by Hilary Longstreet

Created on: June 29, 2009

Terrific Teeth: Dental Evidence for the Peopling of the Americas

Origins

The existence of the Americas and the question concerning the origins of the native inhabitants remains a fervently debated subject in American archaeology. Since the discovery of the Americas in 1492 scholars have pondered the origins of the people in the Americas. There was no mention of a landmass between Asia and Europe in the Bible, or any other known written document in the 15th century. This caused early Europeans to create their own ideas about where the people of America came from.

In the sixteenth century scholars began formulating opinions concerning the origins of the people found on what they referred to as the 'New World'. These opinions ranged anywhere from viewing Native Americans as the survivors of Atlantis to one of the lost tribes of Israel (Powell 2005: 17). In 1590, Jesuit Missionary Joseph de Acosta first suggested the idea that somewhere, in either the north or south, there was some sort of land connection or narrow strait connecting the 'Old World' and the 'New World' (Powell 2005: 19). This idea was later agreed upon by a widespread consensus, which states that during the Pleistocene water levels dropped enough to allow a 'land bridge' in the now submerged Beringia area (Zegura 1985: 5). Acosta also disagreed with a widely accepted idea concerning Native Americans and their own Eden and Ark (Powell 2005: 18).

Around the same time as Acosta, Gregario Garcia also proposed a school of thought concerning Native American origins. He was more contentious about the church and developed a less heretical view about the biblical flood. He researched and presented eleven different theories on this subject, some of which investigated the lost-tribes-of-Israel theory, the Atlantis sunken city Model, and Gonzalo Fernandez de Oviedo y Valdez Model. Oviedo's Model explained that Native Americans were originally from Spain or Portugal. They traveled to the Americas with King Rodrigo in AD711 after his defeat by the Moors (Powell 2005: 19).

Both Acosta and Garcia presented the concept that the origins of Native Americans had biological and cultural roots in Asia. This theory was later adopted by eighteenth century naturalists who developed a classification system for modern humans that consisted of three racial groups. These groups were 'Mongoloids', 'Negroids', and 'Caucasiods'. Native Americans were classified as 'Mongoloids' (Powell 2005: 20).

The end of the eighteenth

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