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Online chapter Las sociedades originarias Director Codirector
Chapter 2: The Original Peopling of Latin
America
Asiatic Biological Origins Physical anthropologists and geneticists agree that Amerindians are closely related to Northeast Asians, and people on opposite sides of the Bering Straits are most closely related. In fact, Eskimos now live on both sides of the Straits; and some evidence suggests that Alaskan proto-Eskimos came from Siberia about 6,000 B. P., and later expanded north-westward along the Arctic Coast to populate the last major uninhabited region of the Americas. In order to accomplish this feat the Eskimos used a highly specialized technology for hunting sea mammals, caribou, and musk oxen. They also had developed specialized clothing which trapped body heat, and well-insulated dwellings. In fact, the Eskimos, along with the equestrian Plains Indian buffalo hunters, were the last specialized big game hunters; and they often serve as models of what the earlier Upper Palaeolithic lifestyle must have been like. The Athabaskan (Dené) Indians, who inhabit a vast forested area of the interior of Alaska, Yukon, western Northwest Territories, and the northern portion of the Canadian provinces west of Hudson's Bay are not relatable linguistically to their counterparts who inhabit the interior of eastern Siberia; but their hunting technology, dwellings, and tailored skin clothing are very similar, and they are quite closely related genetically. The close genetic, linguistic, and cultural similarities across Beringia has been explained by a model that the Eskimos were the last immigrants, while the Dené represent the penultimate immigration. All the other Amerindians, who live farther south, are genetically and linguistically more distantly related to Northeast Asians, so they are considered to be descendants of earlier immigrants who presumably had traversed the ice free corridor at the end of the Last Glacial (e.g.,Greenberg, Turner and Zegura l986). The American physical anthropologist Christy Turner has made detailed studies of Amerindian and Eurasian teeth. He concluded that Amerindian teeth are most similar to Northeast Asian and north Chinese teeth; and are not related to the teeth of Upper Palaeolithic populations in European Russia, the Altai, or the Lake Baikal area of south central Siberia. He believes that the North Chinese population expanded into Mongolia about 20,000 years ago and crossed Beringia about 14,000 B. P. Geneticists studying the mitochondrial DNA of various American populations also find close relationships between Amerindians and Northeast Asians, but conclude that the time frame is much expanded (e.g. Paåbo M;s;; Torroni, et al. l99l). On the basis of extreme genetic diversity amongst Amerindians, as well as high proportions of rare east Asian factors, their conservative clock indicates that Amerindians south of the glaciers are relatable to Northeast Asians perhaps 25,000 to 45,000 years ago.
Last update 13/10/00 |
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