Contributions - Historical Truths/ Corrections

JINGLE DRESS

Created during Spanish flu, jingle dress dance now helping First Nations people cope with COVID-19: "I was really surprised when I started doing the research. I couldn't find a single photograph of what you would call a jingle dress before circa 1920 in the United States or Canada," said Brenda Child, a professor at the University of Minnesota."As a historian, it occurred to me that something very big had happened that created this new healing tradition."For Child, the creation of the jingle dress dance shows how First Nations people have learned to cope with new illnesses introduced to their communities. (Submitted by Brenda Child)That big event was the Spanish flu pandemic of 1919, and First Nations and Native American communities across North America all tell a similar story of the origin of the jingle dress

 

HORSES

The Shared History of Wild Horses and Indigenous People: But according to Indigenous oral histories and spiritual beliefs from Saskatchewan to Oklahoma, America’s Native horses never went extinct. They survived the Ice Age and lived among Native people before, and after, the arrival of European colonizers, and a mountain of historical and archaeological evidence proves it—from ancient clay and wood horse figurines from North America and horse petroglyphs in Peru to accounts recorded by early explorers.

Indeed, in recent years Western science has begun to confirm what Indigenous communities have always known. Riding and caring for horses can activate the sympathetic nervous system in children and influence the rhythm of the human heart rate. Equine therapy is becoming increasingly popular for treating PTSD in military veterans and children experiencing anxiety and depression or recovering from trauma. “Horses are incredibly sacred, they’re more than sacred,” Running Horse Collin says. “Our people didn’t need those kind of studies, we just knew it worked.”

Yet, the official story that was written into the history books, and which persists today, is that the New World had no horses before the arrival of the Spanish. According to the narrative, the first horses to arrive in the New World in 1519 were the progenitors of every horse found on the continent in later years. That it would have been biologically impossible for a small group of horses in Mexico to populate regions thousands of miles away in as little as two years is never discussed.

ASTRONOMY

Relearning The Star Stories Of Indigenous Peoples - Audio recordings: How the lost constellations of Indigenous North Americans can connect culture, science, and inspire the next generation of scientists. Here’s a question Pantalony gets sometimes: What is a series of star stories doing in a museum dedicated to technology and science?“People are surprised, but then it makes sense,” he says. “Of course cultures would have different stories based on this massive canopy from horizon to horizon that unfolds before our eyes every night.” Just like the telescope that sits in the museum, the story about Mars circling around in the sky like a startled moose is also an instrument of astronomical observation.In 2008, Canada began a major effort to right the wrongs of colonization. The process, which aimed to recognize the rights of Indigenous groups and shape a new relationship of respect, was broadly referred to as truth and reconciliation. At the museum, this took the shape of a conscious effort to include Indigenous culture and technology in the story of Canadian science—from snowshoes to star stories.

The oldest book written in the American Continent Is a Mayan guide to Astronomy: The Grolier Codex sometimes referred to as the “Sáenz Codex” or the “Maya Codex of Mexico” is a screenfold book fashioned from bark paper, coated with stucco on both sides and painted on one side. Ten painted pages survive of a twenty-page book; formerly there were judged to be eleven pages but two fragments are now considered to come from the same page. In 1976, the “United States-Mexico Artifacts Treaty of 1970” was invoked by the Attorney General of Mexico. This resulted in the seizure of the codex and its return to Mexico.Sáenz donated the codex to the Mexican government and it is currently kept in a vault in the Museo Nacional de Antropología in Mexico City and is not on public display.The claimed discovery of the Grolier Codex would make it the only pre-Columbian codex discovered in the course of the 20th century, except for some codex fragments excavated by archaeologists.It’s another example of ancient writings come to life , the oldest on our continent. Other documents previously presumed to be inauthentic could need reexamination—in which case, we may (and almost certainly do) have a lot to learn about our past.

HUNTING 

13 discoveries in the last year have fundamentally altered our understanding of human history

B.S. Bering Strait: Archaeologists determined that stone tools and artifacts discovered in a remote cave in Zacatecas, Mexico, were about 32,000 years old. They described the finding in a July study.The new evidence upended the idea that the first people arrived in North America after continent-hopping from modern-day Siberia via the Bering land bridge between 18,000 and 13,000 years ago. During the last Ice Age 32,000 years ago, that land bridge was impassable. So the research suggests the first Americans arrived by sea. According to the study authors, these migrants were likely anatomically modern humans.

Hunting: Scientists discovered a 9,000-year-old burial site containing weapons and animal-skinning tools high in the Andes mountains of Peru. They assumed the human bones there came from a skilled male hunter.But a closer look revealed that this hunter was female. Further analysis of 27 other burial sites across North and South America, which also contained hunting tools and date back to the same time period, revealed that 40% of the hunters were female.

Amazon Rock Paintings: Thousands of drawings hidden deep in the Amazon rainforest tell the story of an ancient tribe's hunting practices about 12,000 years ago. The drawings, which cover more than 2.5 miles of rock in Colombia, depict scenes of humans hunting mastodons. They also contain images of other extinct animals like giant sloths, ancient llamas, and Ice Age horses.Archaeologists announced the drawings' discovery in late November.

WRITING/ READING/ "BOOKS"

The College Student Who Decoded the Data Hidden in Inca Knots

With the help of his professor, Gary Urton, a scholar of Pre-Columbian studies, Medrano interpreted a set of six khipus, knotted cords used for record keeping in the Inca Empire. By matching the khipus to a colonial-era Spanish census document, Medrano and Urton uncovered the meaning of the cords in greater detail than ever before. Their findings could contribute to a better understanding of daily life in the Andean civilization. The only records the Inca are known to have kept are in the form of intricately knotted khipu textiles. In 2002, Urton began Harvard’s Khipu Database Project. He traveled to museums and private collections around the world to record the numbers of knots, lengths of cords, colors of fibers, and other distinguishing details about every Inca khipu he could find—more than 900 in total.

MIGRATORY PATTERNS/ CANNIBALISM

Did Columbus find early Caribs in 15th century Caribbean? Jury is still out

"We have several different notions of what Carib might be," Keegan told Ars. "We have cultural evidence, we have Columbus' reports, we have the accounts of French missionaries in the 1700s. Trying to sort through what all these different Caribs are, or whether they're even just one single cultural group, is what we were hoping that the DNA would help sort out. But as often happens in science, our questions are more subtle than our data."

After finally being able to study enough skulls, they discovered three separate clusters instead of the expected two: a Cuba cluster, a Puerto Rico/Venezuela/Colombia cluster, and a Hispaniola/Jamaica/Bahamas cluster. That prompted Keegan et al. to reexamine a pottery style known as Meillacoid, found only in Hispaniola, Jamaica, and the Bahamas, which anthropologists had previously thought were a separate migration.

"We found that the pottery style was much more consistent with the way those people called Caribs made pottery than the way people called Arawaks made pottery," said Keegan. "Those two lines of evidence led us to conclude that [Caribs] actually were in Hispaniola, Jamaica, and the Bahamas when Columbus arrived."

As for the reports of cannibalism in Columbus' accounts, hard evidence as to whether this was truly a regular practice is still lacking. "The Caribs in the Lesser Antilles told Europeans that they kill and eat their enemies, but this could be hyperbole," said Keegan. "We don't have any skeletal evidence. We're not finding human bones that are cooked or butchered—at least we haven't yet."

One other intriguing finding from the DNA analysis concerned the evolution of Caribbean pottery styles over 2,000 years, as the Archaic Age gave way to the Ceramic Age in the region. There are five distinct marked shifts in style noted by archaeologists: red pottery decorated with white painted designs, for example; pots with tiny dots or incisions; or more ornate styles of pottery with sculpted animal faces. Some archaeologists have viewed this as evidence for fresh migrations to the Caribbean, but the DNA analysis suggests that all the styles in fact were developed by descendants of the same people who arrived in the Caribbean some 2,500 years ago."It confirms what we expect, but as a social scientist, it just goes to show that genetics can't give us a complete picture of the people who carry those genes," said Keegan. "Genes may be discrete units that we can measure, but genomes are created by cultures."

NOTE: There is not perfect resource - this one minimizes the numbers on people on the islands. More research is needed.

New DNA Studies Are Shaking Up the History of Humans in the Americas

https://gizmodo.com/three-new-dna-studies-are-shaking-up-the-history-of-hum-1830313369?utm_medium=sharefromsite&utm_source=gizmodo_facebook&utm_campaign=sharebar&fbclid=IwAR3WYeoVEr39VD3nn13GtamDtTSsswvWWCwBz4vUgeLMum76fAZfgY3aU2E

“That’s something we’ve suspected due to the archaeological findings, but it’s fascinating to have it confirmed by the genetics,” said Meltzer in a statement. “These findings imply that the first peoples were highly skilled at moving rapidly across an utterly unfamiliar and empty landscape. They had a whole continent to themselves and they were travelling great distances at breathtaking speed.”

It’s highly unlikely that this population sailed from Australia or Indonesia to South America. Rather, this group likely trekked northward from their point of origin, venturing through China and Siberia. This population likely didn’t spend too much time in North America, eventually finding their way into South America, while leaving no genetic trace of their journey—aside from this lone specimen in Lagoa Santa. Meltzer and Willerslev don’t know if this population arrived before or after the ancestors of Native Americans. This discovery now presents a very intriguing mystery, because this group could conceivably be the first humans to reach South America.

This natural mummy was discovered in 1940 in Nevada’s Great Basin Desert, and scientists have struggled to understand its origin. The Fallon Paiute-Shoshone Tribe, a group of Native Americans living in Nevada near Spirit Cave, said the remains belong to their ancestors; accordingly, they asked for possession of the specimen under the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act. This request was denied as the origin of the Spirit Cave Mummy was disputed, leading to a 20-year legal battle. The situation changed two years ago when the tribe allowed Willerslev to conduct a DNA analysis on the specimen. His analysis showed that the skeleton is indeed related to the Fallon Paiute-Shoshone Tribe, quashing a longstanding theory that a group of Paleoamericans existed in North America prior to Native Americans.

“It tells us that the peopling of Central and South America not only was fast but also it was accompanied by multiple waves, some of which disappeared and some others which left a strong genetic impact all the way until today.”

Ideally, the researchers would like to find DNA older than 11,000 years, and also acquire DNA from regions in northern South America and the Caribbean, which is absent in this study. The researchers aren’t sure how individuals in these regions are related to the ones analyzed in the new study.

 

 

Genetics reveal a new truth about ancient Caribbean peoples

 Sirak says that these Archaic people likely moved to the Caribbean from Central and South America, which the researchers determined through genetic comparisons with modern-day indigenous people in the Americas."We see that these people share more genetic similarity with presently people who live in Central and South America than they do with people who live in say Mesoamerica or North America," Sirak says.But around 2,300-2,500 years ago, the region begins transitioning into the Ceramic period, which we associate with the use of ceramics — like pottery. 

Remarkably, the study challenges previous research in this area, which traced the origins of some ancient peoples in the Caribbean to North America. But researchers in this study found little support for the North American hypothesis.

 

Ice Age Baby Skeleton Rewrites History of the First Native Americans

https://www.yahoo.com/news/ice-age-baby-skeleton-rewrites-180500731.html

Her genome revealed that she belonged to a previously unrecognized and distinct Native American population, which the study authors call the Ancient Beringians. In a paper released Wednesday, scientists from the Universities of Cambridge and Copenhagen explain that her genes are evidence that the Ancient Beringians came first: They were the initial offshoot of the ancestral population that led to the other Northern and Southern Native American groups historians already know about.

According to the team behind this study, North America was first settled by this shared, founding population, which then gradually split into the different sub-groups.

This finding helps clarify when the two separate branches of Northern and Southern Native Americans split from each other. Previously, scientists debated whether that divide happened after people migrated from Asia to Alaska, or whether genomically different groups from Asia made the cross-continental journey separately. Comparing the genome of the Sunrise Child-girl to the genomes of present-day Native American populations, the scientists found that the Ancient Beringians became isolated from the common ancestral population 20,000 years ago.

That time period comes before the split that led to the Northern and Southern groups, which occurred between 17,000 and 14,000 years ago. This suggests that there was likely just one wave of migration into the Americas.

Archaeological evidence supports the idea that humans lived in the Americas south of the continental ice sheets as early as 14,600 years ago, but the overall timeline of how and when the peopling of the Americas occurred has been clouded with discrepancies.

This new study indicates that the founding population of Native Americans diverged from the ancestral Asian group in northeast Asia 36,000 years ago during the Late Pleistocene era and migrated via the Beringia land bridge connecting northeast Asia to northwestern North America. In that region, harsh weather and glacial barriers kept some of the populations — like the Ancient Beringians — in one place for extended periods of time. The scientists behind this study believe that the split between the North and South Native Americans only happened after some of their ancestors were able to pass through the thawing, giant glaciers that covered Canada and parts of the northern United States.

Who Was First? Chinese in America

What is problematic is the unwitting assumption that the Chinese somehow "discovered" America. This falls right in line with the same old Euroamerican ethnocentrism that lands FOUND were null and void of a prior human presence, thus invoking the principle of terra nullius against non-Christians. We know this to be a clear fallacy as indigenous groups had been present and had thrived for thousands of years before any European or Chinese explorer ever FOUND land in the hemisphere.

Out of respect and to not fall into the same Euroamerican trap, Chinese promoters of this work/theory should always clearly acknowledge the prior Native American presence before their arrival, and strike the ideologically and juridically charged language of "discovery" from their writings, forever.

Tony Castanha


CHINESE PEOPLE ARRIVED IN THE PRESENT-DAY AMERICAS 2200 BC
http://www.asiaticfathers.com/

Asiatic Fathers of the America
http://www.asiaticfathers.com/excerpts.htm

Map
http://www.asiaticfathers.com/images/index/small%20map.jpg

Approximately 4200 years ago after a great flood, the Chinese had lost their sense of direction. Therefore, the Emperor found it necessary to send his astronomer Yu to survey the earth, and reestablish the four directions. Yu sent Prince Y across the great eastern ocean, to the land of Fu Sang--literally “land to the east" (the ancient American continents). Prince Y and Yu determined the boundaries of America and other places and afterwards wrote the Shan Hai Jing.

The Shan Hai Jing (Book of Mountains and Seas) is the world‘s oldest geography. It tells us of many countries in the ancient Americas. There are reports that Emperor Hwang Ti (2640 B.C.) probably had sent expeditions or colonies to America. However, we can be certain that Chinese were in the Americas by around 2250 B.C.

I have found a map which confirms the 4200 year old account of the Shan Hai Jing. In fact, there are at least thirty similar old round maps in existence, which vindicate and corroborate the report of the Shan Hai Jing. These world maps, of ancient origin, are in America, England, France, China, Korea, Japan, and in other countries. The Shan Hai Jing told of at least ten countries in America; which are found on my map -the Harris Fu Sang map- and on the maps of similar origin which came from the original Shan Hai Jing map.

Proofs that “America” is Fu Sang and the fathers of the Fu Sang people are Chinese are these:
1. The Record of the Shan Hai Jing- which describes the people, geography, and the animals.
2. The Record of the ancient Chinese commentaries on the Shan Hai Jing. The dates of these commentaries validate the age of the Shan Hai Jing.
3. The witness of the American Indians and their traditions and language.
4. The record of those scientists who have studied the blood and physical characteristics of the Chinese “Indian” tribes of North and South America
5. The ancient round world maps which were previously misunderstood but which we now explain.
7. The Chinese Court Record (Kuen 327) in 501 A.D. telling of a trip originating in 458 A.D. to Fu Sang

The means that the Chinese arrived in the Americas both in 2200 B.C. and 458 A.D. was by boat. It is the purpose of this book to give sufficient proof of the realities of these amazing matters. The final result of these revolutionary discoveries will be the greater glory of China, East India, Japan, and Korea and a new respect for and the appreciation of the Indians of North, Central, and South America.


The material of this book is the result of a life-time of effort. I have been around the world ten times. In India I sought information and in Pakistan and Bangladesh. In Hong Kong and Taiwan I looked for maps and proofs. I went to the British museum and traveled to Berlin to question the Germans.

How Dogma Trumps Science Part 1

The Bering Strait
http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2014/06/13/bering-strait-theory-pt-1-how-dogma-trumped-science-155284

(Snipits of 5 page article below)

So in 1998, Dennis Stanford, director of the Paleoindian program at the Smithsonian Institution, coined the term “Clovis Police” to refer to those “die-hard archaeologists who insist upon Clovis as representing the earliest culture in the New World.”

 

As recent scientific discoveries have undercut the Bering Strait Theory, a new hypothesis has emerged, the “Beringian Standstill Theory.” The Standstill hypothesis, which proposes that Paleoindians lived isolated in the land bridge area for almost 20,000 years before migrating to the Americas, is also a controversial conjecture that has questionable scientific merit.

When genetic studies that proposed an ancient contact between Polynesians and American Indians – not in conformity with the Bering Strait Theory – were published by University of Hawaii geneticist Rebecca Cann, they were met with a swift and fierce rebuttal. Cann is a pioneer among geneticists, her research having developed the concept of the “Mitochondrial Eve” and the currently accepted “Out of Africa” theory of modern human origins.  But open exploration of the debate is not going to happen, because the debate itself is moderated by ideologues, who determine the evidence that may be used, and ignore the evidence that does not fit the theory. In order to understand why this is, one must look at the history of the Bering Strait Theory, which will only shed a little light on the development of science, but offers important lessons on how and why a dogma is created.

In those days, the study of science was still a subset of theology so virtually all of the early theories of Indian origins were based on the Bible. Typical of these early scientists was the keen-eyed Jesuit observer Friar Joseph de Acosta, whose book The Natural and Moral History of the Indies (as America was then known), published in 1590, is among the first in the nascent field of anthropology. For Acosta, the evidence was clear.

The reason why we are forced to admit that the men of the Indies came from Europe or Asia is so as not to contradict the sacred Scriptures, which clearly teaches that all men descend from Adam; and thus we cannot assign any other origin for the men of the Indies.
 
Similarly, the colonization was believed to have taken place only in the past few thousand years. The scientific consensus at that time, held by the foremost chronologists of the Bible, such as Jesuit philosopher Benedict Pereira, Irish archbishop James Ussher, the astronomer Johannes Kepler and the physicist Isaac Newton, was that humans were created around 4,000 BC and the Flood unleashed around 2,400 BC. The most enduring origin theory based on the Bible was that Indians were the descendants of the Lost Tribes of Israel, a belief still held today by devout Mormons. It was proposed in 1567 by both French Benedictine scholar Gilbert Genebrard in Chronicle in Two Volumes and Dutch priest Joannes Fredericus Lumnius in his book De Extremo dei Judicio et Indorum Vocatione. As evidence they produced the apocryphal Second Book of Esdras, which tells the story of how the Lost Tribes escaped their Assyrian captors and fled “to a far away country where mankind had never lived,” a region called Arsareth, or in their view, America.

Before the “Ice Age” - Research on Early Americans

Pullling Apart the Bering Strait Theory

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/28/world/americas/discoveries-challenge-beliefs-on-humans-arrival-in-the-americas.html?_r=3

Researchers here say they have unearthed stone tools proving that humans reached what is now northeast Brazil as early as 22,000 years ago. Their discovery adds to the growing body of research upending a prevailing belief of 20th-century archaeology in the United States known as the Clovis model, which holds that people first arrived in the Americas from Asia about 13,000 years ago.

Walter Neves, an evolutionary anthropologist at the University of São Paulo has done analysis of an 11,000-year-old skull in Brazil and implies that some ancient Americans resembled aboriginal Australians more than they did Asians.

Tom D. Dillehay, an anthropologist at Vanderbilt University, has shown that humans lived at a coastal site called Monte Verde as early as 14,800 years ago.

European and Brazilian archaeologists building on decades of earlier excavations said last year that they had found artifacts at a rock shelter showing that humans had arrived in South America almost 10,000 years before Clovis hunters began appearing in North America.

Dr. Guidon remains defiant about her findings. At her home on the grounds of a museum she founded to focus on the discoveries in Serra da Capivara, she said she believed that humans had reached these plateaus even earlier, around 100,000 years ago, and might have come not overland from Asia but by boat from Africa.

Genetic Evidence of a single migration (but not over Bering Strait)
http://www.wisdompills.com/2014/06/13/dna-testing-proves-native-american-genealogy-to-be-among-the-most-unique-in-the-world/
The team’s work follows up on earlier studies by several of its members who found a unique variant (an allele) of a genetic marker in the DNA of modern-day Native American people. Dubbed the “9-repeat allele,” the variant (which does not have a biological function), occurred in all of the 41 populations that they sampled from Alaska to the southern tip of Chile, as well as in Inuit from Greenland and the Chukchi and Koryak people native to the Asian (western) side of the Bering Strait. Yet this allele was absent in all 54 of the Eurasian, African and Oceanian groups the team sampled. 

In these earlier studies, the researchers concluded that the most straightforward explanation for the distribution of the 9-repeat allele was that all modern Native Americans, Greenlanders and western Beringians descend from a common founding population. Furthermore, the fact that the allele was absent in other Asian populations most likely meant that America’s ancestral founders had been isolated from the rest of Asia for thousands of years before they moved into the New World: that is, for a period of time that was long enough to allow the allele to originate in, and spread throughout, the isolated population.

How Linguists Are Pulling Apart the Bering Strait Theory

How Linguists Are Pulling Apart the Bering Strait Theory 
http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2014/03/19/how-linguists-are-pulling-apart-bering-strait-theory-154063?page=0%2C0

Click link for complete article (It's 6 Internet pages) - excerpts below:

Over the past few weeks, new scientific discoveries have rekindled the debate over the Bering Strait Theory. Two of the discoveries were covered recently in Indian Country Today. The first “More Reasons to Doubt the Bering Strait Migration Theory,” dealt with the growing problem of “science by press release,” as scientific studies hype their conclusions to the point that they are misleading; and the second, “DNA Politics: Anzick Child Casts Doubt on Bering Strait Theory,” discussed how politics can influence science, and the negative effects these politically-based scientific results can have on Native peoples.

Deloria also argued that science, when studying people, was not neutral. In his view, some scientific theories harbored social and political agendas that were used to deprive Indians and other minorities of their rights. Many of the assumptions that underlay certain scientific principles were based on obsolete religious or social views, and he urged science to shed these dubious relics. The issue for Deloria was not science vs. religion (or tradition), it was good science vs. bad science, and in his view, the Bering Strait Theory was bad science.

Deloria also argued that science, when studying people, was not neutral. In his view, some scientific theories harbored social and political agendas that were used to deprive Indians and other minorities of their rights. Many of the assumptions that underlay certain scientific principles were based on obsolete religious or social views, and he urged science to shed these dubious relics. The issue for Deloria was not science vs. religion (or tradition), it was good science vs. bad science, and in his view, the Bering Strait Theory was bad science.

One of the 150 New World language stocks, Eskimo-Aleut, also spans the Arctic and so has Asian and European relatives. Another language super stock, Na-Dené, composed of the language stocks Athabaskan, Tlingit and Eyak, and located in Alaska and the northwest coast (but also in the southwestern U.S.), is also believed to have relatives in Asia, possibly the Yeneisian languages of central Siberia.

One of America’s greatest scientists, Franz Boas, generally considered to be the father of modern anthropology and an important linguist in his own right, in his classic study, Race, Language, and Culture, published in 1940, wrote that not only were American Indian languages “so different among themselves that it seems doubtful whether the period of 10,000 years is sufficient for their differentiation,” but that the evidence of extremely ancient Indians would some day be found, and that, “all we can say, therefore, is that the search for early remains must continue.” Indeed, Boas was among the first to propose, based on the evidence from an expedition that he led to the Bering Strait region in 1897, the “back migration” from the Americas to Asia.

The dispute also led the influential linguist, Johanna Nichols, to publish “Linguistic Diversity and the First Settlement of the New World,” in the journal Language in 1990. In her introduction, she first made two important scientific points: the diversity of the languages of the New World is due to “the operation of regular principles of linguistic geography;” and that the linguistic and archaeological evidence from the Sahul clearly contradicted the attempts to assign early dates for the Bering Strait migration, since the assignment of early dates in the New World would create a scientific anomaly; “but such a discrepancy–one of at least an order of magnitude–must be assumed if we adhere to the Clovis [15,000 years ago] or received chronology [20,000 years ago] for the settlement of the New World.”

Nichols’ paper used six independent linguistic methods for calculating American Indian antiquity and she determined that it would have taken a minimum of 50,000 years for all of the American Indian languages to have evolved from one language, or 35,000 years if migrants had come in multiple waves. She concluded that, “The unmistakable testimony of the linguistic evidence is that the New World has been inhabited nearly as long as Australia or New Guinea.”

The advocates of the Bering Strait Theory have countered that the linguistic evidence, strong as it may be, is not “proof” that Indians have inhabited the Americas for more than 15,000 years, and granted, it is not proof, it is evidence. The demand by the proponents of the Bering Strait Theory for “indisputable proof” is actually a curious but important aspect of that theory. Science is only rarely able to prove things with absolute certainty, and it normally confines itself to mathematical probability. As one scientist put it, “proof is not a currency of science,” and virtually all widely accepted scientific theories are based upon the preponderance of the evidence, not proof. This strident demand for “proof” while ignoring the evidence is abnormal in science and reflects the fact that originally the Bering Strait Theory was not a scientific theory at all, but a dogma. And this dogmatic stance, along with the vicious nature of the debate surrounding it, has long been a sore point for many scientists, not just for Indians.

The Bering Strait Myth - MOST COMPLETE LIST ON THIS SITE

March 2018 https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/speaking-of-science/wp/2018/03/30/the-oldest-footprints-in-north-america-are-right-where-native-historians-said-they-should-be/?utm_term=.822ab159e0f0

The oldest footprints in North America are right where native historians said they should be 
Archaeological material and genetic studies suggest that people first ventured into the Americas via a land bridge between Asia and Alaska. Further travel would have been blocked by the two massive ice sheets that covered most of Canada until about 10,000 years ago, yet scientists keep finding signs of human presence many thousands of years before that: in Washington, a mastodon rib with a stone point buried in it; in Chile, chipped tools and burned bones; in Oregon, fossilized feces containing ancient human DNA.


Did Native Americans Discover Europe?  

Before Columbus came to America?  There is evidence that supports the idea that Native People circumnavigated the globe, or at least went out far on the ocean in their own "ships."

 

The Bering Strait Theory is also losing credibility.  Native People could have come to the western hemisphere in many ways. First, listen to one of the "great flood" stories told by Native People. Then, read a summary of Red Earth, White Lies by Vine Deloria, Jr. where he offers evidence against this one theory.  

"At the Ceno-Catastrophism convention in Portland a year ago, Deloria said that he had been researching a major project, a compendium of Indian oral traditions and folklore. He said that for many years, he had been out speaking with nearly every chief, shaman, medicine man, storyteller, and keeper of oral traditions of nearly every tribe in North America. He noted the extent to which virtually every one of these tribes retained descriptions of pliestocene megafauna and, more often than not, dinosaurs. If any of that is true, than much of what scientists think they know about the history of our Earth is certainly wrong." Ted Holden, The Emerging Science of Catastropism.

In case you don't know.  The Bering Strait Theory proposes the idea that all Native Americans are descendant from people who crossed a "land bridge" following animal herds during the last ice age, approximately 18,000 years ago.  The video below dramatizes where the land bridge was formed, and how it disappeared again under the water.  The main problem with supporting this theory are:

1. It eliminates all other ways people came here and denies Native People their creation stories.
2. It negates the artifacts and evidence which support earlier settlement and denies the cultural/historical significance of those findings.  Even if you believe the B.S. Theory, it denies that the land bridge opened 40,000 years ago, so people could have traveled at that time up until 12,000 years ago.
3. It supports oppressive political ideology by calling Native People "newcomers" who don't really have that much claim on the lands of the Americas. 

 

What about the human-genome project? DNA? Evolution? Funny, you should ask.  Here are some videos suggesting very different origins.  The top one on the left shows how current research supports the "all humans came out of Africa" theory.  The one on the right shows new DNA research which supports interbreeding with Neanderthals whose DNA is ABSENT from the African gene pool, meaning they originated (and stayed) outside of Africa.  The next videos underneath shows a third human type that lived alongside Cro-Magnon and Neanderthal whose DNA was extracted from bones found in Siberian caves.  The next videos discus what happens when archaeologist "dig deeper than Clovis" and find ice-age European explorers.

 

 

More information and video compilation here. 

DNA Evidence  More here: http://nativeamericanresources.blogspot.com/search?q=dna

The Bering Land Bridge is just one part of the equation. DNA provides more information, but not all of it. Did European mitochondrial DNA emerge in the Native American gene pool because Native People traveled to Europe or because Europeans traveled to the Americas? There are so many points of view.  There is so much controversy.  There is so much we don't know.  One thing we do know is that immediately preceding European contact, there were people in the Americas.  These people developed complex societies, spoke over 200 languages, created roads, domesticated plants, established new technologies for hunting and farming, and used complex medicines and medical techniques (just to name a few things).  

While there are many differences among Nations, there are also commonalities in culture related to the plants, animals, seasons, weather, and other ecological systems that only exist in the "Americas" and therefore influenced the unique culture that developed stories, traditions, foods, and technology in response to this eco-system and its resources, and no other eco-systems in the world.  What is the "take-away" from this?  Research is ongoing and we can't rule out that Native Americans are accurate when we say, "We've always been here."

January 2018 Evidence from ancient ice age baby Beringian.

Linguistic Evidence

http://nativeamericanresources.blogspot.com/2014/03/how-linguists-are-pulling-apart-bering.html

Over the past few weeks, new scientific discoveries have rekindled the debate over the Bering Strait Theory. Two of the discoveries were covered recently in Indian Country Today. The first “More Reasons to Doubt the Bering Strait Migration Theory,” dealt with the growing problem of “science by press release,” as scientific studies hype their conclusions to the point that they are misleading; and the second, “DNA Politics: Anzick Child Casts Doubt on Bering Strait Theory,” discussed how politics can influence science, and the negative effects these politically-based scientific results can have on Native peoples.

Nichols’ paper used six independent linguistic methods for calculating American Indian antiquity and she determined that it would have taken a minimum of 50,000 years for all of the American Indian languages to have evolved from one language, or 35,000 years if migrants had come in multiple waves. She concluded that, “The unmistakable testimony of the linguistic evidence is that the New World has been inhabited nearly as long as Australia or New Guinea.”

Bering Strait Theory Series of Articles

Bering Strait Theory, Pt. 1: How Dogma Trumped Science

https://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2014/06/13/bering-strait-theory-pt-1-how-dogma-trumped-science-155284

and an excerpted version:  http://nativeamericanresources.blogspot.com/2014/06/how-dogma-trumps-science-part-1.html
Bering Strait Theory, Pt. 2: Racism, Eugenics and When Natives Came to America

https://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2014/06/20/bering-strait-theory-pt-2-racism-eugenics-and-when-natives-came-america-155406

Bering Strait Theory, Pt. 3: The Theory Becomes a Religious Crusade

https://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2014/06/27/bering-strait-theory-pt-3-theory-becomes-religious-crusade-155429

Bering Strait Theory, Pt. 4: The Indisputable Facts in the Artifacts

https://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2014/07/04/bering-strait-theory-pt-4-indisputable-facts-artifacts-155659

Bering Strait Theory, Pt. 5: The Theory Comes Crashing Down

http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2014/07/11/bering-strait-theory-pt-5-theory-comes-crashing-down-155774

Bering Strait Theory, Pt. 6: DNA, Blood Types and Stereotypes Read more at http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2014/07/19/bering-strait-theory-pt-6-dna-blood-types-and-stereotypes-155920

Before the Ice Age
http://nativeamericanresources.blogspot.com/2014/04/before-ice-age-research-on-early.html

Native American Origins May Be West Asian and European
Nearly one-third of Native American genes come from west Eurasian people linked to the Middle East and Europe, rather than entirely from East Asians as previously thought, according to a newly sequenced genome.  http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2013/11/131120-science-native-american-people-migration-siberia-genetics/?sf5616090=1#at_pco=cfd-1.0&at_ab=-&at_pos=5&at_tot=4&at_si=545a6eb8c67bf75f?utm_source=Facebook&utm_medium=Social&utm_content=link_fbge20141105nativeamericans&utm_campaign=Content

Two Studies Find Ties Between Native Americans and Australia: http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2015/07/24/two-studies-find-ties-between-native-americans-and-australia-disagree-everything-else

Flora and Fauna Evidence:
Indeed, if anything, the study findings set the Beringian Standstill theory back. According to a review in Scientific American, “This kind of vegetation would not have supported the large, grazing animals – woolly mammoth, woolly rhino, Pleistocene horses, camels, and bison.” It had previously been presumed that Beringia was covered in grass, and that the large animals were what the Paloeindians had lived on, but the shrub tundra would have only supported small mammals, “perhaps some bighorn sheep,” and possibly elk.

http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2014/03/08/more-reasons-doubt-bering-strait-migration-theory

 

To use when presenting multiple perspectives and doing critical analysis.
* My personal favorites


Articles: 
* The Bering Strait Myth by John Two Hawks
Letter I wrote


East or West Coast Migration?
The find doesn’t change any minds in the debate between the West Coast-Bering Strait experts or the East Coast-Solutrean experts, as they argue over discoveries and evidence. Discoveries along either coast are bound to push back dates, as these were the favored migration routes but they are hard to find and test. These sites encounter many other modern issues like development and rising waters.

Read more at http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2014/08/26/22000-year-old-mastodon-and-tool-discovery-raise-questions-156580

 

Popular theory on how humans populated North America can't be right, study shows
http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/ice-free-corridor-north-americans-1.3715397
Human archeological sites as old as 14,600 years old have since been found south of the ice sheet, in Oregon, Florida, Texas and even as far south as Chile.Sediment coreSediment cores were drilled at Charlie Lake and Spring Lake during the winter because the frozen lake surface provided the researchers with a solid platform for drilling into the sediment. (Mikkel Winther Pedersen/University of Copenhagen)Meanwhile, no Clovis sites have been found in Alaska or Yukon, although one dating to around 13,000 years ago has been found in Charlie Lake, B.C., raising the possibility that it could have belonged to people who came through the ice-free corridor from the north.

Books about Bering Strait and population of the world.
Dickason, Olive P. Canada's First Nations:  A History of Founding Peoples from Earliest Times, 2nd Ed.  Oxford University Press.  Toronto, 1997
 
Jones, Mary Ellen.  Seeds of Change:  Readings on Cultural Exchange After 1492. Addison-Wesley Publishing Company, Inc. Reading, MA1993.

* Mann, Charles C.  Before Columbus:  The Americas of 1491.  Antheneum Books.  New York, 2009. 

Waldman, Carl.  Atlas of The North American Indian.  Checkmark Books.  New York , 2009.

Need to Write a Letter? MOST COMPLETE LIST ON THIS SITE by CFT

Here are samples of letters I send and receive.

Positive letters from teachers.
Dakota
Savannah

Letters I send.
1999 annual letter to teacher
2007 annual letter to teacher
2009 high expectations
About Equinox
Racist math riddle
About sports mascots
About tracking a child
Holidays, Celebrations, Educational
Pies for Thanksgiving

Questions from the public.
2007
2008
Bering Strait
2010
About Pow Wow
2011 (including Pagan)
2012
2013 (tomahawk chop)
2014
Last of Mohicans

Bering Strait Letter, 2008 by CFT

Dear Ms. Fox Tree,

My name is Clarissa (name changed), and I'm in 8th grade. This week I have a short essay due on three origin ideas of Native Americans. I just read your piece on the Ice Bridge theory. I would really love to use some of your perspectives in my essay, but I need to know how many Native Americans actually agree with you. While you piece really brought me some new perspectives I can't really discuss it unless its on a larger scale of agreement.

Thank you for your time,
Clarissa

Hi Clarissa,

Thanks for reading my blog. It's not really about how many Native Americans agree with me, not that I could tell you the answer to that questions anyway, it is about research and facts, whether folks believe it or not. Some people don't believe the Holocaust happened to Jews in Germany, but that doesn't make it not true.

Another lie to consider is the Native American population in the Americas. The Smithsonian Institute has stated that the Native American population in 1492 was not more than one million. Under repeated challenges, they have revised that figure upwards to two million. The original figure is based heavily on the interpretations of anthropologists like James Mooney, whose work was filled with racial bias. For example, he refers repeatedly to "half-negro mongrels" and people who have "fairly healthy blood." Using dubious field surveys, he came up with a figure of 1.1 million.

Anthropologist Henry Dobyns, estimated in 1983 that the aboriginal population of North America was 18 million and the present territory of the United States was about 10 million.

The population number now accepted by impartial demographers is that there were 120 million people in both North and South America. Consider that recent scholarship describes Tenochtitlan, the Aztec capital city, as the third largest in the WORLD at the time of Columbus.

A society built by hiding the truth is invested in continuing to hide truths. When you write your essay, you don't have to agree with all the facts, you really just need to be able to bring up reasonable doubt and ask questions that make folks think about other perspectives. The book, Red Earth, White Lies by Vine Deloria cites more research and evidence than I put on my blog.

The other thing about Native American creation stories is that our stories are not really about the Bering Strait, they are about being born from spirits, caves, or clay, depending on the Nation.

Let me know what you decide,
Claudia

The Bering Strait Theory Debunked

by John Two Hawks
These are excerpts, see here for more information and read Red Earth, White Lies by Vine Deloria for the complete story and evidence.

I will offer here a very condensed explanation of the facts that clearly demonstrate that the 'Bering Strait Theory' has never graduated beyond being a theory. Before I begin, however, I would offer that no one has ever exposed the foolishness of this myth with more research, intelligence, and eloquence than my fellow Oglala Lakota, Vine Deloria Jr., Phd. in his best-selling book, 'Red Earth, White Lies'. Read his chapter on the Bering Strait in this book and I assure you, you will never look at this 'theory' the same way ever again.

The Bering Strait Myth is not so much science as it is politics. Much objective modern science in the past several decades has even suggested that it is highly questionable if there ever was a so-called 'ice-bridge'. Yes, that's right, from an in-depth, intensive and non-politically affected scientific study of earth history, countless scientists (mostly non-American) have concluded that there most likely never was an 'ice-bridge'! When I was young, it was '12,000 years ago' when Indians supposedly migrated over the 'ice-bridge' into this continent. Over the years, I have watched this number go up from 12,000 years, to 20,000 years, and now in recent print, I have begun to see the number placed at 30,000 years! It seems that scientists just move the number back whenever something Indian is discovered that pre-dates their Bering Strait migration figure! I can tell you this, science does not have the market cornered on fact, nor on truth.

Most U.S. History books, and many other books written about North American Indigenous people, begin by propagating the Bering Strait Myth, telling the silly story of thousands, even millions, of early First Nations people migrating from Asia, crossing the so-called 'ice-bridge' of the Bering Strait. You may be surprised to discover that the scientists who support the Bering Strait Myth also want us to believe that many kinds of animals, plants, and even trees crossed over the Bering Strait into this Turtle continent. No kidding! Let me give you some more hard facts to help you discard, at long last, the foolish Bering Strait Myth once and for all.

First - Many Indigenous Nations have calendars that have been counting the years for a very long time. I am aware that the calendar of the Mohawk Indian Nation has been counting the winters for over 33,120 years. This pre-dates the so-called 'ice-bridge' of the Bering Strait theory, unless, of course, the Bering Strait scientists decide to move the interestingly illusive time period of our early migration back to 40,000 years! Many American Indian early histories tell of events that took place on this Turtle continent (North America) long before any so-called ice age. But, for political reasons, our histories have been mostly ignored. You see, the Bering Strait, in truth, is a theory that was born of the politics and propaganda of early America. In the midst of the American 'Manifest Destiny' social climate, the Bering Strait theory provided a 'scientific' means to justify the taking of ancestral Indian lands. In short, the mythical theory eased the conscience, as it was a way for land hungry immigrants to believe that, because Indian people were only 'recent inhabitants' of this land that it was not our 'homeland'. Therefore we were, in their minds, not any more the 'original people' in this land than they were. This was, and still is, the political power of the infamous 'Bering Strait theory'.

The Bering Strait theory would have us believe that all of North America was uninhabited by human beings of any kind until the supposed 'ice age'. The theory contends that the ancestors of American Indians originated in Siberia. Factual history of the ancient people of Siberia in those times indicates that these people had plenty to eat, were very settled into their communities, and the land they lived on. The Bering Strait theory wants us to believe that countless thousands of people from these well established communities in Siberia, despite the fact that they had everything they needed, just left everything behind to head north into a frozen tundra to 'chase and hunt game' (which, by the way, also decided for some crazy reason to leave their rich marshlands and head for the ice). Not only does it not make any logical sense, it doesn't make any historical, cultural or scientific sense! The culture of those ancient Siberian people is as different from North American Indigenous cultures as a shark is from an eagle! There are no cultural links between ancient Siberian peoples and the Native peoples of this continent to indicate any human descendancy connection. It simply makes no sense.

Then there is the 'ice bridge' itself… In order to create the Bering Strait 'bridge', we first need the timeless normal function of the earth's wind, evaporation and precipitation patterns to all of a sudden, just change completely. The wind streams need to begin to travel south to north, instead of west to east. In order to create the Bering Strait 'bridge', we need to drop the water level at least 200 ft. So an enormous amount of water needs to be evaporated - about 20.82 million cubic kilometers, enough water to cover an area of 5 million square miles with a sheet of ice 1.2 miles thick. To complete the process, we need this massive evaporation to take place in the warmer climates of the south, then the moisture laden clouds need to break the natural laws of the planet and head to the far north so they can then 'dump' their precipitation as ice over the area of the Bering Strait. To quote from Professor Vine Deloria Jr., "We cannot today conceive of a natural process that would evaporate this amount of water and transport it safely from the temperate zones to ensure that it precipitated as ice in Canada." As you can see, when you begin to explore the facts, it becomes more and more clear how ridiculous the Bering Strait theory really is. The Native people of this Turtle continent did not 'migrate' to this land… we have always been here…

You may notice that I keep italicizing the word theory. My reason for doing this is that I think it is very important to note that this myth is still identified today as a theory, not a fact. A theory is defined as: "an offered opinion which may not positively be true." Yet this theory is taught in schools still today as if it were the gospel truth. It is far from truth, and the time for it to be removed from lessons about American Indian people is long overdue.

I do encourage teachers to use this document in all classrooms where it has been decided to teach the truth of Indian culture. And again, I strongly suggest you get the book by Vine Deloria Jr., Red Earth, White Lies. May you be blessed on your journey to truth.