Talk:Models of migration to the New World/Archive 2

Question about "15m"
Conversely, older sites that are located near modern shorelines would have been approximately 15m from the coast (Ibid). I'm suspicious of the "15m" in this sentence. Based upon earlier sentences, we're talking about a difference in sea level of "60 metres (200 ft)". I find it hard to believe that this would result in a change of 15 meters, yet 15 miles seems too much. If someone has access to the source material, I'd appreciate this being checked. --Vrmlguy (talk) 23:14, 15 January 2008 (UTC)


 * Certainly 15 miles. why does this seem too much to you?  during the ice age, some coastlines in some parts of the world were hundreds of miles farther out (e.g. in southeast asia). Benwing (talk) 05:09, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

It's been a year, so I'm changing the quantity to "15 miles". --Vrmlguy (talk) 12:49, 15 February 2009 (UTC)

Vine Deloria
I don't think Vine Deloria belongs in the "Understanding the Debate" section. Maybe a section entitled "Other Views" if at all. He may have been a respectable advocate for Native causes, but a serious archaeologist he was not. A Young Earth proponent, Deloria opined that dinosaurs coexisted with humans and that Stegosaurus lived in North America until the 19th century. Deloria mischaracterized reasoning behind other migration theories (not that they're not flawed; just his attacks second-guess them in ways not germane to the debate). He's also incorrect in claiming that "all" Native oral histories claim in-situ origins. Twalls (talk) 14:02, 11 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Well, some Meso-American ones simply say they came from the 'west' or whatever. But your idea about 'Other views' might be a good one. He is no more reliable on these issues than the Biblical Creationists he often drew upon.--Doug Weller (talk) 14:10, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

I edited the bit about Vine Deloria because the Young Earth link goes to an article that's mostly the Christian young earth perspective, and Vine Deloria isn't the type to go along with Christians. Plus, the sentence itself was incorrectly worded. I'll leave the "does Deloria deserve mentioning?" question up to you all. Spacefem (talk) 23:52, 13 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Ah, thanks for explaining that. I'd worded it 'young earth' to avoid saying he was a Creationist because that implies Christian. He does rely on some of the Christian Young Earthers though, so I'm still not sure it wasn't right before. The other wording was because he's dead, but I'll take your word it's better now.Doug Weller (talk) 16:12, 14 April 2008 (UTC)


 * I think it's standard to treat someone's ideas in the present tense when discussing their works (i.e. In the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle argues that...) even if the person is deceased, whereas facts about the person or the person's life are treated in the past tense (i.e. Aristotle lived in the 3rd Century BC). I couldn't locate anything on this in the Wikipedia Manual of Style. Twalls (talk) 16:53, 14 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Thanks. As long as the article is consistent, I don't care. I've a lot to learn about style (and everything else pertaining to Wikipedia I'm sure).--Doug Weller (talk) 17:18, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

I am curious as to why this is even here. It strikes me that this is an article about science, right? I mean, there is no mention of the Book of Mormon either (and there should not be here, as this is an article again it seems to me, about science). Dbrodbeck (talk) 21:02, 27 May 2008 (UTC)


 * And it isn't a 'model of migration'.--Doug Weller (talk) 21:05, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

Can we come to a consensus as to whether this belongs on the page? I say no, as it is not science, and it is not a model of migration. What do others think?Dbrodbeck (talk) 04:30, 30 May 2008 (UTC)


 * I would first ask if it's relevant. Does it have tangible elements that are related to a migration? An oral history or fable is no substitute for scientific evidence, so my gut instinct is no. On second thought, there is so much to learn from wisdom of that nature, depending upon how it is interpreted, just like any stories like that - they cannot be taken literally, but there are nuggets of truth that are as plain as day if you think about it. I was reading about the Ojibwa legend about way back in the "beginning" there was a fire in the sky that burned everything, the trees, the ground, and the "big animals" whose bones are now buried underground. I realized, my God, this could be an account of the Younger Dryas impact event (12.9 KYA), which marked with the end of Clovis, extinction of the megafauna and a thin black stratigraphic layer across North America, with its epicenter in the Great Lakes. To have everything - society, technology, the environment - wiped out or greatly altered in that manner would of course entail a new beginning - and memories or tales of such an event might correspond to a perception of Creation. It might explain why some believe they originated here as opposed to having migrated from somewhere else. Twalls (talk) 21:18, 11 June 2008 (UTC)

Deleted entirely. See WP:FRINGE. Benwing (talk) 05:14, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

New Research
First we had the linguistic study recently released, then, going much further back in time: Full article here:  The Phylogeny of the Four Pan-American MtDNA Haplogroups: Implications for Evolutionary and Disease Studies

Alessandro Achilli, Ugo A. Perego1,, Claudio M. Bravi, Michael D. Coble, Qing-Peng Kong, Scott R. Woodward, Antonio Salas, Antonio Torroni, Hans-Jürgen Bandelt

Only a limited number of complete mitochondrial genome sequences belonging to Native American haplogroups were available until recently, which left America as the continent with the least amount of information about sequence variation of entire mitochondrial DNAs. In this study, a comprehensive overview of all available complete mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) genomes of the four pan-American haplogroups A2, B2, C1, and D1 is provided by revising the information scattered throughout GenBank and the literature, and adding 14 novel mtDNA sequences. The phylogenies of haplogroups A2, B2, C1, and D1 reveal a large number of sub-haplogroups but suggest that the ancestral Beringian population(s) contributed only six (successful) founder haplotypes to these haplogroups. The derived clades are overall starlike with coalescence times ranging from 18,000 to 21,000 years (with one exception) using the conventional calibration. The average of about 19,000 years somewhat contrasts with the corresponding lower age of about 13,500 years that was recently proposed by employing a different calibration and estimation approach. Our estimate indicates a human entry and spread of the pan-American haplogroups into the Americas right after the peak of the Last Glacial Maximum and comfortably agrees with the undisputed ages of the earliest Paleoindians in South America. In addition, the phylogenetic approach also indicates that the pathogenic status proposed for various mtDNA mutations, which actually define branches of Native American haplogroups, was based on insufficient grounds.

And an argument that the bulk of the Americas was populated by one Siberian group (the summary below is not by me)A consensus is emerging that the bulk of the Americas were settled 15,000 years ago. An article in tomorrow's Science Magazine will show that the First Americans came from a single Siberian population and came across the land bridge 22,000 years ago, they got stuck in Alaska until 16,500 years ago due to glaciars blocking their path. The founding population was less than 5000 individuals.

The researchers studied 43 sites including a dozen in Asia to reach these conclusions. The founding population was in Siberia 30,000 years ago, came across 22,000 years ago and got free of the glaciar blocking them about 15,000 years ago so they could move south. The Pacific corridor may have been ice free 1000 years before the inland corridor so that the population spread first by way of a coastal route.

This study did not address the linguistic evidence I posted a few days ago about the population being stuck in Beringia rather than Alaska during that time period. This is an exciting time for First American studies.

National Geographic has the story here; http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2008/03/080313-first-americans.html

Someone needs to add some of this stuff into the main article!--Doug Weller (talk) 08:35, 14 March 2008 (UTC)


 * Also:

"Our results strongly support the hypothesis that haplogroup X, together with the other four main mtDNA haplogroups, was part of the gene pool of a single Native American founding population; therefore they do not support models that propose haplogroup-independent migrations, such as the migration from Europe posed by the Solutrean hypothesis." a quote from this article:

"Mitochondrial Population Genomics Supports a Single Pre-Clovis Origin with a Coastal Route for the Peopling of the Americas" Fagundes, Nelson J.R.; Kanitz, Ricardo; Eckert, Roberta; Valls, Ana C.S.; Bogo, Mauricio R.; Salzano, Francisco M.; Smith, David Glenn; Silva, Wilson A.; Zago, Marco A.; Ribeiro-dos-Santos, Andrea K.; Santos, Sidney E.B.; Petzl-Erler, Maria Luiza; Bonatto, Sandro L. American journal of human genetics(volume 82 issue 3 pp.583 - 592)

And see this article: Achilli A, Perego UA, Bravi CM, Coble MD, Kong QP, et al. (2008) The Phylogeny of the Four Pan-American MtDNA Haplogroups: Implications for Evolutionary and Disease Studies. PLoS ONE 3(3)]--Doug Weller (talk) 13:47, 14 March 2008 (UTC)

Book of Mormon reference?
The German version of the page has a paragraph about the migration described in the Book of Mormon. Should we include it here?Naraht (talk) 19:38, 11 June 2008 (UTC)


 * Well, that's not really a migration model - it's a primarily religious belief related to transoceanic contacts at a point in history (600-300 BC) that is much more recent than the scope of the article. The formerly common Biblical explanation that Indians were descendants of the ten lost tribes of Israel is closer to a migration model, but likewise it was a belief informed by faith, not something for which there is any physical evidence. Twalls (talk) 20:39, 11 June 2008 (UTC)