tempforanthro

afaik, or can even imagine, there were no land routes across the Pacific at even glacial maximum.

If you know different, tell.

Nicely summarized.

put a contact in your profile

In this case it really is just a genetic grouping. Refers to the understood native population of, roughly, Australia--there is some overlap nearby.

The subject of human migration as revealed by genetics is super interesting: really puts into perspective how small we are, story wise, and to my mind, lends a sense of gratitude to the almost unimaginable hardships and victories that got us to where we are now, typing words into this temporary format.

I cant comment on Hyerdahl--I just don't know much. A related hole in simian evolutionary theory pertains to new vs old world monkeys, if you want a deep rabbit hole.

edit: the US, afaik, is different in that cultural anthro shares department with archaeology and human/primate genetics at the undergrad level. It's good in the sense that the culturals have to take a bit of science, bad in that politics invade all the subfields.

No worries, though I did not mention Polynesians.

This is not the venue to parse out what Australasian means, but, at least genetically, we would be discussing a much older population.

It is by definition about seafaring people, however, as the only accepted migration path to the americas has been over the bering straights.

edit: oops. now i see where you are coming from. Mea culpa. see comment re Pleistocene boats. Apologies for my derp

I dont want to pollute this thread, but want to briefly describe my time (mid 2000s) as an undergrad with half a double-major in US anthropology.

I was on several occasions warned-off from doing projects that pertained to this very subject and a couple others [examples: h. neanderthalensis relation to modern humans (at the time in the face of mtDNA), some other N. American immigration hypotheses (eg, that pleistocene peoples could make boats)].

Being told repeatedly that authoring research on a subject would ruin a future career eventually drove me out of academia, despite excelling in all other ways. Grad school was worse. It was not a great experience. I could go on at length to describe my perception of why this was/probably still is, but a short take is: the architecture of American social science legitimacy is so delicate that even counter thoughts from undergrads need to be put down.

Somewhat relieving to have all those subjects slowly come into light. Not bitter, but do have a longwinded eyeroll after all this time.

But yes, Pacific cultures visited the Americas pre-Euro contact. It is funny claim otherwise given even a pop-culture understanding of east Asian and Islander seafaring methods of the pre-European era.

Rrrff. End rant.