BajaNomad

The First Americans in Baja?

Family Guy - 11-3-2003 at 07:12 PM

Who Were The First Americans?
Stefan Lovgren
for National Geographic News
September 3, 2003


A study of skulls excavated from the tip of Baja California in Mexico suggests that the first Americans may not have been the ancestors of today's Amerindians, but another people who came from Southeast Asia and the southern Pacific area. The question of who colonized the Americas, and when, has long been hotly debated. Traditionally, Native Americans are believed to have descended from northeast Asia, arriving over a land bridge between Siberia and Alaska some 12,000 years ago and then migrating across North and South America.

But recent research, including the Baja California study, indicates that the initial settlement of the continent was instead driven by Southeast Asians who occupied Australia 60,000 years ago and then expanded into the Americas about 13,500 years ago, prior to Mongoloid people arriving from northeast Asia.

The skulls from Baja California, which may date back only a few hundred years, have slender-looking faces that are different from the broad-cheeked craniums of modern Amerindians, the descendants of the Mongoloid people. "Our results change the traditional idea that all modern Amerindians present morphological affinities with East Asians as a result of a single migration," said Rolando Gonz?lez-Jos? of the University of Barcelona, Spain, who led the study. "The settlement of the New World is better explained by considering a continuous influx of people from Asia."

The new study is reported in this week's issue of the science journal Nature, and could further fuel the controversy surrounding the origins of the first Americans, which is a controversial issue for American Indians in particular.

Challenging Clovis

Conventional wisdom says that Native Americans descended from prehistoric hunters who walked from northeast Asia across a land bridge, formed at the end of the Ice Age, to Alaska some 12,000 years ago. American Indians resemble the people of Mongolia, China and Siberia.

In the 1930s, archeologists found stone spear points among the bones of mammoths near Clovis, New Mexico. Radio carbon dating in the 1950s showed that the oldest site was 11,400 years old. The sites were assumed, for years, to be the first evidence of human occupation in the Americas.

But more recent discoveries challenge the Clovis story. In 1996, archeologists in southern Chile found weapons and tools dating back 12,500 years. In Brazil, they found some of the oldest human remains in the Americas, among them a skeleton?named Luzia?that is more than 11,000 years old.

Luzia did not look like American Indians. Instead, her facial features matched most closely with the native Aborigines in Australia. These people date back to about 60,000 years and were themselves descended from the first humans who probably originated in Africa.

The researchers believe Luzia was part of a people, referred to as "Paleoamericans," who migrated into the Americas?possibly even by boat?long before the Mongoloid people. These Paleoamericans may later have been wiped out by or interbred with Mongoloids invading from the north.

Evolving in Isolation

The late skulls found in Baja California are similar to Luzia and the Paleoamerican skulls found in South America. Their craniums are characterized by long and narrow vaults, with faces short and low in relation to the neurocranium. "Skeletal studies demonstrate that skeletal remains do not fit the Mongoloid set of traits that is determinant of the modern Amerindian morphology," said Gonz?lez-Jos?. "Our results demonstrate that not only are some early remains not Mongoloid, but also some modern groups, like those of Baja California."

The study suggests that Baja California was one of many isolated pockets throughout the Americas were Paleoamerican traits survived. The Paleoamericans might have split at one point, with one group going down to Baja California. This group may not have come in contact with Paleoindians for millennia. Some experts, however, find it difficult to believe that such a population could have evolved in isolation. "I don't doubt there's skeletal diversity and that it's probably coming out of old world Asia," said Tom Dillehay, an archeologist at the University of Kentucky in Lexington, who commented on the study in a separate article for Nature. "But I am very skeptical of a population, particularly close to a coastline, that could have been isolated for more than 10,000 years."

Kennewick Man

The identity of the first Americans is an emotive issue for American Indians, who believe their ancestors were the first to inhabit the Americas. Controversy erupted after skeletal remains were found in Kennewick, Washington, in 1996. This skeleton, estimated to be 9,000 years old, had a long cranium and narrow face?features typical of people from Europe, the Near East or India?rather than the wide cheekbones and rounder skull of an American Indian.

A coalition of Indian tribes, however, said that if Kennewick Man was 9,000 years old, he must be their ancestor, no matter what he looked like. Invoking a U.S. federal law that provides for the return of Native American remains to their living descendants, the tribes demanded a halt to all scientific study and the immediate return of the skeleton for burial in a secret location. The matter is still stuck in the courts.

Them durn Injuns

Ski Baja - 11-3-2003 at 07:43 PM

F.G., this is getting my attention. There is apparently some really interesting finds and discoveries going on here.
The last thing in the world I wish for certain individuals is to end up in court over historic interests by certain individuals.
This is the exact reason I was reluctant to divulge information regarding locations.
I, needless to say believe these areas shouldn't be disturbed.
How would yall like it if someone went around diggin up yer family to put on exhibit. Kinda like Zoos dont'cha think.
The entire Baja peninsula is full of these sites. Maybe development will take a back seat to excavation and science/history.
Your stories are awesome. Thanks
I will be U2Uing you later.

BajaNomad - 11-3-2003 at 08:12 PM

http://forums.bajanomad.com/viewthread.php?tid=823

Baja Bernie - 11-3-2003 at 08:15 PM

I have been very interested in this subject for a few years and still wonder how our ,open, government could bury the 'Kennie' man in Washington. And then ignore any inquire about a white guy who died and was buried long before the Indians who claim all of this land were even around. Perhaps some of them are now roaming Baja. He was a very tall dude--tall enough to paint some of those cave paintings?
Family man, thanks for making me remember!!!

Thanks for the link

Family Guy - 11-3-2003 at 09:53 PM

I printed it out for easier reading.


Quote:

The authors consider several potential explanations to account for the presence of Palaeoamerican traits in the Baja Amerindian skulls, but they suggest that the best explanation is that the Palaeoamericans were the direct ancestors of the Baja Amerindians.


JR, you are right. There are some very interesting discoveries going on. But just the beginning. Heck, how many years did it take for people to begin to study the cave paintings. Hopefully, this and other discoveries will attract more scholars to take an interest in the depth of undiscovered history here.

But that means....the areas have to be disturbed to some degree. I am sure there must be ways to excavate a site while not disrupting the local population too greatly.

There is an archeological/anthropological puzzle on that peninsula and the skull discovery is just another fascinating piece.

I would hate to see science and history take a back seat to development. We could end up with more beer cans and garbage than artifacts in many of these regions.

jimmy smith - 11-4-2003 at 12:05 PM

jimmy, thats the least i've ever

capt. mike - 11-4-2003 at 04:39 PM

seen you say on a subject?!

jimmy smith - 11-4-2003 at 07:01 PM

Guess I must have hit the wrong key (wonder what that Preview post key does?) Anyhway, here's a little ditty that I did for Cabo Life Magazine about 10 years ago and everyone was telling me I was nuts.
Jimmy Smith

NOMADS

A thousand years before the birth of Christ tenacious people voyaged eastward from their homeland on the Tonkin Gulf to establish homes on some of the twenty thousand islands of the Polynesian triangle. The factors motivating these people to migrate can only be conjectured. War perhaps? Famine? Perhaps they simply wanted to see what was on the other side.

They sailed frail catamarans. They had no navigational equipment save their instinct for the sea. They were at the mercy of the weather. They had no tangible evidence that land existed to the east. Yet they went.

They carried food and water for a voyage of up to four months. They carried seeds and seedlings of foodstuffs they had known in their homeland. Dogs, chickens, pigs and rats would complete the inventory of their livestock. Thus equipped they navigated eastward across one third of our planet. These people became the Polynesians.

Archaeologists tell us that the initial Polynesian colonies were perhaps located in the three hundred islands of the Fiji chain, the crossroads of the Pacific. Then came Samoa, Tonga, Tahiti, Raiatia (which remains the spiritual center of Polynesia today), The Marquises, Easter Island, Pitcarn, Hawaii and finally New Zealand.

Each of the isolated colonies developed their own culture as time passed. Some islands would practice human sacrifice, cannibalism, or religious taboos that unknown on other islands. (Taboo is a Polynesian word) On Easter Island, a zeal for erecting huge stone statues destroyed the lush tropical vegetation and hence the livelihood of the inhabitants, creating a desert island.

Limited gene pools altered the physical characteristics of the populations. Varied diets in the individual colonies would certainly affect the physical appearance of these isolated peoples. Three thousand years would doubtlessly alter their language.

When one considers the primitive navigation systems of the Polynesian migrants as well as the whims of the Pacific weather and the periodic reversals of winds and currants created by El Ni?o, it becomes apparent that some of these people would have reached the west coast of the North American Continent.

Malarimmo Beach, located around the 28th parallel, near Guerrero Negro, on the Baja California Peninsula is a depository of marine refuge from throughout the Pacific. Ocean currants and winds have carried flotsam and jetsam to this beach for eons. This would be the logical initial contact point for any misadvenuring catamaran. While sea life abundant around Malarimmo and nearby Scammons Lagoon, this area would not have been habitable because of the scarcity of potable water. Prevailing winds would have forced our vagrant catamaran south along the Baja California Coast to Cape San Lucas where abundant sea life as well as fresh water was found. The Polynesians could have survived here.

Jesuit histories state there were basically three Indian nations in Baja California when the peninsula was first penetrated by Europeans: The Cochimi ranging north from Loreto spoke a Yuman language and had obviously migrated from the north since that language continued into what is now California and Arizona. The Guaicura lived in the area between Muertos Bay and Loreto and spoke their own language.

Finally we have the Pericue who inhabited the land south of Palmas Bay to Cape San Lucas along with three of islands in the Sea of Cortez; Ceralvo, Esperitu Santo, and San Jose. Prof. Pablo Martinez relates; ?The linguistic difference is so ostensible that philologists of native tongues have not been able to reconcile the Pericue and Guaicura with any groups in the American classification.?

Footnote 33 on page 448 of Harry W. Crosby's epic Jesuit history ANTIGUA CALIFORNIA states:
?Early explorers and missionaries reported that the Pericu language and customs were markedly different from those of other peninsular people. The Pericu buried the bones of their dead after painting them red with hematite and elaborately wrapping them in woven fiber bags; other peninsular people usually practiced cremation. Over a hundred Pericu graves have been excavated: anthropometrical studies show that the Pericu were strikingly dolichocephalic (long headed). The Pericu were California's most sea-oriented people. They made balsas and canoes which they paddled and sailed. They alone inhabited the gulf islands adjacent to the peninsula south of 25 degrees N. Latitude.?

The Polynesian frangipani, locally called the cacalochuchil, known as plumaria elsewhere is still worn in the hair of wahinis in the south Pacific. This flower grows in profusion throughout the Pericu territory. Bananas, Papaya, mango, and coconut thrive in the southern fifth of the peninsula. Could these plants have arrived on Polynesian catamarans?

Crosby Antigua California p. 110
?Around 1730 Padre Napoli had been fascinated by what he took to be evidence of European visitors to the region. I have never seen people taller than these; their bodies are well proportioned and filled out, their skin pale and ruddy. Youths particularly resemble Englishmen or Flemmings in fairness and high color. Tamaral echoed these observations, but also noted a dark skinned element. He reported that the population included foreigners--men marooned, castaway or runaway whose presence disturbed the natives of the cape region. He complained of " a number of coyotes, lobos, others of mixed background left by English or Dutch ships that had long frequented those coasts. These people of vile mixed blood are the ones who disturb and agitate the local people. They are the ones who domineer the local populace and lead them astray. Tamaral described the Pericu as conniving, secretive, vengeful, traitorous, and given to falsehoods and the creation of rumors--all traits that could have been introduced or intensified by disturbing and manipulative intruders.?

Pablo L. Martinez History of Lower California p. 52

?The Pericu tradition mentioned a great lord who lived in the sky, called NIPARAJA, who had made the sky, the earth and the sea, and who enjoyed the privilege of doing whatever he liked. This great personage had as wife ANAJICOJONDI, who gave his three sons without the use of herself, since she lacked a body; one of them CUAJAIP, had been a real man and had lived for a long time on the earth in order to indoctrinate humanity. One day these people ungratefully rebelled against the one who had granted them innumerable blessings; they killed him and placed on his head a wreath made of thorns. They believed that in the sky there were more people than on earth and that region at a remote period frightful wars had been fought, provoked by another personage called TUPARAN by some and BAC by others, against the supreme NIPARAJA; that the latter had been victor in the end, so that after taking from TUPARAN the pithayas and all the delicate fruits that he had, he cast him from the sky with all his followers, imprisoned him in a cave near the sea and created whales so that they would guard him, preventing his escape.

It is also asserted that NIPARJA was the enemy of war and TURARAN an adherent of it, and that for this reason those who died of arrow wounds did not go to the sky, but to the cave of TUPARAN. Because of this, there were two sects in the region of the Pericuies: those who believed in NIPARAJA were circumspect people and amenable to reason. The missionaries protected their traditions in order to make them accept Christian Dogma. The partisans of TUPARAN, on the other hand, were tricky, false, and obstinate in their beliefs. They said that the stars, which according to them were made of metal, had been created by a deity called PURUTAHUI and the moon by another called CUCUNUMIC.?

Martinez p. 25
?The linguistic difference is so ostensible that philologists of native tongues have not been able to reconcile the Pericu and Guaycura languages with any groups in the American classification, as they cannot do with Tarascan and some others of Mexico and South America.?

Regarding the Pericues, of whom very ample studies have been made by distinguished scientists. They cite the fact that identical remains with their physical conformity have been found on some parts of South America, in Brazil among places, belonging to a race that the savants have named LAGOA SANTO, because of the site where they were discovered. This confirms the theory that the indigenes who populated the extreme south of the peninsula actually came across the Pacific or plied to the windward, as was the case with those who left their remains in Brazil and other parts of South America.

In treating this important point, the Mexican anthropologist Pablo Martinez
del Rio says:
?in 1833 the expert Ten Kate, on visiting Lower California, found in some caves of the peninsula, as well as on an island off the coast, various craniums of Pericue Indians. Because of the format in which they were found, it appears that they are not very old; on the other hand these craniums present some of the more notable characteristics of those of Lagoa Santa. In the following year, when reporting this discovery, Ten Kate stated he had come to the conclusion that there had existed in the southern part of lower California an Indian people, the Pericue, who presented as very salient features certain resemblances to the Melanesians on the one hand and on the other, the people of Lagoa Santa.?

In 1889 another anthropologists, the Frenchman, Quatrefages de Breau, asserted the thanks to the discovery of Kate, it unquestionably followed that some members of the dark race had come by sea to America from Melanesia. The Savant, Paul Rivet, also French, in a work on the Pericues which was published in 1909, shows by means of statistics and a great number of measurements, graphs, comparisons tables and other illustrative material, not only simple resemblance in the cranium, but a true blood relationship between the Pericues, the race at Lagoa Santa and the Melanesians.

That large hideous yellow stain appearing in the middle of my puss is egg. Egg, hear me, smeared there by science!

Both of my regular readers will recall my September Column in which it was related that around 1880, a Mr. Ten Kate brought forward a theory that the Pericue Indians which inhabited the Los Cabos area had Polynesian origins. He based his theory on a study of cranium structure of skulls found in Pericue burial caves.

A visit with Srta. Harumi and Sr. Gayazar of the INAH (Instituto National de Antropologia e Historia) Museum in La Paz revealed that Mr. Ten Kate and yours truly are full of pickle smoke: DNA studies have been conducted by Dr. El Molto of Lakehead University in Thunder Bay, Ontario, Canada. Dr. Molto reports the Pericue were vanilla flavored, mark I, garden variety American Indians, nothing more. Alas science triumphs over romance.

A similar incident that occurred a bit over thirty years is recalled; Earle Stanley Gardner, in one of his scribblings expressed an opinion that because of his tall stature, Jose Rosas Villavicencio was probably a Maya Indian. Jose Rosas, who was very proud of his traceable Castillian lineage, retorted, ?When I write my book, I'm going to report that Earle Gardner is an African Pigmy.?













Baja Bernie - 11-4-2003 at 07:18 PM

Wow! And Jimmy a few people think you are still ill---BS--you are riding again and we are so happy!

Pickle Smoke

Ski Baja - 11-4-2003 at 07:32 PM

Jimmy, thank you so much for sharing that. I was already thinking I would start looking for Tiki masks in my travels. Dang that science.:lol:
Keep em coming Se?or.

Wow, Great Read

Family Guy - 11-4-2003 at 08:28 PM

Thanks Jimmy. Enjoyed it immensely. Now you've got me itchin' to buy more books!

What a wealth of information in such a small thread.