At 02:02 PM Wednesday 7/6/2005, Warren Ockrassa wrote:
On Jul 5, 2005, at 7:57 AM, Travis Edmunds quoth:
http://www.mexicanfootprints.co.uk/
The discovery of 40,000 years old human footprints in Central Mexico
challenges accepted theories on when and how humans first colonised the
Americas.
The timing, route and origin of the first colonisation of the Americas
remains one of the most contentious topics in human evolution. Experts
from many disciplines are searching for the answers to three seemingly
straightforward questions:
From where did the first people come?
How did they enter the Americas?
When did they arrive?
Thor Heyerdahl thought he had the right answers.
<http://www.answers.com/topic/thor-heyerdahl>
There's some interesting, if hard to believe, evidence that ancient Egypt
had contact with South American people. IIRC some of that evidence takes
the form of cacao residue in the tissues of some mummies -- but cacao is
not native to Africa or any other part of the sino-eurasian continent.
Maybe the earliest settlers came over in skin boats? Were washed out to
sea by a typhoon and fetched up on the shores of, say, what's now Chile?
After all the Polynesians were astoundingly good seafarers. It's not that
far from Rapa Nui to the continent, if you've already crossed the Pacific
island chains.
From Scotsman.com, earlier this week (the source I got it from did not
give a specific URL, and apparently the site requires registration, so here
'tis the whole thing):
<quote>
Taiwan DNA discovery sinks Kon-Tiki theory
IAN JOHNSTON
SCIENCE CORRESPONDENT
SCIENTISTS have discovered the mythical homeland of the Polynesians was
Taiwan and not, as Norwegian explorer Thor Heyerdahl once famously claimed,
South America.
Heyerdahl won international acclaim when he showed that prehistoric sailors
could have crossed the Pacific in primitive rafts by making the journey
himself on a balsa-wood raft called the Kon-Tiki in 1947.
But while he proved there were trading links between ancient South America
and Polynesia, it now appears that the real "Hawaiki" - the Polynesians'
original home according to their own myths - is actually Taiwan.
A new DNA study, which was published in the journal PLoS Biology yesterday,
found the indigenous population of Taiwan were genetically similar to
Polynesians.
The report, by scientists at the Transfusion Medicine Laboratory in Taiwan
and Estonia's Biocentre, said: "Analysis of DNA sequences in this study
reveals the presence of a motif of three mutations ... [which are] shared
among aboriginal Taiwanese, Melanesians and Polynesians. No mainland East
Asian population has yet been found to carry lineages derived from these
three [DNA] positions.
"This suggests that the motif may have evolved in populations living in or
near Taiwan at the end of the late Pleistocene period [more than 10,000
years ago]. The time element ... requires that we adopt a model according
to which the origin of Austronesian [including the Polynesian] migration
can be traced back to Taiwan."
Heyerdahl first came up with his theory about the origins of Polynesians
when he lived on the island of Fatu Hiva in the 1930s and noticed
similarities between local plant life and that of South America.
The direction of winds and currents led him to the belief that the
Polynesians had travelled from the east and not the north-west. The idea
was rubbished by scientists who did not believe prehistoric peoples could
have crossed the Pacific.
So, in April 1947, Heyerdahl and five crewmates set out in the Kon-Tiki
from Peru on an epic journey that took them 4,300 miles in 101 days to the
island of Raroia.
Dr Ingjerd Hoem, head of research at the Kon-Tiki Museum in Oslo, told The
Scotsman that her opinion was that Polynesians originated from south-east
Asia.
However, she said Heyerdahl, who died in 2002 aged 87, did discover that
there had been contact across the Pacific. "They have found evidence of
contact in plants like yams and a kind of cotton which were brought from
South America," she said.
</quote>
-- Ronn! :)
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