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A "LOST TRIBE" that reached America from Australia may have been the
first Native Americans, according to a new theory.
If proved by DNA evidence, the theory will shatter long established
beliefs about the southerly migration of people who entered America across
the Bering Strait, found it empty and occupied it.
On this theory rests the authority of Native Americans (previously
known as Red Indians) to have been the first true Americans. They would be
relegated to the ranks of
also-rans, beaten to the New World by Aboriginals in boats.
To a European, this may seem like an academic argument, but to
Americans it is a philosophical question about identity, Silvia Gonzales,
of Liverpool John Moores University said .
Her claims are based on skeletons found in the Baja California
Peninsula of Mexico that have skulls quite unlike the broad Mongolian
features of Native Americans. These narrow-skulled people have more in
common with southern Asians, Aboriginal Australians and people of the
South Pacific Rim.
The bones, stored at the National Museum of Anthropology in Mexico City, have
been carbon-dated and one is 12,700 years old, which places it several
thousand years before the arrival of people from the North. "We think
there were several migration waves into the Americas at different times by
different human groups," Dr Gonzales said. "The timing, route and point of
origin of the first colonization of the Americas remains a most contentious topic in human
evolution."
But comparisons based on skull shape are not considered conclusive by
anthropologists, so a team of Mexican and British scientists, backed by
the Natural Environment Research Council, has also attempted to extract
DNA from the bones. Dr Gonzales declined yesterday to say exactly what the
results were, as they need to be checked, but indicated that they were
consistent with an Australian origin.
She believes that they arrived by boat, settled in what is now Mexico
and at other points along the Pacific coast, and survived for thousands of
years. The first Spanish colonists and missionaries described the people
they found in the area, the Pericue, as slim hunter-gatherers. They lacked
much culture, but did have burial customs in which bodies were laid out in
the sun before being painted with ochre and buried.
The Spanish collected the people into missions, where they died out in
the 18th century.
(Agencies) |
一种新理论认为，一个来自澳大利亚的“迷失部落”可能是美洲最早的土著居民。
如果DNA检测证实了这个理论的话，这将动摇长期以来人们一直坚信的观点：一群往南迁徙的移民穿过白令海峡进入美洲后，发现无人在此居住，便占领了它。
关于美洲土著居民（以前被称为红印地安人）是首批真正的美洲居民的说法就是以这种理论为依据的。他们可能也会被视为逃亡者，可能是被战船上的土著人打败后来到新大陆的。
利物浦约翰摩尔大学的西尔维亚·冈萨雷斯表示，对于欧洲人来说，这也许看上去只是学术上的争论，但是对于美国人来说，这是一个关于他们身份的哲学问题。
她的说法是以在墨西哥的下加利福尼亚半岛发现的骨骼为依据的，因为这些头骨和美国土著居民那种蒙古人宽头骨的特征极为不同。这些窄头骨的人种和南亚人、澳洲土著和环南太平洋国家的人种有更多共同点。
这些骨骼被保存在墨西哥城国家人类学博物馆里，并经过了碳元素年代测试，其中有一个已经有12，700年的历史了，这比北部移民到达美国的时间还早了几千年。冈萨雷斯博士说：“我们认为在不同时期，经过几次移民潮，有不同的人群迁徙到美洲。在人类进化史上，最早在美国进行殖民活动的时间、路线和人口来源是一个最有争议的话题。”
但是人类学家认为头骨形状的比较并不能成为确凿证据，所以一个由墨西哥和英国科学家组成的小组在自然环境研究委员会的支持下，试图从这些骨骼中提取DNA。昨天，冈萨雷斯博士拒绝透露确切的结果，因为研究结果还需要核对，但是他暗示这些DNA和澳大利亚人的血统是吻合的。
她认为他们是乘船来到美洲的，然后在今天的墨西哥和太平洋沿岸地区定居，并且存活了数千年。早期的西班牙殖民者和传教士将他们在这一地区发现的人（Pericue）形容成“瘦小的猎人和采集者”。他们没有太高的文化，却有埋葬仪式，尸体被放在太阳下，然后涂上赭土下葬。
西班牙人曾把他们聚集起来进行传教，后来这些土著人在18世纪灭绝了。
（中国日报网站译） |
Updated: 2004-09-09 09:32
