Oldest Skeleton In New World Discovered 485
Death Metal Maniac writes "Dubbed Eva de Naharon, or Eve of Naharon, the female skeleton has been dated at 13,600 years old. If that age is accurate, the skeleton along with three others found in underwater caves along the Caribbean coast of the Yucatán Peninsula could provide new clues to how the Americas were first populated. The skeletons' skulls hint that the people may not be of northern Asian descent, which would contradict the dominant theory of New World settlement. 'The shape of the skulls has led us to believe that Eva and the others have more of an affinity with people from South Asia than North Asia,' González explained."
Ethnic group migration (Score:4, Interesting)
Isn't it at least plausible that the group "Eva" belongs to lived in Northern Asia, despite having characteristics that we would now identify with Southern Asia? Perhaps a later group migrated in that direction, driving Eva's group over the land bridge much in the way ethnic groups worked in Europe (subsequent waves tending to push preexisting ethnic groups).
One Theory... (Score:5, Interesting)
I've heard one theory that the Polynesians et all actually were forced out of northern Asia to the south and the east. They walked over the bridge and floated through the oceans to all the little islands, and the New World. There, they found another people, who they had to fight to survive; being from a hostile background, they were better fighters.
So they chased the inhabitants down throughout the Americas, to the very tip of Argentina and Chile. Most of the men were killed and most of the women were taken, however several thousand took to the ocean, and floated along the West Wind Drift.. to Australia!
(The theory was based on genetic evidence that a chickens were introduced to the New World by Polynesians, and that there is a genetic trail on some human female populations in S.A. that links them to Australians.)
Duh (Score:3, Interesting)
I was playing Civilization the other day, doing an earth simulation and I was playing as Japan. One of my first strategies was to research Astronomy so that I could build Galleons and go colonize the Americas before anyone else could. Having colonized all of the islands in southern Asia (and Australia) it was just obvious what I had to do next. Clearly the early south Asians were thinking along the exact same lines.
You scientists and your crazy fossil and skeleton digging. There are simpler ways people!
Re:Silly. (Score:3, Interesting)
What would you be if you are atheist and not an evolutionist?
Crossing from South to North Asia... (Score:4, Interesting)
Crossing from South to North Asia is no more difficult, than crossing from North to South America or, indeed, from Asia to Europe — where even the recent Romans had to battle "endless" Eastern tribes.
So, the theory, that people crossed Bering's Straits into Northern America (Alaska) and then populated both continents, already assumes migrations far more distant, than a travel from Southern Asia to Norther would require...
And finally, next time you are in Cancun, ask a Yucatani Mexican, where the Mayas are from, and he'll tell you, they are related to Mongols (and by the looks of them, he may be right)... Mongolia is neither the Southern nor Northern Asia, but smack in the middle...
Re:wierd theory here (Score:3, Interesting)
I don't think "seafaring" is necessarily the answer, though I think "by sea" is a good answer. I don't think the technology to actually navigate across several thousand miles of open ocean existed until well within the historical period. But using small boats and hugging the coasts certainly must have existed even 20,000 or 30,000 years ago. That seems to have been the way that people found their way to places like Australia, Taiwan and Japan (all of which have ancient indigenous peoples of clearly South Asian descent, not unlike the the few suggestive pre-Clovis remains in the Americas). Perhaps the Americas were just the last stop on the journey of a widespread group of people as they wound their away around the Indian and Pacific Basins, much as Greenland was the last stop for the Inuit peoples on their own coast-skirting migrations out of East Siberia.
its easy to understand populating the new world (Score:3, Interesting)
its no great mystery. the idea of land bridges is silly. if people can reach samoa and new zealand and easter island on boats and rafts, why they need a land bridge to get to alaska from kamchatka or from lappland to iceland, then greenland, then ellesmere, is silly. you don't even need boats to do that, just pack ice. want to understand how the new world was populated?
just look at a picture of icelandic pop singer bjork [google.com]
looking at her picture, seeing her obvious genetic heritage, on iceland, should cue you in on the free flow of of northeast asian genes around the north pole for millenia
and of course this doesn't preclude the odd southeast asian gene influx from the occasional lucky maniac who made the trip to the south or central american west coast from easter island or hawaii
the real mystery is how people ever got to easter island, or any other highly isolated south pacific dot. you can head towards north or south america and be way off your intended course, and still make it there as long as you ar emoving very roughly in a general east west direction
but a dot in the south pacific? if one were given to random chance, that's a lot of wasted souls in outrigger canoes in watery graves. more likely, they simply followed subtle signs: fish migrations, or bird migrations, cloud formations over distant lands, guessing further outliers on island chains from deducing the general direction of mapping previously known chain islands. who knows? perhaps the colonizers of the south pacific used subtle well-observed natural clues we aren't even aware of anymore
Re:Silly. (Score:3, Interesting)
What would you be if you are atheist and not an evolutionist?
Well, if you didn't think any god did it or that we evolved on our own, the logical conclusion must then be that we're being manipulated by some other, non-divine being or beings. It's not entirely out of the realm of the possible that life has been created in the lab by aliens and seeded on our planet. Still, even if you don't claim evolution to be the explaination of all change it'd be pretty hard to deny any and all evolution.
Old news (Score:5, Interesting)
The skeletons were found back in 2001 and 2002 and they were carbon dated no later than 2004, probably before that, though.
They don't say, but I suspect they're talking about the Ox Bel Ha cave system (Ox is the Mayan word for "Three" and is pronounced "Osh"), which is the largest underwater cave system in the world and it's actually something that's probably worthy of a Slashdot post in itself, if it weren't also old news.
I lived in that area for 3 years and I'm friends with 2 of the divers that discovered and mapped the Ox Bel Ha [mexicocavediving.com] system.
The Yucatan peninsula is studded with sink holes called "cenotes". They're filled with fresh water (though there are areas where the salt water comes in and creates a salt/fresh water interface called the halocline, which looks wicked cool. It's kind of like oil and water) and look like a bunch of very circular ponds, except they're often fairly deep and interconnected by caves. Skeletons are a pretty common find in them, but most are far more recent (from the Mayan period) and are largely believed to be sacrificial.
I can't find the stories now, but I recall some stories suggesting that some of the indigenous people of South America were believed to have been descendants of lost fisherman from South-East Asia. It seems plausible that there could have been groups that arrived in Mexico as well.
Re:Dominant theory? (Score:2, Interesting)
Multiple Waves (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:this can't be right (Score:3, Interesting)
Yes of course there's evidence for Creationism. The Bible is evidence. It's extremely weak evidence, and wouldn't be admissible in a court of law. ("Your honour, I object." "On what grounds?" "Hearsay." "Sustained.")
I'm not a creationist, and I'm staunchly opposed to Creationism in the science classroom[*], but I know the difference between "no evidence" and "evidence so thin it could hide behind a supermodel".
[*] Creationism is a great topic for a practical philosophy class. It has it all: the testable vs the untestable; would a creator be so fickle as to trick his creations into heresy and punishing them for it; is carbon dating really proven -- ie can we really assume that the laws governing radioactive decay haven't changed over the millenia etc etc etc. Creationism is a fantastic topic for debate if no-one's trying to force it on other people as a "truth".
HAL.
Re:Everyone? (Score:2, Interesting)
But...but...but...the Book says....
As opposed to "But...but...but...the Scientist says...."???
None of us have this kind of information first hand, as we're just not that old. On some level, we're all just taking someone else's word for it.
Re:its easy to understand populating the new world (Score:3, Interesting)
What the hell has Bjork got to do with it? Iceland was unpopulated until the ninth century AD when it was founded as a long-term fishing outpost by Gaels and vikings.
In fact, some of Bjork's features may be from early Greenlandic populations, as any boats between Norway and Greenland would have stopped off at Iceland for supplie. Who were the Greenlanders? Eskimos. Who aren't genetically linked to South Americans.
Please don't be an educated bigot -- do a bit of research before displaying your total racial ignorance.
HAL.
Re:this can't be right (Score:3, Interesting)
Oh really? So if I say the world is in fact a cube orbiting around a great spaghetti monster and write it down... that piece of paper is evidence to my or someone else's claims this is the truth?
If you wrote it down and published it, you never know, someone might cite you in an academic paper on the subject -- using your theory as evidence.
In academic terms, the Bible is not a prime source -- it is a series of citations of other papers. This indeed makes it very flimsy, but as we do not have the direct testimony of Noah, Moses or anyone else mentioned therein as a prime source, academics would resort to the Bible as a secondary or tertiary source.
When evidence is this thin, scientists don't call it evidence.
Yes they do. You're getting confused because we talk commonly talk about "evidence" in a collective sense. "The evidence suggests" really means "there is more evidence to suggest this than there is to suggest otherwise" -- it's just quicker to tally all the evidence into a single bundle.
Just because no-one can REALLY (in the philosophical sense) prove gravity ("What if the 1 million to the power of a millionth time you drop something it doesn't fall?") doesn't mean we can't call it fact. Same goes with something so unlikely as what is described in the bible...
Absence of evidence does not equal evidence of absence. We have positive evidence of the existence of gravity. We have no substantial evidence of the existence of a supreme being -- this does not mean that we have evidence of the non-existence of such a being.
which in facts contradicts itself on numerous occasions.
This is evidence of the fallibility of the Bible, which reduces its credibility as evidence. But it doesn't prove that the Christian God doesn't exist.
[*] Creationism is a great topic for a practical philosophy class.
No it isn't, and I'm tired of people making this semi-intellectual argument.
See, if you'd been taught philosophy you wouldn't say that.
There's nothing untestable about God... if He exists and exerts influence over this world, it can be proven or disproven
"Thou shalt not put the Lord thy God to the test".
If a supreme being is all-powerful and can manipulate all reality then it makes sense that he can chose whether to be observed or not. If he has explicitly said "you're not testing me", then there is no point trying to test him.
So if God exists as the omnipotent entity described in the Bible, and has rejected calls for evidence as claimed in the Bible, then failing to find any evidence does not disprove the theory, because the theory already predicts that you will fail to find evidence.
This is what we call intractable.
You cannot scientifically say that God doesn't exist. You cannot say that there is no reason to believe in God. What you can say is that there is no good reason to believe in God.
quote>
If He exists and exerts NO influence over the world, he might as well not exist and His existence is just as likely to be true as the Spaghetti monster, etc.
Strawman! We know for a fact that the FSM is made up, so it would be inconceivable to believe He and His Noodly Appendage exist. We do not know for a fact that the Bible was fabricated. The two situations are incomparable. If you say otherwise... well, you may as well be saying that the fact that Coma Patient X must have taken a coma-inducing drug because Coma Patient Y is in a coma because of a coma-inducing drug and their current symptoms are the same. (Coma Patient X may have taken the drug -- I don't know. Maybe he had a stroke or something -- I don't know. I only have the evidence for patient Y. This doesn't allow me to make any firm conclusions on X.)
Now I'm sure you're feeling really angry. Why? Because y