have included the Arabian, Red, and Mediterranean Seas (Phoenicians ?). There are numerous bio-genetic traits shared by South American Indians and coastal Melanesians. Heyerdahl’s book; Native Americans in the Pacific 1952 identifies many archaeological links to the New World that should now transcend, given the overwhelming genetic relationship binding these “first People”, an Amerindian source for the first Polynesians as NOT a migration out of Asia. That the same geneticaly identical people would migrate into separate unpeopled areas tens of thousands of years apart is as unfathonable to me as is the liklyhood that Polynesians “first peopled” the remote Islands of the Pacific from the Americas, is for others.

** Lum, J. Koji, and Cann, Rebecca L. mtDNA and Language Support a Common Origin of Micronesians and Polynesians in Island Southeast Asia. American Journal of Physical Anthropology 105:109-119 (1998).

** Ever since European explorers ventured into the Pacific and found virtually every island inhabited, scholars have debated the origins and relationships among Micronesians, Polynesians, and Melanesians. Archaeological and linguistic evidence supports two distinct stages of Pacific Island settlement. The first phase resulted in the colonization of the Melanesian regions of New Guinea at least 40,000 years before present (ybp) (Groube et al., 1986), the Bismarck Archipelago 33,000 ybp (Allen et al., 1988), and the Northern Solomons 29,000 ybp (Wickler and Spriggs, 1988). The distribution of these Pleistocene sites coincides with the distribution of Papuan-speaking people in the Pacific. p. 109

The colonization of Remote Oceania (Pawley and Green, 1973; Green, 1991) is dated to the last 4,000 ybp. This population expansion is associated exclusively with Austronesian languages and includes the remaining areas of Melanesia and all of Polynesia and Micronesia. p. 109

Under this model, correlated biological and cultural differences accumulate collinearly over time between geographically isolated populations. Thus we would expect biological relationships to mirror linguistic relationships which describe Micronesians, Polynesians, and Remote Oceanic Melanesians as more closely related to Austronesian-speaking Southeast Asians than to Papuan-speaking Melanesians. p. 110

The presence of the 9-bp deletion associated with similar control region haplotypes at substantial frequencies in both Amerindian and Oceanic populations has also resurrected the question of p. 110

Although X.I is absent in Papua New Guinea (Table 1) we observe a moderate frequency of X.I throughout Island Southeast Asia (0.27 to 0.40). We also find consistently high frequencies of X.I in Micronesia (Table 1, Fig. 2), reaching near fixation in the Marshall Islands (0.94). As reported previously, the frequency of X.I also increases to near fixation in Polynesian populations (Hertzberg et al., 1989; Lum et al., 1994; Redd et al., 1995; Sykes et al., 1995). Similarly, XeX is found in Island Southeast Asia, Micronesia, and Polynesia (Table 1). Thus, consistently high frequencies of X.I throughout Remote Oceania and the distribution of XeX supports a common origin of both Micronesians and Polynesians in Island Southeast Asia. p. 115

Of the two Austronesian-speaking Melanesian populations, Vanuatu in the west is closer to Papuan-speaking populations and has a relatively low frequency of X.I. Fiji, in contrast, is at the eastern edge of Melanesia and has a high X.I frequency, comparable to other Oceanic Austronesian-speaking populations in Micronesia (Table 1). p. 115-116

Our comparisons of genetic, linguistic, and geographic distances from Oceanic-speaking Micronesian populations reveal no significant correlations (Table 2). This is consistent with extensive interactions throughout much of Micronesia, in agreement with ethnographic information. The atolls of the central Carolines have maintained traditional navigational techniques and long distance voyaging in order to ameliorate environmental vulnerability (Ridgell et la., 1994). Traditionally these atolls were part of the Yap Empire, and yearly trade and exchange through the sawei system (Lingenfelter, 1975; Alkire, 1978) have provided opportunities for migration. In addition, Marck (1986) has shown that linguistic boundaries within Micronesia are coincident with the distance traveled during an overnight voyage, suggesting ongoing interactions throughout prehistory. p. 116

Even though Kapingamarangi, a Polynesian outlier, is located geographically within Micronesia, there are ethnographic data indicating very limited interactions with neighboring populations (Alkire, 1978). Likewise Rapanui appears to have been settled once and then remained isolated (Metraux, 1940). Consistent with this isolation, interviews of the Tahitian navigator Tupaia by Cook during his first voyage revealed extensive knowledge of Central Polynesia, but not of Hawai’i, Rapanui, or the outliers (Lewis, 1972). p. 116

We interpret these results as support of a rapid colonization of Remote Oceania by a closely related group of Austronesian-speaking populations from Island Southeast Asia. Following this initial settlement extensive gene flow occurred between these recent migrants and neighboring people from Island Southeast Asia and Papuan-speaking Melanesians without major impact on the established linguistic relationships. The observed correlation between genetic and geographic distances in the large-scale comparisons is a result of this putative regional gene flow. p. 117

**Comment: The proposed source for the Austronesian-speaking populations from Island Southeast Asia does not exclude the possibility that Polynesians came from the eastern Pacific and dispersed into Island southeast Asia since the genetic links to a “founding population” are already present in South Americans while southeast Asians and the original Papuan people maintain few, if any, of the genetic markers associated with the spread of the first Polynesians.

Gregor, Thomas, and Tuzin, Donald. Amazonia and Melanesia: Gender and Anthropological Comparison. Current Anthropology Volume 39, Number 2, April 1998, pp. 274-277

In its own right, the theoretical goal of the symposium, acknowledging that 1996 was the centenary of Franz Boas’s influential essay, “The Limitations of the Comparative Method of Anthropology,” was to articulate a comparative method, or coherent set of methods, capable of accommodating the Amazonia-Melanesia resemblance’s. Considering that any genetic connection between the cultures of the respective regions would be many tens of thousands of years distant, such a comparative method would have to be universalistic at some level and yet respectful of the many contingencies that have produced variations within and between regional phenomena. At the same time, because the congeries of similarities between Amazonia and Melanesia is seen as distinctive, such an exercise must ask why these gender-related parallels exist between these areas and not others. p. 274

Such a felicitous outcome was not foreseeable at the start of the week, however, for it quickly emerged that not everyone agreed with the organizers’ perceptions and assumptions about Amazonia-Melanesia resemblances and the comparativist insights to be drawn from them. Descola, for example, disputed the salience of gender in Amazonian societies and argued that for the Jivaroan Achuar, at least, this aspect of sociocultural life was considerably subsumed and muted by kinship formations; similarly, Fisher regarded gender factors as structurally subordinate to those of relative age, at least among Amazonian Ge peoples. p. 275

Broadly speaking, most Melanesians inhabit a world of dense human populations, material (often artistic) objects, domesticated pigs, and spirit-infused yams, taro, and other cultigens. In contrast, Amazonians inhabit a world of sparse human populations, vast forests, and dangerous wild animals. Both literally and symbolically, Melanesians domesticate and objectify what they can, brining the outside “in,” while the background against which Amazonians subjectify and construct their world is the intractable “outside” of enemies, affines, animals, spirits, and the dead. In other words, like the Nuer with their famous cattle, Melanesians inhabit an Objectscape, whereas Amazonians inhabit an Otherscape. p. 276

In struggling to conceptualize the interregional comparison, the symposium adopted a playful but useful heuristic device coined by Hugh-Jones. Let us imagine that there is a place called “Melazonia.” What are its features? What variations exist there in respect of environmental, technological, sociocultural, and psychological particulars? With what do they correlate? How might they be construed as transformations of more basic structures? What is it about Melazonia that sets it apart from other regions? p. 276

In their view, the Amazonia-Melanesia comparison should incorporate interregional parallels in social and material conditions and the physicality of the agent: tropical rain-forest habitats, horticultural subsistence regimes, pronounced sexual division of labor, features of child-rearing and childhood “society,” with corresponding psychological constellations and culturally constituted defenses, moral contradictions surrounding male ritual dominance, situationally determined patterns of sexuality and aggression, decentralized political systems, and the like. p. 276-277

In a different dimension of crisis, Strathern observed, anthropology’s awareness of cultural differences is bowdlerized by those who practice the politics of ethnicity, who cite anthropology in arguing that everyone draws a boundary between self and other, that it is “natural’ for people to want to be with their own kind. What the comparison of Amazonia and Melanesia shows us–and they are strikingly alike in this–is that one does not have to prove sameness before relating to another person; indeed, persons and peoples can and do relate on the basis of differences as well as sameness. The hallmark of Amazonian and Melanesian societies is that they actively seek to locate, create, magnify, and ideologize difference as the basis for relationship. Never mind whether the material for this maneuver consists of differences in sex, age, generation, ritual rank, consanguinity, or affinity, and never mind whether the differences are natural or contrived–in each case the extraction of creativity from difference operates upon a basically procreative model. This cross-regional similarity not only is intriguing in itself but suggests a new and urgent application for anthropology and its comparative insights: against the politics of ethnicity and the dangerous excesses of neotribalism, the peoples of Amazonia and Melanesia have evolved a perhaps more sustainable alternative, which is to present themselves as having to extract creativity not form within but from out of the bodies all around them. Thanks to the symposium, one can say that this way of living and relating and creating has happened not just once in human history but twice. p. 277

Comment: “American Indians in the Pacific” by Thor Heyerdahl 1952. The growing genetic similarities between Melanesians and South Americans (not North Americans or Siberians) could indicate a connection that is only 3,600 years old. That is the settlement of Polynesia is considered to be recent, affording this, so called, ethnological comparison of the two worlds. Some have proposed accounting for the similarity of genetic markers between these two groups as evidence of an ancient founding effect, perhaps 13,800 years ago of Chile’s Monte Verde. The taboo of looking to the Americas for alternative sources of migrating humans must be exorcised!

AUSTRALIA

Lahr, Marta M., and Wright, Richard V.S. The question of robusticity and the relationship between cranial size and shape in Homo sapiens. Journal of Human Evolution (1996) 31, 157-191.

It is suggested that the total morphological pattern observed in Australia does not reflect a plesio-morphic condition, but the specific history of occupation of that continent favouring size reduction with the maintenance of robusticity. p. 157

And last, these analyses show that Australian cranial morphology, at the centre of the debate about modern human origins, is indeed an outlier among modern anatomical patterns. However, the results also suggest that the Australian pattern does not result from the retention of a plesiomporphic combination of cranial dimensions and robusticity that would associate them to the Ngandong hominids. Although the cranial superstructures are in themselves plesiomorphous for all modern humans, the anatomical parameters that constrain their expression in Australian crania are a characteristic of this groups. The most likely explanation for their distinctiveness probably lies in the early occupation of Australia and subsequent differentiation within the continent. Wright (1976) suggested a similar evolutionary mechanism of local response to selection once in Australia to explain large dental size in the late Pleistocene Aboriginal population of this continent. p. 187

This distinctive pattern in Australia is not related to the retention of an ancestral condition because it is not found in conjectural ancestral forms, whether the early modern African/Middle Eastern samples or the Ngandong remains.

The correlation between robusticity and cranial dimensions highlights the need to study the cranial superstructures within the context of metrical variation, and not individually as evidence of phylogenetic relationships. p. 188

** van Holst Pellekaan, Sheila M., Frommer, Marianne, Sved, John A., and Boettcher, Barry. Mitochondrial Control-Region Sequence Variation in Aboriginal Australians. Am. J. Hum. Genet. 62:435-449, 1998.

Comparison with sequences from five published global studies reveals that these Australians demonstrate greatest divergence from some Africans, least from Papua New Guinea highlanders, and only slightly more from some Pacific groups (Indonesian, Asian, Samoan, and coastal Papua New Guinea), although the HVS1 types vary at different nucleotide sites. Construction of a median network, displaying three main groups, suggests that several hypervariable nucleotide sites within HVS1 are likely to have undergone mutation independently, making phylogenetic comparison with global samples by conventional methods difficult. Specific nucleotide-site-variants are major separators in median networks constructed from Australian HVS1 types alone and for one global selection. The distribution of these, requiring extended study, suggests that they may be signatures of different groups of prehistoric colonizers into Australia, for which the time of colonization remains elusive. p. 435

All of the Australians are least distant from the Papua New Guinea highlanders and then from the Pacific populations, whereas farther away are the !Kung and farthest away is the Pygmy group. It is also notable that the Papua New Guinea highland group is more distant from the Pacific sample (which includes Papua New Guinea coastal individuals) than from any of the Australians. p. 439-441

The analysis tells us that samples from living populations retain mitochondrial types that distinguish the AD and AR populations from each other and from other global populations, although three distinctive HVS1 types (types 1, 2, and 10) are seen in both AR and AD samples, suggesting gene flow in the past, perhaps a long time ago (rather than recently, as it is not supported by recollection). p. 442-443

** With regard to the founding populations of Australia, several points emerge. The genetic-distance calculations place Papua New Guinea highland sequences nearest to both Australian groups, lending support to the model of more-recent shared ancestry. However, the specific nucleotide variants in the sequences are different, so acceptance of common ancestry also implies that the ancestral mitochondrial gene pool from which both populations arose was diverse at the time of entry into Sahul and/or that considerable diversification has occurred since that time. p. 443

Nucleotide sites 16287 and 16356 lead only to Australians, whereas 16362 and 16291 are major separators in a group that includes southern AR Australians, one AD individual, and South American lineages II-IV. Interestingly, the South American lineage I, Papua New Guinea coastal, and Pacific types are in an exclusive group having no substitution sites in common with the other types in the network–except for sites 16184 and 16189, which, as has been contended above, are sites that have mutated independently in many populations and that therefore are treated last in the network. p. 444

** The model for separate migrations into New Guinea, leading to the consolidation of earlier immigrants in the highlands, is supported by the observation of highland people being closer, in genetic distance, to the Australians than to New Guinean coastal and Pacific people. This model is also supported by the confirmed absence of the 9-bp deletion in Australian samples, in the light of Redd et al.’s (1995) confirmation of its presence in Pacific populations, including coastal New Guineans. However, the Australian and New Guinea highland mitochondrial sequences are different, so further work is required in order to address suggestions of descent from the same biological group. p. 446-447

** Comment: The Australian and New Guinea highland populations are closer to each other then they are to coastal populations indicating that coastal populations represent a much more recent people from an as yet determined source that was not present in southeast Asians when these ancient Old World colonizers crossed the Timor Strait. “[C]considerable diversification has occurred since that time as it has in nearly every population that has settled the Globe. Regional mtDNAs are new to these regions just as language evolves differently. That the 9bp deletion is not a founding lineage in interior populations, (except in the Americas) or found in high frequencies outside of coastal populations, suggests that it’s newness can be traced to the spread of Polynesians to as far as Madagascar. As evidenced by its predominance in coastal populations and near fixation in Remote Polynesia the only place where it occurs in nearly as many people is the Americas. Why are Indians always confined to the Americas. Given the belief that they Peopled the vastness of the Americas why would they not return to northeast Asia as Boas believed or accidentally discover Tahiti when the currents affording even an accidental discovery are favorable only to them?

EUROPE

Letters to the Editor. Paleolithic and Neolithic Lineages in the European Mitochondrial Gene Pool. Am J. Hum. Genet. 61:247-251, 1997, from L.L.Cavalli-Sforza and E. Minch.

The rather general conclusions drawn by Richards et al. (1995, p. 197)–namely, that “the majority of modern Europeans are descended from the settlement of Europe by anatomically modern humans during the Upper Paleolithic” and that the “overall demographic influence on modern Europeans [of farmers from the Middle East] is relatively small”–are not warranted by their data. p. 248

The geographic gradient, across Europe, of the two markers is rather similar to that observed from the pattern of the first principal component of autosomes. In figure 1 we compare the latter pattern (fig. 1B, from the most recent data set [i.e., Piazza et al. 1995]), with that of the first principal component of the Y-chromosome markers, which we calculated on the basis of the Semino et al. data (fig. 1C). There is a high correlation, and both patterns are highly correlated with the dates of first arrival of Neolithic farmers, as inferred from archaeological observations on the spread of farming in Europe (fig. 1A). p. 249

The mtDNA D-loop is probably plagued both by noise, which is due to excessively high mutation rates, and by an unknown factor, mentioned above and probably affecting all mtDNA data, which decreases genetic distances among populations outside Africa. p. 250

Two factors seem potentially important in the human species. One of them is a tendency, at marriage, for women to migrate more than men, in that it is more often women who relocate to join their spouse; in anthropological terminology, marriage is more often than not patri- or virilocal. This is believed to have been true even for hunter-gatherers (Ember 1978; Hewlett 1996), as well as for farmers, in whom patrilocality is a consequence of preferential inheritance of the land by sons. This makes women, on average, genetically more mobile than men, even though their average daily displacement may be less than that of men. p. 250

Both patrilocality and hypergamy, as well as abduction of women, which was frequent in antiquity and is still observed–for example, among the Yanomama–can increase the gene flow tied to womens’ migration and hence of mtDNA, over that of autosomes or Y chromosomes. Most probably for the same reasons, Y chromosomes seem to show a greater geographic clustering than is seen in mtDNA trees, although comparisons are still limited and indirect (Ruiz-Linares et al. 1996; Underhill et al. 1996). p. 250

** Letters to the Editor. Reply to Cavalli-Sforza and Minch. Am. J. Hum. Genet. 61:251-254, 1997, Martin Richards, Vincent Macaulay, Bryan Sykes, Paul Pettitt, Robert Hedges, Peter Forster, and Hans-Jurgen Bandelt.

** In a recent paper (Richards et al. 1996), we used a phylogeographic approach to infer that most (>85%) of the mtDNA control region (D-loop) variation in present-day Europeans has an ancient ancestry within Europe, coalescing during the Upper Paleolithic. This seems to be in contrast with earlier principal-component analyses of nuclear-gene frequencies in Europe, widely interpreted as evidence for a substantial Neolithic settlement from southwest Asia, which overwhelmed the Mesolithic hunter-gatherers. p. 251

** Contrary to some of the most detailed considerations of the archaeological evidence in recent years (e.g., see Whittle 1996), the mtDNA data suggest that new colonization of Europe from southwest Asia did indeed occur during the Neolithic, as Cavalli-Sforza and his colleagues proposed (Menozzi et al. 1978; Ammerman and Cavalli-Sforza 1984). Nevertheless, it seems likely that their interpretation underestimates the Mesolithic contribution. p. 252

** Comment: The argument can made that Europe was colonized twice from southeast Asia, by both early Cro-Magnon ancestors and Neolithic people. The assimilation by the latter of the first Upper Paleolithic Peoples of Europe is a question of percentages of assimilation for total replacement seems beyond credibility, unless you were a holdover from the days of the European Neandertals. Here total replacement was vary likely as separate species do not mate.

Loirat, France, Hazout, Serge, and Lucotte, Gerard. Brief Communication. G542X As a Probable Phoenician Cystic Fibrosis Mutation. Human Biology, June 1997, v. 69, no. 3, pp. 419-425.

On the basis of geographic repartition of the G542X mutation in the Iberian Peninsula, historical data, and haplotype analysis, Casals et al. (1991) and Chillon et al. (1994) suggested that the G542X mutation was probably introduced into Spain by Phoenicians (between 2500 and 3000 years ago) by means of the Mediterranean Sea. The data reported here confirm this interpretation about the origin of the G542X mutation but seem of special value for the occidental Phoenicians (from Carthage): Relatively high values of G542X frequencies are observed on the Mediterranean coast of Spain and in the Canary Islands but also in North Africa [mainly in Tunis (Carthage)], Sicily, Sardinia, and southern France. These various sites of ancient occupation by Carthaginians (Figure 2) are the focus in the cline of G542X frequencies, established here for the western part of Europe. p. 424

Comment: Could Phoenicians be Polynesians since Polynesians found Madagascar? Does the spread of Yaws and leprosy have a correlate with Japan and the Middle east?

ASIA

Harding, Rosalind, M., Fullerton, S.M., Griffiths, R.C., Bond, Jacquelyn, Cox, Martin J., Schneider, Julie A., Moulin, Danielle S., and Clegg, J.B. Archaic African and Asian Lineages in the Genetic Ancestry of Modern Humans. Am. J. Hum. Genet. 60:772-789, 1997.

Modest differences in levels of b-globin diversity between Africa and Asia are better explained by greater African effective population size than by greater time depth. There may have been a reduction of Asian effective population size in recent evolutionary history. Characteristically Asian ancestry is estimated to be older than 200,000 years, suggesting that the ancestral hominid population at this time was widely dispersed across Africa and Asia. Patterns of b-globin diversity suggest extensive worldwide late Pleistocene gene flow and are not easily reconciled with a unidirectional migration out of Africa 100,000 years ago and total replacement of archaic populations in Asia. p. 772

More surprisingly, genetic diversity measured by pairwise sequence difference is greater in Asia than in Africa and highest in Mongolia, where extensive diversity recently has been reported for mtDNA (Kolman et al. 1996) and Y haplotypes (C. Tyler-Smith, personal communication). p. 780

Comment: The best phylogenetic mtDNA data supports an Out of Asia source for modern man dispersal into the Old World. The archaeological dating of modern humans in Africa 90,000 years ago is based on flawed interpretations of the age of the modern human activities at Klaisies River in southern Africa. Most archaeologists support the idea that the replacement of Homo erectus in Africa coincides with the sudden replacement elsewhere, including Europe where modern man does not appear until after 40,000 years ago. If there is greater diversity in northeast Asia then anywhere else in the Old World then the source for the dispersal of Homo sapiens could have been the New World where genetic diversity is greatest and where the detection of a state of “mutational-drift equilibrium” suggests that it is impossible to detect age or phylogenetic relationships. The bottleneck or Eve for all Old World peoples could be northeast Asia.

** Letters to the Editor; Tasha K. Altheide and Michael F. Hammer. Evidence for a Possible Asian Origin of YAP+ Y Chromosomes. Am. J. Hum. Genet. 61:462-466, 1997.

** Similar patterns of variation at non-Y chromosome loci have been interpreted to support a recent African origin of contemporary human genetic lineages (Cann et al. 1987; Armour et al. 1996; Tishkoff et al. 1996); however, Hammer et al. (1997) have raised the possibility that YAP haplotype 3 originated in Asia and migrated to Africa. This hypothesis is supported by the finding of high frequencies of haplotype 3 in some Asian populations (i.e., 50% in Tibet) and by the observation of higher levels of diversity (based on the number and frequency of alleles at the DYS19 microsatellite locus) associated with Asian versus African haplotype 3 chromosomes. Because YAP haplotypes 4 and 5 evolved from haplotype 3 and account for the majority of Y chromosomes in Africa (table 1), this hypothesis implies a substantial Asian contribution to the African paternal gene pool (Hammer et al. 1997).

We now report additional evidence in support of the hypothesis of an Asian origin of YAP+ chromosomes, based on the distribution of a GÆA transition in the SRY region. p. 463 **

Remarkably, the ancestral YAP+ lineage represented by haplotype 3G was present only in Asian populations, and the derived 3A haplotype was present only in African populations and in a single European individual (table 1). No population was found to be polymorphic for both the 3G haplotype and the 3A haplotype. p. 463

** In sum, the ancestral states associated with polymorphisms that originated just before and after the YAP insertion into the Y-haplotype tree are currently found in Asian–and not in African–populations. The obvious implication, if this pattern continues as new systems are discovered, is that a major component of African Y-chromosome diversity had its roots in Asia. Similar patterns of variation at other loci are needed to support the hypothesis of an ancient migration of human populations from Asia to Africa. In this regard, it is interesting that recent studies of b-globin sequence variation indicate that modern human populations, including those from Africa, carry ancient globin haplotypes that also appear to have originated in Asia (Harding et al. 1997). p. 465

** Comment: More genetic data supporting an Asian origin for modern human dispersal!

Sokal, Robert R., and Thomson, Barbara A. Spatial Genetic Structure of Human Populations in Japan. Human Biology, February 1998, v. 70, no. 1, pp. 1-22, 1998.

The peopling of Japan has been actively researched by numerous Japanese investigators as well as by some Western ones. The contributors to the subject have so far failed to reach agreement on a model for the formation of the Japanese people. It is generally accepted that the modern Japanese are descendants of two populations who produced, respectively, the Jomon and the Yayoi cultures. The region of origin of the Jomon, the relative proportions of these peoples in the modern Japanese population, and the modes by which the Yayoi displaced the Jomon are, however, still in dispute.

The Jomon culture (ca. 8500-300 B.C.) spans the Japanese Mesolithic and Neolithic periods. It eventually extended from Kyushu north to Kokkaido (Kidder 1993). It is characterized by corded pottery. The Jomon people were hunter-gatherers and fishers and may have been slash and burn cultivators. Although they did not practice agriculture, they did live in houses in relatively permanent villages (Aikens and Higuchi 1982). p. 2

The Yayoi culture (300 B.C. to A.D. 300) brought wet-rice agriculture, metallurgy, and numerous other cultural innovations to Japan (Kidder 1993). The characteristic pottery first appeared in northern Kyushu and gradually spread to other parts of the islands (Aikens and Higuchi 1982). The origins of the Yayoi are not in dispute. They came to Japan from northeast Asia by way of Korea. What is still being debated is the mechanism for the spread of the Yayoi culture after it first reached Japan and the fate of the Jomon populations following the arrival of the Yayoi. Whatever process took place, it was continued during the subsequent Kofun period [A.D. 300-700; see Aikens and Higuchi (1982) and Brown (1993)]. p. 2

The first hypothesis is known as the substitution or replacement hypothesis. In this model the invading Yayoi populations displace the earlier Jomon and push them into the extreme north and south, where they form the Ainu and Ryukyuans, respectively. Cavalli-Sforza et al. (1994, p. 232) thinks that this model is most probable. p. 3

The second hypothesis is the hybridization or admixture model. This model holds that the modern Japanese population resulted from the admixture of Jomon with Yayoi elements from the Asian mainland (by way of Korea). Recently, Hanihara (1991) reformulated the admixture model as the dual structure model. The dual structure model rests on two assumptions: (1) The Jomon are descended from southeast Asians who migrated to Japan before 10,500 B.C., and (2) in the Yayoi and Kofun periods (300 B.C. to A.D. 700) immigrants from northeast Asia and Korea partly interbred with the Jomon natives and partly pushed them into the extreme north and south of Japan (Hokkaido and the Ryukyu Islands, respectively), where they became the relict populations of Ainu and Ryukyuans. This theory is supported by the dental findings of Turner (1987). Hammer and Horai (1995) and Omoto and Saitou (1997) support only the second assumption, having demonstrated to their satisfaction that the Jomon must have stemmed from northeast rather than southeast Asian populations. p. 3

We suggest a modification of the admixture hypothesis, namely, that the Yayoi immigrants spread by a process of demic diffusion, first proposed for Europe by Ammerman and Cavalli-Sforza (1984). In this model the immigrants, who are early farmers, infiltrate an area and convert it to agricultural use. This greatly raises the carrying capacity of the area, and the immigrants outnumber the natives by a substantial margin. The natives, who were hunter-gatherers, are converted to agriculture and form an admixed population with the immigrants. The surplus populations, which can no longer be supported by the area, move into new territory and the process repeats itself. p. 3

Our actual observations reported are as follows: There are U-shaped clines for at least four allele frequencies (Table 3). We find sharp boundaries between the main body of Japanese and the Ainu as well as the Ryukyuans (Figure 5), but this result is confounded by the physical barriers at these boundaries. These two end populations are also more similar to each other with respect to at least four allele frequencies. Finally, we find at least three north-south clines in our data. p. 18

Our findings clearly make the transformation hypothesis unlikely. Given that we found some U-shaped clines, the hybridization hypothesis is the more likely of the other two. Because we find such clines only in four allele frequencies, we may wonder how pervasive the hybridization process was. Sokal et al. (1991) pointed out that even in interracial migration events only a few loci have an immigrant allele frequency differential large enough for clines to be noted. This is where rare or unique alleles have the advantage over more common polymorphisms. Hammer and Horai (1995) estimated an admixture of 39% Yayoi based on the frequency of the YAP element in the Y chromosomes. p. 18-19

The substitution and hybridization hypotheses are not mutually exclusive absolutes. There is a continuous intergradation from pure substitution without any admixture to hybridization without any replacement of the natives by the immigrants. So the distinction between these two hypotheses may not be easy. p. 19

AFRICA

** McCall, Daniel F. The Afroasiatic Language Phylum: African in Origin, or Asian?

Current Anthropology, Volume 39, Number I, February 1998, pp. 139-143.

Greenberg (1971) noted that four of the five members of his Afroasiatic language phylum are located on the African continent and only one mainly in southwestern Asia, therefore he saw the mother language from which they descended as being in northeastern Africa. This conclusion is based on the principle that linguists call “least-moves”; it is logically simpler to accept that one moved out of the continent of Africa than that four moved into it. This is an example of Occam’s Razor, which holds that the simpler explanation is the more likely to be true; it doesn’t prove that it is true in any particular case. p. 139

Cavalli-Sforza, Menozzi, and Piazza (1994), however, consider Afroasiatic to have originated in southwestern Asia. They report that the gene frequencies of populations in the northern tier of Africa, where Afroasiatic languages are located, are closer to those of populations on the other side of the Suez isthmus than to those of populations in the rest of Africa, and they attribute this distribution to the movement of food producers from southwestern Asia into Africa, carrying with them Proto-Afroasiatic speech. 139

How can one relate population genetics to historical linguistics? A “population” in geneticists’ terms is a group within which most matings occur. Fertile matings produce in the offspring a mix of the genes of the two parents. Each individual has a very large number of genes, and each person differs somewhat from others, even from siblings, in the combination of genes. Variant forms of genes, called alleles, exist, and new alleles, as well as new genes, are continually coming into existence by mutation, but most of these are eliminated by death of the person with the mutant because of their deleterious effects; some genes are neutral and may survive to be passed on to subsequent generations, and some new genes or alleles are beneficial for adaptation to a particular environment and will flourish among descendants. Thus a population is characterized by the frequencies of a large number of specific genes. The difference between the frequencies found in one population and those of another population is called “genetic distance.” Small populations of similar composition can be pooled to compare to other clusters. 139-140

** Three factors are involved in creating genetic distance: migration of peoples, mutation within populations, and natural selection. Migration creates separate populations. From the time of separation, each generation allows the process of acquiring and losing genes to proceed in both of the now separate populations. Each change in either population increases the genetic distance between the two, and, although there are a few factors that may affect these changes, the overall process is essentially regular. This is a simple matter when the movement is into an unoccupied territory but becomes more complicated when the move is into the habitat of another population. Calculation of the time elapsed since the separation of populations is possible but may require hypotheses about gene mixture or language replacement. Mutation rates are critical to this process, and their regularity or lack of it is still debated. At the moment the “molecular clock” is not totally reliable. p. 140

Paolo Francolacchi (1995;395) puts the elements of the problem succinctly:

the mechanism at the base of the differentiation of languages (diffusion and subsequent isolation) is the same as that which is at work in the evolution of living beings. However, the linguistic transmission is not only vertical (from parents to offspring) as in the case of transmission of genes, but also horizontal (learning from neighbors). A single individual or an entire people can replace a language in a relatively short time, while obviously this cannot be done for genes. This can explain the incongruities when comparing the linguistic affiliation of a population with its genetic pattern . . . Nevertheless, in most cases, the correlation between the tree drawn from the genetic distances and that based on linguistic families is strong . . . .

According to Cavalli-Sforza, Menozzi, and Piazza (1994:99) “The one to one correspondence between genetic clusters and linguistic families is remarkably high, but it is not perfect.” p. 140 **

These are amply justified by linguistic substitution.” Their 1994 book makes a more general statement (p. 99):

Gene replacement is more likely to be partial and tends to follow demographic history. Two neighboring peoples may mix by asymmetrical gene flow, with only one of them contributing a small number of individuals to the other in every generation. . . .the continuation of this process over a substantially long time may determine an almost complete gene substitution. In general, the gene pool tends to reflect rather faithfully the numerical contribution from the two parental groups. Thus, genetically intermediate populations can be generated, with all possible degrees of admixture. This process need not be accompanied by language change. Languages tend to behave more like a unit, and be replaced as a whole, if at all. One can, and usually does, notice contributions to the lexicon of neighbors, but the structure of language is more stable, and certain specific groups of words are more highly conserved. In certain cases, therefore, one can observe massive genetic contributions from an external source with little if any language change, and in other cases, language substitutions with little genetic change. p. 140

This is relevant to Afroasiatic in that speakers of Chadic languages are genetically part of the Sub-Saharan genetic cluster, Cushitic-speakers tend to be intermediate, ancient Egyptians had a certain amount of mixture, and Berger-speakers and Semitic-speakers are predominantly aligned with the Southwest Asian genetic cluster. Thus, with allowance for genetic mixture, Afroasiatic is a language phylum that–with this explanation–could have an origin in the Southwest Asian Genetic cluster. p. 140

Interpretation of currently available genetic data does stimulate rethinking and is to be welcomed, but the genetic argument for a Levant origin of Afroasiatic needs a more substantial data base. And as with any data, the problem may be in the interpreting. The model of the genetic picture of Europe is one case; Afroasiatic and Dravidian are two others. Dravidian is problematic because Sumerian, currently considered a language isolate by most linguists, occupied the suggested area of departure.

Renfrew (1992) adds a fourth wave radiating out from the Southwest Asian Neolithic, this one into Central Asia and correlating with the Altaic language family. p. 141

** David Phillipson (1985) points to the importance of the Dabba culture site at Haua Fteah, Cyrenaica, because of its relation to contemporary industries in western Asia and Europe: “the closest connexions of this phase of the Haua Fteah sequence are with the Levant.” The tools in question have been radiocarbon-dated to 32,000-38,000 B.P. The movement of an Asian population into North Africa 20,000 years or more before the beginning of food production could, perhaps, account for the genetic closeness found by Cavalli-Sforza et al. but would be prior to the Neolithic, which they propose as the driving force for the expansion of Afroasiatic.

Butzer (1964:295) found that there was a movement of Palearctic (i.e., Eurasian) fauna and flora into northern Africa during the Wurm glacial regression (i.e., the late Pleistocene); it is plausible that some hunters in the Levant followed them. p. 142

I. Homo sapiens neanderthalensis became extinct 40,000 years ago, more or less (in some regions earlier than others). Neanderthals are associated with Mousterian tools; a Mousterian type of tool underlies the Haua Fteah tools mentioned above. The intrusive tools from the Levant are of a general type to which the term “Aurignacian” is applied, a type associated in numerous instances with H. sapiens sapiens.

2. This period 40,000 years ago also saw the spread of anatomically modern humans into Europe and more widely in Asia, pushing Neanderthals into extinction, and it is plausible that the Aurignacian stone tools carried by this ancient “population explosion” came into North Africa as one of the waves of migration taking place at that time.

And in the Kom Ombo region of the Upper Nile Valley there are Late Paleolithic sites that have also been identified as similar to those of the Levant (Smith 1966). What relations there may have been between Haua Fteah, Kom Ombo, and the pre-Neolithic culture posited by Munson as probably Proto-Afroasiatic-speaking is not clear. p. 142

Linguists have argued about glottochronology, an attempt to measure language change per millennium that has had only limited success (in fact, many refuse to credit it at all). Dating the diaspora that created today’s Afroasiatic-speaking population is crucial. p. 143

Perception of events remains blurred. Without genetic dating in which we can have full confidence, it is difficult to demonstrate whether Afroasiatic began to expand prior to the Neolithic or subsequently, but Ehret’s reconstruction casts doubt on a Neolithic dating. p. 143

** Afroasiatic could have originated in Africa in accordance with the linguistic principle and still have a genetic affiliation with Southwest Asian populations. This does not dispute the calculations of genetic distances from existing samples, it merely questions the adequacy of the samples and the interpretation drawn from them. Bringing Aurignacian into the picture may point to a possible resolution of the problem. Archaeology may help to provide an answer; more discoveries of Aurignacian tools, especially associated with skeletal remains in Northeast Africa, would be desirable, as would genetic studies designed specifically to test the question. In other contexts Cavalli-Sforza et al. specify other factors besides food production that contributed to sustained population growth. Why not then see the rapid spread of Aurignacian tools as the moment of arrival of foragers with a Southwest Asian genetic makeup? p. 143

My prediction is that Africa will turn out to be the cradle of Afroasiatic, though the speakers of Proto-Asiatic were a reflux population from Southwest Asia. p. 143

** Comment: Important points found in this paper include; 1) discussions of modern human population movements from southeast Asia into Africa during the Wurm glacial epoch, 2) a generally accepted overview of the movement from Asia into Europe that led to Aurignacian or Upper Paleolithic technologies and 3) the identification of language and genetic correlates. Greenberg’s “successful identification” of 4 distinct language groups in Africa (where man supposedly originated), could suggest that language diversification accrued during the past 40,000 years.

Corte-Real, H.B.S.M., Macaulay, V.A., Richards, M.B., Hariti, G., M.S. Issad, Cambon-Thomsen, A., Papiha, S., Bertranpetit, J., and Sykes, B.C. Genetic diversity in the Iberian Peninsula determined from mitochondrial sequence analysis. Ann. Hum. Genet. (1996), 60, 331-350.

Differentiation among Basque provinces has been reported previously. Aguirre et al. (1991) and Manzano et al. (1993) have shown Vizcayan populations as having lower frequencies of rare alleles at several loci, clearly distinguishing them from neighboring populations. p. 343

This is supported by the dearth of human remains in the area from before 1200 B.P. (Collins, 1986). Following the glacial maximum around 20000 years ago, population expansions, composed primarily of individuals of Group 1 and possibly Group 4, might have led to the major colonization of this area. Subsequent isolation may have restricted genetic exchange with surrounding (and more genetically diverse) areas while a historically low population size would enhance the effects of drift. Both processes may have led to the present day genetic distinctiveness of the Basques (see also Calafell & Bertranpetit, 1994; Bertranpetit et al. 1995). In this respect, the very much higher diversity of lineages in other Iberian populations could be due to parts of the peninsula having served as refuge zones at the time of the last glacial maximum (Gamble, 1986), thereby supporting levels of diversity that were extinguished elsewhere (ef. Wilkinson-Herbots et al., submitted). This is substantiated by the presence in Iberia of a number of small lineage groups, outside Groups 2-5, deriving from the ancestral CRS-73 haplotype, which are not found elsewhere in Europe. p. 344

The Andalusian population appears more diverse than other populations in Iberia and elsewhere in Europe (Richards et al. 1996). It is remarkable that despite the small sample size involved, this population has all European Groups (1-5) and subgroups (2A, 2B, 3A, 3B, 3C) represented, unlike any the Iberian population. This may again point to a possible role for the region as a refuge for populations during the last glacial maximum (Gamble, 1986). It is possible, therefore, that a greater diversity was maintained in this region through higher long-term population sizes. p. 344

MtDNA lineage analysis seems to show a small proportion of shared lineages, but the majority of Iberian lineages resemble those of central and northern Europe (Richards et al. 1996). It seems therefore that the genetic contribution by the Moorish presence in the Peninsula, which has been considered by some as substantial (Reyment, 1983), has left little trace in the modern mtDNA gene pool. p. 345

According to Richards et al. (1996), Group 2A founders have an age in Europe of around 6000–12000 years and could be associated with the spread of agriculture. This group is typically present at around 10-15% in most European populations (Francalacci et al. 1996; Richards et al. (1996), but is present at a reduced frequency in Iberia (7% in Spain, 6% in Portugal and less than 3% in the Basque country). Across Europe, this lineage group separates into geographically distinct components, possibly linked to the development of archaeologically defined ceramic cultures, namely, the LBK of central Europe and the Impressed Ware and Cardial Ware complexes of the Mediterranean coastline and Atlantic West. p. 345

Our study of mitochondrial sequence analysis of populations in the Iberian Peninsula shows evidence of geographic subdivision with respect to the Basque region and also Catalonia. Although the majority of haplotypes found in Iberian populations are clearly related and sometimes identical to those in other parts of Europe, a small proportion of lineages appear to originate from North Africa, and have not yet been found elsewhere in Europe. p. 345

Churchill, Steven E. Particulate Versus Integrated Evolution of the Upper Body in Late Pleistocene Humans: A Test of Two Models. American Journal of Physical Anthropology 100:559-583 (1996).

By this view, integration of functional systems both constrains and directs evolution of various traits, and morphological contrasts inform us about overall change in body form related to change in such things as overall growth patterns, climatic adaptation, and technological dependency. p. 559

The observed morphological differences between late archaic and early modern humans reflect particulate evolution in the context of constraints imposed by genetic and morphological integration. p. 559-560

Comment: the term “early modern humans” is often used to link Homo erectus with fully modern humans, which they are not. As Corruccini (1992) concludes “Continued facile reference to Skhul and Qafzeh as craniometrically “fully anatomically modern” is not responsible to the craniometric data. (pg 437).” … while he asserts further that… “ The Border Cave cranium, so central to the course of “out of Africa” thinking despite its uncertain age, can support no special relationship to living African modern humans (pg 441).” Doubts — concerning the true age of modern humans in Africa — surround a greater then 40,000 years old occupation by Homo sapiens of the continent we know Homo erectus originated.

Templeton, Alan R. Advocacy for the Multiregional Hypothesis. Current Anthropology, Volume 38, Number 5, December 1997, pp. 921-922 Book review of, Race and Human Evolution, by Milford Wolproff and Rachel Caspari

This book is valuable both for its clear articulation of a defense of the multiregional model and for its review of the history of racism with regard to models of human evolution. Nevertheless, it has some weaknesses, both trivial and substantial. One is its tendency toward hyperbole. A trivial example is the claim that the genetic code of the mitochondrial genome is “totally different” (p. 40) from that of the nuclear genome; in fact, out of the 64 triplet codons, the nuclear and mammalian mitochondrial genomes use 61 of them in identical fashion. p. 922

Wolpoff and Caspari hurt their own case by saying, for example (p. 282), that “our species is unusual and difficult to model because it is polytypic” and that “the human pattern. . .of a widespread polytypic species with many different ecological niches. . .is a very rare one.” These statements are incorrect and reflect an ignorance of the non-primate literature that unfortunately typifies much of the Eve/multiregionalism debate. When compared with many other geographically widespread species (including other large vertebrates with strong dispersal abilities), humans show remarkably little differentiation among regional populations or “races.” Many other large vertebrate species show much more regional differentiation than humans and remarkable ecological breadth. Polytypic species are not rare or unusual, and it is patent from the general evolutionary literature that regional differentiation within a species sharing a long-term evolutionary history is commonplace. No delicate balance between gene flow and drift/selection is needed; polytypic species occur over a broad range of values of these basic evolutionary forces and are a robust evolutionary outcome. p. 922

Humans are a unique species, but we have been molded by basic evolutionary forces such as gene flow, genetic drift, extinction/recolonization, natural selection, and the interactions among them. These basic evolutionary forces operate in all species, and much insight into the human condition and the significance of “racial” differentiation can be gained by studies on how these forces shape patterns of genetic variation and differentiation in species other than humans. These potential insights have been ignored by both sides of the Eve/multiregional debate and by many students of racism–much to the detriment of the field of anthropology. p. 922

Comment: Templeton continues to identify problems that exists between the two most popular models of human evolution; “Eve/multiregional debate.” I believe that the relative stability of the modern human form could be traced to the Americas if anthropologists were to re-direct the “origin debate” to a higher primate source that has never been given adequate consideration.

** Passarino, Guiseppe, Semino, Ornella, Quintana-Murci, Lluis, Excoffier, Laurent, Hammer, Michael, and Santachiara-Benerecetti, A. Silvana. Different Genetic Components in the Ethiopian Population, Identified by mtDNA and Y-Chromosome Polymorphisms. Am. J. Hum. Genet. 62:420-434, 1998.

** Seventy-seven Ethiopians were investigated for mtDNA and Y chromosome-specific variations, in order to (1) define the different maternal and paternal components of the Ethiopian gene pool, (2) infer the origins of these maternal and paternal lineages and estimate their relative contributions, and (3) obtain information about ancient populations living in Ethiopia. p. 420

Our finding of a high (20%) frequency of the “Asian” DdeI10394AluI10397 (++) mtDNA haplotype in Ethiopia is discussed in terms of the “out of Africa” model. p. 420

The peopling of sub-Saharan Africa has been greatly affected by the Bantu expansions that originated near the confluence of the Niger and Benue rivers ~3,000 years ago (Cavalli-Sforza et al. 1994, p. 162). p. 420

Although these two groups are currently geographically separated by Bantu-speaking populations, archaeological findings suggest that Khoisan territory once extended to Ethiopia (Nurse et al. 1985, p. 105). In contrast to the situation for Bantu speakers, it has been proposed that both Khoisan and Ethiopians share some Caucasoid features, which were acquired at very different times (~20,000 or more years ago for Khoisan and beginning as recently as 3,000 years ago for Ethiopians) (for details, see Cavalli-Sforza et al. 1994, pp. 174-175). p. 420

The Ethiopian population, however, has not yet been the target of these studies, although it occupies a central geographic position with regard to the “out of Africa” model (Lewin 1987). In fact, it has been proposed that Homo sapiens sapiens left Africa both through Suez and by the Ethiopia-western India route (Cavalli-Sforza et al. 1993; Cavalli-Sforza et a. 1994, p. 195). In addition, the complexity of the ancient Ethiopians’ interactions with very different populations gave origin to the present “stunning heterogeneity of Ethiopia’s ethnic composition” (Levine 1974, p. 33). p. 421

In addition, we have searched for all those markers that define the Caucasoid haplogroups (table 1) not detectable with the six-core-enzyme analysis and for the simultaneous presence of DdeI10394AluI10397 sites, which defines an eastern/southern Asian-specific haplotype, DdeI10394AluI10397 (++) (Ballinger et al. 1992; Passarino et al. 1996c). Although virtually absent in the other examined sub-Saharan Africans (Chen et al. 1995; Passarino et al. 1996a, 1996c), this haplotype was present (frequency 18%) in a smaller Ethiopian sample that we have studied previously (Passarino et al. 1996a, 1996c). p. 421

By ~4,000-5,000 years B.C., Afro-Asiatic peoples (proto-Cushites, proto-Omotic speakers, and proto-Semites) were present in Ethiopia (Levine 1974). They probably derived from the Sahara (Levine 1974) or from Arabia (Encyclopaedia Britannica 1964, vol. 8, p. 782), although a local Ethiopian origin of Afro-Asiatic languages has also been hypothesized (Levine 1974). p. 421

** Considering both paternal and maternal lineages, only 5.4% of the mtDNAs can be classified as Caucasoid (table 3), whereas 25.4% of the Ethiopian Y chromosomes have a clear Caucasoid origin (12f2-8 kb; table 6). If one also includes as Caucasoid mtDNA types the ambiguous haplogroup U and the 10 DdeI10394AluI10397 (- -) haplotypes that did not show any tested non-Caucasoid feature, there could be a maximum of 27.0% of “Caucasoid-like” mtDNAs in the Ethiopian population. p. 431-432

However, our data suggest that Caucasoid gene flow into the Ethiopian gene pool occurred predominantly through males. Conversely, the Niger-Congo contribution to the Ethiopian population occurred mainly through females. p. 432

Indeed, Ethiopians do not seem to result only from a simple combination of proto-Niger-Congo and Middle Eastern genes. Their African component cannot be completely explained by that of present-day Niger-Congo speakers, and it is quite different from that of the Khoisan. Thus, a portion of the current Ethiopian gene pool may be the product of in situ differentiation from an ancestral gene pool. p. 432

** The frequency of the DdeI10394AluI10397 (+ +) haplotype is of interest in this regard. As shown in table 4, this haplotype is virtually absent in Caucasoid populations (Indians excepted) and other sub-Saharan Africans. It has been found in India (Passarino et al. 1996c), in eastern Asia, and in peoples who migrated very early from eastern Asia (i.e., Australians, Papua New Guineans, and Amerindians: Ballinger et al. 1992; Torroni et al. 1992, 1993a, 1993b, 1994a, 1994c, 1994d). On the basis of its distribution and antiquity (estimated at 40,250-80,500 years ago [Chen et al. 1995] and 30,250-60,500 years ago [Passarino et al. 1996a]), we have suggested elsewhere that it preceded the split between proto-Indians and proto-eastern Asians (Passarino et al. 1996a, 1996c). p. 432

** This haplotype reaches a frequency of ~20% in Ethiopia and has never been observed in mtDNA molecules of the other African or Caucasoid lineages (Torroni et al. 1994b, 1996; Chen et al. 1995; Passarino et al. 1996c; present study). Thus, it is likely that the Ethiopian and Asian DdeI10394-AluI10397 (+ +) haplotypes have a common origin. If so, then this marker either (1) has been acquired by Ethiopians through interchanges with Asians (indicating an Asiatic component in the Ethiopian genetic structure) or (2) was present in the ancient Ethiopian population and was carried by groups who migrated out of Africa. p. 432

** Comment: The DdeI10394AluI10397 (+ +) haplotype is found in Amerindians usually with one or the other expressed singularly, i.e. + or – the other. The DdeI10394AluI10397 (+ +) haplotype could have combined in Asia as a regional mutation and later to have admixed with Ethiopians ~3,000 years ago since 20% have this combination. An early spread of Homo sapiens Out of Asia into Sub-Sahara Africa could account for the evidence of a second migration with resulting admixture with the original northeast Africans. Population expansion into Africa could be seen, under this scenario, as a “first peopling” with excellerated rates of new markers found only in sub-Saharan Africans (and the original Ethiopians) but not outside Africa. The “bootstrap model”, used in defining the Eve-Out of Africa” hypothesis, identifies the abundance of additional ‘African specific’ mtDNAs as evidence of greater sequence diversity in African populations. The Eve hypothesis suggests that time depth is greater for mtDNA diversity in Africans. In order to support this, Cladistic trees must use the “bootstrap model” to define, a presently unknown ancestor (Eve’s common ancestor), in order to link mtDNAs not found outside of Africa with one recent migration. If the Out of Asia hypothesis is considered then the DdeI10394AluI10397 (+ +) haplotype would not have been carried into Africa during the first modern peopling of Africa (~40,000 ybp) while all subsequent mtDNA diversity, found to be African specific, would have arisen following colonization. The size of the initial population(s) and drift (as well as other factors) have been identified as alternative reasons for finding “greater sequence diversity” in African populations (Harpending 1994; Long 1993). The presence of archaeological and/or anatomical evidence for previous “fully modern human” habitation of Africa remains problematic since many, if not most, researchers specializing in this question have taken a conservative assessment to claims of anatomically modern Homo sapiens in Africa of much more then 40,000, and certainly, all claims greater then 50,000 ybp (Binford 1984; Parkington 1990; Mellars 1991; Bowdler 1990). For example, Binford identified in Faunal remains at Klaisies River Mouth, that Homo erectus was scavenging food remains from scavenging animal kills as recently as 35,000 ybp here in southern Africa while all the C-14 dates for modern human activities associated with the Howison Poort Industry fall well within the limits of C-14 (36,300-26,800). In fact there is a relative dearth of interior “Later Stone Age” African sites to support modern Human behaviors elsewhere in Africa before 37,000 ybp (Klein 1983).

Linares, A. Ruiz, Nayar, K., Goldstein, D.B., Hebert, J.M., Seielstad, M.T., Underhill, P.A., Lin, A.A., Feldman, M.W., and Cavalli Sforza, L.L. Geographic clustering of human Y-chromosome haploytpes. Ann. Hum. Genet. (1996), 60, 401-408.

A major difference between the NJ and UPGMA trees is that the position of the Japanese is closer to Africans in the NJ tree. Furthermore, in the tree of haplotypes, several Japanese haplotypes are seen to cluster with African haplotypes (cluster 1 of Figure 1). These observations are difficult to explain but are probably related to the high frequency of the Alu insertion in the Y-chromosomes from Japan and Africa (18, 19, 27). p. 403

** Churchill, S.E., Pearson, O.M. & Grine, F.E., Trinkaus, E., and Holliday, T.W. Morphological affinities of the proximal ulna from Klasies River main site: archaic or modern? Journal of Human Evolution (1996) 31, 213-237.

** Results suggest an archaic total morphological pattern for the Klasies ulna. Analysis of diaphyseal cross-sectional geometry reveals an ulnar shaft with relatively thick cortical bone, but the specimen cannot be readily distinguished from Neandertals or early anatomically modern humans on the basis of shaft cross-sectional properties. If the isolated ulna from Klasies is indicative of the general postcranial morphology of these hominids, then the MSA [Middle Stone Age] -associated humans from KRM may not be as modern as has been claimed from the craniofacial material. p. 213

In terms of its overall proximal articular morphology, the Klasies ulna is more similar to those of Neandertals and to the Baringo ulna than either of these are to the samples of modern human ulnae included in this study. The relative length of the olecranon process, position of the brachialis tuberosity, and relative thickness of the cortical bone at mid-shaft do not provide unambiguous indications of its morphological affinities. p. 231

The retention of archaic postcranial features after the appearance of modern cranial and facial form may signal retention of archaic habitual behavior patterns, at least with respect to the upper limb. This finding fits well with interpretations of faunal and artefact assemblages suggesting that the MSA-associated hominids of southern Africa, even if craniofacially modern, were behaviorally archaic (Klein, 1983, 1986, 1989; Grine et al., 1991).

** Arguments about the modernity of the Klasies MSA sample are paralleled by questions of just how “modern” the Near Eastern early modern humans from Skhul and Qafzeh Caves really are (e.g., Corruccini, 1992; Kidder et al., 1992). In the CVA, the multivariate centroid of the Skhul/Qafzeh sample falls close to, but on the archaic side of, the pooled modern sample mean. p. 232

** Comment: Note that Churchill, Trinkaus et al. here, omit the ‘h’ in the spelling of ‘Neandertal’. Also, the general overview of modern human behavior as different to archaic behavior of Homo erectus, shows that it is logical to ascertain that species identification can distinguished sapient and non sapient levels when interpreting archaeological data, (see Pilbeam 1986).

** Lam, Y.M., Pearson, O.M. and Smith, Cameron M. Chin Morphology and Sexual Dimorphism in the Fossil Hominid Mandible Sample From Klasies River Mouth. American Journal of Physical Anthropology 100:545-557 (1996).

** ABSTRACT The site of Klasies River Mouth (KRM) in South Africa has produced a small sample of early Upper Pleistocene hominid remains that have been a focus for discussions of the origins of modern humans. Despite certain primitive characteristics exhibited by these fossils, proponents of a single recent origin have attributed them to early modern humans. Critics of this hypothesis have emphasized the significance of the archaic features evident in this sample; including the absence of pronounced chins among the mandibular specimens. p. 545

Similarly, Oxnard (1987:76) observed that in Neandertals and Homo erectus, “as with all extant forms examined so far, sexual dimorphism is considerably greater in the lower jaw than in the upper.” It does not appear inappropriate to use the degree of sexual dimorphism in the jaw as a general proxy for sexual dimorphism in body size when making intraspecific comparisons, although it must be noted that this will likely result in a slight overestimate. p. 552

** The chin has been recognized as a synapomorphy of anatomically modern humans (Stringer et al., 1984; Stringer and Andrews, 1988), while its evolutionary significance has been the subject of continuing debate. Its development corresponds with the reduction in mandibular length and/or the size of the anterior dentition that occur first and uniquely among hominids in anatomically modern humans (Daegling, 1993; Weidenreich, 1936). p. 553-554

Spencer and Demes (1993) found no significant difference in mandibular length between archaic Homo sapiens and Neandertals. p. 554

** Tiller (1989, 1990) has observed a similar situation among the early Upper Pleistocene hominids from Qafzeh, noting that the chin development of these early anatomically modern humans seemed retarded in comparison to modern Europeans. Each KRM mandible that cannot be aged on the basis of dentition appears too large to represent a juvenile, so Frayer et al.’s (1993) argument concerning the frontal fragment cannot be adopted to explain the poorly developed chins observed here. p. 554

** Comment: More evidence of the problems physical anthropologists have identified in deriving Homo sapiens from Homo erectus. If we directly evolved from the first African hominids to colonize the Old World (Homo erectus) it seems to have been very sudden. Moreover, the idea that this procession to modernity would uniformly occur over the entire globe as suggested by Multiregional proponents, then one would have to imagine this – rising tide lifting all ships – to have, hypothetically, if you will, affected American Indians if they were to have descended from Homo erectus or had they migrated into the New World while they were Neandertals. Isolation and subsequent gene flow (often used to explain the multiregional model), becomes even more unexplainable if the sudden worldwide species change accompanying both behavioral and anatomical differences that distinguish evidence of erectus as non-sapient were to hypothesize erectus in the Americas. This may be reason enough for most anthropologists to concede that any site older then 50,000 years is simply, unfathomable. If the behaviors of people living at Monte Verde at 13,800 bp is typical of other pre-Clovis sites then it may distinguish the problems archaeologists have had in identifying mid-Pleistocene sites that are missing Old World components seen they incorporate, what Krieger (1958) identifies as “a pre-projectile stage” or “horizon.”

PRIMATES

Hamrick, Mark W. Locomotor Adaptations Reflected in the Wrist Joints of Early Tertiary Primates (Adapiformes). American Journal of Physical Anthropology 100:585-604 (1996).

Approximately 50 million years ago an adaptive radiation of early primates took place in North America and Europe. These early primates fall roughly into two groups, the small-bodied omomyiforms and the larger adapiforms (Covert, 1986). One of the more outstanding debates regarding the biology of these early primates concerns the positional behaviors characteristic of adapiform primates. p. 585

For example, limb proportions of the North American notharctines are quite similar to those of extant vertical clingers (Napier and Walker, 1967). p. 585

Recent studies (Beard et al., 1988; Beard and Godinot, 1988; Covert and Williams, 1994; Dagosto and Geo, 1994; Ross, 1994) have suggested that adapiforms are the sister group of extant strepsirhines. If this scenario is correct, then extant strepsirhine quadrupeds, vertical clingers, and slow climbers evolved an expanded thumb joint, more mediolaterally curved midcarpal joint, and smaller pisiform body after the divergence of adapiform primates.

Alternatively, the similarities between adapiforms and monkeys could be viewed as evidence of a close phylogenetic relationship between the two groups, which has been suggested by other workers (e.g., Rasmussen, 1986, 1990, 1994; Franzen, 1994). p. 602

The preliminary results presented here, however, suggest that extant strepsirhines are quite derived in many carpal features relative to both living monkeys and early Tertiary primate taxa. p. 602

The divergent thumb of Adapiforms indicates that they were clearly arboreal, but their carpal joints lack mechanical adaptations for habitual vertical clinging and/or slow climbing. Similarities in carpal form between adapiforms and quadrupedal monkeys functionally related to wrist extension, pronation, and weight-bearing suggest that some form of arboreal, pronograde locomotion characterized the common ancestor of both prosimians and anthropoids.

** Heymann, Eckhard W. Giant fossil New World primates: arboreal or terresrial? Jounral of Human Evolution (1998) 34, 99-101.

** In three recent papers Hartwig & Cartelle (Hartwig, 1995; Cartelle & Hartwig, 1996; Hartwig & Cartelle, 1996) reported on two fossil New World primates (Platyrrhini), Protopithecus brasiliensis and Caipora bambuiorum, from eastern Brazil. Based on measurements of the skeletons, they calculate a body mass of about 20-25 kg, and an intermembral index of 104 for Protopithecus and 106 for Caipora. These two species thus represent the largest platyrrhines, living or extinct. p. 99

The New World primate mode of brachiation (New World semibrachiation; Napier, 1963), which includes the use of a prehensile tail, might have a different upper size limit, but in animals much larger than the living atelines brachiation will be constrained by the structure and physical properties of the vegetation (Swartz, 1989). p. 99

** This argument includes some circularity, and a different conclusion should be taken into consideration; if the habitat was in fact very similar to current conditions, it is possible that Protopithecus and Caipora led a way of life that included a high degree of terrestriality. Although terrestriality has evolved in all paleotropical primate radiations, the question regarding why this way of life is lacking in New World primates has remained enigmatic. Protopithecus and Caipora might fill this gap. p. 100

Finally, the alternative hypothesis of a high degree of terrestriality could also account for the very large body size observed in Protopithecus and Caipora in comparison with other atelines. p. 100

** Comment: The fossil record of New World Higher Primates is the weakest of the lot. That we are beginning to fill the gaps left by primarily looking to the Old World for human progenitors is exciting. That the New World does not have an “Olduvai Gorge” of its own should not reflect the negative difficulties in analyzing the potential of evidence for hominid evolution to have occurred from within the confines of the Americas. The evidence from Africa supports the evolution of hominids from earlier ape-like forms but does this evidence forestall the search outside of Africa, especially since we are still unsure that Homo erectus is the only available ancestor for AMHS.

Hofer A-1976. External Characteristics: Nose and Snout. Addendum. p. 16

“(1) The disposition of the nostrils is caused by the lateral expansion of the internarium, which consists of the alar cartilages, the tissue in the sulcus interalaris and the skin between the nostrils. The internarium is situated in front of the septum nasi, which is not involved in platyrrhinism. (2) The alar cartilages form to a variable extent the anterior wall of the cavum nasi, which is in contrast to the catarrhine condition. (3) There is a remarkable similarity in the microscopic structure of the internarium of the lorisifrom prosimian Nycticebus and the platyyrrhine monkeys. This does not indicate a phylogenetic relationship. (4) Aotus and Alouatta are definitely platyrrhines according to the presence of an internarium. There is no similarity whatsoever with the catarrhine condition. (5) The division of the higher primates into Platyrrhina and Catarrhina is regarded as justified. This may indicate a very early evolutionary separation of the Old World and the New World primates. (6) The internarium of the New World monkeys shows sinus hairs and is accordingly a sensorial area, at least of the sense of touch.” p. 16

GENETICS

** Thompson, E.A., and Neel, J.V. Private Polymorphisms: How Many? How Old? How Useful for Genetic Taxonomies? Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution, Vol. 5, No. 1, February, pp. 220-231,1996.

A salient point to the data is that although the Amerindians exhibit such mongoloid variants as TF*D–Chi and Dia, no unique Amerindian linguistic groups have thus far been recognized. p. 230

** We have previously pointed out that failure to recognize this aspect of most modern populations can lead to false inferences concerning such diverse subjects as the past occurrence of population bottlenecks or the frequency of slightly deleterious mutations (Chakraborty et al., 1988; Thompson et al., 1992). The present demonstration, that most rare variants have arisen relatively recently, as human population numbers dramatically expanded, and were quite localized, underscores that earlier conclusion. p. 231

Comment: The rare presence in northeast Asia of common mtDNAs to the Americas could indicate that instead of them being “founding lineages” for Amerindians that they are evidence of migrations into Asia at the end of the last Ice Age. Boas (1905; 1910) warned of this from data collected during the Jesup North Pacific Expedition. He based his preliminary conclusions on cultural, linguistic, anthropometric, and oral histories and myths that detail observations that now have genetic correlations to support them. The E or X-6-7-8 mtDNAs found in only northern Amerindians including the Ojibwa and Sioux may indicate immediate post Ice Age radiations of common Asian mtDNAs into pre-existing pre-Clovis populations, a migration that preceded later Holocene migrations of Amerindians “out the backdoor of the Americas (Waters 197 ).” Archaeologically speaking, the Nenana culture, with ties to northeast Asian paleolithic cultures (and E or X type mtDNAs), may have introduced hunting technologies into isolated Amerindian populations before they migrated into northern North America. “Fluted stone projectile points” were first invented in eastern North America and carried into Alaska in what must be seen as evidence supporting an Amerindian contribution to the formation of Athabascan and later Paleoarctic cultures. Seen this way A, C, and D, mtDNAs found in northeast Asian people could represent a reverse migration of “rare variants have[ing] arisen relatively recently” of once isolated Amerindian haplotypes that arose in the Americas while glacially confined in pre-Clovis times.

Book Reviews. by Weiss, Kenneth M. Genetic Variation and Human Disease: Principles and Evolutionary Approaches. Reviewed by Joseph D. Terwilliger. Am. J. Hum. Genet. 60:1565-1566, 1997

Finally, a realistic perspective on complex disease–predisposing genes. Through detailed analysis of the evolutionary forces that shape the entire human genetic landscape, Dr. Weiss explains why “the inevitable rush of enthusiasm to screen samples, families, or populations for causal alleles for every type of trait will produce many irreproducible results and excessive claims” (p. 306). He goes on to conjecture that “we will be forced to accept that we cannot understand a trait well by enumerating all of its individual ’causes,’ which will be quixotically ephemeral and environmentally plastic” (p. 306). The reasoning that leads him to this conclusion needs to be understood and contemplated by those who wish to study the genetics of their favorite trait. I strongly encourage those who have not read this book to get a copy and to think deeply about the implications of these models (especially of those in parts III and IV) for their own research. p. 1565

This book is divided into four parts: (I) “Genes and Their Expression”; (II) “Introduction to Genetic Epidemiology: Inference from Observational Data”; (III) “Evolution: The Time Dimension in Populations”; and (IV) “Modification of the Inherited Genotype: The Time Dimension in Individuals.” p. 1565

My own experience as the author of a book about human genetic linkage analysis (Terwilliger and Ott 1994) bears this out. The list of statements that I no longer agree with in my own book is as long as the list of my disagreements with Weiss’s claims in this book. This is not a fatal flaw of either book; as with all claims from any author, one generally is advised not to believe anything, unless every premise and logical deduction is understood. p. 1565

Thus, even if coding-sequence polymorphisms are detected, their sheer number may reduce drastically the sensitivity of such association studies. Weiss raises many such issues that affect the spectrum of complex-disease genetics, and none of them is resolved fully. I wish that the author had extrapolated more than he has about the ramifications of his evolutionary model on our current approaches to mapping complex disease-predisposing genes and about how we might improve current methods. p. 1566

There are a great many practical reasons to understand the concepts presented. We are spending millions of taxpayer dollars on the genome screening of many different pedigree or population-based data sets for every potentially genetic trait. Careful review may be needed both to decide if this is a responsible way to spend the money and to identify traits that may be studied most effectively by use of this approach. As the author states, ” a few rare alleles at major genes that affect a trait . . . are of little population importance” (p. 313). p. 1566

The author advocates thoughtfully planned experiments as the best investment. He writes: “Order can be found in the complexity if we know what to look for. I have tried to suggest that it is in the context of evolution that we are being led to such a synthesis” (p. 314). p. 1566

Ashkenas, John. Commentary: Homologous Recombination in Human Mitochondria? Am. J. Hum. Genet. 61:18-22, 1997.

It is not clear that current methods for the analysis of human divergence are compatible with a mutation rate that varies within or between populations.

The findings raise other questions: If the activity is observed so readily in vitro, why is genetic recombination observed so rarely? p. 18

INVITED CORRESPONDENCE

mtDNA Recombination: What Do In Vitro Data Mean? Neil Howell;

Am. Society of Human Genetics 1997

The results of the study by Thyagarajan et al. (1996) are convincing, important, and tantalizing. However, the physiological significance of this recombinase remains inaccessible, because there is still neither any evidence for reciprocal recombination of mtDNA molecules nor any apparent reason that such an activity would be beneficial. When we resolve this paradox, we will have obtained some key insights into human mitochondrial biogenesis and evolution. However, this is a genetic system that “plays by its own rules,” and we should anticipate further surprises along the way. p. 21

Hanekamp, John S., Thilly, William G., and Chaudhry, M. Ahmad. Screening for human mitochondrial DNA polymorphisms with denaturing gradient gel electrophoresis. Hum Genet (1996) 98:243-245.

Mitrochondrial DNA (mtDNA) has emerged as a powerful system to study the evolutionary history of modern populations (reviewed in Cann et al. 1987). mtDNA is maternally inherited and fixes mutations 10-17 times faster than comparable nuclear DNA (Wallace et al. 1987) giving more chances of observing diversity. The entire 16569 nucleotide sequence of human mtDNA has been determined (Anderson et al. 1981). Numerous polymorphic variations have been discovered in human mtDNA using restriction enzyme analysis (Cann et al. 1987; Yoon et al. 1991) and DNA sequence analysis (Di Rienzo and Wilson 1991). p. 243

Schwimmer, Brian. Anthropology on the Internet: A Review and Evaluation of Networked Resources. Current Anthropology. Volume 37, Number 3, June 1996, pp. 561-568.

This broad accessibility reflects the original academic mandate of the system as well as an explicit ethos supporting open exchanges of scholarly information. p. 562

Only three departments have made a more sustained effort: the University of Connecticut, Oxford University, and the University of Kent. All are unique in utilizing Web capabilities and multimedia hypertext displays. p. 564

Oxford is also developing the Haddon project, devoted to cataloguing ethnographic film produced between 1895 and 1945.

The anthropology department at the University of Connecticut has developed ARCHNET, devoted primarily to on-line archaeological resources. Aside from the usual departmental information, ARCHNET includes a directory for locating archaeological material by region and topic. The main contribution for cultural anthropology is Norman Chance’s Arctic Circle Page. It includes numerous files concerning environmental and developmental problems among circumpolar peoples, with background material on history, prehistory, and culture. p. 564

Another photographic collection is presented through the Global Campus (California State University, Long Beach) course offering, “The Native American Experience.” This Web presentation is derived from Johnson’s Facts on File CD-ROM photograph archive of American aboriginal archaeology and history. p. 565

The French National Centre for Prehistory has posted a display of French prehistory, primarily the Upper Paleolithic cave paintings in southern France. p. 565

The Oriental Institute in Chicago has also developed a substantial archaeological database. Its site includes reports, maps, and images related to early Mesopotamian urban sequences. There are also site reports and images from prehistoric Nubia and coverage of Braidwood’s investigations on agricultural origins.

A final noteworthy project has been undertaken by the Center for Anthropology Communications at American University. Anthropology Communications On-Line promotes the participation of anthropologists and the representation of the discipline in the mass media.

Area studies. There are too many area-studies to mention in this short overview. Among the more notable are the University of Pennsylvania African Studies Homepage, the University of Texas’s Latin American Network Information Center, the Australian National University Coombspapers in Asian and Pacific Studies, and the U.S. Office of Technology Assessment’s Native American Resource Page. The Native Americans and the Environment from Yale provides additional resources for aboriginal ethnography, subsistence practices, and culture change. p. 565

The most significant on-line displays have been produced by the Library of Congress, which has established an extensive on-line collection of documents, photographs, and drawings from exhibits that it has organized in the past few years. p. 565

U.S. government providers of information relevant to anthropology include the Department of Agriculture, the Census Bureau, the Department of Education, the Department of Health and Human Services, the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the Geological Survey, and the Department of the Interior. Interior’s services include the National Park Service’s archaeological database. p. 565

Other important government services are provided by federal granting agencies including the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of health. p. 565

International agencies. The two major international development agencies, the World Bank and the United Nations, maintain important Internet services that provide information about policies, projects, and publications, some of which are being produced for on-line distribution. p. 566

The World Health Organization files include a promise of a substantial health statistics and epidemiological database through the WHOSIS service. p. 566

Useful information and documents are also contained in the directories of the Commission on Sustainable Development, the UN Development Programme, UNESCO, and the International Council on Monuments and Sites. The UN Environment Programme maintains the Global Resource Information Database, which will provide environmental data related to international ecological issues. p. 566

In contrast to this considerable potential, our efforts to date indicate an extremely low level of effort. Of the hundreds of major departments, museums, and research institutes, only a few have attempted to develop on-line resources, and may of these seminal efforts are “under construction” at a very slow pace. p. 566

The most obvious barrier to the development of computer-based scholarship is of course the reluctance or inability of anthropologists to learn to use and develop this new technology. Although most academics now own computers and have come to find them indispensable for their writing, actual use is limited to a few applications which take little advantage of the technology’s full potential (Bernard and Evans 1987). Computer use has been restricted to word-processing and statistical analysis. Exploration on the network, which can require arcane knowledge of e-mail keystrokes or UNIX commands, is approached with extreme caution. Experimentation is resisted not only because of the time and effort required but also by phobias that, surprisingly, affect academics to the same extent as everyone else. These problems are compounded by the current pace of technological change, which promises that by the time new hardware, software, or skills have been acquired they will already have become obsolete. p. 566

The established wisdom maintains that Internet growth has broadly benefited popular interests, manly because information flows have been decentralized and beyond the control of official authorities. Accordingly, the medium has been used to foster the success of mass movements and demonstrations. An extension of this perspective concludes that the current communication structure will engender a society with broader information access and power distribution. This situation will be especially apparent in academia. On-line instructional material and research resources will counteract the hierarchical professor-student relationship, and faculty will become mentors rather than authorities. p. 567

Although seemingly limitless, the computers, networks, and storage devices on which the information structure is based are expensive, and their accessibility is already restricted according to class, race, ethnicity, geography, and gender. Accordingly, as dependence upon new technologies increases, groups limited by income, location, or social background may become further disadvantaged. These problems will be especially felt in developing countries, which have already fallen behind in the acquisition of computer facilities and network communications, and exacerbated by trends in the information economy, which favor reductions in public funding and private-sector expansion. Any academic commitment to computer-based publication and teaching will have to consider extending opportunities to participate to underprivileged students and to colleagues from regions not connected with the emerging communication system. p. 567

The observations in this essay suggest that Internet expansion will not have a predetermined or straightforward effect on the social order and cultural values of academia. Three models of equal probability can be envisioned. One predicts a narrowing of opportunity and enhanced control by cultural and social elites as increasing costs and withdrawal of government support restrict opportunities for acquiring the necessary technology and information resources. A second promises an evaporation of traditional academic barriers and structures and the emergence of a new order marked by collaborative research and altruistic sharing of knowledge and benefits among all components of the scholarly community. The third warns of a chaotic system in which scholarship is trivialized by the disintegration of regulation and standards. p. 567

Frankel, David. On Cypriot Figurines and the Origins of Patriarchy. Current Anthropology, Volume 38, Number I, February 1997, pp. 84-85.

Early and Middle Bronze Age Cypriot society need have been no less “communal” than that of earlier periods. p. 84

These show women engaged in a wide variety of tasks, some more domestic or industrial, others, almost certainly, of formal ritual. Women cannot be seen as iconographically (hence symbolically) relegated to the single role of mother. p. 84

The well-known bowl from Marki in the Pierides Collection (Karageorghis 1991:120,pls. 28,79) explicitly depicts pregnancy and childbirth in a context that can be seen as showing a full cycle from conception onward (other male/female couples such as those seen on this bowl are also known). Childbirth cannot be regarded as a closed or excluding act. p. 84

The transition in the mid- to late 3d millennium B.C. from the Chalcolithic to the very different material, technological, and symbolic world of the Bronze Age has always been a matter of considerable debate. It may have been heavily influenced by migration of colonisation from Anatolia (Frankel, Eslick, and Webb 1995). p. 84

Reply. by Bolger, Diane.

Although it is true that motherhood per se cannot be equated with low female status, I have argued that in the context of the prestate cultures of the Cypriot Bronze Age mother figurines communicated powerful social messages concerning the restriction and control of female sexuality. In societies lacking class structures or centralized political institutions, autonomous local groups provide the settings for economic production and exchange and for control over land and resources. Prior to the emergence of the state, such control is normally exercised by kinship structures which seek to restrict access to economic resources through the construction and enforcement of cultural rules concerning marriage, fertility, and paternity. p. 85

While Early and Middle Bronze Age settlements were indeed “communally based,” their surplus economies (involving intensified agriculture, the use of the plow and traction animals, and increasing complexity in the labor force as the result of the secondary-products revolution and accelerated levels of metallurgical production including the first weapons) rendered them far less egalitarian than the simple agricultural communities of the Chalcolithic period. A growing number of Cypriot archaeologists now accept the concept of “levels of complexity” prior to the rise of state society during the Late Bronze Age, and indeed a full appreciation of the ways in which the latter developed demands that we transcend simplistic binary categories such as egalitarian/complex or communal/state. p. 85

Fischel-Ghodsian, Nathan. INVITED EDITORIAL. Mitochondrial Mutations and Hearing Loss: Paradigm for Mitochondrial Genetics. Am. J. Hum. Genet. 62:15-19, 1998.

mtDNA mutations have been implicated in a great variety of diseases, ranging from rare neuromuscular syndromes, with acronyms such as KSS, MELAS, MERRF, and NARP, to such common conditions as diabetes, Parkinson disease, and Alzheimer disease (Wallace et al. 1995). While the study of the role of mitochondrial mutations in each of these diseases has helped to describe and catalogue the spectrum and frequency of oxidative phosphorylation disorders, it has not led to an understanding of the factors contributing to the two major clinical and biological issues: penetrance and tissue specificity. These two issues are frequently lumped together under the genotype-phenotype correlation heading, but, since different molecular pathways may account for each of the two mechanisms in question, keeping them separate may be warranted. Hearing loss due to mitochondrial mutations has, somewhat surprisingly, emerged as the mitochondrial disease that is providing some of the answers. p. 15

Because of the higher energy requirements of muscle and nerve tissue, and because small numbers of dysfunctional muscle and nerve cells can interrupt the function of many neighboring normal cells, mitochondrial DNA mutations in those tissues are thought to be particularly harmful. p. 15

Kaplan, N.L., Martin, E.R., Morris, R.W., and Weir, B.S. Marker Selection for the Transmission/Disequilibrium Test, in Recently Admixed Populations. Am. J. Hum. Genet. 62:703-712, 1998.

Recent admixture between genetically differentiated populations can result in high levels of association between alleles at loci that are ≤10 cM apart. The transmission/disequilibrium test (TDT) proposed by Speilman et al. (1993) can be a powerful test of linkage between disease and marker loci in the presence of association and therefore could be a useful test of linkage in admixed populations. The degree of association between alleles at two loci depends on the differences in allele frequencies, at the two loci, in the founding populations; therefore, the choice of marker is important. p. 703

Evidence of association does not always imply that two loci are linked, since association can occur between alleles at unlinked loci in the presence of forces such as selection or population admixture. To support the conclusion that a marker associated with a disease is physically close to a disease-susceptibility locus, evidence of linkage also is needed. For complex diseases, parametric linkage analysis using pedigree data may not be reliable, because the genetic model for the disease is unknown. p. 703

Increased association between loci in an admixed population results only when the allele frequencies for each locus in the founding populations are different (Chakraborty and Weiss 1988). Since disease genes are unknown, disease penetrances usually are assumed to be the same in the founding populations, and, consequently, the frequencies of alleles at the disease locus are different between high- and low-risk populations. Hence, admixed populations are most useful for the study of those diseases with a large relative risk (i.e., ration of disease prevalances) between the founding populations (Risch 1992; McKeigue 1997). p. 704

In this article, we consider an admixed population with two founding populations and develop a general method to identify the collapsing, to two allelic classes, that minimizes the reduction of the noncentrality parameter. p. 704

For the data from the study by Jorde et al. (1995), when we assumed two major founding populations and random mating in the admixed population, we found that collapsing the microsatellite in the optimal way almost always led to a more powerful test, and, therefore, we would recommend this collapsing strategy. p. 709

Rannala, Bruce, and Slatkin, Montgomery. Likelihood Analysis of Disequilibrium Mapping, and Related Problems. Am. J. Hum. Genet. 62:459-473, 1998.

Population Subdivision

All of the likelihood methods discussed here, including ours, assume a single randomly mating population. There is probably some subdivision even in relatively homogeneous populations, including the population of Finland. For other populations, including Ashkenazi Jews and sub-Saharan Africans, the assumption of no subdivision is even less likely to be true. Models based on either a branching process or a birth-death process are somewhat insensitive to population subdivision, because they assume that each copy of the mutant allele, M, reproduces independently. If there is population subdivision, however, our method and those of Kaplan et al. (1995) and Xiong and Guo (1997) require the implicit assumption that each subpopulation grows at the same rate and that the same fraction, f, of each subpopulation is sampled. Further work is needed to quantify the effects of population subdivision when these implicit assumptions are valid. p .470

Conclusions

Although it is difficult to generalize from our results, because of the many parameters in our model, the three examples that we have analyzed, as well as other cases that we have examined in the course of this study, suggest that likelihood methods are quite robust for the estimation of recombination rates, which is the goal of disequilibrium mapping (Lander and Botstein 1986). p. 470-471

When there has been rapid growth, the coalescence times will be relatively recent, even though the mutant may have arisen in the distant past. As a consequence, substantial disequilibrium is expected in the data, regardless of allele age, and the confidence interval on estimates of allele age can therefore be quite broad. Surprisingly, allele frequency alone, when the results from Slatkin and Rannala (1997) are used, can provide narrower bounds on estimates of allele age. Neither the limitations of disequilibrium analysis for estimation of allele age nor its robustness for estimation of recombination rates appears to result from special simplifying assumptions in our analysis. Rather, these results appear to arise from intrinsic properties of intraallelic gene genealogies in growing populations. p. 471

** Comment: Population movements and issues of first peopling, isolation, secondary migration, and alternative explanations that would challenge pre-disposed “givens” must be incorporated by combining relevant inferences from the related yet diverse fields of anthropology. Simple analyses that fail to look for resolutions by incorporating multidimensional relationships in order to better interpret the complex history of mankind’s exploration of the Earth will fail to see the big picture. Absolute truth anthropologists attempt to unmask are best revealed by finding compatible solutions that encompass interdisciplinary research. Identifying alternatives, when called for, and looking beyond the limited scope of pre-disposed givens can prove to be beneficial when seeking scientific validation. Paradigm growth through theory building is often initiated by incorporating bias and building new observations from it. Bias is the fuel that drives both the accepted given and untested alternatives. New ideas or theories, if you will, that offer viable truths should ably resolve, by indemnification, presumed problems held by the accepted given. These problems must have a viable explanation, embraced by the un-tested alternative.

Excerpted Anthropological Research Articles: July 1998 – May 1999

Compiled by Alvah M. Pardner Hicks

P. O. Box 671

Santa Margarita, CA 93453

Phone: 805) 438-4142

e-mail: alvahhicks@gmail.com

Please see original article s for proofs

CONTENTS:

AFRICA Page 1

POLYNESIA Page 10

SIBERIA Page 13

HISTORICAL ANTHROPOLOGY Page 18

NORTH AMERICA Page 24

SOUTH AMERICA Page 27

LANGUAGE Page 28

GENETICS Page 30

SCIENCE and RELIGION Page 37

PRIMATES Page 43

AFRICA

Watson, E., Forster, P., Richards, M., and Bandelt, H. Mitochondrial Footprints of Human Expansions in Africa. Am. J. Hum. Genet. (1997), 61:691-704.

Furthermore, little is known about expansion events within Africa and about their relation to expansions in other parts of the world (compare Di Rienzo and Wilson 1991; Harpending et al. 1993; Sherry et al. 1994; Graven et al. 1995; Eller and Harpending 1996).

Here, we apply a novel intraspecific phylogenetic-network method (Bandelt et al. 1995) in conjunction with new outgroup information (Zischler et al. 195) and a recent confirmation of the mitochondrial control-region mutation rate (Forster et al. 1996), to 407 published African sequences, in order to investigate these questions. We find that most African mitochondrial sequences appear to be the result of demographic expansions that started ˜ 60,000-80,000 years ago, the earliest of which led to the colonization of Eurasia. p. 691

All clusters are starlike, with smooth unimodal pairwise distributions (fig. 2), and are geographically widespread, suggesting both demographic and geographic expansion. The remaining 13% of the sequences, which are not shared between populations and are thus termed “isolated lineages” (L1i), are not clearly starlike or unimodal in the pairwise analysis (fig. 2), although the pairwise distribution is nevertheless approximately bell shaped, possibly suggesting that these lineages are the relics of a less dramatic and more ancient expansion event across Africa. The network in figure 3 presents the phylogenetic relationships of the isolated African lineages to the four major African expansion clusters. p. 694

The oldest subcluster of this expansion (L3a (fig. 1), consists mainly of eastern-African sequences, suggesting a possible eastern-African origin for the L2/L3 expansion. A lower bound can be set for the arrival of the L3 expansion in western Africa, because of the occurrence of a western African-specific subcluster of L3b, coalescing in a lineage with transitions at np 16124 and 16223 (but not at np 16278), relative to the CRS. Its coalescence time indicates that the expansion of cluster L3 reached western Africa by 30,000 years ago. p. 695

The oldest subcluster within L3a (characterized by transitions at np 16223 and 16311) is eastern African specific, suggesting an eastern-African origin for L3a and thus also for Eurasians. A possible alternative, the Middle East (Stringer 1988; Di Rienzo and Wilson 1991), is less likely to be the origin of L3a, since L2, the sister cluster of L3 (fig. 1), is virtually African specific. p. 696

It has been suggested that a subset of cluster L1a, defined by a 9-bp deletion at np8272-8289 (Vigilant 1990), may represent an expansion of Bantu-speakers (Bandelt et al. 1995; Chen et al. 1995; Soodyall et al. 1996). Another possible marker for Bantu expansions that merits investigation is the sequence motif np 16124-16223-16278 found in southwestern Africa (among the Herero, Nama, and Dama in the data of Vigilant [1990] and Soodyall [1993]. This motif is a subset of L3b, which is widespread in western Africans who mainly speak languages of the Niger-Kordofanian family, of which Bantu is a member. p. 697

This is evident in the example of Watson et al. (1996), in which the population-coalescence times are frequently the result of the fusion of several of the ancient phylogenetic clusters discussed above and therefore, in themselves, are not related to the age of the individual populations–indeed, the individual population phylogenies frequently coalesce on the mitochondrial Eve sequence itself (Bandelt and Forster, in press).

The present work suggests that the starlike phylogenies previously discovered by use of pairwise distributions (Harpending et al. 1993; Sherry et al. 1994) and phylogenetic analysis (Mountain et al. 1995)‚ were generated in eastern Africa 60,000-80,000 years ago by the expansion of a small, closely knit subset of a diverse ancestral mtDNA pool. This implies that the low diversity of modern humans, in comparison with other hominoids (Ruvolo et al. 1994), both within and outside Africa, can be at least partly accounted for by a founder effect that occurred long after the origin of anatomically modern humans. Our sample of isolated lineages is, at present, still too small to allow firm conclusions concerning the period before these major expansions. p. 697

It is curious that only one mitochondrial sequence or, at most, a set of very closely related lineages (the ancestors of L3–and possibly, of L2) should have participated in the earliest major expansion, given that all parts of Africa today harbor diverse, phylogenetically isolated lineages from the earlier period. Since a general environmental change in one area is unlikely to have directly triggered population expansion in only a single mitochondrial lineage, it is possible that a small subpopulation carrying it acquired some advantage, perhaps in response to environmental change, such as the onset o the Last Glacial. p. 697

Alvah’s Comments: If Africa was not the source for human expansions but a place were humans expanded into, this paper could be seen to identify Eastern Africa as the original location for the later total colonization of Africa. As an “Out of the Americas via out of Asia” advocate the methods of human dispersals could be seen to mimic that from Australia, being aided by coastal navigation and subsequent migration into the interior. This would help explain the archaeological data from Africa with the earliest sites for Anatomically Modern Homo sapiens near coastal locations including Klaisies River.

Relethford, J. H. Mitochondrial DNA and Ancient Population Growth. American Journal of Physical Anthropology (1998), 105:1-7.

In recent years, the study of mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) variation has entered a new phase with an increasing emphasis on interpretations of demographic, rather than phylogenetic, history. Human mtDNA variation fits a “sudden expansion” model, where the human species expanded rapidly in size during the Late Pleistocene. This paper examines the sudden expansion model with the goal of partitioning total mtDNA diversity in contemporary populations into two components–diversity that existed prior to the population expansion and diversity that arose after the expansion. A method is developed for estimating these components. Analysis of mtDNA diversity within selected human populations shows that 64-80% of mtDNA diversity in contemporary populations arose after the expansion, a consequence of a high mutation rate relative to the number of generations since expansion. p. 1

Results suggest that excess sub-Saharan African mtDNA diversity is due to the combined effects of the sub-Saharan African population being larger in size prior to the expansion and expanding earlier. p. 1

The issue of excess African diversity also came into question with the demonstration that diversity is not likely to track the age of a population (Rogers and Jorde, 1995), and with analyses showing a larger long-term effective population size in Africa (Relethford and Harpending, 1994; Relethford, 1995). p. 1

The first approach provides a way to partition modern mtDNA sequence diversity into two components–diversity that arose before the expansion and diversity that arose after the expansion. The second approach is an extension to the comparison between two populations, and addresses contributions to excess mtDNA diversity in sub-Saharan populations. p. 2

The mismatch distribution of most human populations shows a smooth wave-shaped curve. Rogers and Harpending (1992) found that such curves do not resemble the curves expected under a theoretical model that assumes an equilibrium distribution obtained from a constant population size over time. p. 2

While mathematically interesting, simplified models are useful only if their assumptions are valid and they show a good fit to real data. To date, the model has proven remarkably robust to violations of the assumptions including starting from equilibrium q0 (Rogers, 1992; Rogers et al., 1996). p. 3

The two-parameter model has now been applied to mtDNA data from 25 human samples from around the world. Of these, 23 show an excellent fit to the model of sudden expansion, and the two outliers are cases with known recent population bottlenecks that compromise results (Sherry et al., 1994). p. 3

An alternative interpretation is that Africa had the largest long-term effective population size (Relethford and Harpending, 1994, 1995; Relethford, 1995), an interpretation compatible with both replacement and multiregional models (Wolpoff and Caspari, 1997)

An effective population size is useful mathematically, but can mask a variety of patterns of demographic change. Possible models are limited by the sudden expansion model–rapid growth from a small to a very large population. p. 5

It is clear from equation (10) that if the population sizes of A and B are equal then the excess diversity of A is due entirely to differences in the timing of expansion. Likewise, if populations A and B both expanded at the same time then the excess diversity of A is entirely due to differences in initial population size. p. 5

There are three different ways in which Africa could have a larger long-term effective population size under the sudden expansion model: 1) Africa was larger prior to an expansion which took place across the Old World at the same time; 2) there was no difference in population size among geographic regions across the Old World prior to the expansions, but Africa expanded earlier than other regions; or 3) Africa was larger prior to the expansions, and it also expanded earlier. p. 6

The results presented here do not bear directly on the question of multiregional evolution versus replacement, but instead refocus the genetic data on questions of ancient demography. p. 6

Alvah’s comment: When the authors address the evidence of Mutational-drift equilibrium found in Native Americans they automatically dismiss the likelihood that they could be the ancestors of modern humans because it is a philosophical given that the “Native” of the Americas originated in Asia. For example “Of these, 23 show an excellent fit to the model of sudden expansion, and the two outliers are cases with known recent population bottlenecks that compromise results (Sherry et al., 1994).” Also, greater Tribal diversity supports a larger base population in the Americas and little if any evidence for bottlenecks as evident in the mtDNA of Native Americans. As an alternative to the Wallace Labs contention of a bottleneck is back-migration at the end of the Pleistocene as Franz Boas identified a hundred years ago.

Amanda B. Spurdle and Trefor Jenkins The Origins of the “Lamba Jews” of Soth Africa: Evidence fromp12F2 and other Y-Chromosome Markers Am. J. Hum. Gen. 1996

The results ability of Y-chromosome polymorphisms to provide a record of male-specific gene flow and human variation has long been recognized, and numerous studies using different Y markers have indicated the value of this approach. p. 1126

The Lemba population of southern Africa Constitutes a group of Bantu-speakers who claim Jewish ancestry. Historically, the Lemba were distinct from their Bantu-speaking Negroid neighbors by their means of livelihood, physical appearance, customs, and rituals (Van Warmelo 1974), and even nowadays the cultural differences between the Lemba and other Bantu-speakers are recognized. p. 1126

More detailed descriptions of Lemba oral history by Professor Mathivha of the Lemba Cultural Association (Mathivha 1992) suggest that the Jewish ancestors of the Lemba, as traders in the 7th century BC, migrated from “the north” to Yemen, where they established both a large community at Sena (Sa’na) and several trading posts along the eastern African coast. The Jewish community of Sena (Sa’na), termed “Basena” was later expanded by exiles escaping the Babylonian destruction of Jerusalem in 586 BC. At some later stage “trouble broke out between the Basena and the Arabs,” resulting in the migration of some Basena to Africa. Here the group split into two, one moving westward to settle in Ethiopia (the “Falashas”), the other (the Lemba) moving southward, finally to establish communities in southern Africa. Dates for the migration from Yemen appear to be inconsistent, and those quoted for settlement en route to southern Africa range from 450 BC to 50 AD (Mathivha 1992). p. 1127

The Lemba exhibit a frequency of .26 for the p12F2/TaqI 8-kb allele. Since this allele is absent in Africans and also was not observed in a sample of 60 Polynesians (A.B.S., unpublished data), it would appear to be specific to Caucasoids. The p12F2 data suggest, therefore, that the Lemba gene pool has received contributions from Caucasoid males. p. 1127

The currently available Y-chromosome genetic data do not support a close genetic relationship between the Ethiopian Jews and the Lemba. In conclusion, the historical facts are not incompatible with theories concerning the origin of Lemba, and the Y-specific genetic findings presented here are consistent with Lemba oral history. p. 1132

Alvah’s comment: This paper demonstrates the value of historical myths and cultural identity and genetic collaborations that help verify tribal accounts of the past. With this in mind we should see greater value in testing other models based on Myth from other cultures, including Siberians being descendants of Native Americans as identified by Boas. Alternatives to anthropological “givens”, as to whether present populations in Siberia are/or ARE NOT the ancestors of Native Americans, should be assessed anew.

EUROPE

Hovers, Erella. The origins of modern human behavior: a Levantine point of view. Abstracts for the Paleoanthropolgy Society Meetings. p. A9

A comparison of several aspects of the archaeological record at Qafzeh and Amud Caves, associated with AMH and Neandertals respectively, suggests that there were no significant differences in the cognitive abilities of the two populations, in their capability for rational organizational strategies, and in their capacities for symbolic behavior. It is also noted that the archaeological manifestations of the Middle-Upper Paleolithic transition in the Levant are not as spectacular as in Europe. The implications of these observations for tracing the origins of modern behavior and for understanding the conditions which favor its representation in the material record are further discussed. p. A9

Alvah’s comment: Again, the “Levant” specimens were behaviorally closer to Neandertals and Homo erectus bringing into question their inclusion into AMH groups despite whatever the limited anatomical support that they were becoming “sapiens” might suggest.

Gauld, S.C. Allometric Patterns of Cranial Bone Thickness in Fossil Hominids. American Journal of Physical Anthropology (1996), 100:411-426.

Many pre-Holocene populations of the genus Homo display mean cranial thickness values that equal or exceed the maximum population averages characterizing recent H. sapiens (Brown, 1987). These differences have led researchers to conclude that, relative to anatomically modern humans, the species H. erectus and archaic populations of H. sapiens exhibit greatly thickened cranial bone (e.g., Jorant, 1938; Twisselman, 1941; Weidenreich, 1943, 1951; Howells 1966, 1980; Trinkaus and Howells, 1979; Murrill, 1981; Wolpoff, 1984; Kennedy, 1991). Because of its differential distribution, cranial thickness is often cited as a relevant trait in cladistic analyses, which rely on the distribution of autopomorphic and synapomorphic character states to establish species’ identity and relationships (Delson et al., 1977; Andrews, 1984; Stringer, 1984; Wood, 198; Bilsborough and Wood, 1986; Hublin, 1986; Turner and Chamberlain, 1989). Indeed, some researchers suggest that the thickened cranial and/or postcranial bone found in some early hominids may represent a unique condition among anthropoids (Weidenreich, 1943) or all mammals (Kennedy, 1985). p. 411

Several studies have addressed the significance of differences in cranial bone thickness in modern H. sapiens. The strong covariance between extant primate body size and cranial thickness, as well as its positive allometric relationship, are similar to patterns documented for postcranial bone thickness across a broad range of vertebrates, including primates (Biewener, 1982; Ruff, 1987, 1990; Selker and Carter, 1989; Anyonge, 1993; Nelson 1994). In the postcranium this relationship is usually considered a byproduct of the functional interaction between mass and skeletal support. While this may be so, the cranial data demonstrate that the association between mass and thickness is also expressed in non-weight-bearing portions of the skeleton. The strength of the association suggests that, at the interspecific level., measures of bone thickness throughout the skeleton covary primarily in relation to size, with specific biomechanical influences exhibiting secondary, localized influences. It is possible that this covariance is established and maintained through the pleiotropic effects of genetically mediated growth hormone systems that target coordinated growth of the entire organism (Nelson and Gauld, 1994; Shea, 1992). The interaction between mass and cranial thickness, and its effects on intragroup variation, have not been carefully investigated in any primate species. However, a relationship between size and thickness can be found in support for human developmental studies, which show steady, rapid thickness increases during growth (Roche, 1953; Adeloye et al., 1975; Brown et al., 1979). Moreover, in measuring the effects of sex, age, race, height, and weight on cranial thickness in a large cadaver sample, Pensler and McCarthy (1985) demonstrate that only weight covaries consistently, and significantly, with thickness. p. 420

The findings presented here support recent body-weight prediction studies of H. erectus in suggesting that Asian, as well as African, members of this species were characterized by substantially large body size (McHenry, 1988; Gauld, 1992; in preparation; Ruff and Walker, 1993; Aiello and Wood, 1994). p. 423

Alvah’s comments; The quadruped motion of apes leads to the heavier bone mass in Homo erectus while the generalized posture of modern humans could have been predated by a long term stasis from a less quadrapedal/more hominid-like bipedal primate ancestor.

Cole, T.M. The use of matrix permutation tests for evaluating competing hypotheses of modern human origins. Journal of Human Evolution (1996), 31:477-484.

Perhaps the greatest advantage of matrix permutation tests is their tremendous flexibility (e.g., Hubert & Schultz, 1976; Smouse & Long, 1992), where the specification of different hypotheses seems limited only by imagination of the investigator. p. 482

More than a decade of debate (recently reviewed by Lahr & Foley, 1995) has failed to produce a consensus with respect to the origins of anatomically modern humans. Perhaps the most interesting finding of Waddle’s (1994a) study is that the data are, in fact, significantly associated with nearly all of the models, so that the same data could be used to argue as effectively for one hypothesis as for another. When Waddle’s (1994a) results are considered in the context of earlier studies, they suggest that the failure to resolve the issue of modern human origins results from the tremendous complexity of the problem. p. 483

Alvah’s comment: By removing Amerindians from the search for Homo Sapiens’s wellspring a compatible resolution to Human Origins supporting the Replacement hypothesis remains complex. Every study of Native American origins starts with an “Asian origin” as a given, but what if this is wrong?

Relethford, J.H. Evolution of Skin Color in Yemenite Jews. Current Anthropology (1998), Vol. 39, No. 1, pp. 150-152.

How long did the evolution of modern human skin color take? Does skin color change rapidly (on the order of a millennium or so), or does it represent evolution over much longer periods of time? On the basis of computer simulation, Livingstone (1969) suggested that modern differences in skin color could have arisen in as few as 800-1,500 generations (roughly 20,000-37,500 years). However, such simulations show us only what could happen and not necessarily what actually did happen. p. 151

Haldane proposed something along this line when he suggested that, because American Indians near the tropics are not as dark as tropical populations in the Old World, they had not yet fully adapted to their new environment and therefore the evolution of modern human skin color differences took longer than the time since initial habitation of the New World (cited in Livingstone 1969). This paper uses similar logic and extends it to a quantitative analysis of a specific human population with a known history of movement into a different latitude–the Yemenite Jew. p. 151

The predicted latitude for the Habbani Jews based on their skin color is roughly 32° north latitude, which is the geographic center of Israel. Even though the Habbani Yemenite Jews spent between 1,500 and 2,600 years in a different environment, there has been no change in skin color. It seems that the evolution of human skin color requires greater time depth and is not indicative of a rapid microevolutionary change. Other populations, also with known histories, must be examined to provide further insight into the rate of microevolution in skin color. The basic method here can also be applied to other traits that show a strong geographic relationship. p. 152

Alvah’s comment: Archaeological evidence for the initial expansion of humans ~45,000 years ago could, if one looks outside of Africa for the source of this migration, dictate that Old World population variance in skin color, from white in Europe to dark in Africa and India, are primarily climate related.

Comas, D., Calafell, F., Mateu, E., Perez-Lezaun, A., Bosch, E., Martinez-Arias, R., Clarimon, J., Facchini, F., Fiori, G., Luiselli, D., Pettener, D., and Bertranpetit, J. Trading Genes along the Silk Road: mtDNA Sequences and the Origin of Central Asian Populations. Am. J. Hum. Genet. (1998), 63:1824-1838.

Central Asia, as defined by Soviet scholars, encompasses the territories east of the Caspian Sea to the current boundaries of China along the Pamir, the Hindu Kush and farther to the northeast, and it comprises the republics of Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Kirghizstan, and part of Kazakhstan; in Western literature, Mongolia, Tibet, and Sinkiang (pinyin Xinjiang, western China) sometimes are included. p. 1824

The role of central Asia in early human evolution and history is not well established. According to an old, long-dismissed hypothesis, the nearby Altai region could have been the origin of humankind. It is known that the region was populated during the lower Paleolithic, and there is ample evidence of settlement during the middle Paleolithic, including Teshik-Tash, the easternmost site from which Neanderthal remains have been recovered. It is not clear, however, whether the region was part of a “maturation” phase of anatomically modern humans, a thruway in the colonization of Europe and eastern Asia, or a place where Asian and European groups met after their expansion (Bowles 1977). p. 1825

For a sequence to be assigned either to eastern Asia or to Europe, it had to be identical to, or to differ in no more than two nucleotides from, a sequence found exclusively in Europe or eastern Asia. That approach allowed us to identify 93.7% of central Asian sequences as belonging to an already sequenced eastern Asian or European lineage (table 3). An average of 33.2% of the individuals in our central Asian samples bore a sequence belonging to a European lineage. This fraction became 35.4% when the unassigned sequences were not taken into account. The proportion of eastern Asian, European, and unassigned sequences was not significantly different across central Asian populations (x2 = 7.67, 6 df, P = .264). p. 1830

Torroni et al. (1994) did not find, in mtDNA RFLPs in Tibetans, any selective effects attributable to high altitude; we can reach similar conclusions with control-region sequences when comparing lowland and highland central Asian populations. p. 1830

The results of the present study consistently show that the central Asia mtDNA sequences present features that are intermediate between those found in Europe and eastern Asia. This is especially patent in the following: (i) the cline of the frequency of certain nucleotides in specific positions, such as those found at positions 16223 and 16362; (ii) polymorphism at the nucleotide level, as measured by nucleotide diversity–even when the effects of clinal nucloetide positions are discounted; (iii) the average pairwise-difference values, which are intermediate between those of Europe and those of Eastern Asia; and (iv) genetic distances, which locate the central Asian populations between Europe and eastern Asia. Several population history scenarios could have produced the intermediate genetic features of central Asian mtDNA sequences; some hypotheses that could be put forth–such as an Asian colonization of Europe, or vice versa–find no support in archaeological knowledge and would contradict other mtDNA evidence (Ballinger et al. 1992). However, some of the analyses that we performed will allow us to assess the degree to which other, more plausible hypotheses are supported by mtDNA evidence. p. 1830

Alvah’s comment: Archaeological support for an Asian origin can be found in looking to dated encounters between Neadertals and H. Sapiens in western Siberia and by looking at the evolution of the earliest progenitors to the Upper Paleolithic in the Russian Steep as Leanova suggests. Also, Johnson et al. 1983 identified Asia as a source for both Europeans and African populations in one of the first mtDNA studies related to anthropology.

Carbonell, E. and Vaquero, M. Behaviroal Complexity and Biocultural Change in Europe Around Forty Thousand Years Ago. Journal of Anthropological Research (1998), Vol. 54, pp. 373-383.

Differences between the [Middle Paleolithic] MP and [Upper Paleolithic] UP are usually assessed by establishing a series of archaeological parameters (technology, spatial organization, symbolic behavior, settlement patterns, etc.) and comparing the documented evidence of each one for both periods (see, e.g., Mellars 1973; White 1982; Kozlowski 1990). p. 374

Two types of factors have had an impact on the scientific community in recent years. On the one hand, empirical and methodological factors have affected the whole range of data published. On the other hand, theoretical and conceptual perspectives underlie the most polemic aspects of the discussion and reflect the multiplicity of paradigms current in the discipline.

In the first place, the contributions made by the field of human paleontology should be mentioned. The theoretical struggle between the multiregional model (e.g., Wolpoff 1989) and the “Out of Africa” theory (e.g. Stringer and Andrews 1988) has highlighted the explanatory weakness of scenarios concerning the transformations which affected hominids and their activities during isotopic stage 3. p. 374

Were the association of the cultural innovations of the UP and [anatomically modern humans] AMH valid, the “Out of Africa” hypothesis would imply an African origin for the UP. However, with the data available at the moment, it seems that the UP did not appear in Africa before it did in other places (Ambrose and Lorenz 1990; Van Peer and Vermeersch 1990). p. 378

What seems to be obvious is that between 45 and 35 kyr B.P., Europe underwent a period of technical effervescence, with processes of change affecting most of the continent. Both the so-called transitional complexes and the Aurignacian must be understood in this context. p. 379

The idea that transitional industries are the result of acculturation to the Aurignacian contrasts with the differences between the two entities. The Chatelperronian does not appear to be a mere copy of the Aurignacian, but rather a typologically and technologically well defined technocomplex with elements of clear originality. J. Pelegrin (1995) casts doubt on the hypothesis of acculturation, citing the considerable differences between the respective technological systems. Harrold (1989) suggests that the Aurignacian affected the genesis of the Chatelperronian but stresses the typological differences between them. p. 379

Some authors (e.g., Davidson and Noble 1993; Klein 1995; Mellars 1996; White 1989) define a group of cultural features found in the archaeological record which are characteristic of a completely modern type of behavior. Among these new patters are the appearance of art, the development of bone, ivory, and antler technologies; great synchronic and diachronic variability among lithic artifacts; complex organization of space; and more effective strategies of exploiting the environment. The appearance of completely modern behavior would have been determined by neurological changes which defined the development of a fully human brain. As Binford (1989) has said, one cannot speak of the existence of a fully human culture before the UP. The conception of AMH as a hominid who was more and better organized has been defended by authors who find evidence of more complex social organization and who argue that there was no significant point of contact between [archaic Homo sapiens] AHS and AMH. This argument has been expressed in different fields of research, such as symbolic expression (Chase and Dibble 1987), lithic technology (Chauchat 1992; Dibble 1989), burial practices (Gargett 1989), and spatial organization (Pettitt 1997). p. 380

The use of the concepts of mental template and planning as criteria for defining the MP/UP transition involves difficulties which are similar to those related to the concept of style. In these cases, speaking of radical differences between the UP and MP does not seem to be justified. Transporting objects from one place to another and the planning for future needs that this implies have been shown beyond all doubt to exist in the MP and are fundamental factors in determining the variability of archaeological assemblages (Geneste 1985; Kuhn 1995). The ability to mentally develop complex technical processes can be inferred from the operative capacity shown in MP knapping strategies (Van Peer 1991; Boeda, 1994), as well as from the multiplicity of reduction strategies used during the MP (Boeda 1993; Turq 1992; Revillion and Tuffreau 1994). p. 381

One of the most important of these techniques is the excavation of large surface areas which represent the entirety of the space occupied by human groups at particular sites. Only by this means can the relationships among objects in space be plausibly reconstructed and, consequently, the organization aspects of behavior interpreted. Below, we shall discuss the conclusions that we have drawn from an approach of this type at a site belonging to the end of the MP: the Abric Romani in Capellades (Barcelona Province, Spain). p. 382

The excavation of nine archaeological levels (levels B-J) pertaining to the end of the MP and dated between 50 and 70 kyr B.P. (Bischoff, Julia, and Mora 1988; Bischoff et al. 1994) has given us systematic access to evidence of the occupational variability of the last Neandertals. p. 383

Alvah’s comment: Interactions that occurred in the Old World are best divined from the robust evidence from Europe and the accompanying evidence of a Transition from the MP to the UP. The authors point out that this occurred in Europe before Africa. This should cause geneticists to look outside of Africa for the source of Homo sapien expansion, but we seem unwilling to do so.

Since the New World offers little if any evidence of any kind of Paleolithic in pre-Clovis times, we must ascertain what we do have in archaeological support. The best example of human behavior sustaining many pre-Clovis sites is the use of fire. If the indications of fire are simply “geofacts” and not related to Human sapient activities then one might ask why similar evidence of fires associated with hearths are NOT found in or about where Homo erectus lived. If they had a great hoopla would exist, helping archaeologists discern that sapient technologies could be allied with erectus or Neandertals. The evidence of humanly created fires in association with hearths and human fingerprints in pre-Clovis times could help us in determining that they were indeed the product of human behavior. The fact that – fires associated with hearths – are not found in Middle Paleolithic Europe should help scientists in dismissing the fancy that only in the New World do “geofacts” of fires enclosed in hearths, exist.

POLYNESIA

Holdaway, S. Stone artefact assemblage variability and scales of temporal resolution at Bone Cave, Tasmania, Australia. Abstracts for the Paleoanthropolgy Society Meetings. p. A9

Bone Cave is one of a number of limestone caves in the southwest of Tasmania, Australia that have produced a rich record of Pleistocene human occupation spanning the period from 10,000 to 35,000 BP. This paper reports the results of a technological analysis of 23,000 stone artefacts excavated from Bone Cave. Artefacts found at the site were manufactured from both local and imported stone, and suggest a variety of reduction strategies. Twenty-nine radiocarbon determinations from the site permit a precise chronology to be constructed that indicates the site was abandoned for substantial periods between occupations during the late Pleistocene. Stone artefact assemblages constructed on the basis of the radiocarbon determinations are compared through time to determine the significance of these periods of abandonment. Also considered are the effects of differing temporal scales of resolution on measures of assemblage variability. p. A9

Alvah’s comment; Human arrival in Tasmania is consistent with a 35-40 thousand year age. The conservative dates associated with the radiation of Homo sapiens throughout the Old World should rely on this timing by scientifically discriminating the consistency of this modern human boundary for our arrival into the Old World as it continues to be consistently dated as being.

From REVIEWS. Geoffrey Irwin, University of Auckland. Reviewing: Goetzfridt, N.J. Indigenous Navigation and Voyaging in the Pacific: A Reference Guide. Bibliographies and Indexes in Anthropology No. 6. New York: Greenwood Press, 1992. 294 pp. bib., inds. np. (cloth).

This myth held that, after initial colonisation, many Polynesian islands were so isolated that they could be regarded as laboratories for the study of cultural evolution. However, we now have some predictive modelling for probable prehistoric inter-island contacts, and archaeology, linguistics and biological anthropology are beginning to fill in the facts. p. 415

Evidently there are many observations and arguments in the literature which perhaps have not received the attention and acknowledgment they deserve. Moreover, the annotations themselves, while tersely written, are substantial. Goetzfridt makes no written judgments about the books and articles he summarises but, so far as I am able to tell, what he has to say about them draws out the major and essential points correctly. Altogether, this book comes as a pleasant surprise in being a comprehensive, accurate and therefore most useful, guide to the literature. p. 415

Alvah’s comment; Again, the arrival of Oceanic populations ~40,000 years ago did not lead to a further expansion as remote Polynesia was only settled 3,600 years ago. The Americas have been given little serious consideration despite the fact that genetic links to the Americas are clearly not those associated with the earliest radiation’s Out of Asia for these earliest Oceanic peoples, as they did not continue into Polynesia.

Betty, D.J., Chin-Atkins, A.N., Croft, L., Sraml, M. and Easteal, S.. Multiple Independent Origins of the COII/tRNALys Intergenic 9-bp mtDNA Deletion in Aboriginal Australians. Am. J. Hum. Genet. (1996), 58:428-433.

However, AW222 has C at position 16189; this individual’s control region sequence persistently groups with the six Asia-Pacific individuals with the deletion (fig. 1). None of the eight individuals we found with the deletion shares the “Polynesian motif” comprising the C at position 16217, plus G at position 16247 and T at position 16261 (Hagelberg and Clegg 1994; Redd et al., in press). p. 429

It is now clear that there have been multiple deletions and insertions at this site. These findings do not remove the deletion’s utility as a mitochondrial population marker. However, these results do mean that a common origin of the 9-bp mtDNA deletion in different individuals or populations must be tested, and not just assumed. p. 431

Alvah’s comment; By looking to the Americas admixture can be assessed against the background of the 9bp’s distribution (or lack of) in interior populations. If it is found without the Polynesian motif could it represent selection or an ancient linkage to a common haplotype.

Lum, J.K., Cann, R.L., Martinson, J.J., and Jorde, L.B. Mitochondrial and Nuclear Genetic Relationships among Pacific Island and Asian Populations. Am. J. Hum. Genet. (1998), 63:613-624.

By examining different genetic systems from the same individuals, we have generated patterns consistent with both views. As described above, our mtDNA data are correlated with linguistic data and suggest island Southeast Asia as the origin of Remote Oceanic Islanders. These data are consistent with the express train model. Our STR data, in contrast, are not correlated with linguistic data and highlight affinities between Near Oceanic and Remote Oceanic populations. We have argued that the differences between these patterns result from postcolonization male-biased gene flow. Genetic interactions between populations after initial colonization may have been mediated by a predominately male segment of voyaging societies, engaged in the control of resources. This bias served to preserve pre-existing linguistic differences, lines of status, and hierarchical divisions among matrilineal kinship groups. Thus, we see female settlement as an express train and male gene flow as an entangled bank. p. 622

Alvah’s comment; Did the mtDNA express train come from the Americas or is this idea to unscientific to address? Certainly nuclear DNA would indicate admixture with Native Oceanic Peoples who had previously colonized southeast Asia (and beyond) ~40,000 thousand years earlier.

Heathcote, G.M., Stodder, A.L.W., Buckley, H.R., Hanson, D.B., Douglas, M.T., Underwood, J.H., Taisipic, T.F., and Diego, V.P. On Treponemal Disease in the Western Pacific: Corrections and Critique. Current Anthropology (1998), Vol. 39, No. 3, pp. 359-367.

Their position that climate “would appear not to be the significant determinant of treponemal disease manifestation” (p. 560) is at extreme odds with epidemiological patterning of treponemal infections in the Pacific Islands, where climatic conditions associated with yaws endemicity are tightly circumscribed and include a mean temperature exceeding 18°C throughout the year combined with an average annual rainfall of 1,650 mm, with rainfall exceeding 65 mm for each month (Pirie 1971-72). p. 359

Thus, the treponematoses are conceptualized as discrete diseases outside of an evolutionary ecology framework. This is puzzling, given the claim that “mutation” brought about a replacement of yaws by syphilis in the New World (p. 560). How such a transmutation was operationalized and how it is reconciled with the advocacy of universal differential patterns (yaws versus syphilis) is not discussed.

We do not dispute that the comparative study of treponemal-like lesion distribution in archaeologically recovered skeletal series can be sound and revealing. Bogdan and Weaver (1992) have shown that such an approach can be useful in distinguishing patterns more closely associated (in subcontemporary populations) with nonveneral than with venereal transmission. pp. 363-364

The Rothschilds’ only concession to heterogeneity of expression is the assertion that “the osseous reaction to treponemal infection, although reproducible for each variety, is not uniform among them” (p. 556). “Reproducible” is the key word here, and this leads us to a consideration of the elements chosen and ignored for examination of treponemal changes. p. 364

In view of such a provocative position–that all tibial periostitis may be treponemal in origin–we wonder why no detailed exposition is offered on other (competing) causes of tibial involvement in the Western Pacific. Attention to the differential changes of leprosy (Moller-Christensen 1967, Andersen, Manchester, and Roberts 1994) would have been appropriate, given the claim of pre-Spanish antiquity for leprosy in Guam and the Western Pacific region (Trembly 1995). Tropical ulcers of the shin of nontreponemal origin (Brown and Middlemiss 1956, Ennis, Gueri, and Sergeant 1972) and trauma to the shin with consequent bacterial or fungal infection should likewise have received attention. We are aware of sound criteria regarding differential pathogenesis and skeletal lesions of leprosy, ulcers, and trauma (as well as for their potential for interaction), but in view of the fragmentary and incomplete nature of the Gognga-Gun Beach skeletons a frank discussion of interpretive problems and more detailed discussion on differential regional patterning and appearance of tibial lesions would have been beneficial. p. 364

However, we take issue with elective and unexplained omissions of certain complementary criteria as well as some heterodox claims as to differences in tibial involvement among the treponematoses, including the following:

1. The lack of an explanation why treponemal infection would affect the tibia differently in syphilis versus bejel versus yaws; criteria for differential diagnosis ought to be grounded in underlying biology and patho-physiology.

2. A conspicuous absence of consideration of cranial lesions (e.g., the caries sicca sequence, including stellate scars versus crater lesions) and degree of nasal region destruction (see Hackett 1951, 1976; Steinbock 1976; Ortner and Pustchar 1981).

3. Absence of attention to osseous and dental changes encountered in congenital syphilis such as osteochondritis, periosteal cloaking, foci of osteomyelitis on the medial surfaces of proximal tibiae (Wimberger’s sign), mulberry molars, and Hutchinson’s incisors (see Bogdan and Weaver, 1992).

4. Failure to recognize several recent contributions toward a differential diagnosis of yaws. Such distinctive osseous involvement is in keeping with clinical observations that juxta-articular nodes (joint effusions) are found in yaws cases but not in venereal syphilis (Kampmeier 1982:586).

5. Failure to consider the skeletal impact of coinfections or secondary infections. Others have found evidence from lesion morphology and distribution that is suggestive of secondary bacterial and/or fungal infections (Hanson 1991, Stodder, Trembly, and Tucker 1992) and co-infection with leprosy (Stodder, Trembly, and Tucker 1992, Trembly 1995) in late prehistoric and early historic Mariana Islanders. p. 364-365

Weisler, M.I. Hard Evidence for Prehistoric Interaction in Polynesia. Current Anthropology (1998), Vol. 39, No. 4, pp. 521-530.

While some may bemoan the smallness of the sample of three adzes from three sites in two archipelagoes, the great distances involved and the chronological placement of these finds are important for prehistoric Polynesian interaction studies. The voyage to Mangareva from the Marquesas is the longest straight-line distance now documented in the eastern Pacific and attests to the remarkable, purposeful voyages of prehistoric Polynesians. The ties between the Society Islands and the Marquesas, long suspected on the basis of artifact styles (of items such as fishhooks, octopus lures, and adzes), plant distributions (Role 1996: 532), language, and shared human physical characteristics, are clearly demonstrated here by actual artifact transfer. This demonstration has implications for the interpretation of the suspected Fiji ceramic sherds in the Marquesas. Such exotic sherds could represent items brought by colonizing groups which are now in a disturbed, later stratigraphic context (Green 1974:246-47) or the remnants of pots transferred during subsequent interarchipelago interaction. It is unlikely that transfer of Fijian pots was made directly, and the Society Islands may have been part of the conduit of transfer. pp. 528-529

The study results also provide empirical support for Biggs’s (1972:149) idea of multiple intra-Polynesian migration and settlement (1972:149; see also Green 1981). This suggestion fits well with Rolett’s “interaction and cultural continuity: model, in which two-way voyaging linked distant archipelagoes during early East Polynesian prehistory (1993:47). The radiocarbon dates clearly associated with two Eiao artifacts exported to the Societies and Mangareva and interarchipelago interaction models based on detailed sourcing studies from the Cooks (Walter and Sheppard 1996, Weisler and Kirch 1996) and the Mangareva-Pitcairn interaction sphere (Weisler 1995, 1996, 1997a) clearly demonstrate that long-distance interarchipelago interaction continued long after colonization. Additional sourcing studies of basalt adze material will provide the necessary hard evidence for the scale, frequency, and duration of long-distance interaction, thus providing a firm foundation for understanding the evolution and transformation of Polynesian island societies. pp. 529-530

SIBERIA

Starikovskaya, Y.B., Sukernik, R.I., Schurr, T.G., Kogelnik, A.M., and Wallace, D.C. mtDNA Diversity in Chukchi and Siberian Eskimos: Implications for the Genetic History of Ancient Beringia and the Peopling of the New World. Am. J. Hum. Genet. (1998), 63:1473-1491.

Our first survey of mtDNA variation in the Chukchi and Siberian Eskimos involved partial haplotype analysis and showed that the “reindeer” Chukchi exhibited three (A, C, and D) of the four mtDNA haplogroups (A-D) observed in Native Americans but lacked the COII/tRNALys intergenic 9-bp depletion associated with haplogroup B (Torroni et al. 1993a, 1993b). In contrast, Siberian Eskimos showed mtDNAs from only two of these haplogroups (A and D), and appeared to be the only aboriginal Siberian group lacking “other” haplotypes-that is, mtDNAs that are not within haplogroups A-D (Torroni et al. 1993b; Sukernik et al. 1996). When native Siberian mtDNAs were subjected to high-resolution restriction analysis, most of these “other” haplotypes were shown to be ethnic-, tribal-, or region-specific haplotypes that clustered into additional haplogroups. This was seen most clearly in the Udegeys of the Sikhote Alin and in the Nivkhs of the lower Amur/Sakhalin Island region (Torroni et al. 1993b). p. 1473-1474

Of these 17 haplotypes, 7 were found to belong to haplogroup A, 6 to haplogroup D, 2 to haplogroup C, and 0 to haplogroup B. In addition, two haplotypes detected in four Chukchi individuals were identified as belonging to haplogroup G, a predominant mtDNA lineage in the Koryaks and Itel’men of Kamchatka (Schurr et al., in press).

Table 2 outlines the distribution of these haplotypes, within and between Chukotkan samples. Haplogroup A haplotypes SIB41 and SIB56 were found to be the most frequent in all Chukchi and Eskimo subdivisions, with the exception of the Naukan, which SIB56 was missing, probably because of the restricted sample size of this group. SIB53, which was observed in two of the three Eskimo subdivisions, did not appear in the Chukchi. The most common haplogroup D haplotype in the Chukchi and the Eskimo was SIB50, with related haplotypes occurring infrequently in either one or the other subdivision(s). p. 1477

All Chukotkan CR sequences specific to haplogroup A exhibited the np 16111 CÆT (16111T) transition, which characterizes both Na-Dene and Amerindian haplogroup A mtDNAs but which was not observed in those from Asian populations (Torroni et al. 1993b; Horai et al. 1996). Aside from the 16111T mutation, either the CÆT transition at np16192 (16192T) or the AÆG transition at np16265 (16265G) further subdivided Siberian haplogroup A mtDNAs and differentiated Chukotkan haplogroup A sequences from related mtDNAs observed in the Koryaks and Itel’men of Kamchatka (Schurr et al., in press). p. 1478

Both sublineages shared the np 16298 TÆC transition (16298C), which defines haplogroup C mtDNAs in both Asia and the New World (Torroni et al. 1993a, 1993b). p. 1477

For haplogroup C, the nodal haplotype is SIB26. It is identical to the Asian haplotype AS65 and to the Native American haplotype AM43 (Schurr et al. 1990; Ballinger et al. 1992; Torroni et al. 1993a). SIB59, which occurred in one Sireniki Eskimo, differed from SIB26 by having two additional mutations not previously seen in other haplogroup C mtDNAs.

For haplogroup D, the nodal haplotype is SIB13. This is identical to AS25 in central and eastern Asia (Ballinger et al. 1992; Torroni et al. 1993a) and to AM88 in the New World (Torroni et al. 1992, 1993a). Interestingly, SIB13 was not observed among the Chukchi and Eskimos, who exhibited a set of haplotypes distinct from those seen in other Siberian populations. Furthermore, the most divergent haplotype in the Chukotkan groups, SIB40 (fig. 3 and table 1), which assumed a terminal position in the cluster, occurred in the Chukchi and Naukan Eskimos, as well as in the Koryaks of northeastern Kamchatka (Schurr et al., in press), suggesting that it belonged to a common gene pool of the latest inhabitants of western Beringia. p. 1481

The haplotypes from haplogroup Y (SIB01-SIB07) and the “other” category (SIB17 and SIB20-SIB25) are also found in Siberia but not in the Americas (Torroni et al. 1993a, 1993b; Schurr et al., in press). p. 1481

Another cluster, encompassing many of the Haida haplogroup A CR sequences and one Bella Coola haplogroup A CR sequence, was defined by the presence of the 16355T mutation in the absence of the 16331 transition. This mutation differentiates the Haida from other Na-Dene populations and reveals its relatedness to Northwest Coast Amerindians (Torroni et al. 1992, 1993a; Shields et al. 1993) (fig. 5). p. 1483-1484

Finally, the haplogroup A CR sequences that harbored the 16129A mutation delineated a North American Amerindian cluster that encompassed mtDNAs from the Haida, Nuu-Chah-Nulth, and Bella Coola, as well as the Ojibwa. p. 1484

These findings at the phylogenetic level were also reflected in the distribution of shared CR sequences among northern Pacific Rim tribal groups, as summarized in table 6. The putative founding CR sequence for haplogroup A, 07, is identical to CIR11 in the Nuu-Chah-Nulth (Ward et al. 1991). This CR sequence occurs in the Chukchi and Siberian Eskimos, as well as in all of the major linguistic groups of Native Americans residing in the northern Pacific Rim (Ward et al. 1991; Shields et al. 1993; present study). However, the remaining CR sequences from haplogroup A occurred in either the Haida and Northwest Coast Amerindians, the Na-Dene Indians other than Haida, or the Siberian Eskimos and Chukchi. p. 1484

However, recent analyses of CR sequence variation in Native Americans indicate that haplogroup B may be as diverse as haplogroups A, C, and D (Bonatto and Salzano 1997; Stone and Stoneking 1998). p. 1487

Alvah’s comment: In a May 1999 gathering of molecular anthropologists Dr. Denise O’Rourke from the U. of Utah reported that Type A mtDNAs was present in ancient Aleutian Island Populations dating to 2000 BC but in frequencies < 10%. Similar reduction in frequencies of Type A in other samples of ancient North American populations could indicate that type A is recently derived being only one mutation beyond mtDNA C and D. Worth noting is the prevalence of C and D in Northeast Asian populations (coupled with the virtual absence of Type A), the eastern perimeter encompassing Boas’s “Eskimo wedge.” Back migration from the Americas for Siberians, and more recently, the Eskimo, could explain genetic similarities between them and Native Americans yet Boas’s conclusions made 100 years ago are rarely, if ever, cited by these authors.

Erlandson, J.M., Tveskov, M.A., and Byram, R.S. The Development of Maritime Adaptations on the Southern Northwest Coast of North America. Arctic Anthropology (1998), Vol. 35, No. 1, pp. 6-22.

Here, we address three primary issues in the archaeology of the southern Northwest Coast: (1) the antiquity of maritime adaptations; (2) the economic significance of sea mammal hunting; and (3) the nature and importance of fishing and weir technologies. We conclude that the antiquity of widespread maritime adaptations in the area is unknown, that pinniped hunting is best understood as an integrated part of broader subsistence adaptations, that coastal fishing was more diverse and eclectic than previously believed, and that the socioeconomic complexity of some southern Northwest Coast cultures was greater than previous models have suggested. p. 6

Although adapting to the exploitation of sea mammals, fish, shellfish, and birds led to certain parallels in technology, demography, and cultural complexity, significant differences also evolved due to local variations in marine and terrestrial environments, migration or in situ development of distinctive ethnic groups, interaction with neighboring coastal and interior peoples, and other factors. p. 6

Some of this gap is due to the fact that much of the area is distant from major population centers and large research institutions. Some archaeologists may also have been discouraged from studying an area where “little of historical importance” (Drucker 1939:81) was ever supposed to have happened and relatively little published ethnography was available.

Statements such as Drucker’s helped foster the misconception that the southern Northwest Coast was peripheral to the main currents of North Pacific cultural developments. Such views were facilitated by the dearth of detailed published accounts on the early history or ethnography of Native cultures of the area. p. 7

As we define it here, the southern Northwest Coast encompasses most of the eastern margins of Washington, Oregon, and northern California, from just south of Cape Alava on the north to Cape Mendocino on the south (Fig. 1). Like much of the Pacific Rim, this roughly 1000 km stretch of coast is rugged and mountainous, with relatively narrow coastal plains and continental shelves. This juxtaposition of mountains and the sea provided coastal peoples with access to a wide variety of habitats and a diverse suite of marine, estuarine, freshwater, and terrestrial resources. p. 7

Prior to commercial overexploitation, salmon, sturgeon, eels, trout, and other fish were abundant in coastal rivers, some seasonally and others year round. In the early 1900s, annual salmon runs appear to have numbered in the hundreds of thousands in several area rivers and several million in the Columbia River (Cobb 1930).

On land, vegetation communities are comprised primarily of coniferous rain forests, with the coast redwood forest zone dominant in northern California and the Sitka spruce zone to the north (Franklin and Dyrness 1988). The latter is dominated by Sitka spruce (Picea sitchensis), western hemlock (Tsuga heterophylla), and red cedar (Thuja plicata). Compared to more northern areas, plants with edible nuts, seeds, or berries are diverse, with acorns and root plants (e.g., camas and wapato) locally abundant. The most important large game in much of the area were deer and elk, but bears and a variety of medium and small mammals once were abundant. p. 7

Kuzmin, Y.V. and Orlova, L.A. Radiocarbon Chronology of the Siberian Paleolithic. Journal of World Prehistory (1998), Vol. 12, No. 1, pp. 1-53.

The area under study may be subdivided into two parts: Siberia proper and the Russian Far East. In American geography textbooks they are often described together (e.g., Simmons, 1990). Russian geographers, however, separate these two regions because of significant differences in climate and vegetation (e.g., Suslov, 1961). The territory of Siberia belongs to the Arctic Ocean drainage basin, and the Russian Far East belongs to the Pacific Ocean drainage basin (Fig. 1). p 3

Instead, the Mousterian-Upper Paleolithic transition seems to have occurred gradually in Siberia and the Russian Far East, within the time interval ca. 43,000-28,500 BP. p. 31

Hence, we accept this age of ca. 23,500 BP as a maximum for Ust-Mil 2 (see also Kuzmin, 1994, p. 368). This interpretation also fits well with the general developmental scheme of microblade industries in Northeast Asia (Yi and Clark, 1985; Abramova, 1989). The anomalous C-14 dates from Ust-Mil 2 [30,000 ± 500 BP (LE-1001), 33,000 ± 500 BP (LE-1000), and 35,400 ± 600 BP (LE-954)] might be explained by the redeposition of “ancient” wood from early Karginian sediments in the lower part of the section into the younger deposits containing the Dyuktai-culture artifacts (cf. Clark, 1988). Similar caveats about the unsuitability of wood as a material for precise C-14 dating of the Dyuktai culture have also been made by Abramova (1979c, 1989) and Yi and Clark (1985). pp. 36-37

It is clear that the Afontovo and Kokorevo cultures coexisted in the Yenisei River basin during the interval from ca. 21,000 to ca. 11,700 BP. The sequence at Listvenka (Afontovo-like in layers 14-19, Kokorevo in layers 7-13; and Afontovo again in layers 2-6) (Drozdov et al., 1990, pp. 131-147) probably reflects the intrusion, at about 15,000 BP, of a Kokorevo population, northward from the core area some 15,000 BP, of a Kokorevo population, northward from the core area some 150-200 km away. p. 37

During the last 15 years, after larger-scale excavations of the Dyuktai sites, some new dates have been obtained. For Ikhine 2, there are two new dates on bone [presumably submitted after the minor excavations of 1992 (Mochanov and Fedoseeva, 1996, p. 195)]: 20,080 ± 150 BP (SOAN-3185) and 19,695 ± 100 BP (SOAN-3186). These are significantly younger than the previous C-14 dates, which range between 31,200 and 24,300 BP. Ikhine 1 was first dated in the 1980s to 16,660 ± 270 BP (IM-452) (Kashin, 1991). Ezhantsy, for which an age of ca. 35,000 BP was originally suggested (Mochanov, 1977), was dated in the 1980s to 17,150 ± 345 BP (IM-459) (Kashin, 1991). Thus, we may accept a preliminary conclusion that the youngest C-14 dates from Ikhine 2, ca. 24,600-24,300 BP (Mochanov, 1977), along with newly released dates from Ikhine 1 and Ezhantsy, accord quite well with the general model of the appearance of microblades in Siberia ca. 23,000-20,000 BP. pp. 38-39

The distinctive feature of Sartan Glaciation pollen spectra from Yakutia is a very low content of arboreal pollen. We can see the same feature in the Ikhine 1 pollen diagram for the upper part of layer 3 (the overlying layer 2 with artifacts is dated to ca. 16,600 BP). A very low arboreal pollen content is characteristic of Ezhantsy, layer 3, containing Dyuktai tools and dated to ca. 17,200 BP; and for Ikhine 2, layer 4, dated to ca. 31,200-24,300 BP. Based on all the observed data, the radiocarbon age of the Dyuktai culture may be estimated at ca. 24,600-10,000 BP.

In the Russian Far East, the earliest C-14 date for microblades is from Ust-Ulma 1, layer 2b, at ca. 19,400 BP. Other typical microblade industries from the middle Amur River basin and the Primorye are dated to ca. 15,300-10,100 BP, while in Northeaster Siberia, microblade assemblages are dated to ca. 13,400-8000 BP. p. 39

The Mesolithic layers have dates of ca. 10,500-8200 BP. However, on the basis of the most recent series of C-14 dates, the boundary between the Upper Paleolithic and the Mesolithic at Eleneva Cave (the contact of the sixteenth and seventeenth cultural layers) dates to ca. 9600-9300 BP (Orlova, 1998). In the Angara River basin, Mesolithic sites are dated to ca. 9900-7300 BP. On the shore of Lake Baikal, where Mesolithic cultures are well defined (Medvedeve et al., 1990), they are dated to ca. 10,300-6500 BP. In the Transbaikal, the Mesolithic as a separate stage (Konstantinov, 1994) is radiocarbon-dated to ca. 12,600-6700 BP. p. 40

In Russian archaeology, the most important criterion for defining the Neolithic is the beginning of pottery manufacture (e.g., Krushanov, 1989). The emergence of pottery in East Asia at the end of Pleistocene, ca. 14,000-12,000 BP, was one of the most revolutionary innovations in Old World prehistory (Barnes, 1993, pp. 64-72). Thus, the end of the Paleolithic and the beginning of the Neolithic mark a very important chrono-cultural boundary. p. 40

Thus, we now have strong evidence for the existence of the earliest pottery in the Russian Far East occurring at ca. 13,300 BP (Kuzmin et al., 1997). In the Amur River basin and the Transbaikal, the Paleolithic-Neolithic transition goes back to ca. 13,300-10,400 BP. In other parts of Siberia and the Russian Far East, the transition took place much later: at ca. 7900-6700 BP in the Yenisei and Angara River basins and at ca. 6000 BP in the Lake Baikal area and Yakutia. p. 41

The archaeology and radiocarbon chronology of the Siberian Paleolithic provide the background for modeling the peopling of the Americas (Morlan, 1987; Powers, 1996). According to West (1996), the initial peopling of extreme northwestern North America (Alaska and adjacent areas) took place ca. 11,800-11,700 BP. Thus, the Siberian cultures which may be the “progenitors” of the Paleoindian cultural complexes must be at least 13,000-12,000 C-14 years old. p. 41-42

Some publications on the peopling of the New World (e.g., Dikov, 1979; Morlan, 1987; Laukhin, 1990) show the glaciation in this region as a vast and continuous glacial belt in the mountain ranges, which could have prevented migration toward Alaska. However, the most recent data (Velichko, 1993) show that glaciation was quite limited in most mountain systems, and glaciers were numerous only in the Verkhoyansk Range and the Kamchatkan mountains (Fig. 3). During the Sartan Glacial maximum, the level of the Bering and Chukchi Seas was about 100 m below that of today and the vast landmass known as the Bering Land Bridge connected Siberia and North America. Thus, between 20,000 and 18,000 BP several migration routes to the New World were accessible. Nevertheless, there are no reliable Paleolithic finds of this or comparable age east of the Lena River basin. p. 42

Using the most reliable dates–those on charcoal from primary stratigraphic contexts–we concluded that the age of the Clovis progenitors was at least ca. 24,000 BP (Ust-Kova). This suggests that Clovis progenitors could have migrated to North America from southern Siberia before the maximum of the Last Glaciation. However, the complete absence of macroblade sites in Northeastern Siberia (except for the very young sites of Ushki-1 and Kukhtui 3) prevents our tracing the routes of such migrants. This situation constrains all existing models for the peopling of the New World. p. 44-45

The earliest C-14 dates for the Nenana cultural complex in Alaska are ca. 11,200 BP and perhaps 11,800 BP (West, 1996). The oldest C-14 age of the Clovis cultural complex in central and southwestern North America is ca. 11,600 BP (Haynes, 1992, 1993; Taylor et al., 1996). The age of Monte Verde in southernmost South America, which is claimed to be the oldest in the Americas, is ca. 12,500 BP (Dillehay and Pino, 1997). The fact that Monte Verde is some 500-900 C-14 years older than any other widely-accepted Paleoindian site has resulted in much speculation about the possible timing and routes for the peopling of the Americas. However, the concept of the “practicable accuracy” of archaeological C-14 dates (Krenke and Sulerzhitsky, 1992) makes it difficult to assert that Monte Verde is actually older than the Nenana and Clovis complexes. They are all quite close to each other in age, with differences of <1000 C-14 years, while internal variations in their series of dates are at least 500-800 C-14 years. p. 45

The numerous radiocarbon dates from the Siberian Paleolithic allow us to elucidate the chronology of the most important changes in Siberian prehistoric life and technology. The Middle-Upper Paleolithic boundary may be drawn approximately between 43,000 and 28,500 BP; the Early-Late Upper Paleolithic boundary may be placed at ca. 24,000-19,000 BP; and the Paleolithic-Neolithic boundary, between ca. 13,000 and 6000 BP. p. 46

Alvah’s comment: What is clear from this paper is that the Upper Paleolithic is in it’s infancy at 43,000 and that it continued to develop following its derivation, becoming full blown Upper Paleolithic as sapiens migrated into Europe. If the dates are correct the first encounters between Homo sapiens and Homo erectus may have occurred in Western Siberia. Following this encounter the use of lithic tools by H sapiens expanded along with their range. If this trail is traced back into the Americas then the use of “bone before stone” could help in linking pre-Clovis bone tool technologies to Alaska and then into western Siberia. Only in the Americas does an ancestor to Homo sapiens exist that would not require a metamorphous from the separate species that was H erectus.

Park, R.W. On the Dorset/Thule Analogy for the Middle/Upper Paleolithic Transition. Current Anthropology (1998), Vol. 39, pp. 355-356.

The specific parallels that she postulates (p. 588) between the Thule and the Upper Palaeolithic (and thus distinguishing them from the Dorset and the Middle Palaeolithic respectively) are “population increase, rapid geographic dispersal, permanent human presence, increased sedentism, larger sites, a denser archaeological record, technological innovation, abrupt disappearance of an earlier cultural substratum, and displacement/extinction/absorption of earlier peoples.” I would like briefly to address some of these issues for Thule and Dorset. p. 355

HISTORICAL ANTHROPOLOGY

Boas, F. The Jesup North Pacific Expedition. Proceedings of the Thirteenth International Congress of Americanists. (1905) Easton, PA: Eschenback Printing pp. 91-100.

The diversity of types, languages, customs and beliefs is so great that even a brief sketch of the fundamental features would occupy too much space and time. p. 95

While it is impossible to trace linguistic relationship between the numerous stocks inhabiting the area in question, it has become clear that morphologically the languages of northeastern Asia are not related to the Ural-Altaic group of languages. The Chukchee, Koryak and Kamchadal, which are closely related to each other, are polysynthetic, like many of the American languages. They incorporate the noun in the verb, and resemble in all their fundamental traits typical American languages. To a less extent the same may be said of the Yukaghir. In a broad classification of languages, the languages of northeastern Siberia should be classed with the languages of America. p. 95

Owing to the great differentiation of the American race on the Pacific coast, and to the large intermixture of Tungus and Turkish blood in Arctic Siberia, the conditions are so complex that it is difficult to discover relationships without a very detailed study of the anatomical material. p. 95

On the other hand, Mr. Smith discovered that in early times the art of stone-flaking was practised extensively in southern British Columbia, while in later times and in other regions of the coast this art seems to have been almost entirely absent. Furthermore, he found a remarkable change in type between the prehistoric inhabitants of this area and the present race, the former having long and narrow faces and elongated heads, while at present very wide and heavy faces and short round heads prevail. All this goes to show that there must have been a considerable change of population in this region, which in all probability was due to an invasion of tribes from the interior, by which the population of the coast was considerably modified. It is very interesting to know that this conclusion, which is based on archaeological evidence, is borne out by linguistic and ethnological studies. p. 96

Extended migrations must have taken place also in northern British Columbia and in the adjoining parts of Alaska. Here we find the Haida on Queen Charlotte Islands, the Tlingit in southern Alaska, and the Tsimshian on the coast of northern British Columbia. p. 97

While the first two have a type of language somewhat similar, in morphological characteristics, to the Athapascan, the Tsimshian is quite different. The first two have no reduplication, while Tsimshian abounds in reduplication. The first two have an elaborate verbal system, while the Tsimshian has a very simple method of verb composition. p. 97

The results of the expedition in regard to probable migrations in the Arctic are even more remarkable, and have an important bearing upon the question of the relationship between the tribes of Siberia and those of America. p. 97

This feature is so striking that Mr. Bogoras and Mr. Jochelson have independently reached the conclusion that a close affiliation exists between eastern Siberian folk-lore and that of southern Alaska and British Columbia. Mr. Jochelson finds that the Koryak have many incidents in their tales in common with the Old World and with the North American Indians, and quite a number which are common to the Koryak, the Eskimo and the Indians, but none that belong to the Koryak and to the Eskimo alone. p. 98

This clew once given, we investigated the cultural similarities in this whole area, and found ample evidence that there must have been, at an early period, an intimate relationship between the Indian tribes of the Pacific coast and the peoples of eastern Siberia. p. 98

It seems, therefore, that the expedition has established, on the other hand, a break between the East Siberian tribes and the Eskimo: and, on the other hand, a relationship between the East Siberian tribes and the coast Indians. The investigations of Messrs. Jochelson and Bogoras have also resulted in clearing up the relationship of the Northeast Siberian tribes to the adjoining Asiatics, particularly to the Tungus and Yakut. There is a fundamental break between the types of culture of these Asiatic tribes and of the East Siberian tribes; and comparisons of type, language and culture make it at once evident that the Northeast Siberian people are much more closely akin to the Americans than to other Asiatics.

The data collected by the expedition thus establish the fact that the Chukchee, Koryak, Kamchadal and Yukaghir must be classed with the American race rather than with the Asiatic race. p. 99

Future researchers may somewhat modify our views as to the lines of migrations here discussed, particularly, it seems possible that a more thorough investigation of the Alaskan Eskimo may correct our present conclusions as to the role that this tribe played in communicating Asiatic culture to America, and American culture to Asia, but it may be expected that the question which the expedition tried to solve will be modified by these researchers only in detail. The main fact of the existence of a close relation between the aborigines of Siberia and of America seems to be well established. p. 100

Alvah’s comment: Few researchers cite this work and/or the conclusions made of a back-migration following the end of the last Glacial. Boas’s “Eskimo Wedge theory” encompasses two separate migrations; the Eastern Siberian Populations then the ancestors of the Eskimo. Both of these groups were identified by Boas as coming from North America. Thus, according to Boas, populations often identified as the ancestors of Native Americans, could actually be refluxes of aboriginal Amerindians into the Old World. Since this paper is rarely cited I thought Mother Tongue should at least qualify its existence!

Harkin, M. Past Presence: Conceptions of History in Northwest Coast Studies. Arctic Anthropology (1996), Vol. 33, No. 2, pp. 1-15.

The question of history, and even more, of temporality, is central to the way anthropologists view their “others,” and hence the image that is constructed of them. Johannes Fabian 91983), in his critique of anthropological theory and practice, describes the central issue as a “denial of coevalness.” That is, anthropologists (whose opinions are influential in shaping those of other members of their societies) have depicted the “other” in such a way that it is impossible to imagine that he inhabits the same world as we “moderns.” These tribal people dwell in historyless worlds that are “cold” in the Levi-Straussian sense. p. 1

I do not believe it is correct to view anthropology as merely reactive to changes happening in the larger world. Rather, anthropology has changed as well due to its own internal institutional and intellectual dynamics. These changes have often themselves had an important effect upon the larger world. Not only the popularizers, such as Margaret Mead and Ruth Benedict, but the systematizers, such as Claude Levi-Strauss and Leslie White, the originators, such as Franz Boas and E.E. Evans-Pritchard, and the auteurs, such as Clifford Geertz and Bronislaw Malinowski, have had a lasting influence on the sensibilities of the educated middle class in North America and western Europe. That is why periodic reexaminations of our professional past are so important. p. 2

But are these phases paradigms? Can we even speak of paradigms in the human sciences? In anthropology at least there have always been multiple voices, multiple churches of orthodoxy. The closest we can come to a paradigm in the Kuhnian sense is probably the central position of Boasian method and theory between 1900 and 1930. (This is the only phase for which I have used the term “paradigm.”) This is especially clear in Boas’ home field of the Northwest Coast. While Boasians were jousting with their evolutionary-minded British cousins. p. 10

Ethnohistory, in the sense it has developed on the Northwest Coast and elsewhere in recent years, is very much a product of this world. It has numerous advantages, both ethical and theoretical, over previous styles in Northwest Coast research. It highlights, not ignores, the unfair and often barbarous treatment First Nations received at the hands of people of European descent and their institutions, which has occurred in the recent past, and even up to the present day. It views the “native” as an agent, and sees historical processes as dialogic, and not merely local reactions to universal processes (as both acculturation and World Systems theory have it). At the same time, its emphasis on the specificity of culture makes it difficult to view indigenous people as merely bourgeoisie in cedar bark dress (Sahlins 1995:145-189). Finally, it engages current political realities in a way that previous styles of ethnography never could. Legal claims to territory and resources may be strengthened by ethnohistorical research: certainly a sense of historical identity and connectedness with the past may be. It seems that, finally, anthropologists have hit upon the theme that aboriginal people are truly interested in, and which provides a great deal of common ground between the two camps. p. 10

Alvah’s comment: Should we examine the Native American contention that they have always been here?As Harkin staes “That is why periodic reexaminations of our professional past are so important (p. 2).” Back migration was one of Franz Boas most powerfull observations yet it seems unherd of in todays assesments of gentic linkage between Siberians and Native Americans. Harkin asserts; “In anthropology at least there have always been multiple voices, multiple churches of orthodoxy. The closest we can come to a paradigm in the Kuhnian sense is probably the central position of Boasian method and theory between 1900 and 1930. (This is the only phase for which I have used the term “paradigm.”) This is especially clear in Boas’ home field of the Northwest Coast. While Boasians were jousting with their evolutionary-minded British cousins (p. 10).”

Introductory remarks by Fewkes, J.W., President of the American Anthropological Association. The Problems of the Unity or Plurality and the Probable Place of origin of the American Aborigines. American Anthropologist (January-March, 1912), Vol. 14, No. 1, pp. 1-59.

At what epoch man came to our continent from a former home; how he made his way hither; and his history since he came, are questions that possess greater and greater attraction as the science of man becomes broader and deeper. While the majority of anthropologists hold that man’s original home was in Eurasia, there are those who advance reasons which in their judgment are equally adequate to prove that he was autochthonous in America, whence he spread to the Old World. Some students have held that America was peopled from the Old World because conditions of life were more complex on that continent than in the New, and because the simians most closely allied anatomically to man are indigenous to the Eastern Hemisphere. As none of the higher apes occur in America, it is reasoned that man, who is regarded as related to these animals, could not have been evolved in America. If we accept the theory that man originated in the Old World, it is evident that his colonization of America is a question of mode of migration, which resolves itself into a geographical or a geological one. p. 2

It can readily be seen that the question becomes a paleontological one, and so far as the determination of the age of the strata in which the anthropologist finds human remains is concerned, a purely geological problem. Unless we are prepared to accept an autochthonous origin of man or his evolution from higher animals in America, the means of primitive migration available, and the conditions of culture implied by a sea voyage, must not be overlooked. It is evident that the situation of islands, the configuration of land, and changes in its contour, are directly connected with all theories of the peopling of America. p. 2

Holmes, W.H. Bearing of Archeological Evidence on the Place of Origin and on the Question of the Unity or Plurality of the American Race.

With regard to this question, the consensus of opinion among students of the subject favors the view that the Old World gave birth to the human kind. Traces of human occupancy are found in the Old World associated with geological formations that may be safely assigned to the close of the Tertiary period, and it is incumbent on those who hold to the theory of American origin to establish occupancy of the New World. Two regions only in America have furnished testimony worthy of serious consideration in this respect–California and Argentina. The testimony in both of these cases is striking and picturesque, giving American man a place in the far Eocene, and is supported with much enthusiasm by a few students who are ready to stake their scientific reputations on the outcome. Recent investigations relating to North American as well as South American early man show that the testimony, if it is to stand, must have much additional support.

In view of these conditions, the theory of an autochthonous origin of the American race may be set aside, and the problem of the arrival in the New World of racial elements originating in the Old World need alone receive consideration. pp. 30-31

Fletcher, A.C. Some Ethnological Aspects of the Problem.

The various kinship groups composing a tribe are apt to be so combined as to express a recognition of the apparently dual natural forces, represented by Day and Night, Summer and Winter, Sky and Earth. This duality concept sometimes takes on an anthropomorphic form and the forces are regarded as male and female, or, they are reflected in social conditions, and represented as War and Peace. The two parts always stand for dissimilar but complementary forces or powers.

Not only in the tribal organization does this duality concept appear, but it is to be found reflected in many of the religious ceremonials of the people. It is to the latter that one must turn for the more direct expression of “religious ideas.” It may safely be stated that among the American race what may be termed “religious ideas” are fundamental to all ceremonials and upon them is built the tribal organization.

These “religious ideas,” briefly stated, are founded upon the native conception of the cosmos. In this conception man views all things from his own personality and from this standpoint predicates his relationship to animate and inanimate nature.

Conscious within himself of an ability to move and to bring to pass, he regards motion, whether of body or of mind, as a universal ability and as the simplest and most fundamental manifestation of a mysterious, indwelling power that has brought all things into existence and is the cause of all movement; of the winds, the clouds, the storm, the rivers, the growth of vegetable forms, the activities of animals, and the physical and mental life of man. There is no visible thing within which this mysterious power does not dwell and that is not made active or stable by it. To man, this mysterious power is invisible and only knowable indirectly through its manifestations in nature and living forms. Since all things (for nothing to the Indian is strictly inanimate), including man, derive life and motion from this mysterious power, all things are regarded as in a sense, related to each other, because of the mysterious power that pervades and sustains all natural forms. pp. 37-38

Chamberlain, A.F. The Problem from the Standpoint of Linguistics.

It may be said here that the American languages are younger than the American Indians, and that, while the latter may have reached the New World in very remote times via Bering strait, the former show no evidence of either recent or remote Asiatic (still less European) provenance. There is thus absolutely no satisfactory evidence, from a linguistic standpoint, of the ultimate Asiatic derivation of the American aborigines; nor is there any of such a character as to argue seriously against such a view, which seems, on the whole, both reasonable and probable. Certain real relationships between the American Indians and the peoples of northeastern Asia, known as “Paleo-Asiatics,” have, however, been revealed as a result of the extensive investigations of the Jesup North Pacific Expedition, which have been concerned with the somatology, ethnology, mythology, folk-lore, linguistics, etc., of the peoples on both sides of the Pacific, from Columbia river to Bering Strait and from the Amur to the extreme point of northeastern Asia. The monographs containing the scientific results of the Jesup Expedition are still in course of publication. The ones most significant for American-Asiatic relations are those of Sternberg on the tribes of the Amur, Jochelson on the Koryak and the Yukaghir, and Bogoras on the Chukchee and the Siberian Eskimo. The general conclusion to be drawn from the evidence disclosed by the Jesup Expedition is that so-called “Paleo-Asiatic” peoples of northeastern Asia, i.e., the Chukchee, Koryak, Kamchadale, Gilyak, Yukaghir, etc., really belong physically and culturally with the aborigines of northwestern America; and they probably reached the parts of Asia they now inhabit (or once inhabited, for some of them had formerly a larger area of distribution) from America at a time more recent than the original peopling of the New World from Asia by way of Bering strait. Like the modern Asiatic Eskimo, they represent a reflux from America to Asia and not vice versa. In brief, these peoples may be said to be “modified Americans.” It is the opinion of good authorities also that the “Paleo-Asiatic” peoples belong linguistically with the American Indians rather than with the other tribes and stocks of northern or southern Asia. Here we have, then, the only real relationship of a linguistic character that has ever been convincingly argued between tongues of the New World and tongues of the Old. The special resemblances of the Gilyak with the American Indian languages, from a morphological point of view, has been treated by Sternberg, in a paper read before the Congres International des Americanistes at Stuttgart in 1904. In his sketch of the grammar of the Yukaghir, Jochelson points out a number of respects in which that language also resembles the American Indian rather than the Ural-Altaic tongues of the Asiatic continent. And finally, Dr. Franz Boas, in his article on “Ethnological Problems in Canada,” makes this statement: “A consideration of the distribution, and the characteristics of languages and human types in America and Asia, have led me to formulate the theory that the so-called Paleo-Asiatic tribes of Siberia must be considered as an offshoot of the American race, which may have migrated back to the Old World after the retreat of the Arctic glaciers.” p. 56

Dixon, R.B. Mythology.

In its relations to the mythologies of other areas, the most important associations are to be found with northeastern Asia. Here the degree of similarity is most striking, the myths of northeastern Asia and of northwestern America forming practically one great group, the members of which are allied not by form alone, but by actual content of the myths themselves. Except for this area, no clear evidence of relationship has been shown.

This Asiatic relationship must not, however, be regarded as furnishing evidence relating to the origin of the American Indian. It indicates a cultural relationship only, and far from pointing to an Asiatic source for the culture even, the bulk of the evidence would favor the theory that the similarity shown in the mythologies is the result of influences passing from America to Asia, and not in the reverse direction. Such cultural influence, moreover, belongs to a stage in culture far above that which must have been possessed by the ancestors of the present Indian at the time when they first came to America and belongs to a period far more recent than that at which the peopling of the American continent must have taken place. p. 59

Alvah’s comment: The preceding concepts helped to one; eliminate the Americas from the search for human origins while the concordance of evidence would seem to qualify the un-incorporated theory of a “back-migration” from the Americas into Siberia at the end of the last Ice Age. Funny how we continue to dismiss, without testing further, the idea of human ancestors in the Americas or, even, the fundamental Boasian contention – the unpublished results of the Jesup Expedition – of “back-migration” by Natives Americans into Siberia after the termination of the Last Glacial.

Was this conclusion, and the subsequent rattling of the British-evolutionists cage, to lead Boas to become primarily a data collector. His later reluctance to feed the fire of anthropological debate may stem from the contempt that surfaced when he first identified back-migration for links between Siberians and Native Americans.

Weil, J. Boasian Anthropology and Identity Politics. Current Anthropology (1998), Vol. 39, No. 3, pp. 391-394.

Each new generation can benefit from a fresh look at the oft-cited passage from Ruth Benedict’s obituary of Boas; reiterated in George Stocking’s editorial introduction: “he found anthropology a collection of wild guesses and a happy hunting ground for the romantic lover of primitive things; he left it a discipline in which theories could be tested and in which he had delimited possibilities from impossibilities” (pp.3-4). p. 391

NORTH AMERICA

Hall, D.A. Though Science Sometimes Takes Time, The Consequences Can Be Spectacular. Mammoth Trumpet (1997), Vol. 12, No. 2, pp. 1, 14-17.

These two early Nevada men looked somewhat different from most of the people who are known to have inhabited the area about 5,000 years later. Possibly they represent a population that reached North America before other ancestors of today’s Native Americans. Analysis of cranial measurements of skeletons that date to around 9,000 years ago or earlier indicates those people had different morphologies and may have had different roots than later Americans. Forensic anthropologists, expert at determining the physical characteristics of crime and accident victims, say these most-ancient Americans had certain generalized features they see in contemporary Caucasian populations. p. 15

Alvah’s comment: Since the European mtDNA markers are found in northern North Americans with little, if any, in South American Indians, then the idea that the First Americans were displaced by later Asian migrants must explain why the European mtDNAs (X Type women lineages) survived only in northern North American populations and/or why, if Europeans were FIRST, European mtDNAs are not represented in South American Populations? The obvious answer is that Europeans were more recent migrants to the Americas. Encounters, at the end of the last Ice Age, between Europeans with Paleolithic technologies, and pre-existing pre-Clovis populations not only fits the genetic data better but, moreover, suggests that intermarriage between these once isolated groups, is an indicator of peaceful assimilation.

Plumet, P. and Lebel, S. Dorset Tip Fluting: A Second “American” Invention. Arctic Anthropology (1997), Vol. 34, No. 2, pp. 132-162.

Basal fluting of Clovis and Folsom Paleo-Indian points is usually considered as the earliest technical “invention” made by an American population, some 12,000 years ago. The purpose of this paper is to introduce, describe, and analyze another prehistoric American invention–tip fluting of points–which was characteristic of the Early and especially the Middle Dorset cultures in the Late Paleo-Eskimo period (2500-1250 BP). During this period the non-tip-fluted points tended to be unifacial, whereas bifacial points dominated during the Late Dorset (1250-650 BP). This very particular technique has not been observed in any other prehistoric culture in the New or Old World. Only some small North African Neolithic arrow points present an apparently similar feature, but they are much smaller at the very end (Fig. 1a). p. 132

Workman, W.B. and McCartney, A.P. Coast to Coast: Prehistoric Maritime Cultures in the North Pacific. Arctic Anthropology (1998), Vol. 35, No. 1, pp. 361-370.

Maritime adaptations are earlier in the ice-free North Pacific than farther north, with independent centers of development in Asia and northwest North America. The available evidence from the North Pacific rim suggests that maritime hunting and fishing were Holocene developments that arose independently of any earlier coastal adaptations during the initial peopling of the Americas. p. 361

Origins and Antiquity of Maritime Culture in the North Pacific

It seems clear that exploitation of marine resources was significantly earlier in more southerly, ice-free seas, both in Asia and North America, than it was farther north. p. 367

The mid-Holocene Hokkaido Jomon people should probably be admitted to the roster of maritime cultures, although farther south full-fledged commitment to maritime subsistence was deflected in part by the richness and diversity of the terrestrial resource base, especially plant food. This situation has parallels on the central and southern Northwest Coast in North America. p. 367

In North America, sea-oriented peoples occupied the Kodiak Archipelago by 6000 years ago (Hausler-Knecht 1993). It seems fully possible that people with a subsistence based on maritime resources had made their way into the eastern Aleutians by or before 8000 years ago. Dated human occupations approaching the Pleistocene/Holocene boundary beyond 10,000 BP are documented for southeastern Alaska and the Queen Charlotte Islands on the Northwest Coast. p. 367

Geographic realties strongly suggest that the early hearths of maritime culture in northeast Asia and northwestern North America developed independently of each other. p. 368

We see nothing in the evidence provided in this volume to make us alter a previously expressed judgment (Workman 1989) that maritime adaptations are mainly a Holocene phenomenon, one of many expensive economic strategies adopted by the ancestors to survive and prosper in a somewhat resource-depleted post-Pleistocene world. p. 368

Stone, A.C., and Stoneking, M. mtDNA Analysis of a Prehistoric Oneota Population: Implications for the Peopling of the New World. Am. J. Hum. Genet. (1998), 62:1153-1170.

Sequence data indicate a correspondence between each marker and particular hypervariable region I (HVI) mutations (Ginther et al. 1993; Horai et al. 1993; Bailliet et al. 1994; present study). Bailliet et al. (1994) suggested a fifth cluster of lineages that has a unique HVI mutation at nucleotide 16278 and does not possess any of the characteristic markers. p. 1153

A total of 328 bp (nucleotides 16056-16383) of the HVI common to all sequences were used for these analyses. Using the quartet-puzzling method to relate Native American and Mongolian sequences with maximum likelihood resulted in a poorly resolved tree. Of 14,463,090 quartets, 49.3% were unresolved, which indicates that these data are not good for this type of analysis. The g rate heterogeneity parameter a was estimated from the data, giving a = .30. p. 1159

Typically, group D lineages are rather dispersed, with very low bootstrap support. This results from the characteristic group D mtDNA HVI mutations that include those at nucleotide 16223 (also found in group A and C lineages) and at nucleotides 16325 and 16362, which fall into the highly variable class of sites (Hasegawa et al. 1993) found in many other lineage clusters. The Yanomami haplogroups X6 and X7, identified by Easton et al. (1996) as new, independent Native American haplogroups, are generally interspersed among the group D sequences, often sharing the same branch with group D sequences. p. 1160

When only two regions, North America and Haida, were examined, the variation among regions (9.96%) was not significant (P = .21), which indicates that mtDNA sequences from the Haida, classified as Na-Dene speakers by Greenberg (1987), are not significantly different from those found in North American Amerind speakers. p. 1163

Thus, according to these data, Mongolians and Native Americans look like members of the same population that began an expansion ~95,000 years before the present (B.P.) (48,000 years under the faster rate). Similar results were obtained when the Mongolian data were subdivided into Dariganga and Khalkha cultural groups and compared to the Norris Farms Oneota. p. 1163

The Norris Farms Oneota possessed a high percentage of single lineages (73.9%) compared to most modern populations. However, this could also reflect Oneota population history. Additional precontact populations should be examined to determine whether a high number of rare lineages is a general feature. p. 1164

Instead, lineage 24 groups with Mongolian sequences that belong to Asian haplogroup F in Kolman et al. (1996). Moreover, as noted by Bailliet et al. (1994) and Forster et al. (1996), Nuu-Chah-Nulth lineages 1-4 probably do not belong to one of the four primary Native American haplogroups. In this research, they cluster with Norris Farms lineage 24 in phylogenetic trees of Native American lineages and with group F Mongolian lineages in phylogenetic trees of Native American and Mongolian lineages (fig. 2). p. 1166

Thus, as noted by Forster et al. (1996), the HaeIII site should not be used alone to define any new haplogroup, and it may be questionable to assume that the site is informative about the number of founding lineages. As a result, the conclusion that X6 and X7 represent new founding lineages does not seem warranted, and it seems more likely that they are derived from C and D lineages. p. 1166

The pairwise comparison of sequences from Native Americans and Mongolians sheds some light on the debate over the number and diversity of migrant populations. The data indicate that Mongolian and Native American populations, including the Haida, have not been isolated from one another for a sufficiently long period of time to generate the mutations needed to result in a leading intermatch distribution. These intermatch distributions resemble the distribution generated when two populations diverge and then expand at approximately the same time (Harpending et al. 1993). p. 1167

The AMOVA analysis between the Haida and other North American populations also does not indicate that the Haida are significantly different from other Native Americans. These data thus suggest that the ancestors of the Haida were included in the initial colonization of the Americas and not the product of a later separate migration from Asia. p. 1167

These Native American populations seem to be exceptions to this, since Chibchan populations are agriculturists and the Haida share food procurement strategies as well as geographic location with the Nuu-Chah-Nulth, who have a much smoother mismatch distribution and a high amount of sequence diversity. p. 1167

In their analysis of the Nuu-Chah-Nulth mtDNA data, Ward et al. (1991) suggested that the sequence differences within lineage clusters coalesce ~8,000-15,000 years B.P. and that many of these differences occurred within Amerindian populations. p. 1167

The mtDNA evidence does not support the three-wave hypothesis of migration into the New World. Native American mtDNA lineages are a subset of Asian lineages, and these lineages are typically rare in Asian populations. Consequently, one would not expect to see these same lineages introduced repeatedly into the Americas.

Alvah’s Comment: If Types A-D being were “derived Lineages”, resulting from pre-Clovis Amerindian isolation during the Wisconsin Glaciation, then Back-migration into Siberia could help explain similarities between the Populations of Northeast Asia that most anthropologists automatically identify as “the ancestors of the first Americans.” Boas concluded that this assumption is flawed while his identification of an alternative explanation for the relationship between Northeast Asians and Native Americans has been lost in the 100 year old shuffle of Paradigms lost.

SOUTH AMERICA

Demarchi, D.A., and Macrellino, A.J. Dermatoglyphic Relationships among South Amerindian Populations. Human Biology (1998), v. 70, no. 3, pp. 579-596.

O’Rourke and Suarez (1985) observed that the synthetic gene frequency maps for South America do not give any evidence of migration or population movement. Instead, they seem to be irregular, derived from isolated populations drifting independently. The fact that blood genetic traits respond readily to microevolutionary processes could be one of the probable causes of such discordances (Froehlich and Giles 1981b).

Of special interest is the close resemblance found between the Andean and the tropical forest groups. This relationship has been described in several studies from different sets of data. Based on morphometrics and material culture, Vellard (1981) proposed that the Quechua’s origins may be found in ancient Amazonian populations who displaced the earlier inhabitants of the Andes. Ruffie and colleagues of the Centre d’Hemotypologie du Toulouse observed remarkable genetic resemblances between the Aymara and Quechua and aboriginals from the Amazonian forest, near Guiana (Ruffie and Larrouy 1966; Arnaud et al. 1981). Craniometric and blood genetic studies carried out by Rothhammer and Silva (1989, 1992) also suggest that the origin of Andean populations is probably Central Amazonia. Hoff et al. (1981) also found a close affinity between Andean and Amazonian populations in their dermatoglyphic traits. Based on their own results and those reported by Blaco and Chakraborty (1975) (who worked with 10 serum polymorphic systems), suggested a more recent common origin or substantial gene flow between the populations. Our results are consistent with this conclusion. p. 592

Interpreted in terms of a branching model, our results suggest an earlier separation of the paleo-American-speaking tribes from the original colonizer population of South America and a relatively recent separation of the tropical forest and Andean populations. Although this model overlooks the effect of genetic drift and gene flow on genetic distances (Relethford and Harpending 1994), the pattern of relationship found among the South American tribes seems to be related to shared ancestry rather than to gene flow between geographically proximate populations.

Another possibility is that more than one migration took place into South America. Although several studies based on mtDNA founding haplotypes suggest a single wave of migration into South America (Merriwether et al. 1995), morphological evidence from fossil remains (Neves and Pucciarelli 1991; Munford et al. 1995) and morphological and mtDNA analyses from dental remains carried out on recent Fueguian-Patagonian samples (Lahr 1995; Fox 1996) indicate that the biological diversity in South America might be the result of at least two migration waves. The highly significant separation between the paleo-Americans and the Andean and tropical forest cluster found in this study supports this hypothesis. p. 593

Ribeiro-Dos-Santos, A.K.C., Santos, S.E.B., Machado, A.L., Guapindaia, V. and Zago, M.A. Heterogeneity of Mitochondrial DNA Haplotypes in Pre-Columbian Natives of the Amazon Region. American Journal of Physical Anthropology (1996), 101:29-37.

Thus, although only haplotypes shared by Asian populations were detected, a wide haplotype variability was observed. If our sample is representative of Pre-Columbian South America, the percentage of haplotypes (39%) not belonging to the four haplogroups described by Horai is much greater than in contemporary indigenous populations. This permits us to suggest that, in addition to the postulated bottleneck effect during the migration from Asia to the Americas, the depopulation effect started by European colonization in the 16th century contributed to the reduction of genetic variability of Amerindians. p. 29

There is no agreement about data interpretation, and even the possibility of a restricted number of ancestral lineages has been questioned. p. 30

The reduced number of mitochondrial lineages detected among contemporary Amerindians may be the product of a bottleneck effect during migration from Asia to the Americas (Wallace and Torroni, 1992), or the consequence of the drastic reduction in the number of individuals after contact with Europeans (Ubelaker, 1992; Cunha, 1992), or both. In any case, the idea of a reduced number of founding lineages is not consensual (Ward et al., 1991; Horai et al., 1993; Balliet et al., 1994). p. 30

Despite the fact that this was a relatively small sample, a wide haplotype variability was demonstrable: in addition to the four haplogroups described by Horai et al. (1993) corresponding to 61% of the sample, there were eight samples that did not belong to any of these haplogroups, which we have tentatively assembled into groups V and VI. p. 35

The two mutations are shared by different ethnic groups, indicating that they precede by a long time the entry of the first inhabitants into the Americas. The (C Æ T) transition in nt 16,233 is detected at low frequency among Blacks, Caucasians, and Mongoloids of the Asia-I group, and at high frequency among Mongoloids of the Asia-II group (Horai and Hayasaka, 1990). p. 35

If our sample is representative of Pre-Columbian America, the proportion of haplotypes not belonging to the four haplogroups of Horai et al. (1993) is much greater than in contemporary indigenous populations. This finding, however, is also supported by our results obtained in contemporary Amerindian populations from the Amazon, showing that 7% of the haplotypes obtained concomitantly by RFLP and sequencing lack one of the characteristic markers of the four haplogroups (S.E.B. Santos, A.K.C. Ribeiro-dos-Santos, D. Meyer, and M.A. Zago, unpublished). This permits us to suggest that the reduction in genetic variability observed in present-day Amerindian populations could also be attributed to the depopulation effect that started in the 16th century, which decreased the population size by more than 95% (Dobyns, 1966), in addition to the bottleneck effect during migration from Asia to the Americas, as proposed earlier. p. 36

Alvah’s comment: If pre-Clovis populations inhabited the Americas behind the veil of Glacial barriers, and if migration(s) went both into and back out of the Americas at the end of the Last Ice Age, then the effects of encounters between once isolated populations must be re-assessed. Could the evidence of Type X – E mtDNAs in Northern Amerindians indicate admixture from Europe? Would this encounter have been a vector to later genetic variability?

LANGUAGE

Ganger, J., and Stromswold, K. Innateness, Evolution, and Genetics of Language. Human Biology (1997), 70: 2, pp. 199-213.

Given that the rules of syntax are too complex for a general-purpose learner to deduce without training and that children do not require training, children cannot be general-purpose learners when it comes to language. They must come equipped with special-purpose learning algorithms that allow them to learn language in a rapid and error-free manner.

Observational and experimental studies provide additional evidence for the innateness of language. p. 200

The order in which children acquire grammatical morphemes of English is also relatively uniform across children (Brown 1973; de Villiers and de Villiers 1973), as is the order in which children acquire complex constructions such as questions, negatives, datives, and passives (Stromswold 1988, 1989, 1990, 1995; Snyder and Stromswold 1997). As we will see in the final section of this paper, although some children are faster than other children at acquiring language, the fact that most children acquire the components of language is essentially the same order suggest that language development is largely the result of innate processes. p. 201

For example, the creolized language of second-generation pidgin speakers includes embedded and relative clauses, aspectual distinctions, and consistent word order, despite the absence of such features in the input language (Bickerton 1981). Thus children who are given a pidgin as their language input go beyond their input and “invent” a language that is more complex and includes the grammatical necessities of natural language. Studies of creolization thus provide compelling evidence that human children are programmed to develop a specific kind of language even with minimal input. p. 201

Evolution of Language

In evaluating evolutionary theories of language, it is useful to think of them as divided along two dimensions. The first major dividing line is the means of evolution. At one extreme is adaptation, according to which language evolved by Darwinian natural selection for some purpose, such as communication. Opposing adaptation is nonadaptation, which can be realized as exaptation (the appropriation of previously developed structures for new functions), serendipity (the opportune birth of a structure or function as a by-product of other structures), or various other possibilities. p. 202

Several researchers have argued that syntax serves as a link between mental representation and speech or motor control and that syntactic properties are due to trade-offs between these functions. The linguist Frederick Newmeyer provides a representative example of this type of theory. According to Newmeyer (1991), our ancestors already had a system of conceptual representation and a system of vocalization in place when selection occurred for syntax (a system linking the two). thus syntax was not selected for directly because of its communicative and representational functions but because it served as a link between preexisting systems. p. 204

Lieberman (1984) pointed out that the physiological and anatomical adaptations in jaw shape and the tongue and larynx placement required for speech are disadvantageous for breathing and swallowing. He argued persuasively that such a detrimental situation could not have evolved unless it caused improvements in syntax or some other aspect of language. Therefore speech and syntax must have evolved in concert, not in succession. p. 205

Bickerton (1990) made specific claims about when and how this representational ability evolved. He argued that the jump from proto-language to syntax was made all at once in one species. According to Bickerton, the diversity of tools and artifacts one might expect from a linguistic society was not present in pre-sapiens species, so ours must have been the first to use language. p. 205

A second problem with Bickerton’s theory is that, just because children make a leap in their second year of life from a proto-language to full-fledged syntax, this does not imply the same leap could have been made in a single mutation. As we saw earlier, syntax is not much use without highly developed systems of communication and representation. Despite what is certainly a narrowly constrained Bauplane of the human brain, syntax probably did not develop all at once without some form of these other abilities in place, nor is it likely that these other abilities developed without syntax. Given that these abilities must have coevolved, Bickerton’s jump is more likely to be an extended period of coadaptation, as Lieberman proposed. p. 206

The physiological and functional proximity of language to tool use may account for how language evolved, but not why. To answer this second question, Greenfeild proposed that language evolved as a way to pass on knowledge of tools to others. If an individual can benefit from the inventions of previous generations, he does not have to reinvent the wheel, so to speak, with each problem. p. 206

To sum up, it is difficult to advance the study of evolution of language if we do not know the purpose for which language was adapted. Language may have been adapted for a specific communicative purpose, such as tool use or hunting, or for communication in general. It may have been adapted for better representation of the world, which in turn allowed for more abstract thought and reasoning–or perhaps just for better hunting. But, as Chomsky warns, language may merely be a spandrel of the brain’s complexity and hence may not have been adapted at all. Researchers must realize that when they propose that language was adapted for a particular function, no matter how innocent and intuitively obvious that purpose seems (e.g., communication), is not uncontentious. Researchers need to put more effort into justifying the function of language that they advocate. Such argumentation must be an integral part of a good theory. pp. 207-208.

Although all adults eventually arrive at essentially the same basic level of linguistic competence in their native language, the rate at which they acquire language varies. As discussed earlier, one of the most striking qualities of language acquisition is its robustness and uniformity. p. 209

Alvah’s comment: How long language has been used is directly related to how long Homo sapiens have been sapient. Old World forms of Homo including erectus may have expressed some ideas through language but their physical anatomy, specifically the area of the larynx, made it difficult to articulate certain sounds. Language, and the copacity to express ideas through it offer another exaple seperateing sapiens from erectus.

GENETICS

Bandelt, H., and Forster, P. The Myth of Bumpy Hunter-Gatherer Mismatch Distributions. Am. J. Hum. Genet. (1997), 61:980-983.

This cluster, described by Bandelt et al. (1995), includes the major African 9-bp deletion subcluster (Soodyall et al. 1996) and is widespread in Africa. It is even found as single outliers in Sardinia, the Middle East (Di Rienzo and Wilson 1991), and Turkey (Calafell et al. 1996). According to Horai and Hayasaka (1990) as well as Tamura and Nei (1993), this cluster constitutes the deepest rooting lineage of their mtDNA trees, and in other analyses it would also branch off very deeply. Therefore, all these populations, including ≥9 of the 13 populations used by Watson et al. (1996), such as the Senegalese Mandenka, coalesce close to mtEve. The coalescence time of 9,000-21,000 years for the Mandenka and thus for mtEve, as calculated by Watson et al. (1996) in their table 3, compares unfavorably with current estimates of 140,000-160,000 years for mtEve (Horai et al. 1995; Tamura and Nei 1993). The other populations in their table 3 fare little better. p. 981

Recent admixture of a group of very distant lineages (such as the 9-bp cluster) into two or more populations inflates genetic distances, and a tree analysis of these distances (their fig. 3) can misinterpret this recent admixture as an ancient population split. p. 981

It is interesting to note that a few of these sequences were found in non-Khosian populations, and these sequences presumably represent recent admixture. The reduced median network (fig. 2) for this data reveals that the !Kung lineages are inseparable by all but six private mutations from other southern African populations. In particular, 8 of 18 Nama (Khoi) lineages are interspersed in the !Kung (San) cluster. Even the outlier sequence in the !Kung (outside the network) is close to other Khoisan sequences: it differs from a Sekele sequence at only one position. The !Kungh hence seem to represent only a splinter of a former widespread Khoisan population, and their differentiation from other Khoisan populations may have occurred quite recently relative to the !Kung coalescence time. p. 982

Alvah’s comment: Does this paper suggests that admixture could be the cause for the widespread distribution of the 9bp deletion in Africa? Given that the highest frequencies of the 9bp marker in Africa is in Madagascar, a recently populated adjacent-region of Africa, the origins of the Phoenicians of the Mediterranean could also be, possibly, traced to southeast Asia. Outliers of this marker in Europe; “It is even found as single outliers in Sardinia, the Middle East (Di Rienzo and Wilson 1991), and Turkey (Calafell et al. 1996).” could mimic the evidence in Africa, as that resulting from recent admixture.

Macaulay, V.A., Richards, M.B., Forster, P., Bendall, K.E., Watson, E., Sykes, B., and Bandelt, H. mtDNA Mutation Rates–No Need to Panic. Am. J. Hum. Genet. (1997), 61:983-986.

It has been argued (Paabo 1996; von Haeseler et al. 1996) that fast sites such as these will predominate among recent coalescences and be underestimated in more ancient ones, so that the faster rate (which they call the “pedigree” rate) may be more appropriate to a timescale of hundreds or thousands of years, whereas the slower rate (which they call the “phylogenetic” rate) may be suitable for a timescale of hundreds of thousand or millions of years. With respect to the phyolgenetic rate, a timescale of millions of years is unrealistic, since many positions in the control region would have been saturated with transitions over this timescale–which is the reason why transversional, rather than transitional, divergence is used to estimate the phylogenetic rate (Ward et al. 1991). A timescale of roughly the past 150,000 years would seem to be reasonable for the application of this rate, since this was the range in which it was calibrated (by use of the transition-transversion ratio in modern human populations). p. 94

In order to test empirically whether the pedigree rate is more appropriate at evolutionarily recent time depths, we can compare the performance of the pedigree rate against the conventional phylogenetic rate in the case of the settlement of the Cook Islands in central Polynesia. The settlement of Polynesia is a special case of population expansion, since it is very recent (occurring ~1,000-3,000 years ago) and well-dated archaeologically. Furthermore, it is characterized by the spread of a particular mtDNA lineage group defined by a 9-bp deletion and a distinctive control-region-sequence motif. This lineage group must have arisen prior to the settlement of Polynesia, since it is ubiquitous throughout the region, and indeed phylogeographic analysis of lineages from Southeast Asia confirm this (Melton et al. 1995; Redd et al. 1995; Sykes et al. 1995). Applying the conventional mutation rate to data from the Cook Islands (Sykes et al. 1995) yields a coalescence time of 1,100 ± 800 years ago–in agreement with the archaeological dates of 900-1,300 years ago for the first settlements (Bellwood 1978). Applying Howell et al.’s pedigree rates to the same data yields a coalescence time <150 years ago. Such a date could be explained only by very recent population bottlenecks, which would be very difficult to reconcile with the observed uniformity of lineages across Polynesia. This observation strongly suggests that the phylogenetic rate is appropriate to vents at least as recent as 1,000 years ago. p. 984-985

Howell, N., and Mackey, D. Reply to Macauley et al. Am. J. Hum. Genet. (1997), 61:986-990.

However, there is no gold-standard clock for the rate of mtDNA divergence, particularly within the D-loop. Standard phylogenetic estimates of the rate of human mtDNA divergence vary widely, and they are associated with high degrees of statistical uncertainty (e.g., see Adachi and Hasegawa 1996; Howell et al. 1996: Parsons et al. 1997), in part because of the different models of mtDNA evolution that have been used by different investigators. p. 987

Furthermore, Tajima (1993, table 7) showed that the molecular-clock hypothesis was not supported among all subsets of hominoid mtDNA sequences that were analyzed with his statistical tests. p. 987

Overall, these results do not support a simple explanation for the high pedigree divergence rate in which HVR2 hypermutational hot spots “swamp out” a slower overall rate of D-loop divergence. On the other hand, failure to correct for site heterogeneity of mtDNA mutation rates confounds phylogenetic analysis and produces serious biases in estimates of the overall mutation rate, the time of the last common ancestor, the transition-transversion ratio, population genetic parameters, and Tajima’s D statistic for neutrality (e.g., see Hasegawa et al. 1993; Wakeley 1993; Bertorelle and Slatkin 1995; Aris-Brosou and Excoffier 1996; Yang 1996; Wakeley and Hey 1997). p. 987

Those observations support a high pedigree divergence rate. Overall, one could conclude that the results of Bendall et al. (1996) support our suggestion (Howell et al. 1996) that it is the phylogenetic-divergence-rate estimates that are biased, possibly because they fail to adequately incorporate the effects of site variability in mutation rates. p. 988

Furthermore, it is not yet clear at what level selection acts (replication, segregation, or phenotypic expression) or to what extent random drift predominates over selection, particularly during oogenesis (e.g., see Jenuth et al. 1996).

We suggested that the high pedigree D-loop divergence rate, relative to phylogenetic rates, may reflect the failure of a substantial proportion of new D-loop mutations to become fixed at the population level (Howell et al. 1996). Although definitive data are not available, it seems safe to posit that the fixation probability is <1 (unless one makes the unlikely assumption that all new mutations will become fixed). It then follows that the pedigree divergence rate must exceed the phylogenetic rate, because of the different time scales (see the further discussion below). p. 988

One must be cautious, even skeptical, pending further analysis, but selection may explain the observation, by Parsons et al. (1997), that some newly arisen D-loop mutations occur at sites with below-average levels of polymorphism within the population. p. 989

Pedigree analysis may be more heavily dominated by random drift, whereas phylogenetic analyses may be more influenced by selection, because of the greater time spans inherent to phylogenetic analysis. p. 989

As Macaulay et al. (1997) mention, one expects that there should be a decline in divergence rates as the time depth increases, presumably as a failure of newly arisen mutations to become fixed, but there is not yet sufficient information for us to expect the monotonic decline that they suggest. It is premature to make, as they do, these comparisons between phylogenetic analyses and pedigree studies. p. 989

Bower, B. DNA’s Evolutonary Dilemma. Science News (1999), Vol. 155:88-90.

Mitochondrial DNA shows a great deal of indivdiaul variability, which as buttressed assertions that it can help to trace the evolutionary history of human females. Researchers have largely believed that mitochondrial DNA changes occur randomly and accumulate at a constant rate in isolated populations, making them suitable for dating ancient population splits.

But mitochondrial DNA may not be so predictable, according to some researchers. Sections of its sequence of nucleotides undergo suprisingly rapid changes, even within one or a few generations, argues Neil Howell of the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston. Mitochondrial DNA alterations may not tick away like hands on a reasonably accurate evolutionary clock, Howell maintains.

Some of these genetic-sequence vairations have spread through populations with a speed suggesting that they somehow aid the survival of their bearers, he adds. If natural selection has reshaped the mitochondrial landscape over relatively short spans of time, it raises serious doubts about the accuracy of estimated ages for evolutionary trees and sizes of ancient populations. p. 89

“Far too often, anthropologyical geneticists draw conclusions about human evolutionary history without testing hypotheses or exploring alternate models,” Mountain remarks. “In some cases, this is because data are insufficient. In other cases, the immediate impression generated by the data blinds us to alternatives.”

Hammer, who remains undecided on how modern humans evolved, suspects that investigators will increasinlgy experiment with statistical formulas for weighing the contributions of natural selection and other factors to DNA diversity. p. 90

Alvah’s comment: In it’s own way population genetics is confounded by similar modes of change as found in Linguistics. Genetic adaptation could be seen to mirror – language isolation; admixture – language borrowing and; genetic affinity – population or language survival. Deciphering the amount of influence each has on the other should help researchers in unmasking new data as it comes in.

Fregeau, C.J., Tan-Siew, W.F., Yap, K.H., Carmody, G.R., Chow, S.T., and Fourney, R.M. Population Genetic Characteristics of the STR Loci D21S11 and FGA in Eight Diverse Human Populations. Human Biology (1998), v. 70, no. 5, pp. 813-844.

A highly polymorphic multiplex short tandem repeat (STR) system composed of D21S11, FGA, and the sex-typing system amelogenin (AMG) has been used to investigate allele frequency distributions in two Canadian Caucasian samples (British Columbia and Alberta), three Canadian aboriginal populations (Coastal Salishans from British Columbia, Ojibwa from northern Ontario, and Cree from Saskatchewan), and three ethnic groups from Singapore (Chinese, Malays, and Asian Indians. p. 813

Results from the 2 X N contingency table exact tests for population differentiation demonstrated that the Canadian samples from two different provinces were not distinguishable from one another at either STR locus and therefore could be combined to form one Caucasian group. Likewise, Chinese and Malays from Singapore did not show significant differences at either STR locus. In contrast, all other examined populations exhibited differences deemed statistically significant. As a complement to our study, we compared D21S11 allele frequency distributions in 21 worldwide populations and FGA allele frequency distributions in 14 populations. Many alleles never previously reported in worldwide populations were identified in Canadian aboriginal and Asian samples from this study. Twenty-four D21S11 and 29 FGA alleles were distinguished in worldwide groups. Interesting similarities in allele frequency distribution patterns across populations suggest that the STR polymorphism at these loci predates the geographic dispersal of ancestral human populations. p. 813-814

Interestingly, the Canadian aboriginal frequency pattern resembled other populations but demonstrated a bias for both small (<262 bases) and large (>290 bases) FGA alleles. p. 826

An overall look at the D21S11 allele frequency distributions revealed striking similarities in the distribution patterns across populations, despite large variations in allele frequencies (see Table 8 and Figure 1A). Two D21S11 alleles exhibited high And similar incidence in all surveyed populations irrespective of their ethnic or geographic origin. Allele 222 was detected with frequencies of 18-29%, and allele 226 had incidences of 15-28% with the highest occurrence in the Cree from Saskatchewan (35%). Interestingly, these alleles were two of the three most common alleles across worldwide samples. This suggests that alleles 222 and 226 have been in existence since before the geographic dispersal of humans and that they represent two ancestral alleles from which all other D21S11 variants have evolved. p. 833

Previous studies have indicated that populations belonging to one major group [European (Caucasian), Asian, Amerindian, African, or Pacific Islander] show a greater degree of similarity in the extent of genetic variation (Deka et al. 1995; Holgersson et al. 1994; Jorde et al. 1997). Our results from the population differentiation test are in agreement with these reports. Populations of European descent showed overall no statistical differences in D21S11 allele distribution (data not shown). Populations of Asian descent (i.e., Chinese and Malays) showed greater similarities to one another than to populations of European descent or any other group examined. Interestingly, for D21S11 Canadian aboriginals were as different from one another as they were from the Caucasians or other groups reviewed for this study. p. 834-835

All groups followed the same distribution pattern, with the exception of the Canadian aboriginals, which showed a few distinct features. The incidence of allele 262 observed for this major group (11-20%) was the highest seen in all populations reported to date. Others showed frequencies of 0.5-7%. Allele 274 was less frequent in Canadian aboriginals (4-10%) than in any other sample (13-34%). Larger variants (≥290 bases) were more abundant in Canadian aboriginals, Africans, and Hispanics than in any other population so far analyzed (Table 9). Conservation of allelic modes together with a universally high degree of polymorphism among the geographically and ethnically dispersed populations suggests that polymorphism at the FGA locus predates the geographic dispersal of present-day human populations. p. 837-838

In addition, Canadian Caucasians did not show any significant differences at either STR locus when compared to Caucasians from around the world. In contrast, aboriginals from three different locations in Canada showed significant differences in D21S11 and FGA allele frequency distributions, although the Ojibwa from northern Ontario and the Cree from Saskatchewan displayed more similarities to one another than to Coastal Salishans from British Columbia. Chinese and Malays from Singapore were similar at both D21S11 and FGA STR loci and showed more similarities in allele patterns to one another than to Asian Indians from Singapore.

The high degree of polymorphism at both the D21S11 and FGA loci was universal, regardless of the geographic locations of worldwide populations, suggesting that the polymorphism probably predates the divergence of human populations.

Both D21S11 and FGA STR systems were easily resolved on a model 373A DNA sequencer. Combined with the sex determination system amelogenin (AMG), both STR systems could be used in confidence in widely differing ethnic groups as a screening DNA typing multiplex system or in combination with other STR multiplexes to increase discrimination for human identity testing. Alternatively, D21S11 and FGA could be used along with other polymorphic STR markers to further investigate microsatellite microvariation in closely related populations. p. 839

Alvah’s comment: This paper (as well as others including Chakrabority and Weiss 1992; Ward et al. 1993, and Johnson et al. 1983) describes ancient genetic connections to the Americas that would seem to point to an inclusion of the Native Americans for Homo sapien origins.

Malaspina, P., Cruciani, F., Ciminelli, B.M., Terrenato, L., Santolamazza, P., Alonso, A., Banyko, J., Brdicka, R., Garcia, O., Gaudiano, C., Guanti, G., Kidd, K.K., Lavinha, J., Avila, M., Mandich, P., Moral, P., Qamar, R., Mehdi, S.Q., Ragusa, A., Stefanescu, G., Caraghin, M., Tyler-Smith, C., Scozzari, R., Novelletto, A. Network Analyses of Y-Chromosomal Types in Europe, Northern Africa, and Western Asia Reveal Specific Patterns of Geographic Distribution. Am. J. Hum. Genet. (1998), 63:847-860.

Markers of the genetic diversity of the human Y chromosome currently are considered to have the potential to provide information on male-specific patterns of migration in the past. The desirable characteristics of markers of this kind are a high level of polymorphism in the population and the lowest possible incidence of recurrent mutations. p. 847

Our results strengthen the idea that the phenetic similarity among haplotypes, represented as a network, is, to a large extent, the result of common descent from one or a few ancestral states and the subsequent molecular-radiation process. p. 848

We used equation (2) of Goldstein et al. (1996) to evaluate the space of possible values of t (the time, in generations, for the coalescence of haplotypes within each network) for a range of mutation rates µ and effective population sizes (Ne) fig. 4). For µ = 5.6 x 10-4 (Weber and Wong 1993), the large (CA)n variance for network 1.1 resulted in an estimate of t > 3,000 generations, or 60,000-75,000 years. The two largest networks with derived characteristics–that is, networks 2.1 and 3.1–both showed much lower values, t = 1,000-3,000 generations. Finally, the three smaller networks–1.2, 1.3 and 1.4–gave estimates of t = ~300, ~200, and ~450 generations, respectively. These latter estimates are fairly insensitive to different values of Ne). p. 855

Emphasis should be put on the caution with which the maps must be interpreted. A specific frequency pattern is the result of both the migration and admixture of people, possibly associated with demic expansions, and of local expansions of types, because of drift and/or founder effects. The aforementioned factors could, in principle, be discriminated against when a large collection of autosomal data is used (Cavalli-Sforza et al. 1994), whereas such discrimination is not always possible in the case of nonrecombining Y-linked markers. Indeed, an enhanced effect of drift has been postulated and demonstrated for this chromosome world-wide (Torroni et al. 1990; Sprudle et al. 1994; Jobling and Tyler-Smith 1995; Scozzari et al. 1997; Underhill et al. 1997). The confinement and high frequency of network 2.1 haplotype 21-19-23-19 in Morocco (see above) suggests a strong drift that is able to affect markedly the shaping of the corresponding map (fig. 1e). p. 856

The map shows a clear southeast-to-northwest gradient all over Europe, a main feature of maps obtained with autosomal, Y-chromosomal, and mtDNA data (Cavalli-Sforza and Minch 1997, fig. 1b-d). The poor coverage of areas east of the Mediterranean gives less support to such a gradient over western Asia, in our map. p. 857

Barbujani et al. (1998) and Richards and Sykes (1998) warned against use of the age of molecules to infer the dating of splitting of the populations that carry them. In our data, too, the events that have led to the attainment of the observed frequencies of networks with derived characteristics may have occurred much more recently than the origin of the different types. p. 857

Our data also reveal the contribution of recent lineages (networks 1.2, 1.3 and 1.4) that emerged from an ancient background. In particular, network 1.2 haplotypes might represent a novel characteristic of chromosomes involved in the neolithic gene flow into mainland Europe from the southeast. p. 857

In fact, it is likely that migrants’ and preexisting populations’ gene pools were not completely differentiated. Such an event leaves space for a wide range of values for the proportion of chromosomes that reached the present frequency by virtue of neolithic (or more recent) phenomena. The main conclusions of the present study can be summarized as follows: (1) there is a low level of homplasy among dinucleotide microsatellite haplotypes; (2) there is high structuring of populations, with regard to Y-chromosomal network frequencies; and (3) networks are optimal markers for population studies addressing the radiation and dispersal processes associated with the preneolithic/neolithic transition. p. 857

Vieland, V.J., and Hodge, S.E. Book Review of Statistical Evidence: A Likelihood Paradigm, by Richard Royall. Am. J. Hum. Genet. (1998), 63:283-289.

Must of current statistical practice is based on frequentist principles–notably, on the Neyman-Pearson paradigm for hypothesis testing or on Fisher’s conception of significance testing. Evidentialism is undoubtedly the least familiar school of statistical thought, both within the field of statistics itself and, certainly, among consumers of the statistical literature. This remains true, at least in part, because journal editors and peer reviewers almost invariably ask that statistical results be reported in familiar frequentist terms. But our predilection for the familiar notwithstanding, evidentialism is, arguably, the only body of statistical theory that is fully consistent with the practice of science.

To justify this extravagant claim, we need to consider the purpose of statistical analysis in scientific contexts. Evidentialism views the purpose of statistical inference as the measurement of the strength of evidence conferred by a given set of data in favor of one hypothesis over another. This may seem a wholly natural objective for scientific data analysis, and we will take it as a given that this is the objective that we are pursuing. But, in fact, much of standard statistical practice is based on a quite different conception of statistical inference–namely, as a set tools for decision making in the face of uncertainty. This latter objective need not in any way involve the concept of evidence. p. 284

We then select the “best” testing procedure, one that minimizes the probability that we will fail to reject the null hypothesis when it is in fact false (the type II error rate) for the selected significance level. p. 284

Similarly, once we have data in hand, we are no longer satisfied with reporting the probability that a certain erroneous outcome might occur when we perform a test of this sort. Rather, we would like to have some way to determine whether we have been misled in this instance. The predetermined significance level of a Neyman-Pearson test does not give us this information. p. 284

But can the P value be made to do double duty, both as the predictive type I-error probability and as a measure of the strength of evidence? What is the relationship between the question of statistical evidence and the frequentist’s interest in error rates? Are these really just two ways of naming the same statistical quantities, or are these fundamentally different kinds of quantities? And, if the P value is not the appropriate measure of the strength of evidence, then what is? Although these questions might seem too philosophical to require the attention of genetics researchers, the methods that we choose for analysis of genetic data ought perhaps to depend on the answers that we give. The evidentialist’s answers begin with the recognition that the familiar frequentist methods cannot be made to satisfy our interest in the measurement of evidence. p. 284

Some statisticians might prefer to talk about testing a “null” hypothesis without reference to an alternative hypothesis. As we have already seen, however, the law of likelihood expressly applies to comparisons between two hypotheses: evidence counts against one hypothesis only insofar as it favors the other. This insistence that any proper measure of evidence must involve two hypotheses rather than one is a cornerstone of evidentialist theory. p. 284-285

The current debate over the relative merits of “parametric” (LOD) versus model-free linkage methods has tended to gloss over this fundamental distinction between the two approaches: the LOD score (defined broadly, as above) is not simply one among the many available test statistics; it may be the only one of them that is suitable to address the question, What is the strength of the evidence for linkage?

Failure to make a clear distinction between frequentist hypothesis testing and evidentialist measurement of evidence has given rise to a body of literature in human genetics in which frequentist methods are freely mixed with evidentialist objectives–a body of literature in which the P value is treated as a valid answer to the evidentialist’s question and in which the LOD score is used to address the frequentist’s concerns. The result is that we now enjoy a canon of statistical practices for linkage studies that draw simultaneously from logically incompatible first principles. The appearance of Statistical Evidence on the scene at this time is therefore especially timely for the field of human genetics. p. 287

In a similar vein, we would have been interested in greater discussion of the assessment of the strength of evidence in multivariate contexts, or in the presence of additional “degrees of freedom.” It is well known that, all other things being equal, the more parameters that we estimate from the data, the larger our resulting likelihood will be. Therefore, the magnitude of the LR is affected by the difference in the number of parameters estimated in the numerator and denominator.

Alvah’s comment: These examples of genetic factors could be applied to language study, when the shoe finds the right foot or Cinderella (the fairest hypothesis in the land) is invited to the ball.

SCIENCE AND RELIGION

Gould, S.J. Lyell’s Pillars of Wisdom. Natural History (1999), Vol. 108, No. 3:28-34, 87-89.

Apparently grandiose or catastrophic events really occur by a summation of small changes through the immensity of geological time–the deep canyon carved grain by grain, the high mountain raised in numerous increments of earthquake and eruption over millions of years.

Second, the claim for a nondirectional or steady-state earth: Standard geological causes (erosion, deposition, uplift, and so on) show no trend either to increase or decrease in general intensity through time. Moreover, even the physical state of the earth (relative temperatures, positions of climatic belts, percentages of land and sea) tends to remain roughly the same or to cycle around and around through time. p. 32

When a scientist proposes such a comprehensive system, we often gain our best insights into the sources and rationale for his reforms by explicating the alternative worldview of his opponents. New theories rarely enter a previous conceptual void; rather, they arise as putative improvements or replacements for previous conventionalities. p. 32

Incidentally, this account of catastrophism as a genuine and interesting scientific alternative to Lyellian uniformity disproves the conventional canard, originally floated as a rhetorical device by Lyell and his partisans but then incorporated uncritically as the conventional wisdom of the profession. In this Manichaean account, catastrophism represented the last stronghold for the enemies of modern science: the struggle of theologically tainted dogmatists to preserve both the literal time scale of Genesis and the miraculous hand of God as history’s prime mover by invoking the doctrine of global paroxysm to compress the grand panoply of geological change into a mere few thousand years. In fact, by the 1830s all scientists–catastrophists and uniformitarians alike–had accepted the immensity of geological time as a central and proven fact of their emerging profession. p. 34

But on an Earth in steady-state, built entirely by modern causes acting at current intensities, the present becomes, in an old pedagogical cliché, “the key to the past,” and Earth’s entire history opens to scientific study. Thus, in a famous statement of advocacy, Lyell condemns catastrophism as a doctrine for despair, while labeling his uniformitarian reform as the path to scientific salvation:

Never was there a dogma more calculated to foster indolence, and to blunt the keen edge of curiosity, than this assumption of the discordance between the former and the existing causes of change. It produced a state of mind unfavourable in the highest conceivable degree to the candid reception of the evidence of those minute, but incessant mutations, which every part of the earth’s surface is undergoing . . . The student instead of being encouraged with the hope of interpreting the enigmas presented to him in the earth’s structure–instead of being prompted to undertake laborious inquiries into. . .causes now in operation, was taught to despond from the first. Geology, it was affirmed, could never rise to the rank of an exact science–the greater number of phenomena must forever remain inexplicable. . .

In our attempt to unravel these difficult questions, we shall adopt a different course, restricting ourselves to the known or possible operations of existing causes. . .We shall adhere to this plan. . .because. . .history informs us that this method has always put geologists on the road that leads to truth–suggesting views which, although imperfect at first, have been found capable of improvement, until at last adopted by universal consent. (Principles of Geology, vol. 3, chap. 1, 1833).

Large intellectual struggles cannot be won by success in easy and simple skirmishes. Adversaries must also be outflanked on their home ground, where superior knowledge and forces should have rendered them invincible. A new theory must meet and encompass the hardest and most apparently contradictory cases head on. p. 87

At most, Vesuvius teaches us that the increments of gradualism can be large at human scale–the lava field versus the eroded sand grain–while still small by global standards. In 1830, at the end of a long chapter entitled “History of the volcanic eruptions in the district around Naple,” Lyell wrote:

The vast scale and violence of the volcanic operations in Campania [the region of Italy surrounding Naples] in the olden time, has been a theme of declamation. . .Instead of inferring from analogy that. . . each cone rose in succession–and that many years and often centuries of repose intervened between each eruption–geologists seem to have conjectured that the whole group sprung up from the ground at once, like soldiers of Cadmus when he sowed the dragon’s teeth.

Moreover–continued Lyell, in closing the first volume of his tenth edition (1867)–even by purely local standards, natural catastrophes usually impose only a fleeting influence upon history. p. 87

Alvah’s comment: Gould offers us again, a heaping plate of evolution and theory building through examples drawn from the past and the study of it science attempts to unmask.

Gould, S.J. Second-Guessing the Future. Natural History (1998), Vol. 107, No. 7, pp. 20-29, 64-66.

In my parish, the dubious (and admittedly somewhat contradictory) status of most famous second-place finisher goes without contest to Alfred Russel Wallace, who, in 1858, during a malarial fit on the Indonesian island of Ternate, devised virtually the same theory of natural selection that Darwin had developed (but hadn’t published) in 1838. In a familiar story, Wallace sent his short paper to Darwin, a naturalist he greatly admired and who, as Wallace knew, had a strong interest in “the species question” (although Wallace had no inkling of Darwin’s particular, and nearly identical, theory and probably didn’t even realize that Darwin had a theory at all). Darwin, in understandable panic, turned to his best friends, Charles Lyell and Joseph Hooker, for advice. In a resolution known to later history as the “delicate arrangement,” Darwin’s friends made a joint presentation to the Linnean Society of London in July 1858: they read both Wallace’s paper and some unpublished letters and manuscripts by Darwin, establishing his earlier authorship of the same idea. p. 20

Because Wallace lived a long time (1823-1913), wrote copiously both for his bread and from his convictions, and held a variety of passionate and quirky views, he left us a vast legacy of varied content and quality. He campaigned ardently for the right and the just, according to his idiosyncratic standards, and he fought valiantly for a set of causes usually deemed “cranky” both in his own time and today–including phrenology and spiritualism (where he nearly came to blows with skeptics like Darwin and Huxley)–and against vaccination, which he called “one of the foulest blots on the civilization of the nineteenth century.” p. 21

Wallace presents a simple thesis as the foundation for his epitome of the nineteenth century–a standard view about the relation of science to society, stated in the context of a particular time. Science, Wallace argues, has made unprecedented gains, largely expressed as technological advance (at least in terms of impacts upon everyday life), but this progress has been blunted, if not perverted, by our failure to make any moral improvements, especially as expressed in the alleviation of social inequities. Thus, and ironically, the progress of science, however bursting with potential for social improvement, has actually operated to increase the sum total of human misery. p. 22-23

In order to estimate its {the nineteenth century’s] full importance and grandeur–more especially as regards man’s increased power over nature, and the application of that power to the needs of his life today, with unlimited possibilities in the future–we must compare it, not with any preceding century, or even with the last millennium, but with the whole historical period–perhaps even with the while period that has elapsed since the stone age. p. 23

We of the 19th century were morally and socially unfit to possess and use the enormous powers for good or evil which the rapid advance of scientific discovery had given us. Our boasted civilization was in many respects a mere surface veneer; and our methods of government were not in accordance with either Christianity or civilization. This view is enforced by the consideration that all the European wars of the century have been due to dynastic squabbles or to obtain national aggrandizement, and were never waged in order to free the slave or protect the oppressed without any ulterior selfish ends.

Wallace then turns to domestic affairs, with the damning charge that our capitalist system has taken the wealth accrued from technological progress and distributed the bounty to a few owners of the means of production while actually increasing both the absolute and relative poverty of ordinary working people. In short, the rich get richer and the poor get poorer:

One of the most prominent features of our century has been the enormous and continuous growth of wealth, without any corresponding increase in the well-being of the whole people; while there is ample evidence to show that the number of the very poor–of those existing with a minimum of the bare necessities of life–has enormously increased, and many indications that they constitute a larger proportion of the whole population than in the first half of the century, or in any earlier period of our history. p. 25-26

Alvah’s comment: One of my favorite scientists from the past has to be A.R. Wallace. The evolution of anthropology into an applied science continues to wane, a warning he left in his writings.

Haley, B.D., and Wilcoxon, L.R. Anthropology and the Making of Chumash Tradition. Current Anthropology (1997), Vol. 38, No. 5, pp. 761-793.

As Powell indicates, “there appears to have been no appellation in use among them to designate themselves as a whole people” (Powell 1891:67). We assume that Powell’s action reflects the popularity of the “ethnographic principle” of defining nations by linguistic or racial criteria (Renan 1990 [1882]). These were the criteria used by European and American intellectuals from 1880 to 1914 to distinguish “nations” (Hobsbawm 1992:95-102). From the start, then, the boundaries of a Chumash identity bear the stamp of an arbitrary and historically contingent outside ideology. p. 767

The people who spoke them–from Morro Bay to Malibu and inland at least to Tejon Pass–were never unified into a single or even a few overarching polities prior to their complete incorporation into the Spanish mission system by 1804. There were, in fact, a number of named group identities among Chumashan-speakers corresponding to village, language, or region (Heizer 1952, 1955), and significant regional cultural differences and episodic warfare between villages existed in pre-mission times (Kroeber 1910, 1953 [1925]; Blackburn 1975:8-15; Glassow and Wilcoxon 1988; Johnson 1988; personal communication, 1995). p. 767-768

He further assumes that material remains on the northeastern boundary were associated with Chumash-speakers (Kroeber had felt that they might have been Salinan), and he treats the southern Channel Islands occupants as non-Chumash (Kroeber had lumped them with Chumash materially but with Shoshoneans linguistically) (cf. Hudson and Blackburn 1982:17-38). King adopts the position that Chumash society has developed in place for more than 7,000 years (King 1990:200; cf. Arnold and O’Shea 1993), and Gibson (1991:14) places the beginnings of Chumash culture “about 10,000 years ago.” p. 768

The widened meaning of the term “Chumash” provides ideological fodder for Chumash Traditionalism. King et al. (1985:97-105) participate in this by employing Edward Spicer’s (1971) idea of persistence to authenticate Traditionalist claims of a continuous link between the Chumash past and present. The persistence argument rests upon an unsupported assumption that what is tradition and who is indigenous are fairly continuous and bounded from past to present, maintained through “organized resistance to change, and persistence of traditional values, custom, and cosmologies beneath a veneer of assimilation” (King et al. 1985:97). However, their own research documents a “new religion . . . [derived from] spiritual leaders from other tribal groups . . . [and] academic works” (pp. 102-3). The new religion is “conceptually distinct from other aboriginal pattern . . . [and] heavily infused with pan-Indian elements” (pp. 103-4). King et al. report that a person becomes a Traditionalist through “an awakening of his or her Indian identity” and that the movement’s “ethnic boundaries and group solidarity are enhanced by self-imposed isolation from the non-Indian community and by the performance of rituals . . . [in] communities . . . [and] ceremonial encampments . . . [where] revivalistic doctrines developed and were elaborated” (pp. 103-4). They overlook these findings when they appeal to an imagined persistence with unsubstantiated rhetoric: “Cultural traditions, as such, span the generations, and therefore transcend the lives and experience of individual group members” (p. 102).

Similarly, Diana Wilson (1994), exploring “indigenous” reactions to the portrayal of American Indian cultures in Los Angeles museums, argues that her consultants, some of them Chumash, are “authentically indigenous” (p. 37)–that they possess an “American Indian way of knowing” wielded strategically against a “Western academic knowing,” a relationship which is “grounded in the historical facts of colonization” (p. 42). Despite their sometimes coming from families whose previous identities were “Mexican,” her consultants’ “subjective awareness of being indigenous . . . apparently survived” (p. 365). p. 768-769

Alvah’s comment: This article is an affront to Chumash Reality, a step in the wrong direction that was aimed at deterring any influence and or historical stewardship for the Point Conception. It is more about Vandenberg and U. S. claims to it. The following statement is the same kind of ethnogenicide, informative if in only identifying that the messengers in anthropology are serving their own agenda, a new cavalry aimed at undermining examples of cultural identity and the continuation of a Past.

Clark, G.A. NAGPRA, the Conflict between Science and Religion, and the Political Consequences. Society for American Archaeology (1998), Vol. 16, No. 5., pp. 22-25.

Laws like NAGPRA strike at the heart of a scientific archaeology because they elevate the cultural traditions and religious beliefs of Indians to the level of science as a paradigm for describing or explaining reality. Political considerations thus take precedence over disinterested evaluation of knowledge claims, with tragic and irreversible results [G.A. Clark, 1996, NAGPRA and the Demon-Haunted World SAA Bulletin (14(5):3, 15(2):4] p. 22

Science can be defined as a collection of methods for evaluating the credibility of knowledge claims about the experimental world. Science does not pretend to certainty; it only seeks better and better approximations of it. Scientific conclusions are continuously subjected to critical scrutiny. Science is, therefore, self-correcting. No topic or question is “off-limits” to science. The only thing that is antithetical to the scientific worldview is dogma. Dogma is the stuff of religious belief. From the standpoint of science, the illusion of absolute, unchanging truth is the most pernicious of vanities. p. 22

From this perspective, humans are only animals (albeit highly intelligent, technologically sophisticated, socially complex ones). Religious views of humans and their place in nature, dependent as they are on concepts that have no reality outside the mind, are epiphenomena (and–for a materialist–absurd). In other words, one cannot simultaneously understand and accept evolution and sustain a believe in the nonmaterial. From the standpoint of science, religious beliefs are curious survivals of earlier cognitive evolution. What probably happened is that, as our cognitive capacities expanded slowly over the Pleistocene millennia, we came to imagine more and more complex realities, and populated them with the gods, demons, and spirits that are the stuff of conventional religious belief. The question science would put to religious is: Why do humans have religious beliefs at all, since there is absolutely no empirical support for them? p. 22

Science is not “about” religion, however. It is not about moral truth, although it can sometimes help us in our struggle to reach appropriate moral decisions. Clearly, humans did not evolve in this hemisphere. Indians haven’t always been here, regardless of what their origin myths might say. p. 24

The worldview of Western science is under serious and sustained assault, and there is a danger that “science-like” views of reality will perish in the face of a multipronged attack in which mysticism, religious fundamentalism, creationism, and the believers in the paranormal combine with postmodernist academics to attack the critical realism and mitigated objectivity which are the central epistemological biases of the scientific worldview. p. 25

Alvah’s comment: The Science of anthropology has its roots in European “Dogma” statements like Clark’s “Clearly, humans did not evolve in this hemisphere. Indians haven’t always been here, regardless of what their origin myths might say. (p. 24)” should be more cautiously addressed for the origins of Modern humans remains unsolved as does the quest to resolve the timing and or theoretical acceptance of a pre-Clovis presence. Are the two, as scientists call them, “holy grails” of anthropology perhaps related? Since only 11% of the data generated from the two prevailing theories of human origins are compatible with each other, perhaps it is time to look to the Americas for a source for the “Replacement” of Homo erectus. What the Native Americans believe is that WE have been modern longer then Modern Humans have been in the Old World while people like Clark remain stagnated by unproven theories that find us tracing human origins back to uncultured beings.

Watkins, J. Native Americans, Western Science, and NAGPRA. Society for American Archaeology (1998), Vol. 16, No. 5., pp. 22-25.

As with most scientific writings aimed at the rather specialized population of scientists studying Native American human remains, one of the paper’s [Clark’s] fundamental flaws is its failure to deal with the differing perceptions of the scientific and Native American communities. While it is extremely difficult to offer a single “Native American perspective” on anything, I will proceed to offer a generalization as if it were possible to do so. p. 23

Maybe American Indians and scientists are doomed to operate on opposite ends of the emotional spectrum–passion versus dispassion. Where scientists feel drawn to cold facts, American Indians feel drawn to those things outside of the demonstrable world (Clark’s “epiphenomena”). Perhaps scientists should stop being so dispassionate, stop trying to step outside humanity, and join the rest of the world. I don’t trust a person who has no passion! p. 23

I believe science and religion are remarkably intertwined, a double helix spiraling across time and space. Neither should exist without the other, for each one gives us different information and different perceptions on the human condition. I argue, unlike my materialist colleague, that is the very fact that we are aware of such things (rather than blindly accepting of them) that places us at the top of the intellectual pyramid. p. 23

Like the philosophical tree in the forest, if “a precontact aboriginal culture of the New World vanishes without a trace,” and there is no “Western observer there to record information about them,” do they make a sound? p. 25

We, as anthropologists, are standing on the edge of a forest with an almost impenetrable growth in front of us. We can try to bulldoze our way through it, but we will destroy all that might be ahead of us; we can try to circumvent the forest, and run the risk of losing our collective lives in the resultant uncharted wilderness; or we can look for the path between the trees, moving carefully, taking the journey one step (and roadblock) at a time. An army does not pass through a forest as a single body, but rather as an allied group of individuals. We must be an army on a common campaign–an army of individuals working to reach a common goal. p. 25

PRIMATES

Ross, C., Williams, B., and Kay, R.F. Phylogenetic analysis of anthropoid relationships. Journal of Human Evolution (1998), 35, 221-306.

Anthropoidea–the group that includes monkeys, apes and humans–has long been recognized as a “natural” group among primates, united by a suite of features of the skull, dentition and postcranium. Anthropoidea is also generally–although not universally (Cachel, 1979)–thought to be monophyletic, descended from a common ancestor not shared with any other primates.

However, the relationships of anthropoids to other primates are not yet resolved. Advocates of several competing hypotheses continue to debate the merits of their respective models. This lack of consensus reflects a broader uncertainty of the relationships among primate higher taxa and the fossil groups thought to have given origin to them. Why does this debate persist? Is it because key fossils are yet to be discovered? It is well established that fossils are vital for deciphering relationships among living taxa because they contain novel combinations of primitive and derived characters and because they preserve morphologies more closely approximating ancestral conditions (Gauther et al., 1988; Huelsenbeck, 1991; Novacek, 1992). In the case of anthropoid origins however, most workers agree on the relationships between living taxa (tarsiers and anthropoids are more closely related to each other than to strepsirrhines); it is the relationships of certain fossil taxa to the living groups that are debated. p. 221-222

Questions surrounding anthropoid origins

Debates concerning the origins and early diversification of the Anthropoidea have centered around several related questions:

(1) Is Anthropoidea a monophyletic group, and if so what are its synapomorphic features?

(2) To which group of fossil or extant primates is Anthropoidea most closely related?

(3) How do Eocene and Oligocene anthropoids of Africa (Parapithecoidea, Propliopithecidae, Oligopitheciade) relate to the Platyrrhini and Catarrhini?

With respect to anthropoid monophyly, older views such as those of W.K. Gregory (1922) that catarrhines and platyrrhines evolved from separate and not very closely related Eocene “tarsiods” have been largely abandoned. p. 222

Several workers at the 1992 Anthropoid Origins Conference and Workshop at Duke University (Fleagle & Kay, 1994) voiced the possibility of a nonadapid, nonomomyid, and nontarsier origin for anthropoids (Culotta, 1992). p. 224

This suggested that the anthropoid clade might be as old, or older, than the earliest omomyids and adapids and that a fundamental dichotomy might exist between omomyids and adapids of the Northern continents and Anthropoidea of Africa and South America. p. 224

There is wide agreement among paleoprimatologists that tarsiers are more closely related to anthropoids than to strepsirrhines (Purvis, 1995). The evidence comes from molecular data (Koop et al., 1989a,b; Porter et al., 1997) and soft tissues (Hubrecht, 1897; Lucket, 1975, 1976; Shoshani et al., 1996). The complete data set presented here provides definitive support for this hypothesis: tarsiers and anthropoids are found to be more closely related to each other than to strepsirrhines. p. 245

Strength of various hypotheses

Adapid-anthropoid hypothesis. This hypothesis receives support from the dental evidence but is not supported by the cranial or postcranial evidence, or the evidence overall. Rather, the majority of the evidence better supports the hypothesis of an adapid-strepsirrhine clade exclusive of anthropoids and tarsiers. Indeed, of the three hypotheses evaluated here, the adapid-anthropod hypothesis was by far the least well supported. p. 246

Our preferred tree is illustrated in Figure 14. We believe the tarsier-anthropoid hypothesis is the best hypothesis of anthropoid relationships at present, for three reasons. First, the tarsier-anthropoid hypothesis is the best-supported by the data presented here. p. 256

Second, the tarsier-anthropoid hypothesis (and the associated [omomyid(tarsier-anthropoid)] hypothesis) is corroborated by functional analysis of character transformation series (Ross, 1996). Third, this hypothesis provides the most parismonious reconstruction of features that are unique to tarsiers and anthropoids; the post-orbital septum and the anterior accessory cavity of the middle ear. p. 256

To evaluate the phylogenetic position of Anthropoidea, morphological data on 291 dental, cranial and postcranial morphological characters were collected for 57 taxa of living and fossil primates and analyzed using PAUP and MacClade. The dental evidence provides some support for the notion of an adapid origin for anthropoids, the cranial evidence supports the tarsier-anthropoid hypothesis, and the postcranial evidence supports monophyly of Prosimii and Anthropoidea. Combining these data into a single data set demonstrates Anthropoidea to be monophyletic and the traditional anthropoid synapomorphies to have evolved mosaically. p. 257

Overall, the available data do not allow definitive statements regarding the interrelationships of the haplorhines: Tarsius, Omomyidae and Anthropoida. Many key fossil taxa (e.g., Eosimias, Afrotarsius) are still poorly known and we lack critical fossils sampling the divergence of the higher taxonomic levels of primates. Clearly, many more fossils are required before we can determine the precise phyletic relationships of tarsiers, omomyids, and anthropoids. p. 258

Alvah’s comment: Just a sampling of the current status of early primate ancestors and the fact that the fossil record is often not complete enough to make absolute the choices for the pre-primate form that led to higher primates.

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Vanessa February 13, 2013 at 11:36 am · Reply →

It’s a pity you don’t have a donate button!
I’d most certainly donate to this fantastic blog! I guess for now i’ll settle for bookmarking and adding your RSS feed to my
Google account. I look forward to brand new updates and will
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1. German Dziebel February 14, 2013 at 10:54 pm · Reply →
  
  The Donate button is now enabled on the site. Thank you.
Alvah Hicks November 20, 2013 at 10:20 pm · Reply →

Thank you German for this link to your site.
Ronald Leighton October 26, 2014 at 7:03 am · Reply →

You should checkout these 2 sites.
Regards
Ron
http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0066948

http://www.livescience.com/37952-ancient-native-americans-have-living-descendants.html
1. German Dziebel October 27, 2014 at 12:25 pm · Reply →
  
  Thanks Ron. Great article! Will study it in depth.