Re: Polynesian canoes (Re: Rat genes solve mystery of great Pacific odyssey

From: Philip Deitiker (Donevenask_at_worlnet.att.net)
Date: 07/24/04 

Date: Sat, 24 Jul 2004 18:39:12 GMT

benlizross <benlizro@ihug.co.nz> says in
news:41021CAA.12E3@ihug.co.nz:

> What people do _not_ seem to have done at that period is
> sail out into an unknown and apparently empty sea, not
> knowing whether there was land on the other side. To do
> that you need not only a seaworthy ship but some means of
> telling where you are and some assurance that you can get
> back if you don't find anything.

I don't know, it might have been a form of banishment.

I am still a bit perplexed as to why there are these strong
connections between Ryukyu and S. Japan and NA in south america,
but very little traces of these haplotypes in the kurils or at
least some isolate or traces along the way. It looks very much
as if people set sail from kyushu or shikoku and ended up in
south of California a very long time ago. Of course it is
possible that all traces of these patterns could have been
eliminated by catastrophe or immigration at some later time, but
trails always leave residues, and the only residue I see are in
the Yakut's and the only pattern they have the resembles
NA/Ryukyu similarities has a feature uncharacteristic of either.

  I could conjecture as follows on the issue. One has to
remember that the new world would be depopulated with respect
to humans, and whale and other large cetecean populations could
have been stressed as a result of climactic changes from the LGM
to the youger dryas. In such a situation there may have been
clusters of marine fish or mammal resources that increasingly
avoided humans in the tropics and clustered in the northwestern
pacific ocean. Under such situations the ancient inhabitants
might have built fishing or hunting platforms or establish a
means of hunting and fish along the edge of the ice, which would
be devoid of predators because of climate changes. The resources
may have been so abundant that people could have lived 'on the
fly' for brief periods and simply followed schools of fish or
sea mammals to the new world and simply followed them as they
migrated between summer and winter feeding grounds.
  I don't think we can neccesarily use the examples of today or
even the last few 1000 years, because humans have become part of
the equation in the arctic and NA, and fisheries may have
shifted to avoid human predation that had no such avoidance
before humans arrived.
  Such conditions may have not existed everywhere, and even when
they existed may have not been tolerant of permanent expansions,
but to say that no circumstance would favor humans to
expeditiously set off into sea with no lands in the port of
departures sites may be oversimplifying. Based on the
archaeology of Japan it is now clear that early and preJomonese
had the capability to collect resources from the deep blue, the
question is now really, how far out did they have to go, how far
beyond this might they have been willing to experiment (test the
waters) and in addition did they find attractants as they moved
out from shore that encouraged them to venture even farther.
  There is one compelling thought I think should be elucidated
with regard to the pacific northwest. The pacific northwest,
just like the outer banks in the altantic appear to be the place
were tropical nutrients would have accumulated in the food chain
from equitorial activities in the south, fish and mammals would
have been attracted to Japan as a protrustion from asia. As it
turns out the ancient-Japanese appear to have been the first to
have invented pottery, but pottery is often associated with
agriculture, Japan being the exception. Further complicating the
matter is that Japan appears to have all the ingrediants for
agriculture, but until very late remained a H/G society. One
could argue very strongly that if it were not for nutrient
production from elsewhere, Japan surely would have adopted
agriculture, particularly intense grain agriculture, earlier. I
think the culture of Japan, even to today, the fact the southern
Japan was dominated with a shell culture that was maritime
oriented, the frequent appearance of maritime food refuse in
campsites, and the genetic connections between Japanese and
South Americans lends to the argument that as a heavily
populated land by late pliestocene early holocene standards, The
focus of Japans nutrient aquisition in many areas would have
been the ocean, the limits to that exploitation are not clear,
but what is clear is that it was attractive enough to delay the
conversion to grain agriculture on a large scale basis
relative to other places in asia. Thus under proper conditions
there might not have been finite limits as to how far people
could travel, and I would stipulate that if the nutrient
availablity for human consumption close to the surface was
continuous or increased from close shore to offshore people
might feel confident to travel with modest maritime
technologies. 

-- 
Philip
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