I Bet This Creates a Bit of Discussion ...

There's a bit of that going around.

Anthropology will always be a work in progress, complicated by the presence of many people who call themselves anthropologists, but really got into the field as failed social workers.

Those are the type responsible for anthropology being linked with eugenics in the old days. Today, they force political correctness on the analysis of artifacts and remains. They do not like DNA as a tool.

We recently had a case where scientists wanted to examine a skeleton at length, but the native Americans (stupid term -- I was born and raised an American, too!) insisted it was an ancestor and had to be reburied immediately. The Clinton administration backed them, but when Bush got in, the scientists won out.

The skeleton shows signs of coming from a very different line of descent than the old Siberian ancestors of the American Indians. It may have been from across the Pacific.

In line with all that, modern humans seem to go back some 40,000 years, going by the beginnings of language and the decorative arts. But that's in Africa and Europe and West Asia. So how did evidently modern humans, Homo sapiens, find themselves already living in Australia 40,000 years ago?

There are complexities we have yet to sort out, and since so much of the early work was done in Africa, Europe, and West Asia, of course most of the evidence was found there. Now that East Asia and the Pacific are getting the same sort of intensive, expert exploration, we are doubling our knowledge base.
 
On PBS a few weeks back, they were talking about similar scenarios. This one was brought up, as well as a very early migration from Europe by means of "following the ice" along the frozen North Atlantic.

Seems that the earliest stone points and such over on the West coast have little in common with the more-advanced Clovis weapons found in Europe...But similar weapons have been found in digs on the East coast recently.

It appears our early ancestors had a bit of wanderlust, as do many of us now.
 
By George, you're right! Has anyone told the anthropologists of this?


Remember the Monty Python sketch with the "researcher" tracing the migration route from one little Brit town to the next?
 
Esav said:

Anthropology will always be a work in progress, complicated by the presence of many people who call themselves anthropologists, but really got into the field as failed social workers.


Where do you come up with this stuff?
 
mwerner said:
Remember the Monty Python sketch with the "researcher" tracing the migration route from one little Brit town to the next?
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That's not just funny. Sometimes it's true. There is a town in England named Cheddar, from which the cheese was named. An ancient skeleton was found there, and DNA testing of local inhabitants of the town revealed that one of them was a very probable descendant. Talk about a stick-in-the-mud. From one little Brit town ... :D
 
Esav, I remember before the Europeans(?) remains were dug out of that riverbank, that there had been seven other skulls found in the upper half of this country. They were dated to 25,000+ years ago, and all were western European in orgin.

The "native Americans" went nuts about that, and almost all info has disappeared about them.

The European(?) mentioned above had been found to have died an extremely violent death IIRC.
 
Esav Benyamin said:
That's not just funny. Sometimes it's true. There is a town in England named Cheddar, from which the cheese was named. An ancient skeleton was found there, and DNA testing of local inhabitants of the town revealed that one of them was a very probable descendant. Talk about a stick-in-the-mud. From one little Brit town ... :D
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I thought you were referring to the Piltdown Man hoax at first.

http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1590/is_n1_v54/ai_19742021

How far back can you trace your family tree? If you were Adrian Targett, you could go back 300 generations!

Scientists have discovered that Targett is a direct descendant of Cheddar Man, the name given to a 9,000-year-old skeleton found in a cave in the town of Cheddar, England. (Yes, where they make the cheese!) "I've been in the cave a few times," says Targett, "but I never realized it was home."

Cheddar Man was discovered in 1903, but scientists only recently decided to test whether he had any modern relatives nearby. First they took DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid, the material that determines a person's genetic makeup) from the skeleton's teeth. Then they took DNA from skin cells of people whose families had lived in town for a long time. When the scientists compared Cheddar Man's DNA with Targett's DNA, they found the two men were related.

How do the scientists know this? DNA is composed of many smaller units known as bases (nitrogen molecules called adenine, guanine, thymine, and cytosine). The way the bases are arranged determines a person's genetic traits. People with similar base sequences are likely to be related.

The DNA drawn from Cheddar Man came from a part of the cell called the mitochondria, which produces energy for the cell. Mitochondrial DNA is inherited only from the mother. So scientists know that Cheddar Man and Targett are related on their mothers' sides.

Cheddar Man has other living descendants besides Targett. Probably 1 percent of all people in England share Cheddar Man's DNA. Of course, it would be a big job to find them all.

"We all have 9,000-year-old ancestors," Targett says. "I just happen to know who mine was."
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A full 1% of the population? Some folks need to get out and travel more. :D

...and thanks for clarifying that Clovis Man was just a local boy from New Mexico.
 
Esav Benyamin said:
Troll :rolleyes:
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It's easier to call names than justify/prove such a ridiculous statement as anthropology is full of failed social workers...that's like me saying post offices install bulletproof glass backwards to keep the bullets from hitting the customers...it's just silly.
 
No, troll, I'm just tired of your snide remarks, intended only to stir up arguments and dissension. I stand by my statement, having found it true through all the years I've studied and worked in anthropology. I even gave you a clue you could have used to help you understand what I meant, but I should know by now you haven't got a clue.

I suppose I should work harde at ignoring you.
 
Mike Hull said:
The "native Americans" went nuts about that, and almost all info has disappeared about them.

The European(?) mentioned above had been found to have died an extremely violent death IIRC.
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While present human types had ancient human ancestors, those ancestors will not necessarily have matched the present types, many of which developed their current appearance relatively recently.

So the Indians are not Asians and the pre-Indian population we are finding were not Europeans or Polynesians. But the Indians are related most closely to the old-Siberian peoples and the pre-Indian populations may have come from western Asia through Polynesia.

I don't know why the American Indians would be so hostile to the idea that many peoples colonized the New World. Their own ancestors came here in different waves, all fought among themselves, and they have been here longer than any other surviving population.

Evidently, the evil capitalists weren't the ones to invent death, war, genocide ... :(
 
Skulls of a people with distinctively long and narrow heads discovered in Mexico and California

That settles it, ConeHeads were the first settlers of America!
Corse it wasn't called America back then, it was called Nuteskertlortski and they consumed mass quantities of anything they could get their hands on. That's what caused the extiction of so many critters down through the years, not some asteroid or climate change. The ConeHeads ate em all up. Thankfully they couldn't eat the bones and tusks or we'd be s.o.l. when it comes to fossil handle material.
 
Esav Benyamin said:
No, troll, I'm just tired of your snide remarks, intended only to stir up arguments and dissension. I stand by my statement, having found it true through all the years I've studied and worked in anthropology. I even gave you a clue you could have used to help you understand what I meant, but I should know by now you haven't got a clue.

I suppose I should work harde at ignoring you.
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And I tire of your dismissive insulting and brusque criticism...it's so nice to see how you model moderator behavior...i choose not to ignore anyone, but if I did you'd rocket to the top of my list, I really have little time for haters, but I do enjoy a good slow train wreck once in awhile...my bad.
 
RWK,

What is it exactly that you have contributed to this thread, besides your original snide remarks directed at Esav? Your behavior seems designed to do nothing more than, as Esav so succinctly put it, "stir up dissension" and make you the center of attention. That's what a troll does.

If you have a beef with Esav's remarks, why not make a substantive challenge backed by a few facts and observations? Act like a contributor and no one will mistake you for a troll.
 
Point taken, I should have more directly challenged Esav's remark about Anthropology and failed social workers and asked him to support it. However, the irony of him making such a baseless and kind of snide/inflammatory remark is not lost on me.
 
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