Where did the First Nation American Indians come from?

November is National American Indian and Alaska Native Heritage Month.

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Alaska
is the bridge
from Asia to America

Asians may have crossed Bering Strait

DNA for the Kennewick Man shows he is an ancestor of modern Native Americans

LANGUAGE Carvings link Chinese with American Indians

BEIJING Carvings identical to ancient Chinese characters have been found in American Indian sites dating back thousands of years, the China Daily reported. They so closely resemble the 3,000-year-old Shang Dynasty characters for the sun, sky, rain, water, crops, trees and astronomy that if they had not been found in America, Chinese experts would have classified them automatically as pre-221 B.C. Chinese script, the newspaper said.
American Indian and Chinese pictographs in 56 matching sets were shown to senior academics at a symposium in Anyang, former capital of the Shang Dynasty.

New methodologies have provided anumber of important insights into the peopling of the New World.
Molecular genetic studies of the variation of mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) in Siberian and Amerindian populations have allowed further inferences to be made about the timing of the colonizations, the number of migrations that reached the New World, and possible regions from which ancestral Native Americans might have originated.

What does the mtDNA genome tell us about the diversity of the original migrations into the Americas?
Many studies have now established that the vast majority of modern Native American haplotypes belong to merely four mtDNA lineages, the haplogroups designated A, B, C and D. When subjected to the methods of phylogenetic analysis, the RFLP haplotypes usually segregate into their respective haplogroups, revealing their integrity as genealogical units (Figure 3). Moreover, ancient Amerindian samples obtained from different locations in the New World reveal the same general pattern of mtDNA diversity. Sequencing studies of the HVS-I region also provide an independent confirmation of four primary mtDNA haplogroups in Native Americans. A comparison of Native Americans, Siberians and Asians reveals that the same mtDNA lineages in all groups share mutations in the control region that are specific to the haplogroups. The simplest explanation is that the control region mutations arose in Asia in the founding mtDNA lineages and were carried to the New World by the ancestral Native Americans. Most of the remaining variants in control region sequences of Native Americans appear to be unique (much like their RFLPs). his suggests that Native American and Asian groups diverged rapidly after the founding New World populations separated from their Asian parental populations.
The geographic and linguistic distribution of haplogroups A-to-D in the Americas also suggests that all four of them were present in the original migration(s). All four haplogroups are observed in populations throughout the Americas and are also found in the three proposed Native American linguistic groups (Amerind, Na-Dene, Eskaleut). However, the original Na-Dene Indians and Eskimo-Aleuts appear to have lacked haplogroup B.

Where Did They Come From?
There has been considerable speculation about the areas from which ancestral Paleoindians emerged and expanded into the Americas. Recent studies have suggested that northern China, southeastern Siberia or Mongolia may have been sources because of haplogroup D being present in those regions. The highest frequencies of these four haplogroups occur in the Altai Mountain/Tuva/Lake Baikal region, implying that this general region gave rise to the founders of Native American populations. Otherwise, haplogroup B is absent in the vast majority of native Siberian populations, haplogroup A occurs a very low frequencies outside of Chukotka, and haplogroups C and D are the predominant mtDNA lineages in northern Asia. However, the presence of a certain control region mutation in haplogroups C and D may point to alternative source areas for ancestral Native Americans. This mutation appears in the majority of both haplogroup C and D mtDNAs in Native American populations, suggesting it is part of the original sequence motifs for both of them. Among all Asian and Siberian mtDNAs, however, this mutation only appears in haplogroup C mtDNAs from Mongolia and the Amur River region and in haplogroup D mtDNAs in the Japanese, Korean and Ainu. This distribution suggests that East Asia as well as southeast Siberia or Mongolia might be source areas (or migration pathways) for these two haplogroups.

Zuni Prehistory "Why do the Zunis and the Japanese share a rare kidney disease?
Their language, religion, and blood type are startlingly different from all other tribes. Most puzzling, the Zuni appear to have much in common with the people of Japan.
In a book with ground breaking implications, Dr. Nancy Yaw Davis examines the evidence underscoring the Zuni enigma and suggests the circumstances that may have led Japanese on a religious quest -- searching for the legendary "middle world" of Buddhism -- across the Pacific to the American Southwest more than seven hundred years ago.

Why does Zunian have no known affiliation to any other language in North America? How did the blood allele B get to this pueblo­and not others? Why is the religious system so highly integrated and complex? The Zuni culture is one of the ten most-documented cultures of the world, yet these and numerous other questions persist.14 Indeed, the complexities of the social, religious, and political system have "occupied scholars and defied interpretation by them since the 1890s,"
The twenty contemporary Pueblo groups of the American Southwest stand out as distinctive clusters of communities derived from at least seven different language groups, sharing many characteristics, but continuing individual local traditions in pottery, jewelry, and ceremonies. Unlike the nomadic Navaho and Apache who arrived in the area much later—perhaps as late as the sixteenth century—and who live in households quite separated from each other, Pueblo peoples live in consolidated villages and have long been agriculturalists. In Chapter 9, I speculate on the possibility that the Pueblo groups as a whole share a common link to the Anasazi civilization, which may have incorporated influences from Asia at an earlier time than the one considered here for the Zuni.

MAPS
Zheng He's Inheritance
Chinese Charts of the Americas from Ming back to Xia Speech for Library of Congress 5/16/05
http://www.asiaticfathers.com/speech.htm

THE MAP
The Harris maps were printed from wood block. Most are on mulberry-bark paper and are written in classical Chinese.
Although varying in ages they have only minimal differences. The oldest of the Harris maps are believed to be from the Ming dynasty. The map books themselves are Korean but the world map in each book is a Chinese map. The Korean name for that type map is Ch'onhado meaning “Chinese map.

Case for Other Pre-Columbian Voyagers
Dr. Davis advanced the hypothesis that the Zuni Indians of New Mexico were distinctive in language, culture and biology, compared with other Indians, partly because they may have come in contact with Japanese in the 13th century. She noted similarities between the Zuni and the Japanese in blood chemistry and some basic words. Even the Zuni migration stories, she said, were suggestive in their description of the trek of a distinctive people from the "ocean of the sunset world" in search of the true middle of the world. "I'm not saying the Zuni are Japanese," Dr. Davis said, "but they may include influences from Japan at a particular time."
From the audience arose Joseph Dishta, head councilman of the Zuni tribe in New Mexico. "We do not endorse this theory," Mr. Dishta said. "We have our own interpretation. We always feel we've been in that part of the country since time immemorial. We feel we emerged from the mother earth."

JOURNEY FROM
ASIA TO ALASKA

The Secret History of the Mongols

The Tsataan are an indigenous people living in Northern Mongolia, south of the Sayan mountains in Russia, the region from which reindeer husbandry is said to have originated.

The Kumandins (also Kumandy, Kumanda, Qumandy, Qumanda) are an autonomous people of southern Siberia.

The Nenets the largest nomadic tribe of Russia's frozen Yamal peninsula. The Yamal Peninsula sits in the deep frozen Siberian Tundra above the Arctic Circle. Yamal means the end of the world. There are no roads people use frozen lakes and rivers to get around on reindeer or snowmobile. They have survived the age of the Tsars, the Bolshevik revolution and the chaotic 1990s, but now confront their biggest challenge - under their fur-bundled feet is enough gas to heat the world for five years. Russian Arctic tribe at risk from Yamal gas projects

TOTEM POLES

China Sources:

• Kim, Taegon. "A Study on the Rite of Changsung, Korea's Totem Pole." Korea Journal. p.4-19 March 1983.
• Communication with Timothy Tangherlini, specialist in Korean Folkloristics at the University of California, Los Angeles

American Indian Sources:
Pictures of Totem Poles
Totem poles are an ancient tradition of the Indian tribes of the Pacific Northwest Coast--Washington state in the USA, British Columbia in Canada--and some of the Athabaskan tribes of southern Alaska.

Various Dong People Pictures
We went to the Hong Feng Lake. The drum tower by the lakeshore can be reached by boat, the folksongs similar to the ones we heard.
The Dong ethnic group at Chinese New Year Eve's CCTV Gala in 1994.
Dong Ethnic Song - Song of Cicadas


Drum Tower

Dominating the landscape of a Dong village is the drum tower with its superb formation of multi-storied pagoda-like roofs, constructed to the unique architecture of the Dong Ethnic.
The lower pavilion of each tower is where villagers congregate during festivals and special meetings. People often gather there in the evenings, to listen to traditional folk songs. After harvests, young people hold festive dances on the grounds surrounding the drum tower.
The drum tower is the highest and most revered structure in the village. A giant drum within the tower served in the past as a warning device against invasions. In ancient times, villagers assembled at the tower with their weapons to await orders from the head of their clan.
Drum towers are a specialty and symbol of the Dong nationality. They first appeared in villages along the Yellow River during the Northern Dynasties (386-581 A.D). the oldest standing drum towers date from the Shunzhi period (1644-1661 A.D) of the Qing Dynasty.
A typical large village consists of from 500 to 600 families, and a small one, of about 50 families. As a rule, one village is said to contain families of one or two surnames. Each drum tower signifies one surname; some villages have two or three drum towers, therefore indicating that two or three surnames dominate the village.
The outline of a Dong drum tower resembles a fir tree, a sacred tree in Dong culture. Some anthropologists have suggested that the Dong people used to be tree dwellers, since they are believed to be a branch of the ancient Yue people, a tree dwelling tribe.