Native American Population History And Genetics

From David Jones’ point of view, it is important to note that these epidemics were just some of the causes of population decline during European contact. Poverty, environmental stress, massacres, dislocation, malnutrition, and destruction of traditional subsistence patterns also changed the composition of many Native American groups. Eventually, these changes caused substantial depopulation and cultural change. Jones agrees that disease carried a decisive role; however, he argues that it is not the key factor in their depopulation. “Many factors contributed to American Indian susceptibility to Old World diseases, including lack of childhood exposure, malnutrition, and the social chaos generated by European colonization” (Jones 34).

According to the standard accepted theory, the Clovis people were the first inhabitants of the Americas. The Clovis people crossed the Beringia land bridge during the period of the last ice age, from there they spread across the Americas through an ice free-corridor. However, recent finding have suggested that the first people did not walk to America but came by boat. This paper will examine evidence found in Haida Gwaii and other sites along North and South America that supports a different view of human migration to the Americas, the coastal migration theory.

The first Americans came from Asia, beginning as early as thirty thousand years ago, over a land bridge that formed at the Bering Strait during the Ice Age. The new immigrants were hunters and gatherers, and over a period of fifteen thousand years various groups spread over the American continents. By the time of the European “discovery” of the New World, there were perhaps as many as 100 million native Americans, the vast majority living in Central and South America.

* According to anthropologists, where did the first human beings live? Why did they leave that place? How did they get to North America?

About 225 million years ago, according to the theory of “Pangaea,” the world was once a single supercontinent that contained all the dry land. Approximately 10 million years ago, North America was shaped by the majestic Canadian Shield. About 2 million years ago, in North America, the grand glaciers laid the land of Canada and the United States, southbound as far as from Pennsylvania all the way to the Pacific Northwest. Recently, about 135 million to 25 million years ago, four massive ranges—the Rockies, the Sierra Nevada, the Cascades, and the Coast Ranges, arose in western North America. About 35000 years ago, the ancestors of the Native Americans, the nomadic Asian hunters, first

Anthropological theories concerning the peopling of North America is a topic that is widely debated. By far, Western scientists seem to agree that: “As a result of the vast amount of water that was locked up in glacial ice toward the end of the Pleistocene era, there was a worldwide drop in sea level of as much as 400 feet” (Sutton 19), creating a land link, known as the Beringia, between Asia and Alaska. Starting from this point about the land link, we find that Elias’s article “First Americans Lived on Bering Land Bridge for Thousands of Years,” is the most agreeable theory about the peopling of North America.

There were a large amount of Native Americans before the arrival of Europeans. Before reading 1491 by Charles C. Mann, I believed that there were only a small amount of people in the Americas. According to Henry F. Dobyns, the “Western Hemisphere held 90 to 112 million people”, which was more than the amount of people living in Europe.

We know the ancestors of all Native Americans came from Asia. We know this to be a fact because DNA analysis of Native Americans, including Native Americans of the southwestern United States, shows a direct link to people living in northeast Asia today. According to Jake Page, former editor of both "Natural History" and "Smithsonian" magazines: "...geneticists have found...DNA lineages present in native populations...which...are found only in Asians…". Linguistic and dentition analysis also demonstrate Native Americans descended from peoples living in Asia. Today, almost no one debates the premise that the ancestors of Native Americans came from Asia. There is also very little debate as to how these first Asians arrived in North America. Because so much of the world's water was locked up in glaciers during the last ice age, sea level was lower than it is today. According to David Meltzer, Associate Professor of Anthropology at Southern Methodist University and an internationally recognized authority on the first inhabitants of the New World: “…these lowered oceans exposed the shallow continental shelf beneath the Bering and Chukchi Seas. This shelf…connected Alaska and Siberia…and it trafficked…in plants, animals, and people."

Native Americans, possibly some of the most intelligent people there are, played a major roll in the survival, and death, of the settlers. The Native Americans are so smart that many of their century old ideas and practices, are still used today, such as farming, fishing, and hunting. Some Native American tribes would battle with the settlers killing them but other tribes, like the one in Roanoke, would instead engage in trade with the settlers. The Native Americans and the settlers would trade goods, and skills to each other that would help them to live good, healthy lives. “Whatsoever commodities we receive by the steelyard merchants or by our own merchants flaxe, hemp, pitche and tarre.”

It has been thought for many years that the Americas were a vastly unpopulated land until Columbus came. However new evidence disputes this previously thought notion. Archeologist, who have been studying the remains of Native American culture, have found evidence suggesting that the Indians were in the Americas for much longer and in greater numbers than what was believed. This new evidence shows us the impact the Europeans had on the New World and gives us insight into what the Americas were like before the Europeans and what they may have been had the Europeans never settled here.

1st movement of people into the Americas: from Asia who went over the Bering Strait (see terms) by land during the Ice Age

Indians arrived in America some 30,000 to 40,000 years ago. Archeological findings and Radiocarbon testing suggested that the prehistoric people who populated the Americas were hunters following the herds of wooly mammoths. They walked from Siberia across a land bridge into Alaska. They headed south toward warmer climates, slaughtering the mammoths as they went. As the glaciers melted, the oceans rose and covered this land bridge, creating the present-day Bering Strait and separating Alaska from Russia. By the time Christopher Columbus arrived, they were millions of what might be called First Americans or Amerindians occupying the two continents of Americas. The first noted documentation of the Beringia theory of the peopling of North America was by Jose de

As a young kid, I grew up knowing about my ancestry on my dad’s side of the family. I had always known that I had some family that was Native American. But as I grew up, I would tell my friends about the Tribe I am apart of, but hardly anybody believe me because I didn’t look like a Native American. Later, when I was older, people would ask if I lived in a Teepee or on a reservation. I always felt that it was fair to make assumptions like this or to not believe me when I said I was Native American even though I don’t look it.

The consequences of European contact with the Native Americans had grave consequences surpassing the expectations of both sides. However, while the Europeans were able to overcome most of the initial problems surrounding the contact, the Native Americans endured the effects for much longer which led to the decline of Native American power in North America. Both biological effects such as the impact of diseases, and cultural effects including the formation of new societies and the European influence, had devastating effects on the lives the Native Americans had formerly known. While some of the effects of contact could be seen as positive, overall the negative effects from Native American contact with the Europeans proved to outweigh the

According to physical evidence, and theories, scholars have concluded upon a whole hypothesis. Based on their knowledge and belief, modern humans diverged from Homo sapiens between 200,000 and 150,000 years ago specifically in Africa, that between 125,000 and 60,000 years ago members of Homo sapiens left Africa, and that these