Doubts resurface over Siberian land bridge migration
Radiocarbon dating has helped determine that a Siberian archaeological site long held to be the crossing-over point for the Bering Straits land bridge to North America is actually much younger than previously thought. The Ushki settlement, once a community of hunters near Ushki Lake in northeastern Russia, is now believed to be about 13,000 years old—4,000 years younger than originally surmised and now of the same time period as the Clovis site, an ancient community in New Mexico. These new findings cast strong doubts on the idea that people could have migrated between the two sites in such a short time span.
"This was the last site out there in Siberia that could have been an ancestor for the Clovis", said Michael Waters, co-author of this research, which appeared recently in the journal Science. "We have to think bigger now and start thinking outside the box."
The Bering Straits land bridge is a strip of land believed to have linked Asia and North America 10,000 to 18,000 years ago due to a period of glaciation when Arctic ices contained much of the oceans' waters, causing the sea levels to be about 400 feet lower than they are today.
"The new age assessment may indicate that archaeologists continue to search in the wrong direction for an answer to Clovis origins", said Anthony Boldurian, a University of Pittsburgh anthropologist who supports a relatively new idea that the first Americans may have arrived 20,000 years ago from Europe using boats to cross Atlantic ice floes.
Other archaeologists believe that early humans from the Japanese archipelago followed marine food sources such as whales across the Pacific Ocean to North America, while still others contend that given the nomadic characteristics of the first Northern Americans, traversing the continent in a seemingly difficult short period of 1,000 years is not impossible.
"We are talking about tiny numbers of people, highly mobile, who would have traversed thousands of square miles as part of their hunting round within surprisingly few generations", said Brian Fagan, an emeritus professor of anthropology at University of California, Santa Barbara.
Along with other recent research (see Archaeo News No. 29, "Late Date Set for Americans"), there new findings continues to be a shake-up of long-held theories concerning the Bering Strait migration.
"It's one of those things where we don't have all the answers right now and that’s what makes it so exciting", Waters said. "I think we're in the threshold in the next 20 years of basically rewriting North American history."
Source: SFGate.com (25 July 2003)
Genetics helps scientists determine Basque origins
Genetics is helping researchers trace the migration of the Basque people, a culture that originated in East Africa tens of thousands of years ago. By first tracking the female gene back 150,000 years to East Africa, scientists then followed the male Y chromosome to determine human whereabouts.
As Joxe Mallea-Olaetxe, adjunct professor for the Center for Basque Studies at the University of Nexada, Reno (USA), explained at a recent presentation at Northeastern Nevada Museum as part of the National Basque Festival in Elko, "The Basque came out of East Africa 50,000 or so years ago and passed through the Middle East."
This explains why some Middle Eastern cities have names that could be Basque in origin, like Ur, Uruk, and Mari, which is the name of a Basque goddess.
According to Mallea-Olaetxe, linguists have long suspected such an idea since an old—now dead—language from Central Asia, Burushaski, "looks suspiciously like Basque". Genetic research is proving the linguists right.
After inhabiting Central Asia for about 10,000 years, Basque ancestors migrated to both the Americas and Western Europe, where they settled—and still live—in France and Spain. The cave paintings in southern France and northern Spain were likely painted by Basque ancestors 10,000 to 30,000 years ago, says Mallea-Olaetxe, which "fits perfectly" the timeline of their migration.
Since DNA research has also shown that the Celtic people’s genes are almost identical to the Basque’s, it is believed they may have migrated together to Western Europe 30,000 years ago.
Mallea-Olaetxe states that genetic research into Basque origins has been ongoing over the past decade or so; however, their conclusions have only been made public recently.
Source: SFGate.com (9 July 2003)
Downtown Miami digs unearth Tequesta Indian artefacts
Archaeologists have been excavating one of three parking lots just north of the Dupont Plaza Hotel in downtown Miami (USA) in search of pottery, ancient tools, and other artefacts of the Tequesta Indians, the ancient tribe responsible for the nearby Miami Circle, the 38-foot-wide stone carving discovered in 1998.
Once the site of the Tequestas' main village for 2,500 years, the site is now scheduled to become the One Miami development of luxury condos, stores, and offices.
Bob Carr, the archaeologist largely responsible for the Miami Circle discovery, and five other scientists have already unearthed shards of pottery, fish bones and shells, and a rock that functioned as a tool or fishing weight. They have also found the city’s original shoreline, hundreds of yards west of the current one, which was produced by modern developers. Carr and his team hope to have completely explored the 6-acre site within a year’s time.
"This is it", said Carr. "This is the chance I’ve been waiting for all my life—to get to the center of the Tequesta civilization, right here in the village that’s under these parking lots."
Source: Miami Herald (29 July 2003)
