Who were they?

[newnan man]

In her book "Life and Death at Windover" author and Bioarchaeologist Rachael Wentz makes what I think is an interesting statement. She, while discussing the DNA recovered from the water burials says that analyses shows the people of the Windover site were not related to any living Native American populations or any prehistoric groups yet sampled. She does say that DNA markers show they are linked to ancient Asian groups, but are not related to Native Americans. This was written in 2012 but I have not seen any research that updates these finds.
Remember this site is over 7 thousand years old and is an amazing find and study. I have often wondered why we don't hear more about the studies and research from Windover. They found intact brain matter and the continent's oldest textiles created on a loom. Water burials unlike anywhere else in the world. Why is more information not forthcoming I wonder? Sorry for the rant, it's hot outside so I'm just doing some reading.

 

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[Tdog]

You didn't say where the site is.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windover_Archeological_Site

 

[newnan man]

So many sites, some older than others. Some are sketchy. The book is an easy read and the author has hands on experience with the site and was a student of the lead archeologist Glen Doran. He has a You tube video out which is interesting but no new info.

 

[Red-Coat]

My understanding is that subsequent DNA research (which would tell us a lot more than the original and rather incomplete assessment using methodologies of the day) has been obstructed... due largely to issues relating to NAGPRA.

 

[joshuaream]

Genetics... A perfectly incomplete picture... It's fascinating stuff.

The problem with looking at DNA markers and saying these people are unrelated to these other people is that we are looking at two very, very small pieces of a puzzle missing literally tens of million other pieces, and saying they aren't related. If we DNA tested every ancient human remain found, we'd have a better picture. That won't happen now, or probably ever.

The missing pieces here are what is significant. Before Columbus came over the genetic diversity and isolation of groups was probably exponentially higher than what have now. I'm sure there were relatively isolated populations of 500 people or less who spoke a unique language, with unique cultural traits, that simply didn't breed with their neighbors. (Burying your dead in a lake might count as unique.) One disease, one war, or one event and that group disappeared from the record. You'd need to have a lot of samples to accurately understand who was related to whom and when they branched off.

Interestingly enough, there are still lots of isolated modern groups. The Amish are a well studied example, they are genetically quite unique now.
'

 

[Twistedsifter]

To me, the most intriguing discovery at Windover was the body of the young adult with spina bifida, and the old woman with osteoperosis. The fact that they took care of those people, despite their disabilities, challenges the notion that hunter gatherer societies kept only the strong, and left the rest behind. They were as human as you and I.

 

[uniface]

1) It has long been apparent that the relevant data will reach the light of public day when it is pried out of the cold, dead fingers of the anthropological Mafia.

Not only DNA (simple, preliminary tests revealed kinship to Europeans -- or to groups currently in Europe) ( pooh poohed away as being from samples that were allegedly contaminated although similar links appear in a few Canadian groups as I recall), but also , and importantly, in skull morphology. The Windover skulls are more secret than nuclear technology. Because they would send the current picture of the past spinning into the dustbin by themselves.

2) The Amish differences from their Swiss/Austrian ancestors, while real, are trivial. Other differences are more fundamental, and therefore significant. That's what we seem to be looking at with Windover. And, I suspect, we would be seeing in Kennewick if the COMPLETE sequences were done (not just the "proof by selected instances" maternal line).

 

[newnan man]

To me, the most intriguing discovery at Windover was the body of the young adult with spina bifida, and the old woman with osteoperosis. The fact that they took care of those people, despite their disabilities, challenges the notion that hunter gatherer societies kept only the strong, and left the rest behind. They were as human as you and I.

Another item that is interesting is they used a loom to make cloth. Archeologist's speculate from how tightly woven and intricate the cloth was it had to be a large permanent loom. Again these folks were not hunter gatherers but lived at this site continually for 3+ thousand years. I'm sure in that time they had ample time to interact with other NA groups. I'm enjoying everyone's replies and they all make valid points.

 

[Aurora1959]

there were other groups in North America who "died out": https://www.smithsonianmag.com/scie...merica-and-maybe-field-archaeology-180967745/

 

[joshuaream]

3) The Amish differences from their Swiss/Austrian ancestors, while real, are trivial. Other differences are more fundamental, and therefore significant. That's what we seem to be looking at with Windover. And, I suspect, we would be seeing in Kennewick if the COMPLETE sequences were done (not just the "proof by selected instances" maternal line).

Sorry, I didn't flesh this out a bit more. Amish are unique, and it's just come in a matter of a couple hundred years because of a relatively small founding population and genetic isolation. As part of the study on some of the recessive diseases that afflict them, many Amish groups have willingly participated in DNA studies. (People from Iceland and the Amish are probably have the most widely studied genealogies and DNAs.)

I have to imagine that "enclave" communities in the ancient americas existed. (They exist in the Amazon rainforest and within Africa where neighboring groups just didn't interbreed.) Imagine what a couple thousands years of isolation could distill out?

I have no doubt that multiple waves of immigration occurred, and some were simply incorporated over the last 10 to 15k years, some probably kept a high degree of isolation, and given the jumbled nature of European conquest, settlement, and resettlement, it's really hard to get a good DNA picture of what the Americas was like before Columbus arrived. If we took DNA samples from human remains, we might actually understand the scope of these migrations. Some countries in Latin America are a lot more open to it, like Pre-Clovis acceptance, it'll probably be something that comes from the South to the North.

 

[uniface]

Josh --


I'm not denying the substance of your post & insights, in the sense in which you intend them. The dysjunction, IMO, comes from us using different grids to map the same data points. IOW, the significance of the differences arises from the contexts they're plotted in.


For a simple example, what the size (thus significance) of the ups and downs on a financial graph look like depends on the scale of the graph used. Like yesterday morning when the London exchange opened -- the price of an ounce of silver looked like it was blasting off almost straight up -- a dramatic increase. But when you looked at the left edge of the scale, the vertical lines were differences of ten cents. So what looked like silver going ballistic was an increase of 40 or 50 cents in an hour's time. Not a big deal, although it looked like one.


The Amish are examples of downstream variation over a span of 400 years or so (another short term divergence on a small scale). That is, their unique differences from the NE European stock people around them are important in that these are specific identifiers. But in a context of only 400 tests, taken randomly across NE Europe, the significance of the Amish subset would be nil -- just one of hundreds of specific, individual details.


Where it gets sticky is going upstream. Very useful:


https://www.differencebetween.com/difference-between-maternal-and-paternal-dna-testing/


Going by mitochondrial (maternal) DNA, the Spanish Conquest of Mexico never happened. How so ? Thousands of MEN immigrated from Spain and took up with indigenous women. With the result that, after 500 years in the genetic melting pot, the average Mexican has Spanish ancestors. But this fact is invisible when only mitochondrial DNA is considered, and mitochondrial DNA is the basis of the claim that ALL Native Americans are descended from a founding group of ancestors from/via Beringia.


So the same conclusion that's obviously absurd re. Mexicans is supposed to be "settled fact" when considering Native Americans.


And some of the most perfectly preserved ancient American DNA imaginable -- complete enough to provide a finely grained map of ancestry -- is from Windover Bog. And a State Secret.


Why is another story that gets into matters seemingly unrelated to archaeology and decidedly "controversial" (noting that "controversial" is a determination made by the anthropological mafia and its media organs to keep it out of sight or, failing that, to "cancel" it).

 

[newnan man]

Great posts from everyone, thanks.

 

[uniface]

Aurora --

Note that state organs lose no opportunity to present the official fairy story as "settled science." E.g., the starting point that's been mandatory for the last lord-knows-how-many-years-now, even though long disproven:

The story of how Homo sapiens spread from Africa to the rest of the world . . .

Smithsonian is funnier than most because it's so ham-handed:

Using demographic modeling, the researchers concluded that the founding population of Native Americans began splitting from their ancestors in East Asia around 36,000 years ago. By 25,000 years ago, they had made a complete split. By 20,000 years ago, another divergence had happened, this time between the Ancient Beringians and the rest of the Native Americans. And within the next 3,000 to 6,000 years, the Native Americans further divided into Northern and Southern groups.

Note that it is the same Computer Modeling that "proved, beyond doubt" that "global warming" was rapidly extinguishing all life on earth.

Outcomes are determined by the way the data are modeled. GIGO -- garbage in, garbage out.

I quit reading there.

 

[uniface]

FWIW:

I think that perhaps of all the things a police state can do to its citizens, distorting history is possibly the most pernicious.

The most effective way to destroy people is to deny and obliterate their own understanding of their history.

Stories make a place. Without stories there is no place, but without place there can still be stories. If your stories are not organically grown, but imposed on you by those who hate everything about you, then you’re virtually dead.

 

[Kray Gelder]

I think the DNA needs to be looked at again. If the basis for their uniqueness is wrong, the debate is moot. How could a "group" from Europe/Asia make it all the way to Florida, without passing through others' territories, making their peace along the way ( otherwise, no Florida settlement ), and not mix DNA. A journey like that was multi-year, maybe multi-generation. My take, is the basis for the story, and the conclusions drawn are wrong. Not a genetically unique people. We know they didn't take the southern route in dugouts. IMO.

 

[Kray Gelder]

Let's not forget, the DNA pool was virtually wiped out by disease, especially along the east coast, and the southeast, shortly after Europeans arrived. So if they're using today's indigenous peoples' DNA to compare, it would be a distorted sample.

 

[Fred250]

Supposedly there is an undiscovered hominin that contributes to our dna and we know the Denisovans from only a couple bones and artifacts, so to me leaving no other as yet discovered trace is a possibility.

 

[uniface]

We know they didn't take the southern route in dugouts. IMO.

With even speculation cried down as heresy/treason/feebleminded, we don't even have a pool of ideas to compare & contrast for a start toward a potentially viable model.

One scenario I would point out as promising was floated years ago by E. P. Grondine, who I've drifted out of contact with & thus can't update. Painshill was less enthusiastic about his book (Man and Impact in the Americas) than I was/am, so I never advocated all that strongly for it out of respect for PS. But FWIW: Solutrian technology also existed in North Africa for a time, although this doesn't get much air time. There, deep sea fishing for turtles goes a long way back in history from what people can determine, so Solutrians in boats are (conjecturally, at least) on the table as possibilities.

From government agency data E. P. dug out, every year there are fisherman in native craft from Africa caught up in hurricane systems blown across the Atlantic & winding up in the western hemisphere -- about 10 cases per year on average, and sometimes they survive the journey.

Another thing to consider is that (Joshua can pad this out if he's inclined to) there is a pretty solid case to be made for Clovis, or protoClovis, arriving in the southeast (its epicentre) from South America, directly across the Gulf of Mexico. This was hashed out pretty thoroughly in years past, but those posts are long since vanished since A'ology crashed & burned.

On a related note, Doc Gramly took the possibility that Cumberland evolved from earlier, thick, Lerma-like lanceolates made in the deep south (like Belize and Alabama) pretty seriously & published on it.

So while you may be right, not necessarily.

 

[uniface]

re. vanished DNA, the indigenous people in Bolivia preserve the memory of their ancestors having wiped out the alien (to them) people who built the monumental stone architecture found there. Like the widespread hereditary memories of red haired giants annihilated in genocidal wars long ago by the ancestors of the surviving NAs in north america, this stuff is simply consigned to official oblivion. Because it isn't congruent with anthropological dogma.

 

[Kray Gelder]

Huh. To be up front, this stuff is interesting to me, but I'll be the first to admit I don't make a point of studying it much. Casual readings. My above comments, and other remarks I make once in a while, are as an outsider, simply stating what occurs to me after reading these posts. I appreciate this forum. I wasn't aware, even to this day, that fishermen from Africa get caught up in the winds and currents, and involuntarily make that long crossing. Or crossing back to the north, across the Gulf from South America. Interesting idea. New wrinkle in my brain.

Any academic dogma is a tough nut to crack. This particular topic is unresolved, it seems. We are only now beginning to learn what happened in the Americas, insofar as human habitation goes. We European immigrants didn't particularly care about any of it. Took what we wanted. Natives were in the way. We are learning slowly.

Even in England, Ireland and Scotland, they argue today in their dark paneled 600 year old studies, tut-tutting new ideas. They haven't settled on who came when, and how they lived, post Ice Age. A very tiny area, compared to the Americas. A wide open field, for a young person today.