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Progeny of the Beringian Standstill the Remains of Early American Shuká Káa Were Discovered in 1996 in on Your Knees Cave on Prince of Wales Island in Southern Alaska

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Progeny of the Beringian Standstill the Remains of Early American Shuká Káa Were Discovered in 1996 in on Your Knees Cave on Prince of Wales Island in Southern Alaska Volume 33, Number 2 ■ April, 2018 Center for the Study of the First Americans Department of Anthropology Texas A&M University 4352 TAMU College Station, TX 77843-4352 www.centerfirstamericans.com Progeny of the Beringian Standstill The remains of Early American Shuká Káa were discovered in 1996 in On Your Knees Cave on Prince of Wales Island in southern Alaska. Now - we find that his DNA relates him more closely to Native Americans than to any other population in the world, including Northern Asians. See his story on page 5. Shuká Káa adds to mounting evidence for a unique American founding population descended from Siberian colonizers stranded in eastern Beringia by the LGM. Meticulous bone analysis confirms that humans occupied Bluefish Caves in Yukon Territory at the time of the LGM. Following the millennia of the Beringian Standstill, from this isolated gene pool emerged the colonizers who peopled the Americas. This headstone commemorates one of their descendants. Bluefish Caves is our lead story on page 1. Photo by Terry Fifield, courtesy of Sealaska Heritage Institute he Center for the Study of the First Americans fosters research and public T interest in the Peopling of the Americas. The Center, an integral part of the Department of Anthropology at Texas A&M University, pro motes inter disciplinary scholarly dialogue among physical, geological, biological and social scientists. The Mammoth Trumpet, news magazine of the Center, seeks to involve you in the peopling of the Americas by report- ing on developments in all pertinent areas of knowledge. JoinJoin inin thethe SearchSearch for the First Americans! Become a member of the Center for the Study of the First Americans on Center publications plus additional benefits according to the level of and explore the origin, lifeways, artifacts, and other aspects of the membership support you choose. Don’t miss out on the latest breaking earliest inhabitants of the Americas. As a Center member you will news and information about the Ice Age colonizers of the Americas while receive a 1-year subscription to Mammoth Trumpet and discounts playing a vital role in education and research pursued by the Center! Membership Levels To Join or Renew Core 1-year membership includes: Select a membership level: Core, Sustainer, or Impact ■ 1-year subscription to Mammoth Trumpet (4 issues!) ■ To join/renew by mail: Fill out the order form below and mail it with a ■ 20% discount on Center books distributed by TAMU Press and CSFA. check or money order payable to TAMF-CSFA to: ■ Discount on PaleoAmerica Journal subscription. As a Core member CSFA you have the option to subscribe to our quarterly scientific journal. IMPORTANT! Department of Anthropology Make check/m.o. Sustainer 1-year membership includes: Texas A&M University payable to 4352 TAMU ■ 1-year subscription to Mammoth Trumpet (4 issues!) College Station, TX 77843-4352 TAMF–CSFA ■ 1-year print subscription to PaleoAmerica journal (4 issues!) ■ One free Center book distributed by TAMU Press or CSFA, contact the ■ To join/renew by credit card: go to our secure order form on our web- Center with book choice. site at www.centerfirstamericans.com ■ A Center pin ■ 20% discount on Center books distributed by TAMU Press and CSFA. Impact 1-year membership includes all benefits of Sustainer membership, plus: Questions? Call us at 979-845-4046 or e-mail us at [email protected] ■ An additional Center book distributed by TAMU Press or CSFA, contact the Center with book choices. ■ A Center coffee mug ■ Exclusive behind-the-scenes letters on Center activities (3 per year) Rates Membership/Subscription Order Form U.S. International Total cost Core membership $ 30.00 $ 40.00 Sustainer membership 250.00 250.00 Impact membership 500.00 500.00 PaleoAmerica journal print subscription discounted rate for Core members 35.00 35.00 PaleoAmerica journal electronic subscription discounted rate for Core members 22.00 22.00 Subtotal The Center for the Study of the First Americans needs your help! Please consider a donation ➡ that will support students and CSFA research. Total Please make check or money order payable to: TAMF–CSFA Ship to (please print clearly): Name Address e-mail address (in case we have a question about your order) City State Zip daytime phone (in case we have a question about your order) Volume 33, Number 2 Center for the Study of the First Americans Department of Anthropology April, 2018 Texas A&M University, 4352 TAMU, College Station, TX 77843-4352 ISSN 8755-6898 World Wide Web site http://centerfirstamericans.com and http://anthropology.tamu.edu Proving the Beringian Standstill Hypothesis 5 Their genetic composition sets The Bluefish Caves Native Americans apart from all other world populations DNA studies find that biological adaptation inherited from their ancestors equips them to subsist on a diet of fish and meat in harsh climates. 9 Found: hundreds of artifacts after 40 years of digging in occupations 20,000+ years old. And yet . Part 2 of our series on Pedra Aerial view of the Old Crow region. Furada in Brazil relates the victories and frustrations of Niède The Bluefish Caves lie in the limestone Guidon and her colleagues. outcropping in the foreground. SHIRLEEN SMITH ©VGFN SMITH SHIRLEEN 15 The Southern Cone is Nora Flegenheimer’s workshop HEN TRYING TO UNDERSTAND (MT 26-4, “A story of ancient mariners”; The Fishtail point may be called the history and movements of MT 24-3, “Putting muscle into coastal- her personal icon, for she has Wearly humans, we can all agree entry research”; MT 20-4, “Exploring researched its presence across on at least one thing: Humans didn’t the Northwest coast: E. James Dixon and the Pampas. Exemplary scientific originate in the Americas. This isn’t much the peopling of the New World”; and MT rigor, grounded in a prestigious help, regrettably, in understanding early 17-2, “The Baja connection”), to traveling European education, has won human migrations around the globe and from Europe across the Atlantic Ocean Nora Flegenheimer praise from scholars and her students. how humans eventually arrived in the (MT 17-1, “Immigrants from the other Western Hemisphere. When did they get side?”). Kids in a Junior Historians here? Where did they come from? What program that this writer teaches even Beringia, a genetic stew pot path did they take? Why did they migrate suggested that humans first arrived here An idea about the peopling of the this way? because someone in Europe accidentally Americas that’s gaining traction in Theories within the anthropological dropped a baby into the Atlantic Ocean, the scientific community (based on community about when and how humans which obviously meant that everyone had scientific research, not on swimming first arrived in the Americas run the to keep swimming after the baby all the babies) is the Beringian Standstill gamut, from migrating by boat down way across the ocean until they all just hypothesis. We know that during the Pacific coastline of the Americas happened to arrive in North America! the last Ice Age in the terminal 2 Volume 33 n Number 2 Pleistocene Epoch, the immense quantity that humans first inhabited North both of Université de Montréal, espouse of water bound up in glaciers lowered America around 14,000 CALYBP. If this the model proposed by anthropologist the sea level and thereby exposed the milestone date holds true, then the EmŐke J. E. Szathmáry of the University Bering Land Bridge, a landscape of grass, estimated duration of 2,400–9,000 years of Manitoba. In their view, Central Asians herbs, and willow shrubs that connected the first migrants spent in Beringia in the late Pleistocene were a homoge- Siberia with Alaska. The landmass we doesn’t fit into the equation. neous population that dispersed to the call Beringia extended from the Lena habitable boundaries of the mainland. River in Siberia to the Mackenzie A new model unravels the With the appearance of the Bering Land River in the Yukon Territory. It was an “migration” knot Bridge, the eastern boundary extended extension of the mammoth steppe, which Physical anthropologist Lauriane Bour- into eastern Beringia. Burke explains stretched across Eurasia and Canada. geon and her supervisor, Ariane Burke, that the founding premise of the Standstill The mammoth steppe was home to great herbivores—mammoth, bison, horse, and muskox—and to hunter-gatherers that preyed on them. It was also a convenient passageway, and home, for any Central Asian populations curious to discover what lay past the eastern horizon. Human populations that we suppose settled along the span of Beringia used it as a glacial refuge, not just a roadway from one continent to the next. The Mammoth Trumpet (ISSN 8755-6898) is published quarterly by the Center for the Study of the First Americans, Department of Anthropology, Texas A&M University, Regardless, these groups would have College Station, TX 77843-4352. Phone (979) 845-4046; fax (979) 845-4070; e-mail found travel farther eastward blocked by [email protected]. Periodical postage paid at College Station, TX 77843-4352 and at ad- the Cordilleran and Laurentide Ice Sheets ditional mailing offices. anyway. Settling in eastern Beringia, this POSTMASTER: Send address changes to: population, estimated by geneticists as Mammoth Trumpet probably numbering no more than a Department of Anthropology, Texas A&M University few tens of thousands, became the First 4352 TAMU Americans (MT 32-2, “A high-resolution College Station, TX 77843-4352 timeline for peopling of the Americas”). Copyright © 2018 Center for the Study of the First Americans. Permission is hereby They settled in present-day Alaska and given to any non-profit or educational organization or institution toreproduce without cost any materials from the Mammoth Trumpet so long as they are then distributed at Yukon Territory, and once the glaciers no more than actual cost.
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