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Mexican Zapotec Native American Indian history - page 2 of 7

James Chatters, one of the first anthropologists to study Kennewick man before it had been properly dated, originally thought the man may have been a European trapper who had met a sudden death sometime in the early 19th century. Kennewick man became the most controversial figure in American anthropology when native tribes living in the region claimed that, as an ancestor, his remains should be returned to them under a 1990 law that gave special protection to the graves and remains of indigenous Americans. The debate intensified after some anthropologists suggested that Kennewick man was Caucasian in origin and could not therefore be a direct ancestor of the native Americans living in the Kennewick area today. Dr Gonzalez said that the identification of Peñon woman as the oldest known inhabitant of the American continent throws fresh light on the controversy over who actually owns the ancient remains of long-dead Americans.

Dr Gonzales' research could have implications for the ancient burial rights of North American Indians because it's quite possible that dolichocephalic man existed in North America well before the native Indians. Even more controversial is the suggestion that Peñon woman could be a descendant of Stone Age Europeans who had crossed the ice-fringed Atlantic some 15,000 or 20,000 years ago.

This theory first surfaced when archaeologists found flint blades and spear points in America that bore a remarkable similarity to those fashioned by the Solutrean people of south-western France who lived about 20,000 years ago, when the ice age was at its most extreme. The Solutreans were the technologists of their day, inventing such things as the eyed needle and the heat treatment of flint to make it easier to flake into tools. They also built boats and fished.

Bruce Bradley, an American archaeologist and an expert in flint technology, believes that the Solutrean method of fashioning flints into two-sided blades matches perfectly the Stone Age flint blades found at some sites in America. One of these is the 11,500-year-old flint spear point found in 1933 at Clovis, New Mexico. Dr Bradley said that the flint blades that came into America with the early Asian migrants were totally different in concept and mode of manufacture. Both the Clovis point and the Solutrean flints shared features that could only mean a shared origin, according to Dr. Bradley. Studies of the DNA of Native Americans clearly indicated a link with modern-day Asians, supporting the idea of a mass migration across the Bering land bridge. One DNA study, however, also pointed to at least some shared features with Europeans, that could only have derived from a relatively recent common ancestor who lived perhaps 15,000 years ago, the time of the Solutreans.

Not every specialist is convinced of the apparently mounting evidence of an early European migration. Professor Chris Stringer, the head of human origins at the Natural History Museum in London, believes there are lots of examples in archaeology where various artifacts from different parts of the world can end up looking similar, even though they have different origins; and most humans in the world at that time were long headed. Nevertheless, the remarkable age of the young Paleolithic woman who died by an ancient lake in Mexico some 13,000 years ago has once again stirred the controversy over the most extraordinary migration in human history.

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Mexican Zapotec Native American Indian history - Pericu - page 3

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