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Historia de América Latina
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Las sociedades originarias
(The Indigenous societies)

Director
Teresa Rojas Rabiela (Mexico)

Codirector
John V. Murra (United States of America)

Chapter 2: The Original Peopling of Latin America
Alan L. Bryan

Themes

| Introduction
| Asiatic Biological Origins
| Asiatic Technological Origins | The Peopling of Latin America
| Early Adaptations to South American Environments

Asiatic Biological Origins

Physical anthropologists and geneticists agree that Amerindians are
closely related to Northeast Asians, and people on opposite sides of
the Bering Straits are most closely related. In fact, Eskimos now live
on both sides of the Straits; and some evidence suggests that Alaskan
proto-Eskimos came from Siberia about 6,000 B. P., and later expanded
north-westward along the Arctic Coast to populate the last major
uninhabited region of the Americas. In order to accomplish this feat
the Eskimos used a highly specialized technology for hunting sea
mammals, caribou, and musk oxen. They also had developed specialized
clothing which trapped body heat, and well-insulated dwellings. In
fact, the Eskimos, along with the equestrian Plains Indian buffalo
hunters, were the last specialized big game hunters; and they often
serve as models of what the earlier Upper Palaeolithic lifestyle must
have been like.

The Athabaskan (Dené) Indians, who inhabit a vast forested area of the
interior of Alaska, Yukon, western Northwest Territories, and the
northern portion of the Canadian provinces west of Hudson's Bay are
not relatable linguistically to their counterparts who inhabit the
interior of eastern Siberia; but their hunting technology, dwellings,
and tailored skin clothing are very similar, and they are quite
closely related genetically.

The close genetic, linguistic, and cultural similarities across
Beringia has been explained by a model that the Eskimos were the last
immigrants, while the Dené represent the penultimate immigration. All
the other Amerindians, who live farther south, are genetically and
linguistically more distantly related to Northeast Asians, so they are
considered to be descendants of earlier immigrants who presumably had
traversed the ice free corridor at the end of the Last Glacial
(e.g.,Greenberg, Turner and Zegura l986).

The American physical anthropologist Christy Turner has made detailed
studies of Amerindian and Eurasian teeth. He concluded that Amerindian
teeth are most similar to Northeast Asian and north Chinese teeth; and
are not related to the teeth of Upper Palaeolithic populations in
European Russia, the Altai, or the Lake Baikal area of south central
Siberia. He believes that the North Chinese population expanded into
Mongolia about 20,000 years ago and crossed Beringia about 14,000 B.
P. Geneticists studying the mitochondrial DNA of various American
populations also find close relationships between Amerindians and
Northeast Asians, but conclude that the time frame is much expanded
(e.g. Paĺbo M;s;; Torroni, et al. l99l). On the basis of extreme
genetic diversity amongst Amerindians, as well as high proportions of
rare east Asian factors, their conservative clock indicates that
Amerindians south of the glaciers are relatable to Northeast Asians
perhaps 25,000 to 45,000 years ago.

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Last update 13/10/00

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