They came before Columbus

On Columbus Day I was reminded of the wide range of fringe theories about "discoverers" who allegedly arrived in the Americas beforce Columbus, but during recorded history (i.e., after the indigenous Americans).

This Washington Post blog with a clickbait title — Christopher Columbus: 3 things you think he did that he didn’t — surprised me by repeating one of the most outré of the fringe theories:

You may also remember that it is believed that Norse explorer Leif Erikson reached Canada perhaps 500 years before Columbus was born, and there are some who believe that Phoenician sailors crossed the Atlantic much earlier than that.

Sure there are. And there are some who believe that shape-shifting alien reptiles are ruling the modern world. The evidence is about as strong for the one hypothesis as for the other.

Any thoughts or experiences with fringe American discovery theories? Have you red books like They came before Columbus, which proposes a West African discovery, or 1421: the year China discovered America?

Shame on the Wash. Post.

Yes, I have long been struck by those theories. Whatever the stated reasons are for believing them, there is generally some other agenda involved. For example, I have talked to people who aspire to be the free thinker who doesn't buy in to the false "received opinion" that all the rest of us sheep are fed. Only one of many agendas behind these ideas.

Personally, I'm more interested in the evolving understanding of the arrival of indigenous peoples, but that's another story.

Perhaps Columbus and Erickson were both shape shifting alien reptiles. The lizards have been involved in things longer than we thought. There was probably one on the grassy knoll.

Where is Doctor Who when he's needed? This week he's mixing with Vikings and their resident aliens, getting close...

These speculations are not new or very original, Kon Tiki and The Ra Expeditions, both by Heyerdahl demonstrate that some contact was possible in very limited circumstances. What is surprising is finding Polynesian DNA in ancient remains exhumed in South America. Somehow they overcame the current and trade winds that helped the Kin-Tiki to cross much of the Pacific.

>5 TLCrawford: The interpretation is still an open question. Says Harvard geneticist David Reich "...what may have happened is this: Members of a now-extinct population of people in what's now Southeast Asia - call them Population Y - crossed the land bridge as well, either before or after the first wave of people made it to the Americas. This splinter group from Population Y kept going, and some members got all the way to Brazil. Meanwhile, those who stayed behind in Asia populated what is now Australasia. But the two groups still are linked genetically."

#6 Occam's Razor fails here. Either they walked a great circle around the Pacific basin leaving no genetic traces, that we yet know of, or they sailed / drifted the big circle of the southern Pacific currents and trade winds through Antarctic waters. There is no simpler choice. They are both impossible.

>7 TLCrawford: What seems "impossible" -- or the hard part -- to me is to envision the situation as it was in the distant past, rather than as it is now. Populations migrate, populations mix, populations replace previous populations. It appears Polynesians were traveling long distances overseas for 3 to 4 thousand years. And any genetic remnant in S America long predates that.

That Polynesian ancestors lived in Asia, some of whom went north and traversed the land bridge and some of whom went south and became Australasian people is far from certain. But it may be the case.

That a small group of Polynesians made it to S America thousands of years before such travel is known and interbred there is also possible.

I don't know what Occam would have to say about this. ;)

>8 stellarexplorer:

The Polynesian theory suggests that Polynesians crossed the ocean before 1492 and landed on the Pacific coast of South America, somewhat earlier than other Polynesians are known to have reached Aotearoa (New Zealand).

The strongest evidence for the theory is an archaeological site with chicken bones that are estimated to be too old to be descended from Spanish fowl. But I have only red second-hand accounts of the find. It's mentioned for instance in James Loewen's Lies My Teacher Told Me.

Loewen has a two-page table of alternate discovery theories and his (somewhat generous) assessents of each theory's likelihood. Pages 40-41 in my copy. I have a few nits to pick with the chart, but they’re probably not worth belaboring here.

>9 Muscogulus: Thank you, Muscogulus. I have read about that, although superficially. I think it's fair to say that the issue is unresolved and an open one. While the possibility of a Pacific crossing to South America by Polynesian peoples is intriguing, I am personally especially fixated on the DNA signal that TLC describes in >5 TLCrawford: above, particularly on whether and how it relates to the ancient history of the settling of people in the Americas.

The finding of that DNA signal in skulls from the now-extinct Botocudo Indians of the Brazilain rainforest was reported in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, but is behind a paywall. Below is a quote from arstechnica summarizing the possibilities suggested by the scientists involved. The first one is less well articulated but essentially the one I cited above by Dr Reich and which I find not implausible: Maybe the DNA came over the Beringian land bridge.


Here is the summary. I apologize for the length and hope no one will feel burdened to read through it unless interested:

"...some researchers have found some Polynesian DNA in the remains of some Native Americans. Oddly, however, the remains are on the exact opposite side of the continent from where the Polynesians are likely to have landed. Even the researchers themselves are at a bit of a loss to explain it; after considering several possible causes, even the one they find most likely gets labelled as "fanciful."

Although the interpretation is bewildering, the data is pretty clear-cut. The authors focused on a tribe that originally lived in the south-east of Brazil called the Botocudo. This group was violent and independent, and didn't come under the control of the Portuguese colonial power. In 1808, the authorities essentially declared war against any group that fit this description. By the end of that century, the Botocudo had essentially ceased to exist as a distinctive ethnic group.

The remains of several Botocudo individuals, however, were preserved in museums, and the authors obtained DNA from over a dozen of them. That DNA was used to study parts of the mitochondrial genome, which is inherited exclusively through female lineages. Because it's relatively easy to obtain and sequence, mitochondrial DNA has been used for a variety of studies of human evolution, and there's a wealth of data available on the variations associated with different populations.

A dozen of these samples produced the sorts of sequences you'd typically see in Native American populations. But two others have a set of distinctive changes that, to date, have only been found in populations associated with Polynesian cultures.

So, how to explain this? The authors consider a number of possibilities. One is based on the fact that both Polynesians and Native Americans are originally derived from Asian populations. Thus, it's possible that the ancestors of both these people shared a variant that has either gone extinct on the Asian mainland, or has just escaped the reach of our current sequencing efforts. However, all indications are that some of the changes we associate with Polynesians appear to be recent, and likely occurred after the population was on Taiwan. So, the authors consider that prospect unlikely.

The next possibility they consider is that the DNA arrived with the Polynesian voyagers themselves, which might seem plausible except for the fact that there's an entire continent's worth of individuals in between who, to date, seem to have no hint of Polynesian DNA. Plus some forbidding geography. "There still would remain the need to explain how these migrants crossed the Andes and ended up in Minas Gerais, Brazil," the authors muse. "We feel that such a scenario is too unlikely to be seriously entertained."

So, what's left? The best of a bad bunch of explanations. Towards the end of the African slave trade, Britain's ban on slavery led it to interdict vessels along the west coast of Africa. That shifted some of the trade to elsewhere, including Madagascar. That island was also settled by Polynesians, and about 20 percent of its population appears to carry DNA variants consistent with the Brazilian find. Once brought to Brazil, there were a few decades in which these individuals could have been kidnapped by and assimilated into the Botocudo (possibly producing offspring) before the tribe was exterminated. The authors helpfully note that a kidnapping of this sort was the subject of an 1870 opera by a Brazilian composer.

The timing and number of coincidences needed are what cause the authors to term this "fanciful." Still, they consider this the best of a bad lot of explanations."

For the record, I think the suggestion that the DNA came from people from Madagascar to be dubious. Such individuals would have brought with them African DNA as well, which was not found in the sequencing.

One thing I might not have considered when labeling their crossing the Pacific instead of walking the northern route as impossible is that the ocean level would be much lower in the south as well as the north. There would have been more islands and the ones that exist today would have been much larger. Perhaps the migration across the Pacific went in small steps over generations?

>12 TLCrawford: Interesting thought. "Global sea level rose by about 120 m during the several millennia that followed the end of the last ice age (approximately 21,000 years ago), and stabilised between 3,000 and 2,000 years ago. Sea level indicators suggest that global sea level did not change significantly from then until the late 19th century."

So the earlier they might have traveled, the more benefit to be had.

>11 stellarexplorer:

Why would Madagascar people who were forcibly transported to Brazil have to have "African" DNA as well? Maybe I'm behind the times, but I remain skeptical of association of DNA sequences with continents, ethnicities, etc. — as in the misleading results pushed by certain DNA sequencing businesses that tell clients they are 10% Irish, 5% Mongol, and so on.

>12 TLCrawford:
>13 stellarexplorer:

The achievements of Polynesian navigators, using memorized data and close observation of the ocean environment, are pretty amazing.

Because of my sister's service in the Peace Corps, I am just two degrees of separation from the late Mau Piailug of Satawal, Caroline Islands, Micronesia — the most successful modern teacher and demonstrator of traditional Polynesian navigation techniques. For a literary portrait of him by a rather besotted American, see The Last Navigator. Anyone who enjoyed Kon-Tiki would probably love this book.

>14 Muscogulus: I'm not sure whether the objection is over the language or the concept. Are you any more comfortable with saying it this way:

Populations in Madagascar derive about two thirds of their DNA from African populations. Their genomes are diverse, and also contain smaller contributions from populations associated with Southeast Asia and Polynesia. The data suggest a genetic connection between people living in Madagascar and people living in both Polynesia and in Africa.

And just to be clear, we are talking here of DNA, not culture or ethnicity. I agree with you that tests of the sort you mention are either naive or predatory. And I was not careful in using the term "African DNA" - thank you for pointing that out. However, you could take too far the separation of genes and locality. There are regional genetic trends in individuals that cluster in populations allowing for some assessment of their genetic similarity or dissimilarity on a broad population-wide basis. It should be noted however that human genetic variation is quite small overall, with any two humans sharing 99.5% similarity in their DNA sequences.

>15 stellarexplorer:

Very helpful explanation; thanks.

Since learning of your obsession with prehistoric migrations, I've decided to exploit your knowledge like an Arabian oil field.

>17 stellarexplorer: I am more than happy to share whatever barrels I extract from those ancient fields!

>10 stellarexplorer: quoted:

"...some researchers have found some Polynesian DNA in the remains of some Native Americans. Oddly, however, the remains are on the exact opposite side of the continent from where the Polynesians are likely to have landed.

Given that we all have many more ancestors than we have DNA strands, or pairs (or whatever the right term is), why can't the same pattern emerge in more than one place in the world, Brazil as well as Polynesia? I've red that it is possible for people with very different ancestries to have virtually identical DNA test results. This should apply to mitochondrial DNA as well.

Why couldn't the result that emerged on Taiwan many thousands of years ago among ancestors of Polynesians also happen more recently in the Amazon rain forest?

It seems to me that geneticists sometimes reason the way geographers did 200 years ago when cataloging the "manners and customs" of different peoples around the world. For instance, if potters in southern China made three-legged pots, and Catawba Indians in South Carolina made three-legged pots, these geographers would conclude that the two peoples must be related. But of course the simpler explanation is that the Chinese and Catawbas each independently came up with an innovation that millions of intervening people never did, or never found to be worth perpetuating.

The scenario you suggest, Muscogulus, is indeed possible. However, there are billions of nucleotides in the human genome, and the probability of the exact mutation arising independently in one or several of these molecules in different parts of the globe is exceedingly remote. These mutations are random events in a sense different from the three-legged pots example; at least complementary cultural innovations arise out of human creativity and cognition.

I am not aware of any known examples of the genetic scenario you are describing. But I could be wrong.

>19 stellarexplorer:

I see what you're saying, and the probability of an identical mutation arising independently in two different places does seem to roughly equal the odds of my being struck by lightning while typing this sentence. (Whew, I'm still here.) But is identical mutation the only way to explain what's been observed here?

I'm just trying to reconcile the idea of "regional genetic trends" with the caveats on this fact sheet about genetic testing, especially the end of the second page. Quoting:

• The same patterns of genetic differences between us can result from a range of very different human histories.
• One version of history could produce lots of very different patterns of genetic differences between us.
• There are sometimes unexpected changes in DNA patterns, so that what looks to us like a reflection of one history in fact results from a completely different one.

Perhaps it's all to do with the difference between a commercial "you-are-13%-Mongolian" DNA test and a peer-reviewed scientific test. But I wish I had a concrete idea of what's present in the latter that's missing from the former.

Of course there's a difference between an individual DNA test and a survey of DNA from many related individuals. But how many Botocudo individuals' remains were studied? Is 14 samples enough to draw conclusions?

>20 Muscogulus: It's an excellent question. I'm afraid I am not able to offer what I consider a "good enough" answer, for at least two reasons. First, I know very little about commercially available genetic testing, although I did look into it a bit since you posed the question to get some idea of what it's all about. And second, when I look to the expertise of the scientists engaged in ancient DNA research (which I am more interested in than in using DNA for recent genealogy), I see a highly technical field of specialists whose comprehension of the relevant genetics far eclipses my own. I wish one of them could speak to this. And simultaneously it is sobering to face the prospect that in so many arcane areas of contemporary scholarship one is forced either to accept the received opinion of experts, or to invest a substantial amount of time and energy to become a near-expert oneself. I have never been happy about accepting received opinion, and I certainly cannot become a near-expert in everything worth knowing about. What a world....!

A few comments. I think it is important to put out in front the idea that no genetic test is going to speak to issues of identity. Any attempt to use genetics to support claims about identity is in my view misguided. Identity is a complex sociocultural and psychological issue that cannot be assessed in any rational way by appeals to genetics.

The scholarly work being done on ancient DNA and on modern DNA as it bears on anthropology relies primarily on genome-wide sequencing. While the cost of sequencing the human genome has come down from --what was it, 3 billion dollars for the first sequencing? -- to $5000 in 2013 and I think is approaching $1000 for high volume testors (I recently saw $1000 per test at a volume of 18,000 tests), clearly that is not what the consumer is getting for $99 or $199.

The commercial tests are not attempting to analyze the genome. They are sampling a number of known single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs), one of several types of genetic variation that distinguish one genome from another. This is an inexpensive way of getting some information out of a sample. There is interest in using SNPs to distinguish genes that cause certain diseases from versions of the same gene that do not cause illness. I don't know much about the validity of these SNPs in drawing conclusions about ancestry, but it is not the genome-based examination that are being used to study ancient DNA.

I offer this recent paper as a taste of the kind of work being done on migration history, and the methods being used to draw conclusions:

http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0121846

Note -- in agreement with your comment -- that the kinds of conclusions being sought and reached in this kind of research apply to groups of people and not to individuals.

>21 stellarexplorer:

Extremely helpful, thanks. Despite your modest disclaimer, you just wrote the clearest statement I've ever seen of the difference between commercially available DNA tests and full genome sequencing.

As to your remark on genetics having nothing to do with "issues of identity," that echoes what I'm finding in the excellent book Racecraft, which points to how in popular discourse "DNA" and "genetics" are too often used half-consciously as a substitute for ancient superstitions about "blood" as the carrier of heritage. It was/is assumed that superficial differences between people, nations, even classes are somehow carried in the blood.

We've had to gradually dismantle our beliefs about blood as scientists have analyzed all its components in the 20th century and determined that there is no difference between the blood of different so-called races. Not that this stops people, even Stephen Pinker according to the authors, from trying to cobble together a biological basis for the folkloric concepts of race we labor under. (Pinker's materials are sickle-cell anemia and Tay-Sachs syndrome, and they are not adequate to the task.)

So now, because "race" is such a fundamental concept and it needs some kind of rationale, many of us turn to the half-understood new science — which, as some of its practitioners acknowledge, grew out of late 19th-century efforts to classify "racial" groups and to perfect eugenics programs, which would breed people for desirable traits, like cattle.

>1 Muscogulus:

BTW, has anyone red anything — a book, article, etc. — that actually claims that Phoenicians came to the New World? I'm curious as to how the Wash. Post blogger became convinced that the crackpot theory was worth mentioning.

Anything credible? Well the Book of Mormon has ancient Hebrews coming to the US in the 800's BCE...(Which I don't find Credible) Barry Fell wrote a book called "America BC" about the pre-Roman Celtic immigration to NA which I didn't think likely either, so I haven't read any thing about Phoenicians proper coming to NA...nope, on balance, nothing in my experience.

Pellegrino suggested that A roman ship MAY have made it to South America (probably by accident).

>24 DinadansFriend:

DF, you mentioned Melungeon origin theories in another thred. For those who don’t know, "Melungeon" is a term for an ambiguous ethnic group in part of the American Upper South (the mountains of eastern Tennessee and western North Carolina). It was formerly a term of abuse, and no one is sure where it came from. Now it is a badge of pride.

DNA testing in 2003 suggested that Melungeons are not that different from other so-called white southerners. The finding disappointed many who conceive of themselves as a kind of Indian tribe. Theories of Portuguese, Turkish, Berber, and, yes, Phoenician origin also get bandied about, and some Melungeons seem to believe all these theories at once.

(A subset of Melungeons is very concerned about eliminating any hint of African ancestry. They were disappointed too; a plurality of white southerners has some African ancestry, and Melungeons appear to be no different.)

Anyway, my point is that the Melungeon echo chamber may have been the source of that Wash. Post blogger's reference to a Phoenician discovery of America. Thanks to DinandansFriend, I now know that N. Brent Kennedy is the author who has probably done the most to advance romantic narratives of seafaring Melungeon ancestors.

>25 BruceCoulson:

Who's Pellegrino?

Here's a link to a site that suggests the presence of humans in North America long before the Clovis People. The evidence is related to the remains of a Mammoth found in a Michigan farmer's field ... which on preliminary investigation points to the huge animal having been butchered by humans ... around 15,000 years ago. Note: the link includes a video showing the skull and head being lifted from the ground.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/next/nature/mammoth-discovery-could-revise-earliest...

>28 Rood: Exciting. I had already posted the same link yesterday to the History at 30,000 Feet group:

http://www.librarything.com/topic/242249