Rare Skeleton Has Scientists Nervous

ByABC News
November 27, 2000, 11:42 AM

V A N L U E, Ohio, Nov. 27 -- The discovery of prehistoric tools from anOhio cave is one of several finds that has scientists questioningthe identity of settlers thought to have moved in 11,000 years ago.

A just completed excavation of Sheriden Cave in Wyandot County,100 miles southwest of Cleveland, revealed tools made from flakedstone and bone. The items are scheduled to go on display next yearat the Cleveland Museum of Natural History.

Kent State University archaeologist Kenneth Tankersley, who ledthe excavation over the past four years, said definite answerswont come until someone finds an Ice Age skeleton and the DNA istested.

Rare Genetic Link to Europe

Disagreement swirls around the timing of their arrival, thenature of their migration, how fast they moved across the landscapeand their relationship to contemporary Native Americans, he said.

Some scientists think that the earliest colonizers could havestarted out somewhere in Europe, not in Asia as previously thought.That idea is rooted in a rare genetic link called haplogroup X -DNA passed down through women that dates back more than 30,000years.

Recent genetic samples from remains in Illinois show that therare European DNA was around centuries before European exploration.Today, haplogroup X is found in about 20,000 American Indians.

To some researchers, its presence suggests the Mongolianancestors of most American Indians were latecomers. Genetic testsshow the DNA is completely absent from East Asian and Siberianpopulations.

That could dispel the more than half-century old notion thathumans migrated across a land bridge from Siberia at the end of theIce Age, made stone tools and hunted while moving south.

Archaeologists since 1996 have found genetic indications ofseveral migrations, along with evidence that people came fromPolynesia, regions near Japan and even western Europe.

Skeleton Has Scientists Jumpy

Frankly, it makes me nervous, Smithsonian Institutionanthropologist Stephen Loring said of the idea that the firstAmericans during the Ice Age were of European ancestry. Its aheretical argument, and some people, unfortunately, will use it toassert the cultural superiority of Europeans. But its a goodtheory that needs to be tested.