“ Scientific Evidence for Pre-Columbian Transoceanic Voyages to and from the Americas” by John L. Sorensen is a detailed two-part manuscript with extensive scientific evidence for transoceanic contact between the New and Old Worlds. Some of you have probably heard about representations in pre-Columbian India of sunflowers and maize, suggestive of contact with the New World, but there are dozens more well documented examples pointing to transoceanic contact. The evidence goes beyond plants, including fauna such as an Asian hookworm parasite found in South American mummies. Lots of interesting food for thought.
Ancient Transoceanic Contact with the New World: Evidence from Plants
I read Sorenson’s article and the evidence sounds pretty good, but if it’s so dead-on, why isn’t the theory more popular? Are all of these pre-Columbian contacts between India and the New World being put in new textbooks?
I ran across this factoid recently and although it is a bit off topic, it is more appropriate to put it under this topic than it’s previous location.
A recent (2006) genetic study of the Yakuts used the Y chromosome mutation rate observed by Kayser (2.8 per 1000) and got a pretty acurate date for the migration of the Yakuts north. Historical evidence supports the view that the Turkic speaking Yakuts went north from Lake Baikal when the Mongols moved into that area. What this means, of course, is that Kayser’s observed mutation rate is more accurate in some cases than the “effective mutation rate” (0.7 per 1000) used in Zegura’s 2004 study of Native Americans.
What’s my point you ask?
Most American Indians could be descended from a man who lived as recently as 2500 years ago. Take that Living Hope Ministries.
The link for the study is below
Investigating the effects of Prehistoric migrations in Siberia: genetic variation and the origins of Yakuts
Brigitte Pakendorf · Innokentij N. Novgorodov · Vladimir L. Osakovskij · Al’bina P. Danilova · Artur P. Protod’jakonov · Mark Stoneking
Hum Genet (2006) 120:334–353
DOI 10.1007/s00439-006-0213-2
http://www.eva.mpg.de/genetics/pdf/Yakut_article_2006.pdf
I found a recent hookworm article here.
Good old Underhill still trying to explain why Native American Y chromosomes look like they have a common ancestor as recently as 2147 years ago. Below is an URL, title and excerpt from the study. The underlying explanation offered is Y lineage extinction. As I recall, Southerton poopooed the very idea of lineage extinction when it was offered as an explanation by BoM apologists.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?tmpl=NoSidebarfile&db=PubMed&cmd=Retrieve&list_uids=16956974&dopt=Abstract
Difference between evolutionarily effective and germ line mutation rate due to stochastically varying haplogroup size.
Zhivotovsky LA, Underhill PA, Feldman MW.
N.I. Vavilov Institute of General Genetics, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, Russia. levazh@gmail.com
Within a Y-chromosome haplogroup defined by unique event mutations, variation in microsatellites can accumulate due to their rapid mutation. Estimates based on pedigrees for the Y-chromosome microsatellite mutation rate are 3 or more times greater than the same estimates from evolutionary considerations. We show by simulation that the haplogroups that survive the stochastic processes of drift and extinction accumulate microsatellite variation at a lower rate than predicted from corresponding pedigree estimates; in particular, under constant total population size, the accumulated variance is on average 3-4 times smaller.
Doug Forbes
Suggest you go back to remedial writing and learn how to present a coherent thesis.
You may have information but you don’t know how to communicate.
Well dang it, SteveP, is it possible that his “not communicating” might perhaps be due to you not being able to receive? Doug’s explanation seemed quite clear to me, and I’m not even a college graduate, much less a scientist. We mustn’t blame others for our own weaknesses, must we? Back to “remedial comprehension” for you, guy.
Looks like we have some more high quality discourse–educated, enlightening, and CIVIL (?)
OK perhaps I was not clear. So I will try again.
Back in 1996 Peter Underhill, a PhD from Stanford calculated that the most recent common ancestor of most American Indians lived 2147 year ago. He used a mutation rate of 2.1 per 1000 observed in living populations.
Since then, he has been trying to explain this calculation by developing an “effective” mutation rate. His theory is that even though we see mutations occurring at rates of 2.1 per 1000 (Weber & Wong) and even 2.8 per 1000 (Kayser) in living populations, over thousands of years, mutations don’t accumulate as fast as those rates imply.
His first attempt to do this focused on Maoris and Gypsies and he and a colleague (Zhivotovsky) came up with an “effective” Y-chromosome mutation rate of 0.7 per 1000. This was used in subsequent studies including one led by Zegura in 2004. Using the “effective” rate of 0.7 per 1000, Zegura calculated that a common male ancestor of Native Americans of the Q-M3 lived as recently as 10,000 years ago. Zegura also calculated that the Q-P36 lineage entered America as recently as 10,000.
Last year (2006) Underhill and his colleague Zhivotovsky, did another study and found that lineage extinction could explain his “effective” mutation rate being slower than the observed rate by a factor of 3 or 4.
Also last year another research team used the faster Y-chromosome mutation rate observed by Kayser of 2.8 per 1000 to calculate the date of migration of Yakuts. Here is an excerpt from that study.
“… it has recently been proposed that ‘effective’ mutation rates (Zhivotovsky et al. 2004), which are not based on pedigree studies but on archaeologically calibrated migrations, may reflect the true historical processes better than pedigree rates. Using the average ‘effective’ rate of 6.9 [per 1000] calculated by Zhivotovsky et al. (2004) results in a much greater age of the Yakut male expansion of approximately 3800 years … However, these older dates are inconsistent with linguistic and archaeological evidence: … the split of Yakut from Common Turkic cannot be earlier than 1,500 years BP.”
So we have a study where Kayser’s mutation rate is used successfully. This means at the very least that the effective rate is not universally valid. If we apply Kayser’s rate to Zegura’s calculations we get a lower bound of 2,500 ago for the common ancestor of most Native Americans; similar to Underhill’s result back in 1996 which was 2147. Clearly this is within Book of Mormon times.
Furthermore, Underhill and Zhivotovsky acknowledge that lineage extinction would be the mechanism most likely to cause a lineage to appear younger than it really is. Mormon scholars have put forward the possibility that lineage extinction could explain the absence of more common Middle Eastern lineages in Native Americans such as J or E3b. This argument was ridiculed by Simon Southerton and others but now it is put forward to explain what is a very serious problem for the scientific mainstream.
I am assuming that mormons are the kind of christians that beleive the earth is only 6,000 or so years old.
I also think I heard it somewhere that the book of mormon says that native americans are descendants of a jewish population that crossed the ocean to the america’s what like 2,600 or so years ago?
What explains the findings of teeth in alaska that are 13,000 years old in one case and in another that is 10,300 years old?
What explains that genetic markers from both of these samples are found in native americans from alaska all the way down to the tip of south america?
I will take my answers off the air, thank you.
I wish to answer the questions to the above post.
anonymous said…
“I am assuming that mormons are the kind of christians that beleive the earth is only 6,000 or so years old.”
That is incorrect. I know of no official LDS doctrine that claims to know how old the earth is. Who knows, science probably has it pretty close.
anonymous said…
“I also think I heard it somewhere that the book of mormon says that native americans are descendants of a jewish population that crossed the ocean to the america’s what like 2,600 or so years ago?”
Correct. The ancient inhabitants recorded about in the Book of Mormon originally came from the Middle East. There were many different groups that crossed the ocean at separate times. One came from the time of the Tower of Babel and another came from Jerusalem at about 600 B.C. Their descendants still live today.
anonymous said…
“What explains the findings of teeth in alaska that are 13,000 years old in one case and in another that is 10,300 years old?”
I don’t know if there is any official doctrine about this particular question, but in My Opinion I do not think that the Book of Mormon inhabitants were the only people to live in the Americas. People probably also came before and after by sea and by the land bridge connecting Alaska and Russia. The Book of Mormon is a record of the people of God who came from the Middle East; there may well have been other inhabitants, as North and South America are huge land masses.
anonymous said…
“What explains that genetic markers from both of these samples are found in native americans from alaska all the way down to the tip of south america?”
Throughout time no doubt the migration of all these different groups of people spread their genetic material all over the Americas.