Post by Pepe friend of obelix on Oct 25, 2005 11:02:17 GMT -5
Extensive analysis of physical features from skulls of the Old and New worlds (Asia and North/Meso/South America respectively), called craniofacial measurements, revealed some interesting findings for anthropologists who have been puzzled by the question - where do the Native Americans originate from?
C. Loring Brace, a professor of Anthropolgy at the University of Michigan who presented his findings this week at the Annual Meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Washington D.C., has been gazing at hundreds of skulls from across North, Meso and South America as well as their alleged ancestors from across the Pacific in Japan, Russia, China and Oceania to name a few.
Instead of one general origin, Brace's analyses class the people of the New World into several main categories. These can essentially be described as: indirectly Asian, Jomon (the prehistoric people of Japan) and Athabascan (from China).
Brace and his colleagues based these statements on two dozen different kinds and specific measurements of the skulls. Over 1500 skulls later, they took a look at their findings. It appeared to Brace and his colleagues that there were four fundamental branches of people from the Asian region that contributed independently to the people who started to populate the New World, some 20,000 years ago.
Brace took the measurements from the skulls and preformed a variety of different statistical analyses, and ended up with an interesting schematic representation of the tree-like relationship between the people of the Old World, compared to the people of the New World. This schematic representation is called a dendogram. In the dendogram, the closer the branches are to each other the likelier they are to be linked.
Their analysis classed the people of the New World into several main categories. These can essentially be described as: indirectly Asian, Jomon (the prehistoric people of Japan) and Athabascan (from China).
Those that didn't appear to be linked to a distinct Asian group included samples of skulls from Peru, Mexico and southern United States. It is hypothesized that they could have been related from much further back in time to Asian ancestors. "This could be because they have been separated from their Asian sources for the longest period of time (of all of the groups)," said Brace in a press release. "We hope that new samples from Novosibirsk, Moscow, and Saint Petersburg, which we've recently been given permission to measure, will illuminate their origins."
The Jomon, the ancient people of Japan are thought to be related to people from Northern U.S., Canada, Florida, Virginia and Argentina, and believed to have come over from there 12,000 years ago. Brace has sub-divided these people into two varieties - but both tended to exploit water-based environments for food and habitation. First, there were those people who tended to stay along the coastal region of both North and South America. These people used the coastal waterway as a means to slowly inhabit the marine systems further along the West Coast as well as take advantage of the rich marine resources for food. Second, were the people who took to terrestrial regions but nonetheless water-dependent environments (like the extensive area across the northern U.S. and central and eastern Canada from the melting glaciers). These people were the fresh-water inhabitants and used the extensive network for lakes and river systems.
The Manchus of northeastern China and the Chukchi of northeast Siberia appear most similar in their craniofacial patterns to the people that inhabited the northern edge of North America, or the Inuit and Aleuts (of the Bering strait). Intent on using the resources of the marine environment, they moved to where there was likely less competition - the chilly regions of the North.
Last, Brace offers a category based on the similarities between the Athabascan people of the plains and almost strictly terrestrial environments of the Yukon drainage as far south as Arizona and northern Mexico, with people from the Chinese Neolithic and Micronesia. They appeared as though they were able to use the resources that were more sparsely used by the other peoples and developed sophisticated plant-food processing techniques based on their experience from their predecessors in Asia.
Brace's results, in addition to more recent genetic studies, all generally fit the same picture as far as explaining why it is likely that the New World was inhabited by different people and not just the generic 'Asia', or Mongolids. Brace suggest why the different peoples move into relatively specific types of areas depending on their ability to adapt, and whether other people were already there. From competition for space, and of course the resources themselves, the people coming from Asia would have likely been bound to certain options and limitations.
Between the cranofacial measurements that Brace and his colleague undertook, to ongoing genetic analysis, and a fundamental understanding of natural resource use, anthropologists appear to be getting closer to finding out where the people of the Western hemisphere really came from
www.exn.ca/Stories/2000/02/18/55.asp
C. Loring Brace, a professor of Anthropolgy at the University of Michigan who presented his findings this week at the Annual Meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Washington D.C., has been gazing at hundreds of skulls from across North, Meso and South America as well as their alleged ancestors from across the Pacific in Japan, Russia, China and Oceania to name a few.
Instead of one general origin, Brace's analyses class the people of the New World into several main categories. These can essentially be described as: indirectly Asian, Jomon (the prehistoric people of Japan) and Athabascan (from China).
Brace and his colleagues based these statements on two dozen different kinds and specific measurements of the skulls. Over 1500 skulls later, they took a look at their findings. It appeared to Brace and his colleagues that there were four fundamental branches of people from the Asian region that contributed independently to the people who started to populate the New World, some 20,000 years ago.
Brace took the measurements from the skulls and preformed a variety of different statistical analyses, and ended up with an interesting schematic representation of the tree-like relationship between the people of the Old World, compared to the people of the New World. This schematic representation is called a dendogram. In the dendogram, the closer the branches are to each other the likelier they are to be linked.
Their analysis classed the people of the New World into several main categories. These can essentially be described as: indirectly Asian, Jomon (the prehistoric people of Japan) and Athabascan (from China).
Those that didn't appear to be linked to a distinct Asian group included samples of skulls from Peru, Mexico and southern United States. It is hypothesized that they could have been related from much further back in time to Asian ancestors. "This could be because they have been separated from their Asian sources for the longest period of time (of all of the groups)," said Brace in a press release. "We hope that new samples from Novosibirsk, Moscow, and Saint Petersburg, which we've recently been given permission to measure, will illuminate their origins."
The Jomon, the ancient people of Japan are thought to be related to people from Northern U.S., Canada, Florida, Virginia and Argentina, and believed to have come over from there 12,000 years ago. Brace has sub-divided these people into two varieties - but both tended to exploit water-based environments for food and habitation. First, there were those people who tended to stay along the coastal region of both North and South America. These people used the coastal waterway as a means to slowly inhabit the marine systems further along the West Coast as well as take advantage of the rich marine resources for food. Second, were the people who took to terrestrial regions but nonetheless water-dependent environments (like the extensive area across the northern U.S. and central and eastern Canada from the melting glaciers). These people were the fresh-water inhabitants and used the extensive network for lakes and river systems.
The Manchus of northeastern China and the Chukchi of northeast Siberia appear most similar in their craniofacial patterns to the people that inhabited the northern edge of North America, or the Inuit and Aleuts (of the Bering strait). Intent on using the resources of the marine environment, they moved to where there was likely less competition - the chilly regions of the North.
Last, Brace offers a category based on the similarities between the Athabascan people of the plains and almost strictly terrestrial environments of the Yukon drainage as far south as Arizona and northern Mexico, with people from the Chinese Neolithic and Micronesia. They appeared as though they were able to use the resources that were more sparsely used by the other peoples and developed sophisticated plant-food processing techniques based on their experience from their predecessors in Asia.
Brace's results, in addition to more recent genetic studies, all generally fit the same picture as far as explaining why it is likely that the New World was inhabited by different people and not just the generic 'Asia', or Mongolids. Brace suggest why the different peoples move into relatively specific types of areas depending on their ability to adapt, and whether other people were already there. From competition for space, and of course the resources themselves, the people coming from Asia would have likely been bound to certain options and limitations.
Between the cranofacial measurements that Brace and his colleague undertook, to ongoing genetic analysis, and a fundamental understanding of natural resource use, anthropologists appear to be getting closer to finding out where the people of the Western hemisphere really came from
www.exn.ca/Stories/2000/02/18/55.asp
