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<DIV>The issue with all these articles and critiques is that they wrongly assume
that Bering Strait Theory equals Clovis. It does not! Most established
archaeological texts cite evidence of multiple migrations, as early as 39 kyr,
25 – 23 kyr, 18 – 15kyr by indirect migration, boat travel and even over
the glacial ice itself since ‘dirty ice’ can provide a soil canopy that
can sustain small forest environments. But the Bering Strait hypothesis holds
good archaeological evidence and is consistent with SOME First Nations
migrations stories.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>So as far as Linguists ‘pulling apart’ a singular migration model, this is
simply nonsense. Biological, Linguistic, and archaeological evidence clearly
shows multiple origins. </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Let us move on...</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><STRONG><FONT size=1>James B. Bandow, Senior Archaeologist &
Partner</FONT></STRONG></DIV>
<DIV><STRONG><FONT size=1>The Fossil Hill Group </FONT></STRONG></DIV>
<DIV><STRONG><FONT size=1>One Hunter Street East, G-100</FONT></STRONG></DIV>
<DIV><STRONG><FONT size=1>Hamilton, ON</FONT></STRONG></DIV>
<DIV><STRONG><FONT size=1>CANADA L8N 3W1</FONT></STRONG></DIV>
<DIV><STRONG><FONT size=1>Phone: (905) 777-7958</FONT></STRONG></DIV>
<DIV><STRONG><FONT size=1>Web: </FONT></STRONG><A
href="http://www.fossilhill.ca"><STRONG><FONT
size=1>www.fossilhill.ca</FONT></STRONG></A></DIV>
<DIV><STRONG><FONT size=1></FONT></STRONG> </DIV>
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style='FONT-SIZE: small; TEXT-DECORATION: none; FONT-FAMILY: "Calibri"; FONT-WEIGHT: normal; COLOR: #000000; FONT-STYLE: normal; DISPLAY: inline'>
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<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV style="BACKGROUND: #f5f5f5">
<DIV style="font-color: black"><B>From:</B> <A title=plnal@HOTMAIL.COM
href="mailto:plnal@HOTMAIL.COM">Bernie</A> </DIV>
<DIV><B>Sent:</B> Monday, August 18, 2014 3:14 PM</DIV>
<DIV><B>To:</B> <A title=ALGONQUIANA@LISTSERV.LINGUISTLIST.ORG
href="mailto:ALGONQUIANA@LISTSERV.LINGUISTLIST.ORG">ALGONQUIANA@LISTSERV.LINGUISTLIST.ORG</A>
</DIV>
<DIV><B>Subject:</B> Re: How Linguists Are Pulling Apart the Bering Strait
Theor</DIV></DIV></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV></DIV>
<DIV
style='FONT-SIZE: small; TEXT-DECORATION: none; FONT-FAMILY: "Calibri"; FONT-WEIGHT: normal; COLOR: #000000; FONT-STYLE: normal; DISPLAY: inline'>
<DIV>Thanks to you as we'll, John.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Bern Francis<BR><BR>Sent from my iPhone</DIV>
<DIV><BR>On 2014-08-18, at 7:01 PM, "John Steckley" <<A
href="mailto:John.Steckley@HUMBER.CA">John.Steckley@HUMBER.CA</A>>
wrote:<BR><BR></DIV>
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<P>One further note in the rant. They are using the exact same
'scientists disagree about the fine points of the theory therefore the theory
is wrong' argument that creationists use (along with the ideas presented in
the 19th century) to try to attack evolution. I challenge them to say
what it is they actually believe, because they did not state it.</P>
<DIV style="FONT-SIZE: 16px; FONT-FAMILY: times new roman; COLOR: #000000">
<HR tabIndex=-1>
<DIV id=divRpF357956 style="DIRECTION: ltr"><FONT color=#000000 size=2
face=Tahoma><B>From:</B> ALGONQUIANA [<A
href="mailto:ALGONQUIANA@LISTSERV.LINGUISTLIST.ORG">ALGONQUIANA@LISTSERV.LINGUISTLIST.ORG</A>]
on behalf of Richard Preston [<A
href="mailto:prestonr@MCMASTER.CA">prestonr@MCMASTER.CA</A>]<BR><B>Sent:</B>
August-18-14 3:22 PM<BR><B>To:</B> <A
href="mailto:ALGONQUIANA@LISTSERV.LINGUISTLIST.ORG">ALGONQUIANA@LISTSERV.LINGUISTLIST.ORG</A><BR><B>Subject:</B>
Fwd: How Linguists Are Pulling Apart the Bering Strait
Theor<BR></FONT><BR></DIV>
<DIV></DIV>
<DIV>cheers
<DIV>Dick<BR>
<DIV><BR class=Apple-interchange-newline><SPAN
style="WHITE-SPACE: normal; WORD-SPACING: 0px; TEXT-TRANSFORM: none; FLOAT: none; COLOR: rgb(0,0,0); FONT: 18px helvetica; DISPLAY: inline !important; LETTER-SPACING: normal; TEXT-INDENT: 0px"><A
href="http://www.richardpreston.ca/"
target=_blank>http://www.richardpreston.ca/</A></SPAN> </DIV>
<DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Begin forwarded message:</DIV><BR class=Apple-interchange-newline>
<BLOCKQUOTE type="cite">
<DIV style="MARGIN: 0px"><SPAN style="FONT-FAMILY: 'Helvetica'"><B>From:
</B></SPAN><SPAN style="FONT-FAMILY: 'Helvetica'">Jennifer Preston <<A
href="mailto:jennifer@quakerservice.ca"
target=_blank>jennifer@quakerservice.ca</A>><BR></SPAN></DIV>
<DIV style="MARGIN: 0px"><SPAN style="FONT-FAMILY: 'Helvetica'"><B>Subject:
</B></SPAN><SPAN style="FONT-FAMILY: 'Helvetica'"><B>Fwd: How Linguists Are
Pulling Apart the Bering Strait Theor</B><BR></SPAN></DIV>
<DIV style="MARGIN: 0px"><SPAN style="FONT-FAMILY: 'Helvetica'"><B>Date:
</B></SPAN><SPAN style="FONT-FAMILY: 'Helvetica'">August 18, 2014 at 3:17:22
PM EDT<BR></SPAN></DIV>
<DIV style="MARGIN: 0px"><SPAN style="FONT-FAMILY: 'Helvetica'"><B>To:
</B></SPAN><SPAN style="FONT-FAMILY: 'Helvetica'">Dick Preston <<A
href="mailto:prestonr@mcmaster.ca"
target=_blank>prestonr@mcmaster.ca</A>><BR></SPAN></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>
<DIV style="WORD-WRAP: break-word">
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Begin forwarded message:</DIV><BR class=Apple-interchange-newline>
<BLOCKQUOTE type="cite">
<DIV style="MARGIN: 0px"><SPAN style="FONT-FAMILY: helvetica"><B>From:
</B></SPAN><SPAN style="FONT-FAMILY: helvetica">Daniel Smoke <<A
href="mailto:dsmoke@uwo.ca"
target=_blank>dsmoke@uwo.ca</A>><BR></SPAN></DIV>
<DIV style="MARGIN: 0px"><SPAN style="FONT-FAMILY: helvetica"><B>Subject:
</B></SPAN><SPAN style="FONT-FAMILY: helvetica"><B>Fwd: How Linguists Are
Pulling Apart the Bering Strait Theor</B><BR></SPAN></DIV>
<DIV style="MARGIN: 0px"><SPAN style="FONT-FAMILY: helvetica"><B>Date:
</B></SPAN><SPAN style="FONT-FAMILY: helvetica">8 August, 2014 6:42:31 AM
EDT<BR></SPAN></DIV>
<DIV style="MARGIN: 0px"><SPAN style="FONT-FAMILY: helvetica"><B>To:
</B></SPAN><SPAN style="FONT-FAMILY: helvetica">Jean Koning <<A
href="mailto:jean.koning@live.ca"
target=_blank>jean.koning@live.ca</A>><BR></SPAN></DIV>
<DIV style="MARGIN: 0px"><SPAN style="FONT-FAMILY: helvetica"><B>Cc:
</B></SPAN><SPAN style="FONT-FAMILY: helvetica">Al Day <<A
href="mailto:aday@namerind.on.ca"
target=_blank>aday@namerind.on.ca</A>>, Pam Palmater <<A
href="mailto:ppalmater@politics.ryerson.ca"
target=_blank>ppalmater@politics.ryerson.ca</A>>, Gary Farmer <<A
href="mailto:garytroublemaker@gmail.com"
target=_blank>garytroublemaker@gmail.com</A>>, Cyndy Baskin <<A
href="mailto:cbaskin@ryerson.ca" target=_blank>cbaskin@ryerson.ca</A>>,
Raven Redbird <<A href="mailto:sfive@rogers.com"
target=_blank>sfive@rogers.com</A>>, Carrie Lester <<A
href="mailto:lester.carrie@rogers.com"
target=_blank>lester.carrie@rogers.com</A>>, Jennifer Preston-Howe
<<A href="mailto:jennifer@quakerservice.ca"
target=_blank>jennifer@quakerservice.ca</A>>, Ken Deer <<A
href="mailto:kennethdeer104@hotmail.com"
target=_blank>kennethdeer104@hotmail.com</A>>, Deb Aaaron <<A
href="mailto:debaaron@newcreditfirstnation.com"
target=_blank>debaaron@newcreditfirstnation.com</A>>, Peter Cole <<A
href="mailto:coyoteandraven@mac.com"
target=_blank>coyoteandraven@mac.com</A>>, Anita Rooke <<A
href="mailto:arooke@gcna.com" target=_blank>arooke@gcna.com</A>>, Ward
Churchill <<A href="mailto:wardchurchill@yahoo.com"
target=_blank>wardchurchill@yahoo.com</A>>, Blanche Meawassige <<A
href="mailto:meawassige@gmail.com"
target=_blank>meawassige@gmail.com</A>><BR></SPAN></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>--<BR>
<DIV><BR><BR><BR><BR><BR>
<DIV>Mary Lou and Dan Smoke</DIV>
<DIV>Adjunct Professors<BR>Smoke Signals, #3255 SSC<BR><A
href="http://london.ctvnews.ca/more/smoke-signals"
target=_blank>http://london.ctvnews.ca/more/smoke-signals</A><BR><A
href="https://www.facebook.com/#1/ctvsmokesignals"
target=_blank>https://www.facebook.com/#1/ctvsmokesignals</A><BR><A
href="http://www.chrwradio.ca/"
target=_blank>http://www.chrwradio.ca</A>
<BR><A href="http://chrwradio.ca/content/smoke-signals"
target=_blank>http://chrwradio.ca/content/smoke-signals</A><BR>94.9 FM
CHRW<BR>Sundays 6:30 - 8:00 p.m. EST<BR>CHRW 2013 Outstanding Specialty
Program<BR>519 659-4682</DIV>
<DIV>519 661-2111 x85083 for messages </DIV>
<DIV><A href="https://www.facebook.com/#!/groups/150460689234/"
target=_blank>https://www.facebook.com/#!/groups/150460689234/</A><BR><A
href="mailto:dsmoke@uwo.ca" target=_blank>dsmoke@uwo.ca</A></DIV></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV style="MARGIN: 0px"><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: helvetica; COLOR: rgb(127,127,127)"><B>From:
</B></SPAN><SPAN style="FONT-FAMILY: helvetica">Daniel Smoke <<A
href="mailto:dsmoke@uwo.ca"
target=_blank>dsmoke@uwo.ca</A>><BR></SPAN></DIV>
<DIV style="MARGIN: 0px"><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: helvetica; COLOR: rgb(127,127,127)"><B>Subject:
</B></SPAN><SPAN style="FONT-FAMILY: helvetica"><B>How Linguists Are
Pulling Apart the Bering Strait Theor</B><BR></SPAN></DIV>
<DIV style="MARGIN: 0px"><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: helvetica; COLOR: rgb(127,127,127)"><B>Date:
</B></SPAN><SPAN style="FONT-FAMILY: helvetica">8 August, 2014 6:33:19 AM
EDT<BR></SPAN></DIV>
<DIV style="MARGIN: 0px"><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: helvetica; COLOR: rgb(127,127,127)"><B>To:
</B></SPAN><SPAN style="FONT-FAMILY: helvetica">Donald Smoke <<A
href="mailto:donaldosmoke@gmail.com"
target=_blank>donaldosmoke@gmail.com</A>><BR></SPAN></DIV><BR><BR>
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<ADDRESS>Read more at <A
href="http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2014/03/19/how-linguists-are-pulling-apart-bering-strait-theory-154063?page=0%2C0"
target=_blank>http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2014/03/19/how-linguists-are-pulling-apart-bering-strait-theory-154063?page=0%2C0</A></ADDRESS></SPAN></DIV>
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<DIV class="fb-share-button fb_iframe_widget"><SPAN
style="HEIGHT: 61px; WIDTH: 56px; VERTICAL-ALIGN: bottom"></SPAN>How
Linguists Are Pulling Apart the Bering Strait Theory<A
class=node-detail-author
href="http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/advanced/search?fq[0]=ts_field_full_name%3AAlex%20Ewen"
target=_blank>Alex Ewen</A></DIV></DIV></DIV></DIV>
<DIV
class="field field-name-publish-date field-type-ds field-label-hidden">
<DIV class=field-items>
<DIV class="field-item even">3/19/14</DIV></DIV></DIV>
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class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden">
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<P>Over the past few weeks, new scientific discoveries have rekindled the
debate over the Bering Strait Theory. Two of the discoveries were covered
recently in <EM>Indian Country Today</EM>. The first “More Reasons to
Doubt the Bering Strait Migration Theory,” dealt with the growing problem
of “science by press release,” as scientific studies hype their
conclusions to the point that they are misleading; and the second, “DNA
Politics: Anzick Child Casts Doubt on Bering Strait Theory,” discussed how
politics can influence science, and the negative effects these
politically-based scientific results can have on Native peoples.</P>
<P>RELATED: <A
href="http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2014/03/08/more-reasons-doubt-bering-strait-migration-theory"
target=_blank>More Reasons to Doubt the Bering Strait Migration
Theory</A></P>
<P>RELATED: <A
href="https://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2014/03/11/dna-politics-anzick-child-casts-doubt-bering-strait-theory-153947"
target=_blank>DNA Politics: Anzick Child Casts Doubt on Bering Strait
Theory</A></P>
<P>It is generally assumed that the Bering Strait Theory has almost
universal acceptance from scientists. So, for example, the <EM>New York
Times</EM>, in an article on March 12, “<A
href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/13/science/linguistic-study-sheds-new-light-on-peopling-of-north-america.html?_r=0"
target=_blank>Pause Is Seen in a Continent’s Peopling</A>” stated
unequivocally that “The first migrations to North America occurred between
15,000 and 10,000 years ago,” with the new wrinkle that maybe on their way
from Asia Indian ancestors laid over in the Bering Strait region
(Beringia) for thousands of years before traveling on to the Americas.</P>
<P>Therefore it is usually presumed that the primary critics of the theory
must be anti-science, like the “creationists” who argue against evolution,
or New Age pseudo-scientific conspiracy theorists. Thus in 1995, when the
late Sioux philosopher Vine Deloria Jr. published <EM>Red Earth, White
Lies: Native Americans and the Myth of Scientific Fact</EM> and challenged
the Bering Strait Theory, he was savagely attacked by many scientists who
lumped him in with those fringe groups.</P>
<P>The vitriol that poured from some of the harshest critics, such as John
Whittaker, a professor of anthropology at <A
href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grinnell_College"
target=_blank>Grinnell College</A>, who referred to Deloria's book as "a
wretched piece of Native American creationist claptrap,” seemed excessive.
The critics also demonstrated that they clearly did not comprehend
Deloria’s argument. <EM>Red Earth, White Lies, </EM>embroidered by
Deloria’s wry sense of humor and rambling musings, shows he was not
anti-science, but rather <EM>anti-scientist</EM>. In particular, he was
against those scientists who held narrow views of the world, who had no
respect for other people’s traditions, who fostered a cult of superiority
either for themselves or for their society, and who were afraid to search
for the truth unless it already conformed with established opinion.</P>
<P>Deloria also argued that science, when studying people, was not
neutral. In his view, some scientific theories harbored social and
political agendas that were used to deprive Indians and other minorities
of their rights. Many of the assumptions that underlay certain scientific
principles were based on obsolete religious or social views, and he urged
science to shed these dubious relics. The issue for Deloria was not
science vs. religion (or tradition), it was good science vs. bad science,
and in his view, the Bering Strait Theory was bad science.</P><SPAN>
<DIV class="field-item even">
<P>Nor was Deloria alone in this opinion. Since it was first proposed in
the late 16th century, and especially in its most recent incarnations in
the late 19th and the 20th centuries, the most vociferous critics of the
Bering Strait Theory have been scientists. Even among archaeologists and
physical anthropologists, generally the most dogmatic proponents of this
theory, it has always been extremely factious. And the abuse they would
heap upon each other was no less acidic than that they spewed on
outsiders.</P>
<P>In 1892, when the geologist George Frederick Wright published his
massive study, <EM>Man and the Glacial Period</EM>, which challenged some
of the tenets of the Bering Strait Theory as it was then formulated, he
was attacked, as David J. Meltzer pointed out in <EM>First Peoples in a
New World</EM>, “with a barrage of vicious reviews which were
unprecedented in number and savagery.” One critic of the book, William
John McGee, the head of the Bureau of American Ethnology, “was especially
bloodthirsty, labeling Wright’s work absurdly fallacious, unscientific,
and an ‘offense to the nostrils,’ then dismissing him as ‘a betinseled
charlatan whose potions are poison. Would that science might be well rid
of such harpies.’”</P>
<P>To understand just one of the many scientific criticisms of the Bering
Strait Theory, we go halfway around the world to the continental mass
known as the Sahul, which includes Australia, New Guinea and surrounding
islands. Like the Americas, it had long been assumed by archaeologists
that the Indigenous Peoples who lived in that region had migrated there
from Asia just a few thousand years ago. It then came as a massive shock
to those same archaeologists when in 1968, near Lake Mungo in Southeastern
Australia, the geologist Jim Bowler discovered the remains of a cremated
woman who was subsequently radiocarbon-dated to be between 25,000 and
32,000 years old. Lake Mungo Woman, as she came to be known, was
repatriated to the Aboriginal community in 1992.</P>
<P>Yet this discovery had already been anticipated by other scientists,
for example, the linguists. The Sahul is one of the most linguistically
diverse areas in the world, home to more than 1,000 languages, about
one-fifth of the world’s total. The linguists had already predicted that
the “time depth” required to achieve this type of linguistic diversity was
clearly not in the thousands of years, but in the tens of thousands of
years. Subsequent archaeological finds have now pushed back the date of
human occupation of Australia to a minimum of 45,000 years ago and
possibly 60,000 years ago.</P><SPAN>
<P>The only area in the world that has a comparable level of linguistic
diversity as the Sahul is the Americas, and in certain very important
respects, the Americas were even more diverse. Since the very first period
of contact between Europeans and Indians, observers had marveled at how
many different languages and cultures were to be found. Thomas Jefferson,
among the leading scientists of his day, wrote in 1785 in his <EM>Notes on
the State of Virginia</EM>.</P>
<P><EM>Imperfect as is our knowledge of the tongues spoken in America, it
suffices to discover the following remarkable fact. Arranging them under
the radical ones to which they may be palpably traced, and doing the same
by those of the red men of Asia, there will be found probably twenty in
America, for one in Asia, of those radical languages, so called because,
if they were ever the same, they have lost all resemblance to one another.
</EM></P>
<P>Today, linguists call Jefferson’s “radical languages,” language
families or stocks, each made up of numerous languages and dialects. As
Jefferson saw it, this diversity clearly pointed to the great age of
American Indians; “A separation into dialects may be the work of a few
ages only, but for two dialects to recede from one another till they have
lost all vestiges of their common origin, must require an immense course
of time; perhaps not less than many people give to the age of the
earth.”</P>
<P>Based upon the linguistic evidence, Jefferson believed that “a greater
number of those radical changes of language having taken place among the
red men of America, proves them of greater antiquity than those of Asia,”
and led him to speculate that Asians may have been the descendants of
early American Indian migrations from the Americas to Asia.</P>
<P>Exactly how diverse the American languages were became clearer in 1891,
when the famed explorer and director of the Bureau of Ethnology, John
Wesley Powell, released the monumental work, <EM>Indian Linguistic
Families North of Mexico.</EM> In his introduction, Powell explained that,
“The North American Indian tribes, instead of speaking related dialects,
originating in a single parent language, in reality speak many languages
belonging to distinct families, which have no apparent unity of origin.”
Powell grouped the American Indian languages in the U.S. and Canada into
58 language families (or stocks) that could not be shown to be related to
one another.</P><SPAN>
<P>Since Powell’s day his classification has been modified somewhat and
attempts to link many of these language stocks together to create “super
stocks” have met with mixed success. Although what constitutes a family,
stock or super stock is a matter of continuing debate among linguists,
today it is generally accepted that there are 150 different language
stocks in the Americas. To give some perspective to this diversity, there
are more language stocks in the Americas<EM> than in the rest of the world
combined</EM>.</P>
<P>One of the 150 New World language stocks, Eskimo-Aleut, also spans the
Arctic and so has Asian and European relatives. Another language super
stock, Na-Dené, composed of the language stocks Athabaskan, Tlingit and
Eyak, and located in Alaska and the northwest coast (but also in the
southwestern U.S.), is also believed to have relatives in Asia, possibly
the Yeneisian languages of central Siberia.</P>
<P>It has long been suggested, and the issue is not particularly
controversial, that peoples speaking Eskimo-Aleut and Na-Dené moved back
and forth between Asia and the Americas. A new study published on March 12
in the journal PLoS, “Linguistic Phylogenies Support Back-Migration from
Beringia to Asia,” found that Na-Dené is not descended from Yeneisian (as
the Bering Strait Theory would infer) but the other way around, that there
was a “back-migration into central Asia than a migration from central or
western Asia to North America.” (As an aside, the study, true to “science
by press release” fashion, argues that this supports the “Beringian
Standstill” hypothesis–that Indians paused in Beringia for thousands of
years before colonizing the New World–but the study only examined the
Na-Dené language stock, whose speakers still live in the Alaskan part of
Beringia to this very day, and so it would seem the study would just as
easily support the Na-Dené view that they have been there since time
immemorial.)</P>
<P>Other than Eskimo-Aleut and Na-Dené, linguists have yet to find any
connection with any language stocks of the Americas and those of Asia.
Along with the tremendous hemispheric diversity, this created serious
doubts about the dates proposed by archaeologists and physical
anthropologists for Indian origins. At the beginning of the 20th century
it was held to be at most 10,000 years and generally only 5,000 years. In
1916, Edward Sapir, among the most important and influential linguists in
history, countered the prevailing archaeological view; “ten thousand
years, however, seems a hopelessly inadequate span of time for the
development from a homogeneous origin of such linguistic differentiation
as is actually found in America.” Instead he argued that, “the best piece
of evidence of great antiquity of man in America is linguistic
diversification rather than archaeological.”</P>
<P>One of America’s greatest scientists, Franz Boas, generally considered
to be the father of modern anthropology and an important linguist in his
own right, in his classic study, <EM>Race, Language, and Culture,</EM>
published in 1940, wrote that not only were American Indian languages “so
different among themselves that it seems doubtful whether the period of
10,000 years is sufficient for their differentiation,” but that the
evidence of extremely ancient Indians would some day be found, and that,
“all we can say, therefore, is that the search for early remains must
continue.” Indeed, Boas was among the first to propose, based on the
evidence from an expedition that he led to the Bering Strait region in
1897, the “back migration” from the Americas to Asia</P><SPAN>
<P>Linguists were not the only ones who recognized the importance of the
linguistic evidence. The great British paleo-anthropologist Louis Leakey
firmly believed that the linguistic evidence showed that Indians were
likely to be many tens of thousands of years old and possibly much older,
and shortly before his death in 1972 he began to sponsor fieldwork in the
Americas in the hopes of proving this. But most American archaeologists
and physical anthropologists, where the dogmatism of the Bering Strait
Theory is most pronounced, dismissed or ignored the linguistic evidence,
leading people and the mainstream press to assume that linguists were
silent on this subject, even though the reverse was true.</P>
<P>Starting in 1987, the tensions between the proponents of the Bering
Strait Theory and linguists turned into open warfare as archaeologists and
geneticists used a highly disputed (and now completely discredited) theory
by the linguist Joseph Greenberg to claim that the linguistic evidence now
(after hundreds of years of refuting it) showed that Indians migrated from
Asia to the New World around 15,000 years ago. The dispute led to a
torrent of scientific papers by the world’s most prominent linguists
denouncing the use of “non-science” and faulty data to back the Bering
Strait Theory. The archaeologists and geneticists largely ignored the
objections, forcing a group of linguists–led by <A
href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=Campbell%20L%5Bauth%5D"
target=_blank>Lyle Campbell</A>, author of the standard work in that
field, <EM>American Indian Languages: the Historical Linguistics of Native
America,</EM> and <A
href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=Goddard%20I%5Bauth%5D"
target=_blank>Ives Goddard</A>, curator at the National Museum of Natural
History at the Smithsonian Institution and the linguistic and technical
editor of the massive <EM>Handbook of North American Indians</EM>–to write
to the <EM>American Journal of Human Genetics</EM> in 2004 and condemn the
widespread use of pseudo-scientific linguistic “evidence” in genetic
studies about Indian origins.</P>
<P>The dispute also led the influential linguist, Johanna Nichols, to
publish “Linguistic Diversity and the First Settlement of the New World,”
in the journal <EM>Language </EM>in 1990. In her introduction, she first
made two important scientific points: the diversity of the languages of
the New World is due to “the operation of regular principles of linguistic
geography;” and that the linguistic and archaeological evidence from the
Sahul clearly contradicted the attempts to assign early dates for the
Bering Strait migration, since the assignment of early dates in the New
World would create a scientific anomaly; <EM>“</EM>but such a
discrepancy–one of at least an order of magnitude–must be assumed if we
adhere to the Clovis [15,000 years ago] or received chronology [20,000
years ago] for the settlement of the New World.”</P>
<P><BR> </P></SPAN></SPAN></SPAN></DIV></SPAN></DIV></DIV></DIV></SPAN></DIV>
<DIV>
<DIV>Mary Lou and Dan Smoke</DIV>
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