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Deep genetic affinity between coastal Pacific and Amazonian natives

pnas.org

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Re: Deep genetic affinity between coastal Pacific and Amazonian natives

#11

Post by tempforanthro »

AlotOfReading wrote: post #7
tempforanthro wrote: post #6

I dont want to pollute this thread, but want to briefly describe my time (mid 2000s) as an undergrad with half a double-major in US anthropology. I was on several occasions warned-off from doing projects that pertained to this very subject and a couple others [examples: h. neanderthalensis relation to modern humans (at the time in the face of mtDNA), some other N. American immigration hypotheses (eg, that pleistocene…

Not to dismiss your experiences with academic anthropology, but this paper isn't actually about any transoceanic seafaring cultures. It's about the population structure of some of the first peoples of the Americas and their ancestors, which predate polynesians by something like ten to twenty thousand years. I made the same mistake on my initial reading too.

No worries, though I did not mention Polynesians.

This is not the venue to parse out what Australasian means, but, at least genetically, we would be discussing a much older population.

It is by definition about seafaring people, however, as the only accepted migration path to the americas has been over the bering straights.

edit: oops. now i see where you are coming from. Mea culpa. see comment re Pleistocene boats. Apologies for my derp

Re: Deep genetic affinity between coastal Pacific and Amazonian natives

#12

Post by tempforanthro »

UncleOxidant wrote: post #10
tempforanthro wrote: post #6

I dont want to pollute this thread, but want to briefly describe my time (mid 2000s) as an undergrad with half a double-major in US anthropology. I was on several occasions warned-off from doing projects that pertained to this very subject and a couple others [examples: h. neanderthalensis relation to modern humans (at the time in the face of mtDNA), some other N. American immigration hypotheses (eg, that pleistocene…

I wonder if this is more of an issue with American academic institutions than it is in other parts of the world (anthropologists avoiding the boat hypothesis, that is)? I note that this article [1] (from Norway) explicitly makes the connection to Thor Hyerdahl's theory - which, as I understand from what you've written here (and from talking to others) is considered in the same category as the Bermuda Triangle and UFO…

I cant comment on Hyerdahl--I just don't know much. A related hole in simian evolutionary theory pertains to new vs old world monkeys, if you want a deep rabbit hole.

edit: the US, afaik, is different in that cultural anthro shares department with archaeology and human/primate genetics at the undergrad level. It's good in the sense that the culturals have to take a bit of science, bad in that politics invade all the subfields.

Re: Deep genetic affinity between coastal Pacific and Amazonian natives

#14

Post by tempforanthro »

Ericson2314 wrote: post #13

Not knowing who these "Australasian" peoples are makes this very confusing.

In this case it really is just a genetic grouping. Refers to the understood native population of, roughly, Australia--there is some overlap nearby.

The subject of human migration as revealed by genetics is super interesting: really puts into perspective how small we are, story wise, and to my mind, lends a sense of gratitude to the almost unimaginable hardships and victories that got us to where we are now, typing words into this temporary format.

Re: Deep genetic affinity between coastal Pacific and Amazonian natives

#15

Post by blix »

tempforanthro wrote: post #6

I dont want to pollute this thread, but want to briefly describe my time (mid 2000s) as an undergrad with half a double-major in US anthropology. I was on several occasions warned-off from doing projects that pertained to this very subject and a couple others [examples: h. neanderthalensis relation to modern humans (at the time in the face of mtDNA), some other N. American immigration hypotheses (eg, that pleistocene…

> I could go on at length to describe my perception of why this was/probably still is, but a short take is: the architecture of American social science legitimacy is so delicate that even counter thoughts from undergrads need to be put down.

I'd like to read the long take. Maybe write it down somewhere :)

Re: Deep genetic affinity between coastal Pacific and Amazonian natives

#16

Post by amvalo »

tempforanthro wrote: post #6

I dont want to pollute this thread, but want to briefly describe my time (mid 2000s) as an undergrad with half a double-major in US anthropology. I was on several occasions warned-off from doing projects that pertained to this very subject and a couple others [examples: h. neanderthalensis relation to modern humans (at the time in the face of mtDNA), some other N. American immigration hypotheses (eg, that pleistocene…

> some other N. American immigration hypotheses (eg, that pleistocene peoples could make boats)].

Why were they so opposed to this? You can't leave us hanging...

EDIT: ok and why is this at -1??

Re: Deep genetic affinity between coastal Pacific and Amazonian natives

#17

Post by bpodgursky »

mc32 wrote: post #4

So the first people(s) to pop SAm and the first people(s) to pop NAm were of different origin and arrived via different methods?

I wouldn't go that far. We're talking wildly different timescales. Migration to the Americas over the Bering was < 16,000 years ago, while the golden age of Polynesian exploration was only about 1,000-2,000 years ago.

Re: Deep genetic affinity between coastal Pacific and Amazonian natives

#18

Post by AlotOfReading »

UncleOxidant wrote: post #8
mc32 wrote: post #4

So the first people(s) to pop SAm and the first people(s) to pop NAm were of different origin and arrived via different methods?

That's what it seems like. Reading this article on the topic https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2021/03/earliest-south-ameri... and it says: "One unanswered question is why the Y signal hasn’t turned up in any North or Central American Indigenous groups. One possibility, Hünemeier suggests, is that the Y signal–bearing migrants simply stuck to the coast and made it to South America without leaving any genetic legacy up…

They did leave a genetic legacy up north in ancient remains like Anzick-1 and ancient Channel island remains [1]. That legacy simply no longer exists among most remaining native populations in the US and Canada. Moreover, they're still clearly related to North American natives, it's just a more distant relationship. So it's not that North Americans and South/Central Americans descend from different ancestral populations, the population structure is just poorly understood.

[1] doi.org/10.1126/science.aar6851

Re: Deep genetic affinity between coastal Pacific and Amazonian natives

#19

Post by AlotOfReading »

amvalo wrote: post #16
tempforanthro wrote: post #6

I dont want to pollute this thread, but want to briefly describe my time (mid 2000s) as an undergrad with half a double-major in US anthropology. I was on several occasions warned-off from doing projects that pertained to this very subject and a couple others [examples: h. neanderthalensis relation to modern humans (at the time in the face of mtDNA), some other N. American immigration hypotheses (eg, that pleistocene…

> some other N. American immigration hypotheses (eg, that pleistocene peoples could make boats)]. Why were they so opposed to this? You can't leave us hanging... EDIT: ok and why is this at -1??

There was a debate back in the 80s/90s about how the "beringia standstill population" got into the Americas south of the ice walls. It became a bit of a pressing issue once Monte Verde was accepted as unambiguous evidence of the pre-clovis hypothesis. There were basically two main, competing theories to explain it:

1) the "ice-free corridor" / inland route, where people simply walked from Alaska to the continental US/Canada and then on to South America and

2) the pacific coastal route, where people migrated along the coast. There's a variant of this involving boats, but they're practically the same in that they post-date the first boats by a huge margin and it only changes the chronology a little bit.

The ice-free corridor was the primary hypothesis for a bit because it matched the behavior of the Siberian populations they were descended from better, but it was basically defunct by the mid 00s because the timelines on plausible ice-free corridors were too late to explain Monte Verde. Since then, PCR has been the dominant theory for pre-clovis migrations and it just took undergrad textbooks awhile to catch up. I wouldn't be surprised if even lower level classes like AP World were still teaching the inland hypothesis.

Re: Deep genetic affinity between coastal Pacific and Amazonian natives

#20

Post by EdwardDiego »

UncleOxidant wrote: post #10
tempforanthro wrote: post #6

I dont want to pollute this thread, but want to briefly describe my time (mid 2000s) as an undergrad with half a double-major in US anthropology. I was on several occasions warned-off from doing projects that pertained to this very subject and a couple others [examples: h. neanderthalensis relation to modern humans (at the time in the face of mtDNA), some other N. American immigration hypotheses (eg, that pleistocene…

I wonder if this is more of an issue with American academic institutions than it is in other parts of the world (anthropologists avoiding the boat hypothesis, that is)? I note that this article [1] (from Norway) explicitly makes the connection to Thor Hyerdahl's theory - which, as I understand from what you've written here (and from talking to others) is considered in the same category as the Bermuda Triangle and UFO…

I think Heyerdahl's issue is that he approached it as South Americans travelling to Polynesia, instead of some of the most capable navigators the world has seen travelling to South America.

Some claim it was racism, but IIRC, he based it on prevailing winds and currents, which are west to east... except for during an ENSO (El Nino Southern Oscillation) event, which were poorly understood, or even widely known of, at the time of Kontiki.

And there's some evidence of correlation between Polynesian westward migration, and ENSO events.

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