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A. I've always subscribed to the out-of-Africa theory for all humans.
B. Yes, this is true.
i just think it's rather arbitrary to suggest that the people who crossed the bering strait are "More American" than the people who crossed the Atlantic Ocean, that's all.
i just think it's rather arbitrary to suggest that the people who crossed the bering strait are "More American" than the people who crossed the Atlantic Ocean, that's all.
Well, the ones who crossed the Bering were in the Americas first. The ones who came from Europe were, from the perspective of the original inhabitants of this hemisphere, invaders.
Americans view 'white' people as some big monolithic cultural bloc, but to me an intermarriage between an Italian and an English person is almost as big as an 'interracial' marriage between say white and asian. Two very different cultures.
This would only be true of first generation Americans (original immigrant generation) IMO. Most second generation Americans (first American born generation) tend to be Americanized while still keeping the immigrant language and many/some of the ethnic traditions. The third and later generations tend to be indistinguishable, culturally, from other Americans, although members of these generations sometimes seek to maintain some cultural traditions.
Marriages between individuals from different ethnic groups tended to happen primarily because of proximity more than culture. If Irish and Germans lived within a few blocks of one another and went to the same schools and churches, the chances of some of these people marrying increased. Where there were large ethnic enclaves where the communities, schools, and churches were almost exclusively one ethnic group, not only did the immigrant culture remain longer but inter-ethnic marriages occurred less frequently.
Unsurprisingly, the last ethnic cultural tradition to be lost is religion, so religious affiliation often continues long after anything else. Since the church or synagogue was the center of many if not most ethnic families and communities, you frequently find ethnic mixing primarily along religious lines in the 2nd and 3rd generations: Irish Catholics marrying German Catholics; Italian and Poles, both predominantly Catholic, marrying; German Lutherans would tend to marry Scandanavian Lutherans. Prior to the 1960s, religious affiliation was a major cultural divide in America. Into the 1960s, "mixed marriage" frequently meant a Catholic-Protestant, Catholic-Jewish, or Jewish-Protestant marriage.
These patterns first began breaking down where individual immigrant communities were small, and immigrants and their families mixed frequently with "Americans" or with other immigrants. These immigrants and their children became "Americanized" very quickly. There were also fewer choices for marriage partners within the ethnic group itself.
Where there were larger ethnic enclaves and people were less "Americanized", mixed ethnicity marriages became much more numerous during and after WW II, probably because the war effort exposed so many young men and women to people of other backgrounds that they likely wouldn't have ever met if they weren't in the military or working in defense plants. Even the religious taboos on inter-faith marriages began to erode. Just as the effort and sacrifice of the Civil War made most Americans of the 2nd half of the 19th century think of their country as a single nation rather than as a collection of states, so the effort and sacrifice of WW II made ethnic Americans think of themselves as primarily Americans not as Italian-Americans or German-Americans. It wasn't until the late 1960s and 1970s that Americans started thinking in terms of ethnicity and the immigrant experience.
Well I'm a mix of german and hungarian. Dad german,mom hungarian.Of course then when you think of the various amcient tribes of europe of various groups,and the invasions by Gengish Khan,Tamerlane, the ottoman turks in their various excursions into eastern europe, there is even more of a mix. We look European. Had a russian lady once think I was russian,due I guess to skin tone,eye color,etc. Everyone is a mix of something else.
Well, the ones who crossed the Bering were in the Americas first. The ones who came from Europe were, from the perspective of the original inhabitants of this hemisphere, invaders.
During the time when an enormous ice sheet covered the northern portion of the Atlantic, while Britan and France were populated by the celtic peoples, its been suggested and there is some evidence to support it that the area around southern France was the source of some of the very early migrations to the americas. They lived by fishing and could have followed the ice sheets, living on seal and in their boats as they did while hunting. It could have first happened by accident. The discovery of very early sites with Clovis style tools along the atlantic coast is the strongest suggestion, especially since they shared the exact and distinctive arrow points with the clovis people in later france.
Evidence has been found away from the coasts as well. The migration from Asia would have been over the straights, but could have been by boat too. Since later similar arrowheads were made by the decendents of the first waves of settlers, its likely the european clovis people simply merged with the others.
After that there were repeat waves of migration and the likelyhood that those who had come before were conquered by the newcomers. The cultures over time have a distinct and different influence. Likely the clovis age migrants viewed the next wave over the straight as invaders as well and the invaders viewed them as something in the way.
It's more likely that the *previous* group to come over the straights would have looked upon the newcomers as invaders and dealt with them as such. Different language, different customs and dress would have made them unwelcome strangers. There was a predominant culture at each time, one based on hunting the giant mammals of the time. They were very good hunters and likely hunted out some of the species. But were replaced after the hunts went dry.
It's been suggested that the repeat settlements of North America were not a peaceful meeting if idealized natives, but something closer to the 8th to 10th century in Europe as the new repeatedly replaced the old.
When Europeans again settled, there were a wide variety of native cultures, which suggests that there were a diverse source of cultures from the start.
There are more Eastern Europeans there, but they don't intermarry very often. Only with other Eastern Europeans in my experience.
This seems to be the case for some families in Metro Toronto. I suspect that in smaller cities where there aren't so many large enclaves, they can't maintain their cultural cliques as much. I have relatives in Metro Toronto who are Polish, and there's two branches of the family descended from 2 sisters who were my mother's first cousins.
The one branch is now three and four generations in Canada and are remarkably ethnocentric. While all of them speak English, they all speak Polish -- a lot. They live in predominantly Polish neighborhoods. All their friends seem to be Polish. All of them marry Poles. They identify everyone by their ethnic heritage (I must be the strange American cousin!). It's only in the fourth generation that the younger ones seem to be getting away from that. At family gatherings, you would think that these folks were all first generation Canadians rather than people whose families had been in Canada for a century.
The other branch is much more "Canadianized". From what I understand from my aunts is that their parents (both of whom are long deceased) were die-hards about maintaining their Polish culture, and didn't teach their kids any English. When these kids went to school, they were apparently taunted as foreigners or something. The result is that they largely rejected their Polish heritage. None of them will speak Polish, none married Poles, and none live in Polish neighborhoods.
i just think it's rather arbitrary to suggest that the people who crossed the bering strait are "More American" than the people who crossed the Atlantic Ocean, that's all.
Correct. Tens of thousands of years living in the Americas is just as arbitrary as 300-500 years in the Americas.
Do you think this gives Americans a more continental European look than say Australians? A lot of Australians basically look just like the British because they are. Not all are even tanned. I think that's why I personally notice that Americans often have a certain physical look that is different from a lot of white Australians.
I always think it's hilarious when people in either Australia or the UK throw around the pejorative "mutt" to describe Americans. I always remind them that we're in good company. Look at the ancestry of the British Royal family: They're 100% mutts too. Take a look at Prince William's tree: You'll find German, Danish, Dutch, Norwegian, Russian, Greek, French as well as English, Scottish, Welsh and Irish blood. It's also been discovered recently that one of his mother's great-grandfathers married a woman from India. So he is part Indian too.
By his racial makeup, Prince William could practically be an American.
That comes from people changing their names when they came here so as to fit in with the dominant anglo-saxon culture.
That happens a lot in American genealogy. People would Anglicanize their surnames to be more "American." My grandmother's family did that: They left France in the late 1600's and settled in Quebec. Around 1720 they left Quebec and settled in Missouri. (They're one of the oldest families in Missouri history and one of the first families to live on the western side of the Mississippi River.) Until the Louisiana Purchase (1803) they used their French name Partenais, but after the U.S. bought Upper Louisiana they changed their name to Partney so they could fit in with all of the "Englishmen" from the eastern side of the Mississippi River who settled in Missouri after 1810.
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