ISRAEL – The Haaretz News out of Israel recently published a report that would indicate humans have been in what is today known as the Americas, as far back as 100,000 to 150,000 years.
The article is entitled “Native Americans Have Actually Been There Since the Beginning, Say Archaeologists” written by Elizabeth Sloane. In it, she builds a case from archaeology and oral history.
“Oral histories are usually considered fabulous. Now ancient skeletons and a genetic study proves that the Tlingit and Haida tribes’ oral history of being there from the beginning is based on fact,” writes Sloane.
Ancient bones found in the 1990s at an Alaskan dig site known as “On Your Knees Cave” and tested by todays latest electronic equipment has shown to be more than 10,000 years old, but the real discovery came when genetic remnants from the sample bones were tested against a data base of DNA information gathered from hundreds of indigenous people around the world showed the three skeletons DNA was very close to that of the Tlingit and Haida of today, offering evidence that a population of early humans in North America remained in the area and eventually became the Tlingit and Haida.
According to the Israeli report, “The initial study was based on mitochondrial DNA from the skeleton, who had been dubbed Shuká Káa – “Man Ahead of Us”. The geneticists did not get a positive genetic match between Shuká Káa and the tribe. However, analyzing isotopes from his teeth, they discovered that Shuká Káa ate a marine diet and was, therefore, probably a seafarer.
“That, however, was not the end. New and improved methods of genetic sequencing allowed geneticists to revisit the issue. The last of Shuká Káa’s tissue was removed from his molars and compared to DNA from three other ancient, though more recent, skeletons using nuclear DNA sequencing. Shuká Káa was also found to be related to tribes from Central and South America.”
Shuká Káa DNA has also been found in three younger skeletons from British Columbia, dating back to a much later time.
Farther south from the Alaskan find a mastodon tusk that was believed to have been worked by human hands was tested with modern technology and found to be between 100,000 and 130,000 years old, 115,000 years before previously accepted.
According to Haaretz, it is also tens of thousands of years before the migration of Homo sapiens out of Africa that is believed to have populated today’s world.
