[ajross]

Uh... who? I mean, yes, it's true that almost all native americans (the exceptions being the Inuit and their relatives who are more recent immigrants) are descendants of a single wave of population motion out of asia about 12kya that coincides closely with the Clovis culture.

But hints that there were people here before that have been around for a long time, starting with the Monte Verde work in Chile a few decades back.

And I don't recall any particular "mess" from indigenous americans.

I mean, scientifically there's definitely a big question of why the population density of the earlier settlers seems to have been so low (vs. clovis, which basically exploded onto the scene and went everywhere on the continent very fast), or why they are not identifiable in contemporary DNA (which very closely supports the "clovis only" hypothesis).

But there's no politics at work here. Stop it.

[PaulDavisThe1st]

Just to clarify: you're saying that genetic analysis appears to rule out current natives being (at least partially) descended from a pre-clovis population?

[ajross]

I'm not an expert. But yes, that's my understanding. The pre-clovis americans seem to have died out and not integrated.

[Causality1]

Correct. The evidence isn't exactly overflowing but what little there is indicates the Clovis migration was not a peaceful one and existing populations either met a violent end or were forced to move to areas where their populations couldn't be sustained and slowly died out.

The parallels to the European genocide of Native Americans has significant consequences to two groups of people. The first is the white supremacists/edgelords who think an invasion from thousands of years ago means the actions of colonial Europeans as well as ongoing social justice issues with native Americans/reservations are somehow justified or deserved. The second is the far larger but far less dangerous group of people who think native Americans are somehow inherently morally superior and/or that European colonialism is responsible for all the world's problems. To them it's an article of faith that aboriginal peoples do not and cannot commit large-scale atrocities.

These two groups can make discussing and teaching American pre-history very difficult.

[shusaku]

I don’t understand how it would be possible for the Clovis culture to conquer an earlier people without leaving a genetic record. I mean we even have Neanderthal DNA in each of us. Surely they would have intermingled?

[PaulDavisThe1st]

One answer would be that there was no conquering. That could happen via a few possibilities:

1. pre-Clovis people were so thinly spread that Clovis was able to just fill in the gaps

2. pre-Clovis people had actually essentially become extinct before Clovis arrived. It's not easy to see how that would be the case in a continent(s) of this size, but not actually implausible.

3. as a combination of the two, pre-Clovis culture was completely nomadic, and their constant migration kept them out of the way of Clovis until a point where their population was so diminished as to leave no descendants, even via inter-breeding.

[Causality1]

To the best of my knowledge we don't have a good explanation yet. Maybe the genetic evidence is there but so scant we don't recognize it.