Bits that don’t fit # 2 On Your Knees Cave
On July 4th 1996, geologist Tim Heaton was excavating in an abandoned bear cave at the northern tip of Prince of Wales Island in the Alaska panhandle. The site known as “On Your Knees Cave” had been discovered in 1993 by a logging survey team. Just a kilometer from Sumner Strait and 125 meters above sea level the cave’s small entrance concealed two tunnels, one of which held a small spring. It was the final day of the excavation and Dr. Heaton was filling his last bag of sediment when he came across the lower jaw and pelvis of an ancient human.
The bones were that of a man about twenty years old who had died in that beautiful, isolated spot some 10,000 years before. The discovery of the oldest skeleton in Alaska/Canada generated much discussion within the archeology “club” and the media. The assumption was that the existence of this ancient mariner provided positive proof in support of the Pacific coast theory of the peopling of America. One of the stone tools found with the body was geologically unlike anything else from Prince of Wales Island, suggesting that this young man had not been a local.
A mystery emerged. “Where did he come from?”
In 2008, DNA evidence extracted from the remains revealed that he was genetically unique and in all probability had died a very long way from home. Less than two percent of First Nation peoples hold the unique DNA signature of these bones. Known as Haplogroup D4h3a, this group:
… is mostly found in South America with the exception of eight samples from Mexico and two found in California.[1]
Our ancient mariner may have traveled from as far a way as Tierra del Fuego. It is here that we find the Yaghan people – one of the few groups who have this unique genetic make-up.[2]
Terra del Fuego is the closest large landmass to Antarctica. A large island[3] about the size of Massachusetts and New Jersey combined – it lies south of the South American landmass.
The Yaghan people have a rich and varied culture that may stretch back to 11,600 years ago, the very century of the destruction of Atlantis. They commonly cremate the bodies of their dead so no ancient remains from Tierra de Fuego have yet been found. But physical evidence for human occupation of this land, so close to Lesser Antarctica, date to 11,880 (plus or minus 250 years) at a site called “Tres Arryoyos.” [4]
Today there is only one person, Cristina Calderón still fluent in the Yaghan language which is remarkably rich in vocabulary and has been classified as an “isolate” – meaning that it appears to be unrelated to any other known language in the world. It contains more than 32,000 concepts and its unique grammar allows for the creation of several hundred thousand words.[5] When one considers that only 850 words are necessary to speak basic English,[6] the volume of Yaghan words is nothing short of amazing.
The Yaghan’ s rich mythology records:
three world cataclysms: a glaciation, a world conflagration and a flood. [7]
This association of a flood with glaciation is rare. In our research of world mythology we have only discovered one other instance: the ancient Vedic story of Airyana Vaêjo[8] which was said to be covered with a thick blanket of ice at the time of the flood when a “dire winter” destroyed the island paradise.
On of the modern features of ancient Atlantis was the role that women played in the community. Plato relates that they enjoyed equal rights:
In Critias he had spoken of the former primacy of the goddess and of the equality of men and women in ancient times. In the Republic he envisions a similar criterion for leadership and where women will have all the advantages of education and all the opportunities for advancement available to men. ‘Public offices are to be held by women as well as men,’ as was the way of the ancients.[9]
The Yaghan society is the closest place on earth to the former site of Atlantis. Women held powerful roles as shamans and dictated the final say over important matters because they were thought to rule the sea.[10] Only females learned to swim. Males were forbidden to marry within the tribe and were expected to embark on sea quests to find wives. The young mariner found at “Upon Your Knees Cave” may have been on one of these long canoe searches for a wife when he died on Prince of Wales Island.
In 1931, anthropologist E. M. Loeb presented his theory that the Yaghan of Tierra del Fuego shared cultural affinity with certain native people of California.[11] After years of study, Loeb concluded that there were rituals, ceremonies and rites of passage that the Yaghan shared with some of the tribes of California. In California many of the First Nations practiced the “Kukusu Cult.” A ritual of dance and masks and appeals to the spirit world.
Professor Loeb could not know, in 1931, that his theory of a connection between the Yaghan and the natives of California would be confirmed using genetic evidence. One of the tribes that practiced the Kukusu Cult in California was the Chumash. In 2008 it was reported that the Chumash possess the same distinct Haplogroup D4h3a as the Yaghan. [12]
Bears were important animals in the Kukusu Cult. Bear caves were considered ideal sites in which to follow spirit quests. Given what we know of the Yaghan’s mastery of the sea, their long quests for mates and their adventurous nature, it’s not impossible that the young man with the D4h3a genetic marker found on Prince of Wales Island may have traveled from Tierra del Feugo. If so, then this discovery, along with a host of other excavations, has the potential to break open the prevailing paradigm of the peopling of America.
This entrenched paradigm dictates that North America was colonized before South America.
On the contrary, human migration may well have moved in the opposite direction. Increasingly, evidence from South America points to this radical conclusion.
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[1] Pereog, Ugo, A. et al. “Distinctive Paleo-Indian Migration Routes from Beringia Marked by Two Rare mtDNA Haplogroups” in Current Biology 19, 1-8, 2009, page 2.
[2] Bryson, George “DNA tracks ancient Alaskan’s descendants,” Anchorage Daily News, December 28, 2008.
[3] 48,100 square kilometers or 18,572 square miles
[4] Miotti, L. and M.C.Salemme “When Patagonia was colonized: people mobility at high latitudes during Pleistoncene/Holocene transition” Quaternary International 109-10, 2003, 95-111, pages 97-98.
[5] Bridges, Rev. Thomas “A few notes on the structure of Yaghan”, Journal of the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, XXIII, No. 1, 53-81.
[6] http://esl.about.com/library/vocabulary/bl850_basics.htm accessed 6 March 2009
[7] Loeb, E.M. “The Religious Organizations of North Central California and Tierra Del Fuego” American Anthropologist, 33, No. 4, (1931) 530.
[8] Please see Chapter Six: Aztlan and the Polar Paradise.
[9] Plato as cited by Davis, Elizabeth Gould The First Sex, Penguin Books, Baltimore, Maryland, 1973 (copyright 1971) page 28.
[10] http://www.meyna.com/yahgan.html accessed 6 March 2009
[11] Loeb op. cit. 517-556.
[12] Bryson, op. cit.
