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There ain't nothing "native" about Native Americans. So get that out of your system. They're ALL Asian...PERIOD!
Nobody is native except for some Africans.
If 17,000 years of occupation doesn't qualify for 'native', what does? Native Americans' very distant ancestors may have been Asian, but they are not now, except for the faint genetic traces.
Races change as they adapt to the geography the live in. Asians all physically adapted to cold weather physically long ago. So did some Europeans, but their evolution was a different adaptation. Nature always shows there is more than one solution to an environmental demand.
Stone age cultures were probably all more similar racially earlier than later. Geography plays an enormous part of everything that constitutes humanity.
Homo Sapiens could have interbred with other close genetic rivals such as the Neanderthals, which could have resulted in human's adaptability to every environment on earth. Skin color and all the other racial traits are all results of adaptation of the fittest for differing environments.
Humans are wanderers. Always have been, always will be. Those who didn't succeed in one environment moved on until they found a better suited place.
The possibility of stone age peoples building boats is as natural as the possibility of building anything. The North and South American continents could have been inhabited around the same time, one earlier than the other, or any combination of south to north and vice versa.
Native Americans have as much physical disparity as any other race. I personally know members of different Intermountain West tribes, and by and large, they bear distinctly different tribal appearances to me. Some folks are darker than others, some are built with heavier bone structures than others, some taller, some shorter, you name it.
Each culture all over the world develops it's own ideas of physical differences and beauty ideals. Most of it comes from an instinctual understanding of fitness for the environment. The unfit don't get as much opportunity to reproduce as the fit, so differences evolve. Our genome changes regularly all by itself as well.
Yes, we came from "somewhere else" a long, long time ago. There is evidence that while many nations originated from the Bering land bridge migration, there is also evidence that some came from the Pacific Islands. The Chumash of California, in particular, are thought to have their origins from there. The bottomline is that, yeah, we all came from somewhere, but we were here a long time prior to 1492.
The question of who the Americas were populated is a rich one. In part because America could have been populated from Asia via the Beringa land bridge or by boat island hoping from NE Asia (i.e. Japan or Korea). From Europe during the Ice Age either walking over the permanent sea ice from Britain, to Iceland and Geenland to the NE USA or by boat along the ice's edge. This is how the Inuit get around today in Greenland. Another route is the trade winds between NW Africa and Brazil. The from Europe route is a good explanation from the fact that the famous Clovis sprear point is almost identical to spear points made in Britain and Spain at the same time. Also the Clovis culture appears to arise and radiate from the mid-Atlantic region around the Chesapaeke Bay before spreading west to places like New Mexico. During this time during the end of the last Ice Age the Eastern US was ice bound as far south as Pennsylvania. This area would have been ice free and not unlike Spain of that time. Spear points used in Asia were Folsom-style and actually replace those used by Clovis cultures suggesting that Clovis using peoples were replaced by Asians. This is about 10,000 years ago. Climate change in the form of the Younger-Dryas Event or a sereral hundred year relapse into very cold and dry ice age conditions may have stressed Clovis cultures to the breaking point clearing the way for the Asians.
Don't forget the long running theory that NA's are one of the 10 lost tribes of Israel, and that DNA markers have comfirmed consistancies within Jewish peoples and Cherokee peoples.
especially some of the North American and the Alaskan tribes
I heard they followed the bufalo herds and ended up in north america
Ya because they came from Asia! Native Americans came from North East Asian and walked over the land bridge during the last ice age into Alaska. Genetically speaking they are pretty similar as well.
In regards to Goodpasture's statement about blue-eyed Cherokees before the white man came....then something about peace offerings of the Viking and Asians??? Peace offerings from Vikings? Mongols? Two of the most violently aggressive, conquering, rapers and pillagers in all history? Ewe, think not. Sounds like a simple case of brutal R & P to me.
After skimming through many of these posts I have come to the same conclusion that I read early on in Redbird's post. Scientists/ Anthropologist don't know squat and are just shooting from the hip like everyone else. You can conjecture on how old a bone is by where you find it and how deep you find it, but you have no actual proof. One Anthropologist guesses, "Oh, because of the layer we found it in we believe it to be 20 billion years old." Then another scientist argues, "Naw couldn't be, another theory says the layer you found it in is actually only 20,000 years old."
To give my opinion in regard to the title of this thread...."Hey, I didn't notice it until someone else pointed it out." Yet their stating this sort of stabled the Native Americans are actually only lost and wandering Asians theory into my brain for many years. Prior to this, I didn't think they even looked alike. Two of my best friends growing up were a Cherokee/White mix. They didn't look Asian at all to me, of course the white might have blurred some of the possible Asian influence in their blood line but truly, to be very honest, I think most Native Americans look like their own unique race. As I stated in another post I am an uber mutt but most people would swear up and down that I am 100% Celtic. Looks can be deceiving, especially considering all the flirting between the continents over the past billion years or so.
Furthermore, as another poster said DNA is still in it's infancy - even 5 years after this post was started. When a DNA test can give us an exact line of our ancestral roots then we can truly start proving some of these "theories." However I don't think it can or if it ever does that ancestral tree is not going to fork, it will lead right back to Africa for all of us yet not because of "Lucy's boney link to the apes", which has now been declared as total hogwash by the way, but because yes, maybe that was where the Garden of Eden was. Then again maybe it won't prove that was where we started. Maybe humans have not uncovered enough evidence about ourselves in each country to put a "stick a fork in it, it's done," tag on this "Out of Africa" theory.
As for any of the evolutionists out there, “Don't you ever point at an ape in my presence and tell me that is my great great grandpa.” I'll just haul off and slap you up side the head if you do. Then the dirty ape might throw his poop in your face before he licks the remains off his fingers. Besides who was the first idiot to look at an ape and say, “Gracious sakes, that ape bears an uncanny resemblance to my uncle Doug. Especially when he puts his finger up his butt hole and then his nostril like that. Just look honey, now he's wafting his finger in the air right in front of his nose and rolling his eyes - as if embracing the aromatic complexity of a fine wine. Gosh, I wonder if we're related?”
Well, that man's uncle Doug must have been one ill-mannered and butt-ugly fella.
Last edited by GINGERSNAP1963; 01-01-2013 at 10:56 PM..
If 17,000 years of occupation doesn't qualify for 'native', what does? Native Americans' very distant ancestors may have been Asian, but they are not now, except for the faint genetic traces.
I would suggest that time isn't nearly as important as the fact that Native Americans were as far as we can tell the first modern humans to occupy the American continents. To me that's pretty freaking native.
As for the "faint genetic traces" ah... those traces aren't all that faint.
Southern Altaians, were pinpointed as the specific population sharing a genetic lineage with Native Americans. The southern cultural traditions shares “greater affinities with Mongolians and Central Asians than they do with northern Altaians,” the study found.
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Redbird was right.
between the continents over the past billion years or so. 
