Solutrean hypothesis: Native American Clovis Culture & NW Europe: (ydna Q, mtdna X2)

Keep me updated on it, thanks. Seems it may be probable, but I haven't heard of any still around today.
 
​I don't think the Solutrean idea holds up, for some of the reasons that sparky mentioned. However, I have another theory, which I know he also disagrees with. To understand it, you have to realize that Y haplotype R1 is the second most common Native American haplotype in North America, but it's largely absent from South American populations. And although R1 is fairly common among Dene, it's the main Y haplotype among some Algonquin speaking tribes and is common among some other tribes that used to live around the Great Lakes area, such as Iroquoan and Siouian speaking people. Geneticists have stated that the R1 in Native Americans is all from modern Europeans as a result of post-Columbian contact, even among tribes like the Ojibwe who are 79 percent R1. And why do the geneticists think that all the R1 among Native Americans is from modern Europeans? Well, it just is, so let's not discuss the issue. But I want to discuss the issue, especially since the mtDNA X2 is clustered almost completely among tribes who have high R1. I think another piece of the puzzle is the fact that, although the first wave of people into the Americas happened about 15,000 years ago, there was a separate wave of people into the Americas about 8.000 years ago. The theory currently accepted by academia is that this wave of settlement was fairly small and was limited to Dene speakers, but I've never seen any solid facts to support that idea. My own theory is that the wave of immigration 8,000 years ago was much larger than has been assumed and that the largest component consisted of Algonquin speakers who migrated east to the Great Lakes area. They are the ones who brought Y-R1 and mtDNA-X2 to North America. As for any Q that is too modern to have been part of either early wave of settlement, as long as its a fairly small component, I think it could be accounted for by small, more recent waves of immigration from Siberia. We know that the Dorset and Thule people arrived in the Americas just a few thousand years ago, and there could have been a few other small groups that headed south and mixed with existing populations.


The problem with the distribution of R1 and X2 is that it appears to be limited tothe eastern half North America. That would seem to suggest a rather recent origin, otherwise it would be evenly distributed over both continents.
Also, any migration by foot would have to happen during the glacial maximum, I would think. There's still a lot of blue water at the North Pole that was iced over.
 
The problem with the distribution of R1 and X2 is that it appears to be limited tothe eastern half North America. That would seem to suggest a rather recent origin, otherwise it would be evenly distributed over both continents.
Also, any migration by foot would have to happen during the glacial maximum, I would think. There's still a lot of blue water at the North Pole that was iced over.
First time I saw R1 signature in NA I thought it was a gift from Vikings, who settled East Coast for a while around 1,000 CE during warm medieval period.
 
First time I saw R1 signature in NA I thought it was a gift from Vikings, who settled East Coast for a while around 1,000 CE during warm medieval period.

The levels of R1 seem to be far too high for that. Also, there seems to be a consistent pattern of the highest levels of R1 being reported among Dene, Algonquin speaking people and tribes that historically were in fairly close proximity to Algonquins. And the Algonquin speaking people with high reported levels of R1 are in many cases the ones with high reported levels of mtDNA X2. Of course, there could be a problem with the small sample sizes that these figures are derived from, or a problem with where the samples were obtained. For example, it's reported that the Ojibwe are 79% Y-DNA R1 and 22% mtDNA X2, but I believe those percentages comes from a fairly small number of samples.

One of the difficulties is that many Native Americans are opposed to DNA testing. Another problem is that researchers so far have apparently not done any further analysis of R1 found among Native Americans because the researchers assume that it's as a result of recent European admixture. They assume that it must be, because they already know that R1 isn't found in Native American populations. A classic example of circular reasoning. I'd like to see a researcher actually apply the scientific method to this situation, instead of just making assumptions. A few bloggers have reported that the STR values in many cases are not typical of European results, but all the details on that sort of thing seem to be under lock and key, for some reason. So, the apparent amount of R1 among Native Americans may be an interesting phenomenon or it may not be, but we don't know because researchers would rather just make assumptions that there's nothing to see here, please move along.
 
I think we can expect that the results for people who are participating in a DNA study because they know they're a mixture of Amerindian and European ancestry could be different from random sampling of Native Americans living on reserves. When I was talking about data not being available, I was talking about studies such as Tarazona-Santos and Santos, 2002; Zegura et al., 2004; Balnick et al, 2006, etc. In other words, the studies that indicated high levels of R1 among specific Native American groups. I'd just like to know how detailed their information is and what it says. Anyway, I was mainly trying to suggest that there could be an alternative to the Solutrean hypothesis to explain how mtDNA X2 got to North America. I suppose another possibility could be that a lot of Finnish women emigrated to North America and married Native Americans, if it weren't for the fact that the Native American version of X2 either has been shown to be or is assumed to be different from the European X2 - I haven't seen the data on that one either, although I haven't actually tried to find it.
 
The way I understand Native American hg. X2 is that it's been here (U.S. and Canada) for at least 10,000 years.
 
The way I understand Native American hg. X2 is that it's been here (U.S. and Canada) for at least 10,000 years.
I won't quarrel with that. R1/X2 could have come at a later date than Q-L55/C1 though. My prediction is that Q-L55/C1 came over with the Solutreans and R1/X2 came over with either the Solutreans or some of their descendants before 10,000 years ago. Motala6 (Sweden, 8,000 ybp) tested L55+. And downstream of Q-L55 (Q1a2a) are the Native American Q-M3 and Q-Z780. And the unique mtdna C1e and C1f have been found in Scandinavia. But if I'm wrong I'll have to eat my words.
 
I was just looking at Family Tree DNA's mtdna Haplogroup C Project webpage where it shows the map of the locations of their most distant ancestors. Of the 39 locations of the most distant known ancestors for people confirmed there as belonging to mtdna C1, 37 of the locations show the Americas, and the other 2 show Spain. And the locations are País Vasco, Spain (for an individual with Confirmed Haplogroup: C1b) and Cantabria, Spain (for an individual with Confirmed Haplogroup: C1c1b). And those locations are right next to each other in the centre of the north coast of Spain, right where the Solutreans allegedly made their journey to America from.
 
I was just looking at Family Tree DNA's mtdna Haplogroup C Project webpage where it shows the map of the locations of their most distant ancestors. Of the 39 locations of the most distant known ancestors for people confirmed there as belonging to mtdna C1, 37 of the locations show the Americas, and the other 2 show Spain. And the locations are País Vasco, Spain (for an individual with Confirmed Haplogroup: C1b) and Cantabria, Spain (for an individual with Confirmed Haplogroup: C1c1b). And those locations are right next to each other in the centre of the north coast of Spain, right where the Solutreans allegedly made their journey to America from.

Interesting results. However, depending on how far back their records go, I think it's possible that the most distant known maternal ancestors of these people could be Native American women who married Spanish men who then returned to Spain with their Native American wives.
 
Yes, that’s got to be considered. On the corresponding haplogroup assignment results page there, they list a C1c1b as “Ungrouped” right at the bottom, but I don’t know if it’s the Spanish C1c1b in question. And I can’t tell if there’s a C1b on the list that’s that much different from the others.


There’s a similar situation with Q-M3 on the ydna Haplogroup Q project webpage. Out of about 50 individuals’ locations on their map, all but one of them are in the Americas, and the one that isn’t is in Gibraltar (which borders Spain and where there are Solutrean sites).
 
Yes, that’s got to be considered. On the corresponding haplogroup assignment results page there, they list a C1c1b as “Ungrouped” right at the bottom, but I don’t know if it’s the Spanish C1c1b in question. And I can’t tell if there’s a C1b on the list that’s that much different from the others.


There’s a similar situation with Q-M3 on the ydna Haplogroup Q project webpage. Out of about 50 individuals’ locations on their map, all but one of them are in the Americas, and the one that isn’t is in Gibraltar (which borders Spain and where there are Solutrean sites).

That's definitely an interesting result, given that Y-DNA was probably much less likely to migrate to Europe from the Americas during the colonial period, although that could have happened, I suppose. And if the one example of Q was in Gibralter, the person's ancestors are quite likely to have been British. But then we have to explain the presence of Q-M3 in Britain.
 
I agree. What also intrigues me is the position of Q1a2a1a2 (L804) on the phylogenetic tree. Here is the current sub-structure of the Q1a2a1 (L54) branch:

· Q1a2a1a (CTS11969)

  • Q1a2a1a1 (M3): the main subclade of Native Americans
  • Q1a2a1a2 (L804): found in Germany, Scandinavia and Britain (possibly Hunnic)
    • Q1a2a1a2a (L807): observed in Britain
· Q1a2a1b (Z780): found among Native Americans, notably in Mexico

· Q1a2a1c (L330): the main subclade of the Mongols, also found among the Kazakhs and Uzbeks, as well as in Ukraine, Turkey and Greece (probably Mongolian and Turkic)


On the ydna Haplogroup Q project webpage where they list the locations for the L804+ people of their most distant known ancestor on their direct male line, the breakdown comes out as follows:

England 8
Scotland 2
Ireland 2(one unique surname)
Sweden 1
Germany 1
Norway 1
United Kingdom 1
Unknown Origin 2
I don’t think all of these were due to Native Americans migrating to Northern Europe, especially since none of them list the Americas, and there is only 1 out of 50 Q-M3’s that don’t list the Americas for their most distant known ancestor. What it looks like to me is that these L804’s were probably integrated into Germanic tribes thousands of years ago – and were probably mixed in with R1b-U106-Z8’s like me.

It also seems to me that Q1a2a1 (L54) likely originated somewhere around Siberia / Central Asia, since it’s the main subclade among the Mongols, and some branches then migrated over to France and Spain. In Stanford and Bradley’s book they mention the Streletskayan archaeological culture (located southeast of Moscow) as their perhaps prime candidate for “a Solutrean progenitor”, although they mention a couple others as well. (Bradley talks about this on a webpage of his as well) But that’s still a ways from Siberia, though.
 
Interesting. Although the migration of Q from Siberia to Iberia seems like a bit of a stretch, I think it makes more sense than Solutrean migration across the Atlantic. And perhaps the differences between Solutrean and Clovis can be explained by the fact that they're both descended from a common source, rather than one being derived from the other.
 
The Solutreans were noted for being very advanced technologically. My understanding is that they probably had the best stone tool technology in the world at the time, as well as with other survival technologies for cold climates. For instance, in “Across Atlantic Ice” they say: “The earliest small, sharply pointed, eyed needles made of bone have been found in Solutrean deposits.” And as earlier cultures evidently made and used boats for long journeys (e.g. the first Australians) the Solutreans were probably quite capable of doing so too, the argument goes.

There are many videos and documentaries on youtube describing how the Solutreans might have made the journey across the edge of the ice sheets of the North Atlantic at the time.

They also say in “Across Atlantic Ice” that most of the earliest evidence of people in North America comes from eastern North America, especially along the east coast, and that the stone tool technology there is very close to that of the Solutreans, and looks as if it was derived from them. That’s their argument anyway.

Also, haplogroup Q in Eurasia seems to peak in Western Siberia, north of India. And they seem to be a very mobile haplogroup judged by their distribution across the continents, as is also the case with haplogroup R.
 
I’m a bit surprised that there isn’t more activity on this thread. I suspect a lot of people are afraid of supporting the Solutrean Hypothesis for fear of being called racist. I think that’s ironic though, since I think it’s quite possible that the Solutreans were the first settlers of NorthWestern Europe after the ice sheets there from the Last Glacial Maximum melted. Just look at the distribution of haplogroup Q in Europe, for instance. Something like 40 percent of the average genetic makeup of Native Americans may be attributable to the Solutreans, whereas the component might make up just a few percent of the genomes of NorthWest Europeans. Maybe it could be argued that the Cherokees, Ojibwes and Micmacs are the Native NorthWest Europeans.
 
...Maybe they looked similar to Patrick Stewart with somewhat darker skin...

Wouldn't we then see a much more pronounced rate of sagittal keel in the Americas?

Kidding... I love Picard. Best Star Trek Captain. Ever.
 
I’m a bit surprised that there isn’t more activity on this thread. I suspect a lot of people are afraid of supporting the Solutrean Hypothesis for fear of being called racist. I think that’s ironic though, since I think it’s quite possible that the Solutreans were the first settlers of NorthWestern Europe after the ice sheets there from the Last Glacial Maximum melted. Just look at the distribution of haplogroup Q in Europe, for instance. Something like 40 percent of the average genetic makeup of Native Americans may be attributable to the Solutreans, whereas the component might make up just a few percent of the genomes of NorthWest Europeans. Maybe it could be argued that the Cherokees, Ojibwes and Micmacs are the Native NorthWest Europeans.

I imagine most people take the view that Q entered the Americas from Siberia, and that any Q currently in Europe is either descended from a Q hunter-gatherer who strayed west from Asia a long time ago or is the result of more recent population movements across northern Eurasia (depending on which subclade is involved). Most people view the Solutreans and Clovis as separate but similar developments. You may not agree but I doubt you'll convince many people unless you can get a Solutrean to come back from the dead and give a talk on 'How We Emigrated to the Americas".
 
As someone who not only entertains the Clovis/Solutreans connection, but supports it... I think Solutean's main "proof" revolves around the maternal X2 we see centered around what is New York State. I haven't heard another good explanation of this haplogroup's curious location, and it's the key facet of this entire controversial conjecture. Of course this is only my opinion-- as we all know everyone has one.
 

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