Origins of Humanity: Africa?

Bookish Agrarian wrote:

Wow were did you read that.  I would be fascinated to read that myself.  Personally I subscribe to the theory that North and South America were settled much longer ago than the last Ice Age.  I think the evidence is starting to pile up pretty high to support that.

 Yeah there does seem to be. I don't pay attention to the area as much as I should anymore because I do find it interesting but I recall coming across things here and there that basically consist of 'Oh hey look we found something! Oh wait...the dates. Mmmm geez that really shouldn't  be that old. Crap....thinking,  rethinking....'  Meanwhile there's some FN's person sitting somewhere, "Duh. Do you still think we've been talking out of our asses all this time?"    

 I just tried to find and article that I read sometime last year which was about how scientists are looking more to those stories to get clues especially after there was a case on the West Coast where the story the community told about their origins didn't match up with what the prevailing theory of migration and such. So with  advent of DNA they did some tests and wow, low and behold it looks more then likely that this story is correct.  I'll keep looking for it because it talked about the ramification for some of the prevailing theories that are generally being worked with.

I'd recommend the book '1491' for a fascinating survey of recent archaelogy of the Americas.

Speaking to the conjecture around a 'Moorish' presence in America, the very term is confusing to me since Moor in my understanding connotes the Islamicized North African cultures that expanded into southern Europe before the middle ages.

Unless there is semantic confusion this would put a limit to how far back we can go to look for Moorish colonization of any part of the Americas.I am also curious at the dearth of historical and material evidence to support the notion. Unless evidence has been deliberately suppressed any direct genetic links between various African populations and American - predating modern slavery - would long ago have made waves in the scientific community, you couldn't keep the lid on something like that.

Furthermore genetic evidence indicates that Africans' closest biological kin are Europeans.

Also, something to do with haploids I recall: at any rate North American Indians carry 11 different types where Europeans have 47 or so. This suggests population bottlenecks in the early American inhabitants, wherever they came from - and also explains in part their increased vulnerability to European diseases apparently. This all seems credible enough to me and could be cross-referenced to explore the African link.

Bookish Agrarian wrote:

Wow were did you read that.  I would be fascinated to read that myself.  Personally I subscribe to the theory that North and South America were settled much longer ago than the last Ice Age.  I think the evidence is starting to pile up pretty high to support that.

I forget which Gear book it was contained in and the resources they listed, that I explored, it was a few years back now.

But the gist is, they now know there was a large shallow central sea  that lead to the formation of the upper Great lakes at the end of the last ice age, when doing digs in this area, archeologists found large amounts of ancient human bones, perhaps predating the paleo Indians, scattered in amongst the glacial till, that appears to have been all thrown together in a massive out pouring  of water. The theory being that when the glaciers collapsed en masse, there was a huge explusion of water, till and the peoples did not have time to flee the on slot brought about by the collapse.  This  findings of bones mixed with glacial till, means that the First Peoples  were present for sure at the time of the central sea and the collapse of the glaciers, and indeed either lived in the shadow of them, or under them.

Under them is extremely plausible, as they were miles thick in places and would be honey combed with caverns and tunnels just as glaciers are today. Having fire in them would not be any different than in an Igloo, and less so because they could have bigger fires. And they would escape the climatic external conditions around the glaciers, that would suffer under if they lived in the shadow.

Currently accepted in NA history, excluding Mexico,  and cCentral America are;  First Peoples dates going back 13,000 years with the Paleo Indian, then Early Archaic, at about 7300 -6000 BCE,  Archaic, around 6000-3000 BCE,  Basketmakers around 3000-1500 BCE, Woodland about 1500-100 CE, Mississipian, and Pueblo around 800-1000 CE.

However, with the findings in the Great Lakes area, and the chert blade recently found in the Jamestown area, from the time when NA and Europe were covered in Ice, suggest  that their were pockets of Peoples living here throughout the ice age.

Then of course there is what Eliza has recounted by way of oral traditions, being found to be true.