Aberdeen
Regular Member
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- Ethnic group
- Scottish, English and German
- Y-DNA haplogroup
- I1
- mtDNA haplogroup
- H4
The things I wanted to confirm are:
1) Were there really Caucasoid or Europoid people living in North America before the Clovis culture, notably between 15,000 and 30,000 years ago ? Were these people replaced by another migration bringing Y-haplogroup Q and mtDNA haplogroup A, B, C and D ?
2) How did X2a get to North America and where did it come from ? Was it European, Middle Eastern, Central Asian ?
3) What paternal lineage was linked to X2a ? (really crucial question for understanding the origins of haplogroup X2) Was it R1* as has been suggested ?
Call it Solutrean hypothesis or whatever you like, I still strongly believe that Caucasoid people came to North America during the Solutrean (22-17 kya) or Gravettian (32-22 kya) periods. I only use those terms to define periods in time. I do not mean that these people came from Western Europe. Actually, my hunch is that the first inhabitants of North America were related to the Mal'ta boy and belonged to Y-haplogroup R* or R1* and mt-haplogroups U (including perhaps U2 and U4), X2 and perhaps even C (presumably C4 or C5). In terms of admixture, these people would have carried ANE and Kalash-like autosomal DNA.
I don't care much about similarities in stone tools. It could have happened by pure coincidence or have been learned from other people, maybe even by the remnants of Caucasoid Palaeolithic North Americans.
Perhaps I'm mistaken, but I thought the the term "Solutrean hypothesis" referred to the idea that the Solutrean toolkit and the Clovis toolkit seem similar, so some people think that the Clovis people are descended from European Solutreans, despite the time gap. I was suggesting that if there is any connection, it would have to have been via Siberia and not directly from Europe to the Americas. Some American archeologists are claiming that they're finding ancient European-like remains in the eastern U.S. during the same time as the Solutreans were in Europe but there are disputes about the dating of the remains and I'm personally sceptical. I think Mal'ta Boy shows that the connection between Europeans and Native Americans is via a common origin point in Asia.
Some archeologists have suggested that there were three waves of settlement of the Americas, one about 15-18 thousand years ago, one about 8 thousand years ago and the proto-Eskimos about 4 thousand years ago. Some archeologists and linguists concluded that the second wave of settlement was associated with the Dene people, who are the ones who have the most mtDNA C3, but some people have speculated that the second wave of immigration could have included Algonquin speaking people, who have most of the mtDNA X2. Both of those lineages could have been in Siberia for a long time before they came to the Americas before disappearing from Siberia, so their age of separation from other lineages don't tell us when they arrived in the Americas, IMO. And the Dene and Algonquins are also the Native Americans who seem to have a lot of R1, which made me wonder whether R1 could have come to the Americas at the same time as mtDNA C3 and X2. However, although none of the researchers seem to have tested the Y DNA any deeper than R1, sparky has been quick to point out more than once that those Native Americans who have been personally tested all seem to have European subclades, which he thinks destroys that idea. I think the issue requires further research, but, regardless of the R1 issue, it does seem as if mtDNA C3 and X2 would have come with the second wave of the populating of the Americas, if that theory holds up. I notice that some geneticists, including the folks who researched the Clovis genes, are now stating that there were two waves of settlement but they took place fairly close together, even though only one of them was involved in populating South America. I'm not sure that agrees with the conclusions of the archeologists, and the idea needs further research, I think. I suppose people could have come to the Americas much earlier than is now thought, but a longer stay in Siberia is also an explanation, I think.