origins

Ever since the Europeans accidentally came into contact with the New World, people have wondered where the creation of this new place and the origins of the people who live here. Some people theorized that indigenous people of the Americas were one of the ten tribes of Israel; others felt that maybe they were refugees from the lost continent of Atlantis; that these Native people were the descendants of the infamous seafaring Vikings; or as in the case of those that believe in monotheism, that Noah had visited the New World. By the seventeenth century it became difficult to ignore the similarities between people, plants, and animals of Asia in the Old World and those of the New World. As science and technology has advanced through time, compelling evidence has been gathered from geology, archaeology, linguistics, and physical/biological anthropology for suggesting that the ancestors of all indigenous peoples of the New World originated in Asia.


During the Pleistocene or last “ice-age” epoch there were periods of time during where most of earth’s surface sported glaciers, which tied up enough water to allow the sea level to drop at least three-hundred feet, thus exposing a land connection or a “land bridge” between the far east of the Soviet Union and Alaska. Beringia, the land bridge, as it is commonly referred to, was the route by which plants and animals (both human and non-human) moved into and populated the New World, including South, Central, Meso and North America. Between 30,000 and 14,000 years ago Beringia was it its maximum size; and hunters and gatherers unintentionally moved slowly through the generations from Asia into what is now the New World pursuing the game upon which they depended for food, clothing, housing, fuel, and building materials.

Archeological evidence is crux to understanding theories and questions related to the peopling of the New World. Archaeologists have many means by which they can date cultural and associated faunal and floral remains; some are relative dates and other provides absolute data in terms of years before the present. Unfortunately, no known archaeological remains in either Alaska or Canada date older than 12,500 years ago. Additionally problematic is the fact that archaeological cultures cannot be linked directly with known ethnic groups, especially in the absence of human fossil remains. Most Alaskan archeologists, however, would argue that based on comparative tool type analysis there were three or more distinct waves of human migration to the New World.

Historic linguistic evidence also suggests that there were three major migrations of people into the New World from Asia, placing the first one around approximately 15,000 years ago. The science of historical linguistics utilizes its own methods for shaping relative and definite language divergences based on what is referred to as core vocabulary. There is currently no linguistic evidence that supports an absolute relationship between any language spoken by the indigenous peoples of the New World and any existing language of Asia or the Russian far east. New World language diversity does not sustain a theory that they all derived from a common linguistic stock 15,000 years ago. Two or three separate old world linguistic ancestors offer a more likely scenario explaining New World linguistic variations.

Biological anthropologists study clines, which establish the progression of genetic and other biological traits over geographical areas of the world. An additional aspect of human blood systems, Rh negative, also indicates the biological similarity of Native Americans and Asians as distinct from other populations. There are practically no Asians or Native Americans (Indians or Eskimo-Aleuts) which either manifest the Rh negative factors in their blood, or carry the gene for this characteristic. There is also a common dental characteristic of shovel-shaped incisors (incisors with a concave cross section) between all indigenous Native Americans and Asians. Additionally, the sinodont pattern in Eskimo-Aleut, characterized by extremely high frequencies of rooter first lower molars is found principally in south-east Asia. These biological factors, considered in association with nonqualified aspects of general appearance such as hair, form, hair and eye color, epicanthic fold, skin pigmentation, stature and various other biological characteristics indicate the Asian origins of all Native Americans.

Admittedly, there is no single explanation derived from anthropology and linguistics for the peopling of the New World based on geological, anthropological, linguistic, and biological data that is supported by ALL scientists, but the great majority of evidence, research, and data designate an Asian derivation for all indigenous people of the New World.