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Giants with Double-Rowed Teeth, Flattened Heads and Six Fingers

Saturday, October 13, 2012
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Were They Possibly Denisovan Hybrids?

The Cherokee called them the Moon People. The Utes and Paiutes spoke of a hideous race of cannibals ten feet tall living in caves. And the Choctaw also have an account of the race of giants that first colonized the Ohio Valley. 

From Old World Roots of the Cherokee, chapter 5, "America's Middle Ages," pp. 78-79, we read:

What kind of Indians lived in the territory the Choctaw and Chickasaw carved out for their new home? According to their traditions, reports Cushman, as confirmed by excavations of bones in Tennessee, it was a “race of white giants”:

[T]he tradition of the Choctaws . . . told of a race of giants that once inhabited the now State of Tennessee, and with whom their ancestors fought when they arrived in Mississippi in their migration from the west, doubtless Old Mexico. Their tradition states the Nahullo (race of giants [literally, wizards]) was of wonderful stature; but, as their tradition of the mastodon [which used to be found on the Great Plains], so this was also considered to be but a foolish fable, the creature of a wild imagination, when lo! Their exhumed bones again prove the truth of the Choctaws’ tradition (151).

These giants could have been Rafinesque’s Atlans.

Cushman then recounts the discovery in 1880 at a burial mound site near Plano, Texas, of human bones “of enormous size . . . the femoral bones being five inches longer than the ordinary length, and the jaw bones . . . so large as to slip over the face of a man with ease.” Cushman goes on to identify them with the older occupants of North America called Allegewi or Taligewi (Talegans). Many historians, moreover, speculate they were the builders of the Adena mounds.

As for the Chickasaw, Cushman notes that they have no record of their history before the colonial period, although it is assuredly "the same as the Choctaws, being one tribe and people until the division made by their two chiefs Chikasah and Chahtah many years after their arrival and location east of the Mississippi River" (p 358). Of the Natchez, Cushman records that they, "if tradition may be believed, also came from Mexico where they had lived for centuries" (p 440).

A story was told by the Comanches in 1857: 

Innumerable moons ago, a race of white men, ten feet high, and far more rich and powerful than any white people now living, here inhabited a large range of country, extending from the rising to the setting sun. Their fortifications crowned the summits of the mountains, protecting their populous cities situated in the intervening valleys. They excelled every other nation which was flourished, either before or since, in all manner of cunning handicraft—were brave and warlike—ruling over the land they had wrested from its ancient possessors with a high and haughty hand. Compared with them the palefaces of the present day were pygmies, in both art and arms. They drove the Indians from their homes, putting them to the sword, and occupying the valleys in which their fathers had dwelt before them since the world began. At length, in the height of their power and glory, when they remembered justice and mercy no more and became proud and lifted up, the Great Spirit descended from above, sweeping them with fire and deluge from the face of the earth. The mounds we [i.e. the speaker Chief Rolling Thunder and his Spanish listener] had seen on the tablelands were the remnants of their fortresses, and the crumbling ruins that surrounded us all that remained of a mighty city.[i]

The word Nahoolo or Nahullo “is now emphatically applied to the white race and no other . . . The Nahullo were of white complexion, according to Choctaw tradition, and were still an existing people at the time of the advent of the Choctaws to Mississippi,” concludes Cushman (p 153) . In agreement, the Indian trader Adair often refers to the Nani Ishtahoolo as departed white ghosts vested with spiritual powers whose descendants were priests and magicians. Their cries and magic spells could still be heard in the mounds like those at Ocmulgee.[ii] These references contribute to the suspicion that the “Indians” who preceded Asiatic tribes from Mexico were, as we would say today, Caucasian.

About exactly a year ago on this blog, we published a post about "Neanderthals in America," mentioning also the peculiar archaic skeleton that is now a roadside attraction in Arizona, called The Thing. In the meantime, we acquired a copy of Fritz Zimmerman's book, The Nephilim Chronicles, which reproduces over 300 historical accounts of Giant skeletons. Many are associated with the earliest mound sites in America, but Zimmerman's survey of this worldwide phenomenon ranges from the Hunter-Fisher People of northeast Europe and Red Paint People whose movements were circumpolar to the giants of the Bible, noted by the Babylonian Talmud as having double rows of teeth, and "Giants' Remains in the British Isles" (pp. 157-65).

Navajo legends speak of the Starnake People, a regal race of white giants endowed with mining technology who dominated the West, enslaved lesser tribes and had strongholds all through the Americas. They were either extinguished or "went back to the heavens." The name may be a corruption of the Biblical race known as Anakim (Num. 13:33, Deut. 1:28). The name Og (Hebrew "chief") appears to be characteristic (see Zimmerman, pp. 188-91). The ogham alphabet is attributed to this cultural founder. 

Certainly, many of the mound sites uncovered in the nineteenth century tell a story of constant warfare by incoming Asiatic tribes  against the giants occupying the land. One grisly scene showed thousands of skeletons, male, female and young heaped in a mass grave, with warriors' skulls pierced by arrows. It would appear that as these aboriginal inhabitants of the Ohio Valley were gradually displaced, some members of their society went over into the ranks of the new conquerors, bequeathing a strain of great stature still noticeable, for instance, in the Mobilian chief Tuscaloosa and DeSoto's Indian queen Cofitachiqui, both of whom were said to be seven feet tall.

We are struck by the following traits of this giant race or ethnic group from human prehistory:

  • Mother Goddess religion
  • Copper (not bronze) axes 
  • Polished slate tools including fishing plummets, which were apparently regarded as sacred
  • Belief that the Grandmother Moon was the repository of souls
  • Diet emphasizing shellfish (for which the double row of teeth probably was selected as an evolutionary advantage in their beachcomber origin out of Africa?)
  • Building of fish weirs in North American rivers to trap migrating eels
  • Certain vegetarian habits (wild rice, for instance)
  • Inscriptions on artifacts, especially pipes, often buried with the dead
  • Use of coal and petroleum
  • Weaving and looms
  • Knowledge of seafaring, mathematics and engineering, including canals and irrigation
  • Burying of a dog with a child to guard the latter in the afterlife
  • A language apparently Afro-Asiatic and close to Semitic tongues
  • Kingcraft:  nobles were buried in seated positions on thrones surrounded by a coterie of their retainers

When Denisovan Man was first discovered, we had just a fingerbone to go on. We can only extrapolate the look of the skull. Geneticists conjecture, however, that it was an Austronesian type. We suggest that a modern prize of science will belong to the geneticist who can derive ancient DNA to study and classify from the bones of giant hominids that are unavoidably plentiful in the archeological and mythological records of humankind. 

Maybe the owner of The Thing will allow researchers to borrow one of the femurs for laboratory analysis and measurement. If that's not possible, the Smithsonian, Carnegie Institute and dozens of local historical societies throughout the Midwest have basements and storage facilities brimming with these relics of American history.

Above:  Patagonian giants. 



   


[i] Nelson Lee, Three Years among the Camanches. Albany:  Baker Taylor, 1859) 194. See also Cyclone Covey, Calalus: A Roman Jewish Colony in America from the Time of Charlemagne Through Alfred the Great (New York:  Vantage) 144-45.

[ii] Adair 37. 

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Neanderthals in America

Tuesday, October 18, 2011

Yes, Virginia, there is a Neanderthal fossil record in America. And apparently a Neanderthal hybrid fossil record.

No genetics publication has put all the evidence together: the genetics establishment is still in denial about most things Neanderthal. The evidence is scattered and mostly unrecognized, but, in our opinion, conclusive and compulsive. Consider the following article:

Frank L'Engle Williams and Gail E. Krovitz, "Ontogenetic Migration of the Mental Foramen in Neanderthals and Modern Humans," Journal of Human Evolution 47/4 (Oct. 2004) 190-219. 

The mental foramen (literally "mind's little hole") is an anatomical trait very pronounced in Neanderthals, a small dimple in the lower jaw of the skull beneath the teeth, or mandible. It is found sporadically in humans, where it is classified as archaic. Among the places where it has been identified are the Oleniy Islands and Baltic region, Northwestern Russia in Cro-Magnon like Europoid and Mongoloid types, along with "large and massive" torus occipitalis or Anatolian bumps (Alexander Mongait, 1959; Marija Gimbutas, 1956); Bakhehisarai in the Crimea (Alexander Mongait, 1959); the Joman or Ainu of Japan (Carleton Stevens Coon, 1962); and the "race of giants" continually being unearthed in West Coast, Ohio Valley and New England archeological sites, caves and mounds.

Archaic giant skeletons with mental foramina, occipital bumps, double rows of teeth and other Neanderthal features are reported, in fact, all over the Americas. Fritz Zimmerman has gathered a lot of the evidence in a new book titled Nephilim Chronicles, of which a small excerpt was published in Ancient American magazine, issue 91, pp. 24-27. Here is one of the newspaper reports he cites:

Evening News (Ada, Oklahoma), November 8, 1912. PRIMITIVE MEN OF GIGANTIC STATURE.
Eleven skeletons of primitive men, with foreheads sloping directly back from the eyes and two rows of teeth in the front of the upper jaw, have been uncovered at Craigshill at Ellensburg, Washington. They were found about twenty feet below the surface, twenty feet back from the face of the slope, in a cement rock formation over which was a layer of shale. The rock was perfectly dry. The jawbones, which easily break, are so large that they will go around the face of a man today. The other bones are also much larger than those of the ordinary man. The femur is twenty inches long, indicating a man of eighty inches tall [6' 8"]. The teeth in front are worn almost down to the jawbones, due, it is believed, to eating uncooked foods and crushing substances with the teeth. The sloping skull shows an extreme low order of intelligence.

We note that the female mummy clutching a child known as The Thing on display at a roadside attraction on Interstate 10 north of Tombstone, Arizona, has a double row of teeth. It supposedly was one of three skeletons sold to the operator of the original site for $50 by a Chinese gentleman passing through. The Thing is discussed in several works by David Hatcher Childress. (My son and I paid our two bucks and saw it last Christmas on a road trip.)

Photo above:  Archaic skull from Oleniy Island studied by Marija Gimbutas among other archeologists, showing the position of the mental foramen, the result probably of Neanderthal interbreeding.

Photo below:  The Thing.






Comments

Kathryn Halliday commented on 19-Oct-2011 11:50 AM

Very interesting article. What caught my eye is the article from Ada, Oklahoma---where I was born and now live in my old age. It is the center, after the removel, of the Chickasaw Nation.

Fritz Zimmerman commented on 01-Feb-2012 11:38 AM

There are many cases of "archaic" type skulls that are associated with the Maritime Archaic who migrated to North America (by boat) from 7000 - 2000 BC. They eventually migrated in to the Great lakes region. These are a few of headlines of giant skeletons
with Neanderthal like skulls in the Great Lakes http://gianthumanskeletons.blogspot.com/2012/01/giant-human-skeletons-with-archaic.html This link will take you to headlines from the coastal regions, where more of these Neanderthal looking skulls were uncovered.
http://gianthumanskeletons.blogspot.com/2012/01/giant-human-skeletons-headlines.html

Anonymous commented on 02-May-2012 11:12 PM

Yes there is overwhelming evidence to support this im one of the rare people who have in my possession a skull showing brow ridge teeth leg bones and hundreds of tools. Drockhound texas


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Aboriginal Australian History Finally Resolved

Saturday, October 08, 2011

Everyone probably has wondered at some time what makes Aboriginal Australians different from other people, where they came from and how old their ethnic type is. Well, wonder no more. Following up on the previous post, "Australian Aboriginal DNA Gets Attention," this post will summarize the groundbreaking article in Science magazine, M. Rasmussen et al., "An Aboriginal Australian Genome Reveals Separate Human Dispersals into Asia" (Science 334, 7 Oct. 2011, 94-98).

First the abstract:

We present an Aboriginal Australian genomic sequence obtained from a 100-year-old lock of hair donated by an Aboriginal man from southern Western Australia in the early 20th century. We detect no evidence of European admixture and estimate contamination levels to be below 0.5%. We show that Aboriginal Australians are descendants of an early human dispersal into eastern Asia, possibly 62,000 to 75,000 years ago. This dispersal is separate from the one that gave rise to modern Asians 25,000 to 38,000 years ago. We also find evidence of gene flow between populations of the two dispersal waves prior to the divergence of Native Americans from modern Asian ancestors. Our findings support the hypothesis that present-day Aboriginal Australians descend from the earliest humans to occupy Australia, likely representing one of the oldest continuous populations outside Africa.

Above:  Aboriginal Men about 1900 from the Coranderrk Community. La Trobe Picture Collection.

This study of Aboriginals will be cited as a landmark case in genetics because the authors took especial care to disarm any criticism concerning possible admixture and contamination, achieved a stupendous rate of success in sequencing DNA sites and used smart comparators to verify their model of what makes Aboriginals different, including Neanderthals, Denisovans, Andamanese, Filipinos, Indians, Papua New Guineans and Melanesians. Fifty-eight co-authors are listed, with Morten Rasmussen of the Feinstein Institute for Medical Research, Manhasset, New York, named as the first lead author.

First sentence:

The genetic history of Aboriginal Australians is contentious but highly important for understanding the evolution of modern humans.

Some mysteries pointed out about Aboriginal Australian DNA by the authors include:

--The Aboriginal population contains a lot of diversity, including specimens of most of the world's haplogroups, male and female

--Related populations suggested are hunger-gatherers from Nepal and the Philippines, Great Andamanese and Onge from the Andaman Islands, Highland Papua New Guineans and certain peoples from India

--It was previously unclear whether Aboriginals resulted from a single dispersal out of Africa or multiple-dispersal model

--The role of hybridization with other archaic peoples was also not clear.

The authors confirm that "before European contact occurred, Aboriginal Australian and PNG Highlands ancestors had been genetically isolated from other populations (except possibly each other) since at least 15,000 to 30,000 years B.P." Also, "our results favor the multiple-dispersal model in which the ancestors of Aboriginal Australian and related populations split from the Eurasian population before Asian and Europeans split from each other" (97). "We find that the European and Asian populations split from each other only 25,000 to 38,000 years B.P., in agreement with previous estimates."

The new study finds that Aboriginals have an amount of admixture with Neanderthals and Denisovans comparable to Europeans and Asians, although they have more Denisovan DNA than other people. "This admixture may have occurred in Melanesia or, alternative, in Eurasia during the early migration wave" (97).

In sum, the Aboriginals are part of the same first-out-of-Africa branch of the human tree as Europeans and Asians, their ancestors splitting 62,000 to 75,000 years ago from Africans, and leaving relic related populations in the Highlands of Papua New Guinea and the Philippines. A second expansion wave through India, Indo-China and Southeast Asia replaced the original stock, while the Aboriginals became stranded and isolated in Australia about 50,000 years ago. 

"This means that Aboriginal Australians likely have one of the oldest continuous population histories outside sub-Saharan Africa today" (98).

Properly positioning Australian Aboriginals in the expansion of humans out of Africa opens the way to connecting the dots for all the other prehistoric peoples. The migration map presented by Rasmussen et al should be carefully studied for clues about the origins of Asians and Native Americans, to begin with.



Reconstruction of early spread of modern humans outside Africa. Note admixture between early dispersal (red) and second dispersal (black), as well as presence of archaic Denisovans in Asia. Science magazine.










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Emerging Prehistory of Ethnic Groups

Thursday, June 16, 2011
As Revealed by Autosomal Markers

No scientific work, to our knowledge, has ever hazarded a guess on what the mutation rate for autosomal CODIS-type markers might be. Is it like mitochondrial DNA, which has a molecular clock measured in the thousands or tens of thousands of years, or is it like STRs on the Y chromosome, with its much shorter timeframe? The question is important if you are trying to extrapolate the history of the human race from today's autosomal population statistics.

From what we can see, putting on diachronistic lenses, the mutation rates for the DYS values on what are commonly called CODIS markers or the DNA profile for individuals are very small. The values appear to have been set from the beginning of mankind and to have mutated little in the past 100,000 years.

If this is true -- and it cannot be a very big "if" or we would have more diversity between populations than what is known -- the oldest markers are Sub-Saharan African and the newest European. Statistical divides bear out this reading of the human genetic record, as shown now in our updated map included with the DNA Fingerprint Plus.

We will try to make some notes on the individual markers in future posts.

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Neanderthal Uralic Connection

Thursday, May 12, 2011

Did Neandertals Linger in Russia's Far North?

By Michael Balter

Science 13 May 2011:
Vol. 332 no. 6031 p. 778
DOI: 10.1126/science.332.6031.778

For more than 150,000 years, Neandertals had Europe's lush river valleys to themselves. Then, beginning about 40,000 years ago, modern humans swept in from Africa and the Near East, spreading rapidly from east to west. Soon, the archaeological evidence suggests, the Neandertals retreated to “refugia” in southern Europe, such as Spain and Portugal—their last holdouts before going extinct.

Or were they? On page 841, a research team claims that some of the last Neandertals may have taken refuge in the dark Arctic north rather than the sunny south. At the 32,000-year-old site of Byzovaya in Russia's Polar Ural Mountains, which at 65 degrees latitude is as far north as Iceland, archaeologists found stone tools they argue are typical of those long associated with Neandertals in Europe...

Read abstract.

Note: This may explain why Finno-Uralic is one of the strong contributors to a high score on our Neanderthal Index.

Byzovaya Cave in Russia's Polar Ural Mountains with Neanderthal artifacts.


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Pre-historic Arabia Crossroads for Early Humans (and Neanderthal Hybrids?)

Saturday, February 05, 2011
The Southern Route “Out of Africa”: Evidence for an Early Expansion of Modern Humans into Arabia

Science 28 January 2011: Vol. 331 no. 6016 pp. 453-456 DOI: 10.1126/science.1199113

By Simon J. Armitage, Sabah A. Jasim, Anthony E. Marks, Adrian G. Parker, Vitaly I. Usik, and Hans-Peter Uerpmann

Abstract

The timing of the dispersal of anatomically modern humans (AMH) out of Africa is a fundamental question in human evolutionary studies. Existing data suggest a rapid coastal exodus via the Indian Ocean rim around 60,000 years ago. We present evidence from Jebel Faya, United Arab Emirates, demonstrating human presence in eastern Arabia during the last interglacial. The tool kit found at Jebel Faya has affinities to the late Middle Stone Age in northeast Africa, indicating that technological innovation was not necessary to facilitate migration into Arabia. Instead, we propose that low eustatic sea level and increased rainfall during the transition between marine isotope stages 6 and 5 allowed humans to populate Arabia. This evidence implies that AMH may have been present in South Asia before the Toba eruption (1).

First paragraph.
The deserts of the Arabian Peninsula have been thought to represent a major obstacle for human dispersal out of Africa. AMH were present in East Africa by about 200 thousand years ago (ka) (2). It is likely that the first migration of AMH out of Africa occurred immediately before or during the last interglacial [marine isotope stage (MIS) 5e] (3). During MIS 6, the Afro-Asiatic arid belt was hyperarid, restricting movements of human populations out of Africa. Finds from Qafzeh and Skhul in the Near East, dated between 119 ± 18 and 81 ± 13 thousand years ago (ka) (4, 5), suggest that AMH first migrated along the “Nile Corridor” and into the Levant. 



The location of Jebel Faya, United Arab Emirates, along with key sites mentioned in the text. The dashed line represents the –120-m paleoshoreline, indicating the maximum exposure of land during marine lowstands. Science.

Did Modern Humans Travel Out of Africa Via Arabia?

By Andrew Lawler

Science 28 January 2011: 387. [DOI:10.1126/science.331.6016.387]


JEBEL FAYA, UNITED ARAB EMIRATES—The barren desert and hills here seem wholly inhospitable, with sparse rain and sandy soil supporting only a few nomadic Bedouin. But things were different 125,000 years ago, when the desert was savanna, with plentiful water and game, and under the protection of a rock overhang, a group of hominids whiled away their time making stone tools. A Germanled team argues on page 453 that these tools were made by modern humans who may have crossed directly from Africa as part of a migration spreading across Europe, Asia, and Australia. Although most researchers agree that our species came out of Africa in one or more waves (see p. 392), those dates are more than 50,000 years earlier than most believe our ancestors left the continent.

The audacious claim by Simon Armitage of Royal Holloway, University of London, and colleagues is sparking interest and controversy. “This is really quite spectacular,” says archaeologist Michael Petraglia of the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom, who has previously argued that Homo sapiens left Africa before the massive eruption of an Indonesian volcano 74,000 years ago, a catastrophe thought to have left much of Asia unlivable for early humans (Science, 5 March 2010, p. 1187). “It breaks the back of the current consensus view.” But others, such as archaeologist Paul Mellars of the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom, say that although the discovery is important and well dated, the conclusions are flawed. “I'm totally unpersuaded,” he says. “There's not a scrap of evidence here that these were made by modern humans, nor that they came from Africa.”

The debate centers on a collection of stone tools found here at Jebel Faya, a long limestone mountain an hour's drive from the bustling urban center of Sharjah and 55 kilometers from the Persian Gulf. A rock shelter indents the mountain's end, a few meters above a desolate plain where only camels graze today. The overhang is modest, but it has sheltered humans for millennia, say excavators Hans-Peter and Margarethe Uerpmann of the University of Tübingen in Germany. They began digging here in 2003, uncovering artifacts from the Iron, Bronze, and Neolithic periods before hitting material from the Middle Paleolithic era, roughly 300,000 to 30,000 years ago. Using single-grain optically stimulated luminescence, which measures how much time has passed since materials were last exposed to light, the team dated the oldest set of artifacts, including stone hand axes, blades, and scrapers, to about 125,000 years ago.

Arabia and its fierce deserts have long been seen more as obstacles than conduits to human migration, and most archaeology here has focused on historical times. Recent studies, however, show wetter periods such as one that began around 130,000 years ago. And a spate of findings in the past 25 years show that hominins were in the region during the Middle Paleolithic. Early H. sapiens skulls and tools from Skhul and Qafzeh caves in Israel are now dated to 100,000 to 130,000 years ago, for example.

Co-author Anthony Marks of Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas, says the combination of artifacts from Jebel Faya, such as two-sided blades and small hand axes, is remarkably similar to assemblages made during this period in East Africa, when our own species was the only known hominin on that continent. Other hominins, such as the Neandertals who populated Europe and north Asia, did not use this combination of tools and were not likely to have been in Arabia, he says. That makes the African origin likely “by process of elimination.”

Marks says the tools don't resemble those from Israel or the Aterian tools from the same era in North Africa (Science, 7 January, p. 20). He suggests that H. sapiens may have left Africa in different waves, with the Arabian tools representing a migration launched from East Africa.

Petraglia agrees that it's likely that H. sapiens made the tools and that they came from Africa. “This is out of the habitat range of Neandertals,” he notes. “So they make a really strong and plausible argument.” The team believes that these early modern humans may have even pushed on across the Persian Gulf, perhaps to India, Indonesia, and eventually Australia. Petraglia claims evidence of early H. sapiens in India both before and after the Indonesian eruption, though others dispute that assertion.

Mellars, in contrast, sees no evidence that the Jebel Faya artifacts are of an East African style. He says one of the bifacials is stout rather than narrow like those common in Africa and adds that the authors have not ruled out Neandertals and even H. erectus as the toolmakers. “Everything hinges on whether that material is explicitly African—and I don't see that.”

Other researchers are enthusiastic about the Jebel Faya discovery but cautious about the conclusions. Archaeologist Mark Beech, a visiting fellow at the University of York in the United Kingdom who has worked extensively in the United Arab Emirates, praises the paper but adds: “One site does not confirm the out-of-Africa-via-Arabia hypothesis.”

Hans-Peter Uerpmann agrees, saying that fossil bones are needed “before we can be absolutely sure” that the tools were made by H. sapiens. Other researchers are hot on the trail: Petraglia leaves this month to continue work in Saudi Arabia, and other archaeologists plan to comb Arabian caves and sands for signs that our ancestors passed this way.


We've been saying as much all along.

See our blog post on Prehistoric Arabia.




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Haplogroup N in Europe, Asia Minor and American Southwest

Saturday, January 01, 2011

And Now in the Cherokee...

Haplogroup N1a became prominent in genetics literature when Wolfgang Haak et al.'s studies on 7500 year old skeletons in Central Europe revealed that 25% of the Neolithic European population might have belonged to this lineage. The skeletons were found to be members of the Linear Pottery Culture (LBK ware) which is credited with being the first farming culture in Central Europe.


7,000 Year-Old Linearbandkeramik (LBK ware) from Stone Age Germany.

The study was a major development in the debate on the origin of European populations, since Haak et al. argued that "The discovery of mitochondrial type N1a in Central European Neolithic skeletons at a high frequency enabled us to answer the question of whether the modern population is maternally descended from the early farmers instead of addressing the traditional question of the origin of early European farmers."

Neolithic Revolution
Two competing scenarios exist for the spread of the Neolithic from the Near East to Europe:
  1. Demic diffusion (in which farming is brought by farmers), for example Renfrew's NDT - Anatolian hypothesis
  2. Cultural diffusion (in which farming is spread by the passage of ideas), which is the assumption in Alinei's Paleolithic Continuity Theory.

The study's authors concluded: "Our finding lends weight to a proposed Paleolithic ancestry for modern Europeans."

N currently appears in only .18%-.2% of regional populations. It is widely distributed throughout Eurasia and Northern Africa and is divided into the European, Central Asian, and African/South Asian branches based on specific genetic markers. Exact origins and migration patterns of this haplogroup are still unknown and a subject of some debate.

Although not one of the classic Native American lineages (A, B, C, D, and X -- Schurr), N has been identified in the ancient Southwest in the Fremont Culture centered in Utah. It is one of the Middle Eastern lineages that appear in the Cherokee and other Indians; see DNA Consultants Blog, “Anomalous Mitochondrial DNA Lineages in the Cherokee”. Most investigators attribute this phenomenon to recent European admixture. But such haplotypes  if only instanced in North America without exact Old World matches could just as well be considered Native American.

It has been suggested that N is also characteristic of the Sea Peoples, who may have traveled to the American Southwest in antiquity.

Cherokee or Saponi Wedding Dish from Southwest Virginia in author's possession is glazed black, the color of the Earth Mother, and marked with the "tri-line" signifying the Triple Goddess's power of increase and plenty and rule over all life. The style of pottery is similar to Linearbandkeramik (LBK) ware. This is the female dish of a matched pair. The slightly larger male dish is marked with four lines on each handle. They were used to share food in a wedding or bonding ceremony.

Comments

Paul commented on 03-Jan-2011 01:02 PM

It's my experience that people practicing their ideas travel much farther than ideas alone. Especially since we are talking about pre-writing cultures. It would make sense that the incoming farmers would not only pass on their farming techniques but also their genetic traits.


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Back to the Drawing Board on Post-Ice Age Refugiums

Wednesday, December 15, 2010

Using mitochondrial DNA to test the hypothesis of a European post-glacial human recolonization from the Franco-Cantabrian refuge

O García1,4, R Fregel2,4, J M Larruga2, V Álvarez3, I Yurrebaso1, V M Cabrera2 and A M González2

  1. 1Basque Country Forensic Genetics Laboratory, Erandio, Bizkaia, Spain
  2. 2Área de Genética, Departamento de Parasitología, Ecología y Genética, Facultad de Biología, Universidad de La Laguna (ULL), La Laguna, Tenerife, Spain
  3. 3Unidad de Genética, Hospital Universitario Central de Asturias, Oviedo, Asturias, Spain
Received 1 December 2009; Revised 23 February 2010; Accepted 18 March 2010; Published online 21 April 2010.

Abstract

It has been proposed that the distribution patterns and coalescence ages found in Europeans for mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) haplogroups V, H1 and H3 are the result of a post-glacial expansion from a Franco-Cantabrian refuge that recolonized central and northern areas. In contrast, in this refined mtDNA study of the Cantabrian Cornice that contributes 413 partial and 9 complete new mtDNA sequences, including a large Basque sample and a sample of Asturians, no experimental evidence was found to support the human refuge-expansion theory. In fact, all measures of gene diversity point to the Cantabrian Cornice in general and the Basques in particular, as less polymorphic for V, H1 and H3 than other southern regions in Iberia or in Central Europe. Genetic distances show the Cantabrian Cornice is a very heterogeneous region with significant local differences. The analysis of several minor subhaplogroups, based on complete sequences, also suggests different focal expansions over a local and peninsular range that did not affect continental Europe. Furthermore, all detected clinal trends show stronger longitudinal than latitudinal profiles. In Northern Iberia, it seems that the highest diversity values for some haplogroups with Mesolithic coalescence ages are centred on the Mediterranean side, including Catalonia and South-eastern France.

Mitochondrial testing specialists better get busy revising their haplogroup theories! Another Western European, Atlantic-facing prejudice has been disproved.

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Archeology Venturing into Uncharted Waters

Thursday, December 09, 2010
Or At least Starting to Get Its Feet Wet


American Schools of Oriental Research Annual Meeting:
Tracking the Med's Stone Age Sailors

Andrew Lawler

Genetic studies are beginning to fill in the missing pieces in the history and prehistory of seafaring. "By carefully sorting genetic data from living people, a researcher at this recent meeting covered in Science reported that around 6000 B.C.E., early seaferers indeed spread their seed--both agricultural and genetic--from their homeland in the Near East as far west across the Mediterranean as Marseilles, but no farther."

No farther? Could that be because they have looked no farther?

Gunnar Thompson's new study, whose first print runs have already been exhausted apparently, Ancient Egyptian Maize, builds a well-documented and persuasive case that "Indian corn blossomed with equal vigor along the shores of the Nile River and Gulf of Mexico at the very dawn of history."

You may say that Gunnar Thompson is not a "real" researcher but we would counter that 400 corncobs on ancient tombs and papyrus scrolls of Egypt and corncobs depicted with copper weapons on ancient ships are real enough to be remarked upon by anyone with eyes in their head and a brain to think.

"Male regents in the Middle East and India sent mariners overseas in search of the world's purest copper deposits. These were located in the Mediterranean Sea on the Island of Cyprus, in the Persian Gulf on Megan Island, and on Isle Royale in the Upper Great Lakes Region of North America. This worldwide exploration took place in approximately 6000 B.C.E....all the way to the shores of North and South America" (p.2).


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From Matriarchy to Patriarchy: Year 3000 BCE

Thursday, October 28, 2010
The Greatest Divide in Human Genealogy and History

You hear a lot of talk about the Neolithic Revolution--the gradual adoption and spread of agriculture, animal husbandry and town life by our prehistoric European ancestors--but the most important epoch in the course of civilization goes largely unnoticed in the history books. That was the abrupt shift from matriarchy and worship of the Great Goddess to the warrior-based governments and language stocks of the steppe-dwelling Indo-Aryan barbarians who invaded Old Europe beginning in the late fourth millennium BCE.

The roots of Europe's original female-oriented religion are lost in the mists of the early Stone Age, and may even precede the arrival of "modern humans" in Europe and be part of the heritage of Neanderthals. This substratum of a long-lasting peaceful hunter-gatherer society organized around the religion of the Great Goddess absorbed the spreading practice of agriculture from the Middle East beginning in the fifth millennium and reached its apogee of development in a pure form in the fourth millennium.

The cult of the Great Goddess, depicted here in an enthroned version with flanking felines from Çatal Hüyük, an 8,000-year-old shrine in present-day Turkey (p. 107), was the lifelong object of study by Lithuanian-American archeologist Marija Gimbutas, whose most influential book is The Language of the Goddess (London:  Thames & Hudson, 2006). 

The axe fell on this ancient civilization--quite literally--around 3000 BCE. As confirmed in Jane McIntosh's Handbook to Life in Prehistoric Europe (New York:  Facts on File, 2006), there was a clear line of demarcation between old and new Europe, from the Balkans to Britain, Spain and Scandinavia. The archeological record tells the story of a sweeping and abrupt end to things. The first metal weapons appear in the graves of elite males along with hoards of gold and jewels. Axes previously used to clear forests for agriculture are now battle-axes. Burials are single rather than family and clan-oriented. Whole villages were massacred and depopulated. Fortifications grew as violence escalated. The horse, venerated as just one of the totem animals of the Goddess since the early Stone Age, becomes the symbol of the warrior, along with the chariot and boat. Rock art features ithyphallic warriors wielding weapons or shooting arrows at each other. The transition can also be seen in the establishment of the Pharaohs in Egypt about 3500 BCE.

The invaders brought their male pantheon of war gods, Indo-European languages, aristocratic forms of government and Central Asian/Caucasian genes. The goddess cult underwent radical male adaptations, surviving in out-of-the-way places like Crete and Brittany

So, rather than one transformation, European civilization first went through a Neolithic Revolution, then conversion to warrior-dominated patriarchal societies. It can be postulated that the matriarchal societies eagerly adopted agriculture but exhausted soils, destroyed vital forests and became weaker and smaller-bodied due to a changed diet, falling prey around 3000 BCE to the barbarian warriors of the steppe, who found the accumulation of wealth and unprotected agrarian settlements of Old Europe easy pickings. Climate change could have been a contributing factor.

James Joyce called history "the nightmare from which one cannot wake." If we take a long view of human events, this nightmare began about five thousand years ago. Other-worldly religions like Christianity introduced a further element of alienation and turning away from the sources of life. Before that, people were happily alive, awake, in tune with nature and celebrated life under the auspices of matriarchy.

Assailants with bows and arrows attack

a fortified Neolithic settlement in Furfooze,

France, who defend themselves by hurling

stones and raising clubs. Reconstruction

from Louis Figuier, Primitive Man (London: 

Chatto and Windus, 1876). 

Comments

trumae jackson commented on 28-Oct-2010 06:20 PM


Blogger assumes a matriarchal society was "happily alive," tuned in and harmonious. Probably not.

Anonymous commented on 28-Oct-2010 06:54 PM

"To an archeologist it is an extensively documented historical reality... This culture took keen delight in the natural wonders of this world. Its people did not produce lethal weapons or build forts in inaccessible places, as their successors did, even when they were acquainted with metallurgy... This was a long-lasting period of remarkable creativity and stability, an age free of strife. Their culture was a culture of art...." (Gimbutas, pp. 320-1).

Alan Wade commented on 27-Feb-2011 06:23 AM

I'm in the process of building an Ancient World page on my web site and I was interested in your "From Matriarchy to Patriarchy: Year 3000 BCE", something of our past that I feel has too little emphasis.. What I want to show is that history was not linear
as is inferred, in support of other branches of science. I would like to link to your site from my page if that is OK with you. I will understand if you consider my stuff too radical on other pages. Regards Alan Wade


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