Native American Settled The New World In Three Major Waves

Americas 'Settled In Three Waves' -- BBC

The biggest survey of Native American DNA has concluded that the New World was settled in three major waves.

But the majority of today's indigenous Americans descend from a single group of migrants that crossed from Asia to Alaska 15,000 years ago or more.

Previous genetic data have lent support to the idea that America was colonised by a single migrant wave.

An international team of researchers have published their findings in the journal Nature.

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A Search For The Bones Of An Early American

The Young Man of Chan Hol II skeleton was laid to rest 10,000 years ago when sea levels were much lower (Image: Eugenio Acevez/Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia/REUTERS)

Bones Of Early American Disappear From Underwater Cave -- New Scientist

One of the first humans to inhabit the Americas has been stolen – and archaeologists want it back.

The skeleton, which is probably at least 10,000 years old, has disappeared from a cenote, or underground water reservoir, in Mexico's Yucatán Peninsula.

In response, the National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) in Mexico City has placed "wanted" posters in supermarkets, bakeries and dive shops in and around the nearby town of Tulum. They are also considering legal action to recover the remains.

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Soldiers From The Past

Forensic Reconstructions Reveal The Faces Of Civil War Sailors -- Popular Mechanics

Forensic anthropologists have reconstructed the faces of two Union sailors found onboard the USS Monitor, 150 years after the world’s first battle between ironclad warships off the coast of North Carolina.

One-hundred-fifty-year-old ghosts rarely look so detailed.

In 1862, two ironclad warships from opposing sides of the American Civil War blasted each other silly in the Battle of Hampton Roads. Although neither vessel could inflict much damage on the other, the Union’s USS Monitor and the Confederacy’s CSS Virginia opened a new era in naval technology as wooden sailing frigates gave way to armored warships with steam engines. The Monitor, however, didn’t have long to live; it sank in rough seas on December 1862 and sat for more than a century.

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My Comment: It is truly amazing what science can reveal, and looking at the pictures I cannot help but feel that these two fallen sailors are related by family.

Were Europeans The First Americans?

Source: Dennis Stanford and Bruce Bradley. The Washington Post.
An established theory says the first Americans walked across the Bering Sea about 13,000-15,000 years ago. But stone tools found in the mid-Atlantic suggest an arrival from Europe about 20,000-22,000 years ago. The tools match those made by the mysterious Solutrean people of ice-age Iberia.

Radical Theory Of First Americans Places Stone Age Europeans In Delmarva 20,000 Years Ago -- Washington Post

When the crew of the Virginia scallop trawler Cinmar hauled a mastodon tusk onto the deck in 1970, another oddity dropped out of the net: a dark, tapered stone blade, nearly eight inches long and still sharp.

Forty years later, this rediscovered prehistoric slasher has reopened debate on a radical theory about who the first Americans were and when they got here.

Archaeologists have long held that North America remained unpopulated until about 15,000 years ago, when Siberian people walked or boated into Alaska and then moved down the West Coast.

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USS Revenge Found After 200 Years

Mystery Of 200-Year-Old Shipwreck Found Off US Coast -- The Telegraph

For two centuries it rested a mile from shore, shrouded by a treacherous reef from the pleasure boaters and beachgoers who haunt New England's southern coast.

Now, researchers from the US Navy are hoping to confirm what the men who discovered the wreck believe: that the sunken ship off the coast of Rhode Island is the USS Revenge, commanded by Oliver Hazard Perry and lost on a stormy January day in 1811.

"The Revenge was forgotten, it became a footnote," said Charlie Buffum, a brewery owner from Connecticut who found the shipwreck while diving with friend Craig Harger. "We are very confident this is it."

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My Comment: Gotta love the name .... USS Revenge.

Rare Colour Photographs Of The Depression

Distributing surplus commodities in St Johns, Arizona, October 1940

In The Bleak Light Of The Depression: Rare Colour Photographs Of The Era That Defined A Generation -- Daily Mail

It was an era that defined a generation. The Great Depression marked the bitter and abrupt end to the post-World War 1 bubble that left America giddy with promise in the 1920s. Near the end of the 1930s the country was beginning to recover from the crash, but many in small towns and rural areas were still poverty-stricken. These rare photographs are some of the few documenting those iconic years in colour. The photographs and captihttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifons are the property of the Library of Congress and were included in a 2006 exhibit Bound for Glory: America in Color. The images, by photographers of the Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information, shed a bleak new light on a world now gone with the wind.

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My Comment: A fascinating gallery of photos from a time when America was all black and white.

No Evidence for Clovis Comet Catastrophe, Archaeologists Say

These are Clovis Points. (Credit: David Meltzer)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Oct. 1, 2010) — New research challenges the controversial theory that an ancient comet impact devastated the Clovis people, one of the earliest known cultures to inhabit North America.

Writing in the October issue of Current Anthropology, archaeologists Vance Holliday (University of Arizona) and David Meltzer (Southern Methodist University) argue that there is nothing in the archaeological record to suggest an abrupt collapse of Clovis populations.

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Did Australian Aborigines Reach America First?

The skull of Luzia, possibly the oldest skeleton in the Americas, who has facial features distinctive of Australian Aborigines. Credit: Marco Fernandes/COSMOS

From Cosmos:

SYDNEY: Cranial features distinctive to Australian Aborigines are present in hundreds of skulls that have been uncovered in Central and South America, some dating back to over 11,000 years ago.

Evolutionary biologist Walter Neves of the University of São Paulo, whose findings are reported in a cover story in the latest issue of Cosmos magazine, has examined these skeletons and recovered others, and argues that there is now a mass of evidence indicating that at least two different populations colonised the Americas.

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Genocide Wiped Out Native American Population

The unearthed bones and artifacts indicate that when the violence took place, men, women and children were tortured, disemboweled, killed and often hacked to bits. Getty Images

From Discovery News:

Physical traces of ethnic cleansing that took place in the early 800s suggest the massacre was an inside job.

Crushed leg bones, battered skulls and other mutilated human remains are likely all that's left of a Native American population destroyed by genocide that took place circa 800 A.D., suggests a new study.

The paper, accepted for publication in the Journal of Anthropological Archaeology, describes the single largest deposit to date of mutilated and processed human remains in the American Southwest.

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Archaeologists Track Infamous Conquistador Through Southeast

Sixteenth century glass beads are among the rare artifacts discovered at Fernbank Museum of Natural History's archaeology site, which scholars believe is a stop along Hernando de Soto's trek through the Southeast in 1540. (Credit: Dan Schultz/Fernbank Museum of Natural History)

From Science Daily:

Science Daily (Nov. 5, 2009) — Archaeologists at Atlanta's Fernbank Museum of Natural History have discovered unprecedented evidence that helps map Hernando de Soto's journey through the Southeast in 1540. No evidence of De Soto's path between Tallahassee and North Carolina has been found until now, and few sites have been located anywhere.

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How The Ancient Nazca Civilisation Sealed Its Own Fate By Cutting Down Forests C

An ancient geoglyph of a hummingbird (colibri in Spanish) on the edge to the Nazca plains was probably inscribed here as an offering for water/fertility in the fields that lie below

From The Daily Mail:

The mysterious people who etched the strange network of 'Nazca Lines' across deserts in Peru hastened their own demise by clearing forests 1,500 years ago, according to British scientists.

The Nazca people, famed for giant animal drawings most clearly visible from the air, became unable to grow enough food in nearby valleys because the lack of trees made the climate too dry.

Archaeologists examining the remains of the Nazca, who once flourished in the valleys of south coastal Peru, discovered a sequence of human-induced events which led to their 'catastrophic' collapse around 500 AD.

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A New Royal Maya Tomb Emerges From The Tunnels Beneath Copán's Acropolis

Archaeologists Molly Fierer-Donaldson and Nereyda Alonso perch on a wooden platform as they lift artifacts from the tomb of the early Maya king discovered beneath the Oropéndola temple. (Courtesy Proyecto Oropéndola)

From Archaeology:

A new royal Maya tomb emerges from the tunnels beneath Copán's Acropolis.

The Maya kings of Copán were not interested in moving mountains. They preferred to build their own, like the pyramid now known as Temple 16. Rising 100 feet above the city's Great Plaza, it is the highest point among a group of holy buildings that archaeologists have dubbed "the Acropolis." Inside an excavation tunnel deep beneath the pyramid's surface, the face of the sun-king scowls at me from the wall of his temple. The city's ancient rulers built their temples--one on top of the next--to suit the needs of the moment. The moment I am visiting occurred shortly after A.D. 540 when the first of four temples was built around a small plaza at the top of the Acropolis.

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How Arlington National Cemetery Came To Be

From The Smithsonian:

The fight over Robert E. Lee's beloved home—seized by the U.S. government during the Civil War—went on for decades

One afternoon in May 1861, a young Union Army officer went rushing into the mansion that commanded the hills across the Potomac River from Washington, D.C. "You must pack up all you value immediately and send it off in the morning," Lt. Orton Williams told Mary Custis Lee, wife of Robert E. Lee, who was away mobilizing Virginia's military forces as the country hurtled toward the bloodiest war in its history.

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2012 Doomsday Not Likely, Mayans Insist

From Discovery:

Apolinario Chile Pixtun is tired of being bombarded with frantic questions about the Mayan calendar supposedly "running out" on Dec. 21, 2012. After all, it's not the end of the world.

Or is it?

Definitely not, the Mayan Indian elder insists. "I came back from England last year and, man, they had me fed up with this stuff."

It can only get worse for him. Next month Hollywood's "2012" opens in cinemas, featuring earthquakes, meteor showers and a tsunami dumping an aircraft carrier on the White House.

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Montreal Underground -- A Look Back In History

The Pointe-à-Callière Museum

From Archaeology Magazine:

This past August I traveled to Montreal for Archaeo (Archaeology) Month, which is celebrated throughout the province of Quebec. On my first day in Montreal, I met with Louise Pothier, project manager for the Montreal Museum of Archaeology and History. The museum, better known as Pointe-à-Callière and affectionately referred to as the PAC Musée, is located in Old Montreal on the very spot of the city's birthplace on May 17, 1642, and opened exactly 350 years later on May 17, 1992.

PAC Musée is situated on a point of land where the Little Saint Pierre River once ran into the St. Lawrence River. Chevalier Louis Hector de Callière, the third governor of Montreal, built a home on the site in 1688. The museum is situated atop remains of the first French settlement here, Fort Ville Marie (1642-1674), and its permanent exhibition is titled, "Where Montreal was Born."

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My Comment: This probably does not interest 99% of the readership for this blog .... but as a Montrealer who visited this museum today .... it is so cool.

British Museum's Aztec Artefacts 'As Evil As Nazi Lampshades Made From Human Skin'

Showstopper: A turquoise mask which probably represents the sun god Tonatiuh

From The Daily Mail:

Ten minutes into the British Museum's Moctezuma exhibition, devoted to the last Aztec ruler before the Spanish Conquest, you come across a statue of an eagle with a cavity in its back. The cavity, you will discover, was designed to hold the hearts of the victims of human sacrifices.

This detail, for me, obliterates any observation about whether the sculpture is otherwise well crafted. Similarly, I don't care whether a Nazi lampshade fashioned from human skin is beautifully made or not. And the same concern blocks out a lot of one's interest in this exhibition.

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Take A Virtual Tour Of Ancient Manhattan

From Geek Dad:

New York City is one of the world’s top tourist destinations. Yet the rise of the greatest city in the world has obliterated most traces of what the island was like before Henry Hudson sailed into New York Bay.

But now everyone can take a virtual tour of ancient Manhattan, circa 1609. The tour shows Manhattan and the surrounding land in its original shape and topography. They’re all there: the salt marshes, ponds, rivers and native settlements, all available at the click of a mouse.

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Mysterious Ruins May Help Explain Mayan Collapse

This is one of the exceptionally well preserved buildings discovered at Kiuic. This building dates to the Late/Terminal Classic (A.D. 800-1000) and is part of the later major royal Palace discovered at the site.By Bolonchen Regional Archaeological Project.

From USA Today:

Ringing two abandoned pyramids are nine palaces "frozen in time" that may help unravel the mystery of the ancient Maya, reports an archaeological team.

Hidden in the hilly jungle, the ancient site of Kiuic (KIE-yuk) was one of dozens of ancient Maya centers abandoned in the Puuc region of Mexico's Yucatan about 10 centuries ago. The latest discoveries from the site may capture the moment of departure.

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Climate Study Puts Incas’ Success Down To 400 Years Of Warm Weather

The Inca City of Machu Picchu was built during the 400-year warm spell,
scientists say. (Paolo Aguilar/EPA)

From Times Online:

Supreme military organisation and a flair for agricultural invention are traditionally credited for the rise of the Incas. However, their success may have owed more to a spell of good weather — a spell that lasted for more than 400 years.

According to new research, an increase in temperature of several degrees between AD1100 and 1533 allowed vast areas of mountain land to be used for agriculture for the first time. This fuelled the territorial expansion of the Incas, which at its peak stretched from the modern Colombian border to the middle of Chile.

“Yes, they were highly organised, and they had a sophisticated hierarchical system, but it wouldn’t have counted a jot without being underpinned by the warming of the climate,” says Dr Alex Chepstow-Lusty, a palaeo-ecologist from the French Institute for Andean Studies in Lima, Peru.

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Archaeological Treasure Trove Surfaces In S.C.

From The State:

HILTON HEAD — An archaeologist who’s been digging at the Topper Site in Allendale County for 11 years is uncovering new evidence that could rewrite America’s history.

University of South Carolina archaeologist Albert Goodyear found artifacts at this rock quarry site near the Savannah River that indicate humans lived here 37,000 years before the Clovis people. History books say the Clovis were the first Americans and arrived here 13,000 years ago by walking across a land bridge from Asia.

Goodyear’s discovery could prove otherwise.

His findings are controversial, opening scientific minds to the possibility of an even earlier pre-Clovis occupation of America.

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