Choose a different title name

[ThatHawaiiGuy]

America's founding fathers are Japanese
By David Derbyshire, Science Correspondent
(Filed: 31/07/2001)


THE Japanese discovered and colonised America thousands of years before the Vikings or Christopher Columbus, according to a new study.

Scientists investigating how humans spread across the world have found evidence that Japan was the launch pad into the New World 15,000 years ago.

Previously anthropologists assumed that America was colonised from mainland China or Mongolia. The findings come from a study comparing 21 facial characteristics of modern and prehistoric skulls collected from Europe, Asia and America.

By measuring the sizes of facial features, the team of American, Chinese and Mongolian scientists put together a family tree of ethnic groups and a map of how humans may have spread.

Most anthropologists believe that humans evolved in Africa, colonising the world in waves. By 17,000 years ago the last great Ice Age was ending and the glaciers were retreating. For the first time people living in Asia could move north.

By 15,000 years ago the first humans crossed into America, according to the team led by Dr Loring Brace, professor of anthropology at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.

His study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, found these settlers were not linked with any known mainland Asian population.

Instead, they showed ties to the Ainu peoples living in Japan at the same time and their predecessors, known as the Jomon. Their descendants include the Iroquois, the Blackfoot and the Sioux.

http://news.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2001/07/31/wyank31.xml