Peopling the Americas
From Keith, USA
Current thought is that the Americas were inhabited about 15 to 20 thousand years ago from Asia accross the land bridge. I have always thought that that was not enough time for the Americas to be populated, and especially not enough time for all the advanced civilizations in South America to develop and disappear. Also, why did the Inca and Mayans become so advanced? Why didn’t the peoples in North America advance? The reason why I think is because they have been there a lot longer than the people who came over the land bridge in North America.
When I began this research in 1976 it was complete heresy to suggest that people had been in America before 10,000 B.C. There are now several sites in both North and South America that have been dated to well before this time. The sites in South America are just as old as the oldest in North America. Beringia was not the only source of people arriving in America. I believe that a good number of the people of the Americas came from Atlantis. The mythology of Cherokee, Haida, Okanagan, Aztec people all point to an island in the ocean, and the Aymara of Lake Titicaca tell of men who came from the south after the flood to create agriculture.
March 14th, 1998 at 9:51 pm
From Tom Semple, Mt. Shasta, CA, USA
It would be interesting to see what kind of work is being done in reconstructing human migration patterns from DNA evidence. Would it support or refute Antarctica-was-Atlantis heory? Similarly for linguistic analysis (you touched on this some with Aymara, etc. but I’d be curious to see more).
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Yes, I do believe that DNA evidence will eventually support the Atlantis hypothesis but to answer your question would involve a book in itself. One book alone (Tracing the Genetic History of Modern Man by Cavalli-Sforza, L.L.,Menozzi, P., & Piazza, A.) published in 1994 takes the question only up to 1986 and includes references to more than 2,900 articles. When one considers the fact that as much research has been done since 1986 then you can begin appreciate the sheer volume of reading required to answer your question properly.
Much of the research is based upon blood samples taken from living subjects around the world. This provides valuable information but I would like to see further studies that isolate DNA from the physical remains of people from more remote times. Comparisons are still primarily between Asian and native Americans and this is of course logical if you accept the Beringia landbridge as the only means of people arriving in the New World. The mythology of the Haida and Okanagan people points to arrival by the ocean after a great flood. We highlighted the connection between the Haida (Na-Dene language branch) and the Sumerians in When the Sky Fell. (See mythology). So what is really needed is a world wide study of ancient DNA samples that lets the chips fall where they may rather than a focused comparison between Asia and America. The log jam in the archaeological acceptance of the very ancient age of the people of North America and especially of the people of South America might very well be broken up by DNA studies. Just as the geological work of Robert Schoch shook up assumptions about the age of the Sphinx so also may the work of some future DNA researcher liberate archaeologyfrom its presuppositions about the peopling of America. Schoch wasnt hampered by the presuppositions of the Egyptologists and was therefore able to make a breakthrough (inspired of course by John Anthony West’s reading of Schwaller de Lubicz). Likewise, those presently studying DNA may very well come up with conclusions that are not preconditioned by the false presuppositions of archaeology.
The case of linguists is similar to DNA in that it is still a young science. The work of Stanford professor Joseph H. Greenberg is perhaps the best place to start.
I would also note that the vast number of languages in South America seems to indicate the people of this continent may have been in the New World as long, if not longer, than the people of North America. High density of different languages would seem to point to a vast amount of time passing to allow for so much branching of this language tree.
Some native Americans may have come from the south rather than the north. I can imagine a scenario whereby people are dislocated from southern Africa (perhaps after an earlier displacement) and arrive in Lesser Antarctica when it was temperate. (see The Atlantis Blueprint) After generations of isolation they might have developed quite separately before moving to South America.
If people could make their way to Hawaii without the help of Europeans I dont see why people couldnt have migrated from southern Africa along former ocean currents to Antarctica and then to South America, all without the help of Europeans. This is a possibility that is not even considered in academic circles but those circles might very well be broken by the very kind of studies (DNA, the study of language, and geological modelling) that you are suggesting.
As the problem of the peopling of America is tied directly to the movement of ice sheets please see the article on ice sheet formation.