Tuesday, January 13, 2009

DNA Link between Ancient Peruvians and Ainu

This is a direct DNA evidence link with the Ainu. This is expected news but also news that is a little late in presenting itself. It has been understood for some time that the art of the kayak had provided means for traffic along the coast twenty thousand years ago or more.

What is more than evident though is that they were not the only folks making the trip.

My own speculation on this is that DNA work will find a surprising number of affinities between tribal populations from both East Asia and even southern Europe. We forget the dominance of hybridized European and Han population stocks that diluted uniqueness. Tribal groups exported their genes into the super tribe and the reverse was uncommon.

This process is obviously accelerating around the world and the effort to collect the related genetic information is still in infancy. It needs to be supported. Once completed, we will find many surprises.

Our conjecture regarding Bronze Age commerce means that a secondary DNA migration injected itself on the Americas for a least a millennia adding some hybridization to the gene pool. What we do not understand is the original variation that was in place.

Our conjecture regarding the Pleistocene Nonconformity makes any conjectures regarding the linkage of the American gene pool with that of Asia suspect and supports the likelihood that DNA injections from Asia were not fundamental. We have to at least consider that.


Study Reveals DNA Links Between Ancient Peruvians, Japanese

LIMA -- A study has revealed genetic links between people who inhabited northern Peru more than 1,000 years ago and Japanese, El Comercio newspaper reported Thursday.

Japanese physical anthropologist Ken-ichi Shinoda performed DNA tests on the remains of human bodies found in the East Tomb and West Tomb in the Bosque de Pomas Historical Sanctuary, which are part of the Sican Culture Archaeological Project, funded by Japan's government.

The director of the Sican National Museum, Carlos Elera, told the daily that Shinoda found that people who lived more than 1,000 years ago in what today is the Lambayeque region, about 800 kilometers (500 miles) north of Lima, had genetic links to the contemporaneous populations of Ecuador, Colombia, Siberia, Taiwan and to the Ainu people of northern Japan.

The studies will be continued on descendents of the Mochica culture, from the same region, who are currently working on the Sican Project and with people who live in the vicinity of the Bosque de Pomac Historical Sanctuary.

Peruvian archaeologist Luis Chero told El Comercio that "currently, the DNA results have great value because they can be understood to show that there were people who arrived in these zones from Asia and who then converted these zones into the great culture of the New World."

The results of the studies will be presented at an exhibit on the Sican culture that will be set up for a year at the Tokyo Museum of Science and Nature.

Also to be displayed at that exhibit will be gold, silver and copper jewelry found in the tombs of the ancient Sican rulers and priests.

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