Were the FIRST AMERICANS really FIRST? MYSTERY of vanished 'Population Y'

Hell of a lot of ifs and maybes

But since the pacific was apparently populated by boat, it doesn't seem unreasonable to think the same groups may have made it to the Americas by boat rather than via the ice

Are Australasian and Polynesian synonymous?

I didn't thing the Aboriginal Australians were of Polynesian descent - though they got there much earlier.

Wikipedia does not group them together, certainly.

Tierra del Fuegans

There are no more original Tierra del Fuego peoples any more. What did for them is the diseases brought by the missionaries in the mid 1800s, although this simply wiped out any who weren't left standing. I asked my Argentinian guide what he thought about this, and he said the history of the world was one group driving another into extinction. The slightly better step was to merge with the 'conquering' group. Or you could have protracted wars. He also reminded me that this process has not stopped, and wondered if we would see the end of the Palestinians and the Uighurs in this century.

Given that he was half native South American (from Patagonia), I thought he was pretty pragmatic.

So the "Y" first Americans: forced into extinction (or as close as dammit: being driven into the depths of the Amazon), merged with the second wave9s), or died fighting? We'll never fully know, but I await the next info from the genetic evidence.

This stuff is so awesomely interesting. Everything is more complicated than we can believe.

Lemurians

Obviously Churchward was right, and the people of Population Y are descendants from the ancient Lemurians, who colonized South America leaving the traces found by Le Plongeon!

Er, it's a well known fact Aussies like to travel. They obviously just stopped over in South America on their way to become bar staff in London.

The puzzlement that the "Y" were completely exterminated in North America - rather than any mixing - would suggest that the "Y" were never in North America. The sea route from Asia might be improbable but not impossible. How much of the Japanese tsunami flotsam has reached South America within a reasonable time-frame?

The super continent Pangea and Gondwana

Since the "Native Americans" have little written history and their oral history changes with time, it is difficult to tell exactly when they got here but a much more plausible explanation for any common genetic markers is that their primitive ancestors (carried the same genes) traveled much shorter distances back when the tectonic plates were much closer. See link https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gondwana

There have been multiple versions of "Native Americans" that have inhabited the America's. People crossed the land bridge from Siberia to Alaska just after the last Ice Age.

In addition, seafaring Polynesians may have traveled across the Pacific to the America's; so may have early Chinese sailors. The wind was in the right direction for easy travel to South America.

"...displaced them with a thoroughness..."

A thousand generations on, how would one distinguish between angrily "displaced" and happily absorbed?

Keep in mind that about 25% of one's unique genetic code lineage is lost each generation. And 75% raised to the 1000th power is on the order of 10^-125. So it's a mathematical certainty that there's not even a single distinctive 'bit' left.

Thor Heyerdahl

No one has yet mentioned Thor Heyerdahl, and his Kon-Tiki Expedition:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thor_Heyerdahl

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kon-Tiki_expedition

Dave

time to be that guy

Interesting from a scientific standpoint but in the history of world wide civilization up until now fairly irrelevant other than the locals perhaps cultivating some of the native species that would spread in the great Columbia exchange.

>>"We spent a really long time trying to make this result go away and it just got stronger," says Professor David Reich of the Harvard Medical School.

That's a refreshing degree of candour. Would that scientists in certain other fields could be so upfront.

Old news?

The term "paleoamerican" has been used for a while to distinguish some inhabitants of the Americas from what we now call "native Americans. See http://www.economist.com/news/science-and-technology/21602193-new-fossil-helps-understanding-about-how-americas-were-colonised-history for an example.

The more fossils and ancient DNA we find the more complex migration turns out to have been. But the size of the oceans, particularly the Pacific, did put limits on many journeys. With the right wind and currents a raft might conceivably make it but there was no way people could carry enough fresh water with them.

What it comes down to is largely politics on interpreting migration patterns. Do the Celts have any more right to the British Isles than the Anglo Saxons and Vikings? Not that this is any kind of apologist justification for past crimes: the treatment of the indigenous population by European settlers has routinely be dreadful.

Denisovans

probably...there's traces of them in Siberia, Australia and P&G and I think one isolated tribe in India. They probably crossed to North America very early on.

Kontiki

Fish not only provide a source of food, but they also contain liquid. We don't give enough credit to the sea going capabilities of our ancestors. If the Kontiki can do clock wise around the south pacific why can another 'boat' go anticlockwise?

"Well-known"?

It's well known, of course, that humanity spread from its original cradle in Africa out across Asia and thus south to Australasia and separately north - via the Bering Strait land bridge, then in existence - to North America.

Argh. What's "well known" is that the Beringia route almost certainly was not the sole, and quite likely not the first, migration route for humans into the Americas. Maybe we could stop tossing antiquated, debunked theories into articles under the guise of scientific consensus?

Oh, wait, I see Lewis wrote this one. Never mind.