Scientific Racism and Migrations to the New World
by Giulianna LamannaOver the weekend, Jason and I watched a docudrama called Ice Age Columbus: Who Were the First Americans? on the Discovery Channel. The storyline was sheer baseless speculation, much of it what you’d expect (Nature is brutal and it’s a constant struggle to survive! Let’s cross hundreds of miles of ocean for no particular reason! Hey, we’re gonna steal your boat and threaten to kill you despite the fact that it makes more sense to get along with you and also we’re surrounded by trees that we could easily fell to make a new boat!) but it looked pretty. It can be another inspiration for the look of The Fifth World.
We missed the first five minutes or so. The first question I asked was, “Wait, why do they look European? And why are they in a boat?” When they got to the New World, it was explained: these characters were from somewhere in Spain—not the Beringia-crossing Asians we were expecting. As the show went on, I figured it was one of those “Hey look, Europeans got to the New World before Columbus!” things, just a little earlier than the usual Viking story. But at the end of the show, after Jason had gone to bed, the narrator said that 6,000 (or something) years later, people from Asia would cross the Bering Strait. The show was not about Europeans coming to the New World before Columbus; the show was about Europeans coming to the New World before anyone.
A BBC article about the program explains the reasoning behind this theory. Similarities between spear heads found in North America, and the Solutrean points found in southwest France, along with mitochondrial DNA evidence, suggest the possibility of a westward migration from Europe before the more commonly known eastward migration from Asia.
If this theory turns out to be correct, it will have major implications not just for archaeology, but for Native Americans. Many Native Americans already hate the Bering Strait theory:
Why do American Indians get so mad when you say their ancestors migrated across the Bering land bridge from Asia?
Well, there are several reasons. First of all, that contradicts the religious tradition of many native peoples, which claim we have always been here. Surely you know some white people who claim that the earth can’t be thousands of years old because it conflicts with the Bible. It is the same principle—except that the Christian fundamentalists get a lot of attention and even nice mentions in textbooks, whereas the Indians are ignored. That gives them an extra reason to be mad.
However, though there is a wide spectrum of native religions in the Americas, most of them tend to be less hierarchical and more flexible than Christianity. If you asked most Indians in some respectful manner, I think you’d find most of them wouldn’t have a problem reconciling a philosophical belief that we have lived here since time immemorial with natural evidence that we arrived here at least 20,000 years ago. Why shouldn’t they both be true? The Creator is great, we don’t always understand the whole world.
But now the problem is, most of us have not been asked this in a respectful manner. Instead, a lot of people have used this Bering Strait bridge theory to belittle Native Americans as “not really native” (a claim that is stupid as well as insulting, since the same scientific facts they use to show the immigration theory also clearly show we have been here at least 20,000 years—longer than men have inhabited England.) Furthermore, missionaries in the past commonly ignored our religious traditions as inferior to scientific findings—while at the same time touting their own religious traditions as superior to science. Is it any wonder that this sort of hypocrisy makes Indians angry?
For an excellent example of this, see William A. Donahue’s recent interview on The Colbert Report, in which he dropped this priceless gem of wisdom:
I’m a Native American, I was born in New York City and those people came from Asia, so they’re not really Native Americans anyhow.
Got that? He was born in the United States, so he’s a Native American. But people who were also born in the United States aren’t Native Americans because their ancestors only came here about 20,000 years before his did. This is also the man who cancelled Nothing Sacred. I’ll wait here while you get your pitchforks ready.
Anyway, getting back to the Bering Strait, not all Native Americans disagree with the theory on religious or political grounds. The Native-Languages.org writer I quoted above believes that “the Bering Strait theory is probably true.” I’m not going to address the religious reasons for not believing the Bering Strait theory—I know better than to tangle with Creationists. But I think the political implications are worth addressing. In the same way that people read Darwin’s theory of natural selection and somehow came up with social Darwinism, the Bering Strait theory has been used to justify colonialism—because, after all, the Native Americans were colonists just like the Europeans, so they don’t have a right to, you know, live. Is it right to discount a possibly valid theory because it might have some nasty implications? The BBC article concludes:
The impact of this new prehistory on Native Americans could be grave.
Very true! I’m glad someone’s realized that and is about to thoughtfully and sensitively explore the possibly racist implications of this new theory, while still keeping intellectual honesty in mind and raising the question of how best to avoid interpretations that justify further oppression against Native Americans. Right?
They usually consider themselves to be Asian in origin; and to have been subjugated by Europeans after 1492. If they too were partly Europeans, the dividing lines would be instantly blurred.
Okay, that’s a lie. Like I said above, many Native Americans hate the Bering Strait theory. And their distaste of this new theory has nothing to do with “blurring dividing lines.” It would be yet another justification for European oppression. Whoever wrote this article makes it sound like those damn racist Native Americans (they’re just the same old sneaky Orientals, but in buckskins) need to learn how to let go of the hate and live in peace with us gentle white folks.
I don’t think Dennis Stanford, Bruce Bradley, or Douglas Wallace are necessarily racist, or motivated by racism. But it’s particularly telling that when searching for information on the Solutrean theory, one of the first results was from National Vanguard, a neo-Nazi—oh, I’m sorry, white nationalist (gotta give props to their PR guy)—organization. Whether or not the scientists behind the theory are racist, their earliest supporters among laymen certainly seem to be. It reinforces racist attitudes already existing, and could be interpreted as justifying European colonialism in North America.
But is perceived justification enough to do further damage? The Bering Strait theory emerged only after the worst of the North American genocide was over. The Europeans did what they did to the Native Americans while thinking that the natives had always been there. (With the exception of Mormons, the Scientologists of the 1800s.) The justification then was that Europeans deserved the Americas because they were just plumb better than everyone else. Basically, Europe needed the resources, and any reason they could come up with was good enough. If they’d known about Beringia, that excuse would have been fine. If they’d all believed, along with the Mormons, that the Native Americans were a lost tribe of Israel, they’d probably have justified it with some good old-fashioned anti-Semitism. It really didn’t matter what the excuse was: they needed the land, they took the land, and Native Americans just got in their way.
Just look at the current immigration debates: the land most of these immigrants are moving onto belonged to Mexico a mere 150 years ago, and was stolen in a war so widely recognized as unjust that Henry David Thoreau went to jail rather than pay taxes to support it, listing it alongside slavery as his primary criticisms of the United States. When Europeans illegally immigrate to America and slaughter the residents, it’s okay. When Mexicans move back onto land their country owned less than 200 years ago, it’s not okay. (More on that later this week.) It doesn’t matter what the reason is—might makes right and if we want it, we deserve to have it.
It remains to be seen whether the Solutrean theory stands up to scrutiny, and whether it has any effect on American society. I don’t have much faith in the transformative powers of science; after all, there’s no evidence for race, but racism still exists. We cherry-pick what science we believe, and what science we ignore, according to what suits our purposes. People will do what they need to do to keep their society going, and come up with reasons for it afterward. In the case of our society, that means gobbling up land and resources and plowing down anyone who stands in our way.
great thinking piece.
The problem with trying to figure who the “real” native americans is that we are looking for linear, a-to-b sources of human genetics.
I’m willing to bet, that tribes were bumping into each other all the time, constantly venturing out, some suceeding, and some drowning.
I find it interesting that Central American mythology often talked about a “white brother”(who doesn’t have to be caucasian), who will come over the ocean. Th white brother could easily be asians, who are now known to have made voyages and reached the americas.
I believe this false predication of linera human genetics comes from the lingering concept of there being an end end to the world, or four corners of the world.
Comment by TonyZ — 9 October 2006 @ 3:28 PM
I’ve also seen other suggestions that there was a seperate group here even before the Clovis.
Wiki on Clovis model issues
SA skull study suggests Australians, Melanesians, and Sub-Saharan Africans
Comment by ChrisN — 9 October 2006 @ 4:22 PM
appropriate post for “columbus” day, thanks.
also, i used to really like the “History” and “Discovery” and all the other doco type cable channels way back when…but anymore, they tend to serve up even more damaging socio/political propaganda than FoxNews.
Comment by patricia — 9 October 2006 @ 5:44 PM
For what it is worth, my home town has been host to a small conference called “Paths Across the Pacific” which has featured talks related to discussion of a maritime migration into North America by the first settlers and then later trans-Pacific voyaging (in both directions).
It’s my understanding that these ideas are dismissed among most academic anthropologists for the most part, but I am not sure why. My background is not anthropology, but it seems perfectly reasonable to imagine people migrating along a coast rather than through the interior. In many respects, it seems more sensible to utilize the abundant coastal resources of the North Pacific. Some of the stories of the local Natives (Tlingits) tell of moving down the coast when there was much ice and coming back north to Southeast Alaska some time later.
Comment by Matt — 9 October 2006 @ 8:01 PM
Chris, that’s what this theory is all about. The evidence for some kind of pre-Clovis migration is fairly overwhelming at this point. The question here is, did some of those pre-Clovis populations come from Europe? It’s possible, but as Giuli highlights, we do have a long history of racism in this area, so we should be cautious with such theories.
Matt, the idea of a pre-Clovis population isn’t exactly mainstream in academic circles, but it’s no longer rejected outright. I don’t know if the Solutrean theory has any kind of widespread acceptance, but that’s a very different subset of this theory. Even in the mainstream, it’s fairly accepted that the migration came in waves, and that some waves hugged the coast, as you say. This theory is quite different: this isn’t about hugging the coast along the North Pacific, but hugging the coast along the North Atlantic, migrating from Europe to North America.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 10 October 2006 @ 11:35 AM
To clarify a little bit: My understanding of the situation is that theories involving early coastal migrations have met with much resistance, but are starting to become more accepted. However, it is also my understanding that theories involving more recent trans-Pacific travel (in either direction?) are still widely dismissed in principle among academic anthropologists.
My understanding is probably colored significantly because it comes from people who have spoken at the conference. Betty Meggers is a pottery specialist who has been putting forth the idea that there was a migration from Jomon (Japan) around 6000BC (if I remember the dates right) based on the pottery evidence found at sites in South America. It’s my understanding that she has been making these arguments since the 1960s or before, but made little headway. Another person is Nancy Yaw Davis, who has compiled evidence that suggests the possibility of the Zuni people in the American Southwest being influenced by (both genetically and culturally) an influx of Japanese immigrants sometime prior to Western European contact, but I can’t remember the specific dates. (She wrote a book called “The Zuni Enigma”.)
Having said all this, it does not really address the Solutrean Theory (which I had not heard of previously) one way or the other. I mainly brought it up as an alternative to the (primarily) Beringia Migration Theories and the notion that whatever pre-Columbus contact from the Old World that took place came from Europe. It seems to my non-anthropologist mind that there could have been (and probably was) relatively freqent intercontinental contact across the Pacific Ocean over the centuries and millenia prior to Columbus.
Comment by Matt — 10 October 2006 @ 1:03 PM
Oh, I’ve heard Meggers’ theory. It’s interesting, but still kind of weak. The similarities in pottery are there, but not nearly so conclusively, and other evidence is lacking, which makes the whole thing very difficult to prove. While ancient migrations along the northern coasts are fairly well accepted (at least as a possibility), Holocene interactions between the Old and New Worlds are often claimed—you’ll also hear about Chinese junks in Mesoamerica, or Phoenicians making their way to North America—the evidence is usually extremely sketchy. The only one so far with a good bit of evidence is Vinland, where we’ve actually excavated the colony.
You have to remember that once the Holocene began, the Old and New Worlds were quite separate. Take a look at a globe: the Pacific is far, far bigger than the Atlantic, so you’d expect more contact with Europe than Asia, simply because of the difficulties of the trip. The fact that all we have is, at best, ambiguous evidence is fairly telling. I think the similarities in pottery, or with the Zuni, have more to do with superficial chance resemblances than any kind of contact. The Polynesians were wide-ranging on the Pacific and might have come to the shores of the Americas, but I do not think we can really point to any contact with Japan or China.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 10 October 2006 @ 1:18 PM
Not to discount the SoulTrain hypothesis, where North American migration was actually a result of a conga line gone too far…
Comment by TonyZ — 10 October 2006 @ 2:25 PM
The evidence for Meggers’ theory, as I understand it (and I may have it wrong, as I am relying memory of a couple of her talks, rather than a comprehensive knowledge of the field), primarily consists of the pottery that, seems to have suddenly shown up with relatively sophisticated design forms on the coast of northwestern South America. These patterns bear striking similarities to that found in Jomon pottery of the same time frame. Coincidence is possible, but it seems a little strange that such pottery/decorative forms would show up in this place with little or no antecedents, unlike the development of pottery/decorative forms that have been studied pretty much anywhere else. Also, around the same time of this pottery in South America, there was a significant volcanic event in Southern Japan that would explain the motivation for a migration of peoples.
As far as the Zuni go (here I’m relying on my reading of the book I mentioned previously as well as conversations with the author), there are some pretty striking similarities in culture/language and physical characteristics related to genetic variation (blood types, and some other things). None of these things by themselves are conclusive, and even all together, they are not proof. However, and this is what I think causes the author great frustration with the academic world, they evidence seems to suggest it might be worth taking a closer look, rather than dismissing it as merely coincidence, because, a priori, there is clearly no way that any kind of trans-Pacific contact occured.
I don’t know about the Atlantic and its currents, but one of the interesting things about the Pacific is the strong current that runs across the North Pacific from Asia to North America. In historical times there are many records of Japanese who survived drifting across the Pacific Ocean unintentionally. I am not sure why it is such a stretch to think that people could cross (whether intentional or not) the Pacific from Asia to North America prior to the historical record. For that matter, it is my understanding that many coastal native groups have stories telling of trips that involved significant ocean voyaging.
Again, my information comes from people who have been, in the words of one of them, “scarred” by the world of academic anthropology. It is not so much that they think their theories are precisely correct, but rather that the theories have rarely been given a fair reading with suggestions for further research and the people themselves feel ostracized for even suggesting a theory involving trans-Pacific contact. Perhaps with your background in anthropology, you have a better sense of what has happened in this regard. In any case, I understand this discussion has probably diverged somewhat from the point of the post, and although I find the conversation interesting, I would be happy to let it drop if that seems best.
Comment by Matt — 10 October 2006 @ 3:30 PM
The pottery from Ecuador really doesn’t look that much like the Japanese pottery. There’s some superficial similarities, but all of the really defining details are missing. While a volcanic eruption is a good reason to leave Japan, why would someone leave Japan and then cross into the vast unknown of the Pacific?
In other words, it’s a very big claim, made with very scanty evidence.
Genetic resemblances between the Zuni and the Japanese aren’t terribly remarkable, since most Native Americans likely came from Asia. The cultural peculiarities of the Zuni suggest that they may be the survivors of an earlier wave of Asian migration, like the Basques or Finns in Europe.
On Amazon, Mark Newbrook, a PhD in linguistics, writes of The Zuni Enigma:
The remainder of the evidence presented in The Zuni Enigma is mostly very superficial: vague resemblances between Buddhism and Zuni religion, etc. The vast differences between them, of course, are neglected.
I’m not assuming that pre-modern people couldn’t cross the Pacific, but the evidence that they did so is lacking. Davis’ argument has been neglected by academia less for an a priori rejection than the simple fact that there’s no reason to think there’s anything to it at all. A closer look has been taken—the rebuttals to Davis & Meggers takes a closer look and deeper analysis than they provided in their arguments, and finds the evidence to only be superficially similar. A closer look shows that what was initially mistaken for evidence of trans-Pacific crossing is, in fact, no such thing. So while I appreciate that they feel rejected by the establishment, it was not an a priori rejection. Everyone in “the establishment” dreams of the fame and fortune that would follow from overturning the established paradigm, and most of us would love for something like this to be true. But if the evidence isn’t there, it just isn’t there.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 10 October 2006 @ 3:52 PM
Here’s a link to a resource worth review, relative to your current topic.
http://www.paabo.ca/uirala/index.html
The basic proposition is the development of an early boat culture as the water flowed and the Ice Age glacial sheet receded northward. The linguistic aspect is quite interesting.
Comment by Miraculix — 10 October 2006 @ 4:01 PM
Why did you make the National Vanguard link to a Jewish hate group web site. National Vanguard is not at http://www.adl.org it’s at http://www.nationalvanguard.org
You need to open your mind. Every race has an organization or several that looks out for its interests, what’s the difference between National Vanguard and the NAACP or ADL. Would you use the ADL to talk about hte NAACP?
Rob
[Editor’s note: National Vanguard URL has been edited to point to ADL’s page on them, because the thought of giving the National Vanguard any boost from traffic or search engine ranking, even indirectly through comments, makes everyone in the Tribe of Anthropik nauseous.]
Comment by Rob — 12 October 2006 @ 12:14 PM
National Vanguard: Giving voice to the voiced and helping the enfranchised since 1939.
We didn’t link to the National Vanguard’s website because they’re a loathsome, racist hate group. We instead linked to the Anti-Defamation League, which is a reputable watchdog group that could only be called a “Jewish hate group web site” by the most vile and rabid of anti-Semites.
First and foremost, “races” do not exist in any meaningful biological sense. They are social constructions that idiots ascribe some kind of biological reality to based on their ignorance of biology. Homo sapiens has clines, not subspecies.
But because such idiots do exist, groups like the NAACP and the ADL are needed to counter-balance the ignorance of those who believe in “races.” White supremacists think their “race” is being victimized when their privilege is stripped away and they’re forced to give up their advantages over everyone else, and then they talk about how a bunch of neo-Nazi skinheads are just evening things out. There’s a pretty ugly assumption implicit in your argument there, Rob: domination be people with skin the color of unbaked cookie dough is not the natural state of affairs, and when the NAACP or the ADL force you to treat brown people like human beings, they’re not taking away your G-d-given right to racial superiority—they’re taking away your imperial legacy, something your ancestors stole through theft and murder, and never belonged to you to begin with.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 12 October 2006 @ 1:02 PM
First of all… I’m a Jew, you moron.
Second of all…
If the ADL is a hate group, and the ADL is comparable, in your mind, to National Vanguard, then National Vanguard is also a hate group—by your own definition. You can’t have it both ways. If you’re going to make a comparison, either both you and the ADL are harmlessly looking out for your interests, or you’re both hate groups.
Comment by Giulianna Lamanna — 12 October 2006 @ 2:49 PM
they are all hate groups. Only bigots care about the color of a person’s skin or race, or religion.
And to be totally fair, the Jews have been calling themselves God’s Chosen people for about 2500(if not more) years than stupid pink supremacists. Takes one to know one.
Nice censorship, BTW.
Comment by some random dude — 12 October 2006 @ 4:30 PM
Yes, the Jews are as ethnocentric as any culture. It’s universal. There’s a world of difference between “the Chosen People” and concentration camps.
Censorship would be editing what he had to say. I didn’t touch a word of what he said. But links improve search traffic. Links use our website to help promote something we find vile and disgusting. I’m not going to let someone turn this site that we’ve all put so much in to into a platform to help a bunch of creeps like the National Vanguard. If you really want to see what kind of hateful bile they’re spewing, the URL is still printed there. You can copy it and paste it into your address bar, but I’ll be damned if they’ll get one iota of support, or any traffic with an “anthropik.com” referrer.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 12 October 2006 @ 4:35 PM
You are right, there is indeed a difference between calling oneself the Chosen People and concentration camps. The only difference is one of action, not ideology. It is the same “i am better than you b/c I am a ___” ideology, just not taken to its “logical” conclusion, i.e. extermination camps.
I was unaware of the link refferer thing, so I am sorry.
But, rather than take nuetral tack, like linking it to a google search result of National Vanguard, you linked it to their “enemies’ ” denunciation of them. A great way to reinforce their stupidity, and to “persecute” them even more.
Comment by some random dude — 12 October 2006 @ 5:05 PM
Every society believes that theirs is better than every other society. It’s a human universal. However, in tribal societies the “logical conclusion” of that belief is not extermination, but solidarity. The group’s believed superiority doesn’t make them go out and kill everyone who isn’t them—it only prevents people who might otherwise leave the group from doing so. The only context in which it is desirable, or even possible, to exterminate other groups is in civilization. Which brings us back to this site’s main purpose.
So either we reinforce their pathetic persecution complex by linking to ADL instead of them (by the way, read the article: it’s not even a denunciation, but a news article about the group’s recent split from National Alliance) or we support them by directly linking to them. Which one do you think helps them more?
Comment by Giulianna Lamanna — 12 October 2006 @ 5:14 PM
Isn’t it more logical, if you believe yourself so superior, to ignore your “inferiors”? If anything, I’d say these racist groups suffer from the breakdown of ethnocentrism. I mean, look at Hitler’s idea of the Jews. Though “inferior,” according to Hitler, they had managed to gain control of everything. Doesn’t that imply that they’re actually superior? I think racism (which is largely a recent phenomenon, quite distinct from ethnocentrism, arising from the pattern of spreading complexity and the strong correlation that thus resulted between African descent and slavery) has more to do with what happens when our ethnocentrism is threatened—when we don’t believe that we’re superior to all others. Look at Rome, or China—aloof disdain is the logical consequence of ethnocentrism, not racism. Racism implies, at the very least, that you’re close enough to bother with them, and more often, that you fear that you might not actually be so superior after all.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 12 October 2006 @ 5:19 PM
Good point. I’d like to add, just how weak do these neo-Nazis think their own culture is, if merely coming into contact with another culture is apparently enough to destroy it?
In any case, before this topic monopolizes the whole thread, let’s get back to the more interesting archaeological discussion.
Comment by Giulianna Lamanna — 12 October 2006 @ 5:29 PM
Jason, that is an awesome insight.
But that’s all I’m gonna say cos Giuli called the tangent over
Janene
Comment by janene — 12 October 2006 @ 5:34 PM
never thought of it that way. i’ll buy that…
Comment by some random dude — 12 October 2006 @ 10:37 PM
It shouldn’t make any difference where the ancestors of America’s native peoples came from. Whoever they were, they got there a long time ago, created unique societies, and eventually had them decimated by European genocide. Let us imagine that in fact all native Americans are descended from a small group of Cro-Magnons from ‘Europe’… hey, no genocide, we’re all Europeans!
Non sequitur?
Comment by Eric — 13 October 2006 @ 12:47 AM
Total non sequitur. You make an excellent point. Just because it’s done to other Europeans doesn’t make it right. See: the Holocaust, the Armenian genocide, the Balkans, and pretty much everything that’s ever happened between France and Germany.
Comment by Giulianna Lamanna — 13 October 2006 @ 9:22 AM
Nice article. However, endorsement of a theory by a fringe group does not automatically discredit it. Quite often, such groups use (and _distort_) anthropogical anomalies to bolster their own notion of superiority, whether it be the Solutrean hypothesis, blond Guanches or tall, fair-skinned Chachapoyas in Peru. One Pan-African group even claims the Dravidians of India as their own.
The truth is, few in the scholarly community take the fringe groups seriously. On the other hand, it’s mainly political correctness and academic rigidity that stifles any new evidence or research in these areas, particularly anything in the Americas that appears to predate Clovis. Give up the politics, and stop worrying about offending anyone’s beliefs or worrying about which fringe group will exploit the evidence .
The best comment was the one referring to it as the “SoulTrain Hypothesis.”
Cheers,
Tom
Comment by Tom Walls — 29 March 2007 @ 12:26 AM
Perhaps you should read the article again; she never says aything about whether the Solutrean theory is true or not, but rather, what people do with it. I think it’s important to consider the way scientific theories affect society–particularly when, as this article points out, we cherry-pick which ones we’ll listen to in order to buttress completely hypocritical beliefs like Donahue’s quoted above. The place for that consideration probably isn’t when you’re evaluating whether the theory is true or false, but it’s something that should happen somewhere, and a blog article that never concerns itself with the truth or falsity of the theory itself seems as good a place as any to me.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 29 March 2007 @ 9:46 AM