Actually, I’m not name-calling with the headline, but making a point about how what’s past is prologue, how our genetics and DNA and history play a part in making us who we are. DNA research shows that those of us descended from European or East Asian ancestors have about 1.8 to 2.6 percent Neanderthal DNA. As if that isn’t news enough, my own genome analysis also shows me about 4 percent Denisovan, another early Homo line that died off – and we don’t know squat about them!
We do know that early modern humans aka Homo sapiens – aka us – interbred with Neanderthals and Denisovans (and who knows who else?) and passed along some good and bad genetic material that affects us today and into the future.
Science tells us that Neanderthals migrated out of Africa to Europe some 270,000 years ago, while modern humans left the homeland in a later migration about 50,000 years ago. The odds are there were many migrations, including back and forth. Nothing is ever as neat as we might like it.
There is some very speculative evidence that at some point those Neanderthals – usually depicted as “cave men”— may have crossed oceans to reach the Americas. One study dates broken mastodon bones and possible stone tools in California to 130,000 years ago. There are credible reports of Neanderthal-like skulls having been found in North and South America years ago.
There are continuing arguments among archaeologists about the way the Americas were populated. The most popular and well-known theory is that Asian ancestors crossed the Bering Straits and followed an ice-free zone south along the Canadian Rockies about 16,000 years ago. That theory originated with a religious missionary seeking to explain the Lost Tribes of Israel. More recent evidence shows that people came down the west coast from Beringia in boats.
But — the oldest known habitation site in the New World is Monte Verde in Chile, perhaps 30,000 years old. Chile is about as far south of the Bering Straits as one can get – so is it possible that Thor Heyerdahl was right? That people crossed the Pacific Ocean in boats to South America? He proved it could be done. What seems certain is that there was a lot going on and different people likely arrived from different directions and by different means. Certainly the Aborigines used boats to populate Australia.
The Tohono O’odham and Pueblo peoples’ oral histories say they came from the south far earlier than the Beringia peoples, bringing Mesoamerican traditions like village plazas, ball courts and platform mounds with them along with maize-based agriculture and ceremonial macaws. Indeed, the Navajo and Apache peoples arrived in the Southwest around the same time as the Spaniards, and the O’odham and Pueblo peoples had been long established.
The Southern Choctaw peoples of the Southeast say that they came from Mesoamerica in canoes across the Gulf of Mexico. Their ancestors left great earthworks that seem to mimic in dirt what the central Mexico people built with rock. Same culture – local materials. But who listens to them?
For a quite readable discussion check out University of Colorado archaeologist Steve Lekson’s A History of the Ancient Southwest, which is both a history of Southwest archaeology and a well-argued case for population from the south (SAR Press, 2009). It’s especially interesting that when a particular archaeological theory holds sway that any evidence contradicting that notion simply doesn’t get heard.
An example: There is an ancient platform mound site in Marana. But Emil Haury, dean of Southwest archaeology for many years in the 1930s – 50s, had decreed that the ancient people labeled Hohokam* could not survive out in the desert and had to live near rivers. People who knew about the Marana Mound site – many miles from water – simply shut up, because Haury had spoken! Those “primitive” ancient ones, however, designed and constructed miles of canals in the Phoenix and Tucson areas to bring the water to them.
What’s new news is the influence those ancient ones continue to have on us today. The Neanderthal DNA we carry has been linked to the rheumatoid arthritis, fat accumulation, high LDL cholesterol, eating disorders, and even schizophrenia, that afflict many of us today. They influence sleeping and mood patterns. And Neanderthals have been extinct for 40,000 years!
Worth remembering in these racially-polarized times: Our earliest roots are in Africa. All of us whose ancestors came from Europe or East Asia have some Neanderthal in our DNA. History imprints on our DNA. And we should lose the word “prehistoric.” Those that came before us had history, whether it was written down, carved into rocks, or passed along in songs and stories.
*Hohokam is a word made up by archaeologists to label the culture that began agriculture in the Sonoran Desert over 4,000 years ago. It is a corruption of an O’odham word for their ancestors, Huhugam, meaning “all used up.”
ABOUT COMMENTS FROM THE CHEMO COUCH: I am nearing 80 years of age and am taking chemo for multiple myeloma, an aggressive and incurable blood cancer that attaches itself to my ribs and spine and sucks the calcium out so that a sneeze breaks two ribs. That keeps me close to home. After several months of treatment it is still not clear whether the chemo is slowing the cancer down, but it all leaves me with little energy and a lot of time to think. And I think a lot, and because I’m a writer I want to put what I think into words for others to read. Give them something to think about too, about local and national politics, about nature, community, history, and maybe even about facing the end of my time on this earth. I am grateful to John and Lori Hunnicutt and the Arizona Daily Independent for carrying my opinionated stories, and hope these columns will get readers thinking. I am a trained researcher and do diligent research to present facts and avoid name-calling. Hopefully we will all learn something we didn’t know and will talk to each other about it. Right or Left, we have more in common than we are often willing to admit, and dialogue is, perhaps, the only thing that can save democracy in America. — AVL