Montana Boy: Bones Show Ancestral Links to Europe

[xchrom]

http://www.spiegel.de/international/dna-analysis-shows-native-americans-had-european-roots-a-954675.html


Shane Doyle of the Crow Nation gave permission for the DNA analysis of the 12,600 year old bones.

It must have been a pretty special child, otherwise the two-year old wouldn't have been buried in such a ceremonious manner. The boy was sprinkled with celebratory red dust and given distinctive stone artifacts for his last journey.

The characteristic fluting of the stone weapons serve as archeological evidence that the boy, who died some 12,600 years ago, came from the Clovis culture. It was one of the earliest New World groups, disappearing mysteriously a few centuries after the child's burial in present day Montana. From the summit of a hill towering over the burial site near the Yellowstone River, the boy's Ice Age contemporaries could monitor their hunting grounds for mammoth and bison.

Now a team of scientists led by the Danish geneticist Eske Willerslev has analyzed the boy's origins and discovered that he descends from a Siberian tribe with roots tracing back to Europe. Some of the boy's ancestors are likely even to have lived in present-day Germany.

Their findings go even further: More than 80 percent of all native peoples in the Americas -- from the Alaska's Aleuts to the Maya of Yucatan to the Aymaras along the Andes -- are descended from Montana boy's lineage.

[wyldwolf]

1. Is someone trying to retroactively 'Europeanize' native Americans?

[theHandpuppet]

3. Sounds that way.

But when it comes right down to it, we are all Africans.

[Arkansas Granny]

6. Yep. Whether you believe in evolution or creationism, we all come from a common ancestor.

[theHandpuppet]

7. But that makes Freeper heads everywhere explode

That's why they hate the teaching of evolution.

[onehandle]

2. It's my understanding that man originated in Africa, spread to Europe, Asia, then to the Americas.

DNA carried and changing all the way.

So, other than the boy being given a special burial, so what?

[kelliekat44]

4. Yes, but that doesn't mean the boy's DNA had links to Europe...they are only reporting on one

link. Eventually, it will all lead back to Africa.

[onehandle]

5. I need to read the whole thing. I thought that Native Americans had a little DNA of everywhere.

Man moved East, so the 'European DNA' came with them.

I thought.

[Nitram]

8. North America was populatd by people who walked across the Bering Strait.

They would have been living in Siberia for many generations. They would be descended from people who lived in what is now Europe. Who were descended from people who came from Africa. These are all theories, and when DNA evidence can back that up, it's very significant.

[MMcGuire]

9. Wouldn't surprise me that there has been seafaring links between peoples, running both ways.

Maritime Archaic peoples where very skilled seafaring peoples. Both in Europe and America along the coasts people did bury in red-dye paint. It's not an impossibility that there is a cultural link, still there is a need to be mindful of motivations outside historical fact. For and against.

Numerous origin stories, used throughout history has been used to justify ownership or alienation of people with little historical fact more with the politics of the day (or current) to back it up.