I know this is a pretty big necrobump, but I just came across this long,
long thing that's extremely relevant to this thread and can't resist the temptation to post about it:
http://anthropogenesis.kinshipstudies.o ... igins-wip/Since it's so huge, there's really no hope of reading it in its entirety (at least in one sitting, especially when tired (I'm always tired...)) but there's some interesting stuff about the Haida and other Native Americans. I'll quote a few paragraphs that stuck out:
Quote:
Ethnographic studies also emphasize the minor role of language (and thus tribe) in population relationships on the Northwest Coast. Instead, socioeconomic organization was more important for what were essentially interactions on the village level. Clans included speakers of different languages and dialects (p. 433).
Quote:
If one branch of a language group is in contact with an unrelated group, it is likely to change faster than its sister languages and in a different direction. It may thus appear by glottochronology to have diverged from its sisters at an earlier date than is actually correct. Renewed contact between branches of the same group can result in borrowings that will make the branches appear to have diverged more recently than is really the case. Extreme contact situations such as those which result in the formation of a pidgin can throw off the results of glottochronology entirely and may even create a false bridge between two unrelated language stocks. An application of glottochronology to English and the English-based pidgin of Papua New Guinea, Tok Pisin, gives a separation date of something like 2,000 B.P., but Tok Pisin has not existed a tenth of that time. Moreover, the fact that Tok Pisin contains words from Malay and Tolai as well as English might convince a scholar from the future that these stocks were closely connected (p. 491).
Quote:
The pairwise comparison of sequences from Native Americans and Mongolians sheds some light on the debate over the number and diversity of migrant populations. The data indicate that Mongolian and Native American populations, including the Haida, have not been isolated from one another for a sufficiently long period of time to generate the mutations needed to result in a leading intermatch distribution. These intermatch distributions resemble the distribution generated when two populations diverge and then expand at approximately the same time (Harpending et al. 1993). p. 1167
The AMOVA analysis between the Haida and other North American populations also does not indicate that the Haida are significantly different from other Native Americans. These data thus suggest that the ancestors of the Haida were included in the initial colonization of the Americas and not the product of a later separate migration from Asia. p. 1167
Quote:
The Bering Sea was never as formidable a barrier as the expanse of glacial Ice that accompanies the return of the Land Bridge. The oscillating levels of the ocean during and following Glacial events has a similar impact in shifting the distances between Islands and Continents. This has a similar impact in isolating populations from mainland populations as was the case for the original inhabitants of New Guinea and Australia
After googling some relevant terms since my interest in this topic is rising again, I also found this thing written by an Estonian, which I didn't read much of yet but seems relevant (even if possibly pretty crackpotty):
http://www.paabo.ca/uirala/uini-altaskinboats.html...apparently, everyone hates this guy with a passion. I'd never heard of him before, but googling him comes up with almost nothing except people negatively calling him an Uralic nationalist, pseudoscientist, etc. Like I said, though, I didn't read much so it could well be that he really is like that (not that being a nationalist is bad, but that's another topic...), but based on what little I did read so far, it didn't really seem like that except that he decided to call the hypothetical ancient culture "Atlantians" and is really trying to hammer his ideas hard, which is kinda disappointing but at least he ends every other sentence with a question mark... and even if he is a total nut, it's still admirable how dedicated he is to writing about this stuff, and even a total nut could shed some light on mysteries by exploring possibilities that others don't consider.
Anyway, has there been any new research into anything? How is Haida currently doing? Is the revitalisation project looking successful?
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) animal heads but human bodies, the Hindu god Ganesha has an elephant's head but a human body, etc. 
