by Gary Vey for viewzone
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DNA Evidence linking American Indians to Europeans
There are no known human remains of the European Solutreans or Clovis culture in North America. Therefore, no DNA can be directly assessed to determine the nature and extent of the association of these two groups.
Anthropologists have tried to determine the racial characteristics of various groups by such things as their skull size and shape and other anatomical peculiarities, but this is always subject to error and interpretation. In cases where human remains have been found, the age of the remains almost always prevents extraction of adequate DNA. The exceptions being the recent extraction of DNA from Neanderthal specimens which where obtained from ancient teeth.
That being said, some surprising results were obtained in a study that assessed the DNA of a variety of human populations around the world using mitochondrial DNA to determine the relatedness of these populations.
Mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) and haplogroups
When a sperm and egg combine to form a zygote the genetic codes of both mother and father re-combine in the new organism. But in a particular organelle inside each cell, called the mitochondria, the DNA is always a copy of the mother's code.
Over time this code will have slight mutations and so, eventually, the lineage of a specific group will be unique for their race, ethnicity and family history. These mutations are called haplogroups and by studying them it is possible to form a family tree of humanity going back in time to a single common mother. The woman at the root of all these groups is the matrilineal most recent common ancestor (MRCA) for all currently living humans. She is commonly called Mitochondrial Eve.
The letter names of the haplogroups run from A to Z. As haplogroups were named in the order of their discovery, they do not reflect the actual genetic relationships. We will be looking at haplogroups X and C3.

[Above:] Although the global occurrence is very small (less than 4%) the population containing the X mutation appears concentrated in the Algonquin Native American Indian population and in what is now Turkey.
This is thought to reflect the movement of the populations over the past 20 to 30 thousand years. The Solutreans are thought to have migrated East at the end of the last ice age, perhaps following game, while the Clovis culture is thought to have been absorbed by more recent Native American Indians and pushed to the remote Canadian wilderness.
It is significant that the population of X mutations remains in the East, where the most dense Clovis artifacts were found and that it is not totally obliterated in the remaining parts of North America.
Another supporting statistic is that haplogroup X has been found in people of the Orkney Islands, which were part of the North sea shelf and were free from glaciation during the last ice age. These islands would have been accessible to the Solutreans during their sea migrations.
Traces of haplogroup X are found in both living and prehistoric Basque populations which are believed to be descendants of Paleolithic Europeans.

[Above:] It is thought that the more recent migration of Asians, through the Bering Straits, accounts for the higher occurrence of mutation C3. We see this especially true in Alaska and western Canada where the ice-free corridor opened up following the last ice age. Here we have 30-60% of indigenous people with this mutation.
Quite naturally, the highest concentrations (60-100%) of mutation C3 are found along the proposed migration route, in northern Siberia, around Lake Baikal and in the Kamchatka Peninsula (where the Dyuktai Cave archaeological site was dated to 10,000 years ago).
Climate & Ice Flow Data
During the 1970s the CLIMAP (Climate Mapping Analysis and Prediction) was established to produce models of past climate changes in order to help us understand the present cycles and changes we encounter, especially with regards to global warming. Because of this we have some excellent models of how the world's weather reacted to the last ice age.
While we usually think of an ice age as a single cooling event, these models showed that within an ice age there is quite a bit of diversity. Although the temperatures do not vary on a large scale, local variations of cooling and warming cycles can have dramatic effects on yearly ice flows. Such was the case in the North Atlantic.

[Above] Highlighted variations during the last ice age were small but altered the flow of ocean current and allowed ice packs to form and brake up every six months. The period shown is from 15 to 18 thousand years BP although the Solutreans almost certainly began this migration thousands of years earlier.

"Paleoclimatological mapping has produced some surprising results. We have long talked about four ice ages. It is now apparent that multiple events during the Pleistocene represented long-term cooling trends, known as Bond cycles, and incorporated many shorter ice advances that alternated with periods of warming. Heinrich events, named for Hartmut Heinrich, were periods when massive amounts of ice calved off glaciers and formed huge packs of icebergs. Although we once thought that creating an ice age took millennia, we now realize that drastic climatic changes can happen extremely rapidly, perhaps even within a few decades." [2]
Climate experts say the temperatures in western Europe during the last ice age were 10°C colder than today. The wind, blowing off the glaciers, would have been dry and cold, forcing refuge near the coast where ocean water would mitigate the freezing. Flora and fauna would have been severely reduced, making survival difficult.
The coast line was extended further than today as the oceans had dropped nearly 130 meters due to the water being locked in the mile thick glaciers. Archaeological research shows that the only inland game was the non-migrating red deer who seemed to thrive on what little vegetation remained. The wooly mammoths, rhinos, musk and oxen did not survive and the Solutrean diet eventually sought sea birds and seals on the ice packs.
It is thought that the Solutreans crossed the North Atlantic, either by accidentally becoming stranded on an ice flow that drifted West or by seeking out a land of which they could have known very little, if at all. However they did it, the eventually arrived in North America and, for several centuries, thrived and left traces of their survival which historians have called the Clovis Culture.
Next: Cultural and Linguistic Clues


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