Young Genealogy
To search for Revolutionary War Pensions: http://www.genealogytoday.com/roots/xweb.mv?xc=Surname.Search&xo=gentoday&sn=young&xz=gt-home2
Early records of births and deaths in Virginia are almost non-existent. Official records of births and deaths were not kept until 1853. The Virginia Historical Society says that Virginia wills prior to 1800 are listed in Clayton Torrence's Virginia Wills and Administrations, 1632–1800
1623 Census of Jamestown, Virginia
Dr. John Woodson
Record of attending Oxford University to become a doctor (look under Wooddeson, John)
https://www.british-history.ac.uk/alumni-oxon/1500-1714/pp1674-1697
http://files.usgwarchives.net/va/jamestown/census/1623cens.txt
In this document, on page 172, it shows John Woodson as living at Jordan's Jorney. A little further down it shows Sara Woodson's name and that she had 6 "Negors".
English settlers began arriving at Jamestown in 1607, and the property at Jordan's Point was first known as Beggars Bush and then as "Jordan’s Journey" in 1619. It was then located in Charles Cittie (sic), a "burrough" (sic) or "incorporation" (sic) of the Virginia Company of London, the early proprietor of the Virginia Colony. The first recorded owner was Samuel Jordan, who with his wife, Cecily, her two daughters, and their adult male servants, took up residence around 1620, Samuel Jordan died in 1623, and his widow married William Farrar, who moved to Jordan’s Journey, which appears to have been abandoned by 1635.
It is recorded in The Generall Historiie of Virginia, New-England and the Summer Isles, by John Smith (1624) that during the Indian uprising by the Pamunkeys in 1622 when many settlers were killed that “Master Samuel Iordan gathered together but a few of the straglers about him at Beggers Bush which he fortified and lived in despight of the enemy”. (http://docsouth.unc.edu/southlit/smith/smith.html)
Then, according to the Muster records of 20 January 1624/5, John Woodson was living at Peirseys Hundred.
(http://www.virtualjamestown.org/Muster/search.muster.cgi?muster=Woodson+John%&start_page=0&search_)
The originals of the 1623/4 census and the 1624/5 Muster are in the Public Record Office, London, England.
Thomas Young, born 1745 in Augusta County, VA
From Nita : You know, it's quite logical to think that Richard and Thomas were, if not brothers then cousins. And I'm sure we are going to fit in there too. Did you notice how the report kept saying we are Scots. That's exactly what grandpa and his uncles always said. Funny how families always seemed to know where they were from. Not so much anymore. Anyway, about Thomas. He first showed up in Augusta co, Virginia. He is supposedly in the books on the Scots Irish. He migrated to Burke Co NC, later split and where lived he lived became McDowell Co. We are also McDowell's but that another story. Thomas was a Loyalist as was his father in law. He also had many sons. I'm sure I have more info on him, but I'll have to get it out tonight.
Augusta County's original territory included most of western and southwestern Virginia, as well as most of what would become the state of West Virginia, the future state of Kentucky, and the Illinois territory. Major reductions to Augusta's territory included the creations of the counties of Hampshire (1754) and Botetourt (1770), and the loss of the other far western lands of the county (the creation of Yohogania, Monongalia, and Ohio counties from the District of West Augusta in 1776 and the creation of Illinois County in 1778). The subsequent creations of the counties of Rockingham and Rockbridge (both 1778), Pendleton (1788), and Bath (1791) brought Augusta County to its current boundaries.
Col. Richard Young
Was born in Fauquier county, Virginia about 1745. He emigrated to Kentucky in 1780, having married previous to that time to Mary Moore of Fredericksburg, VA. He settled in Fayette county and owned many thousands of acres, and 22 slaves. The county of Woodford was formed in 1788 and his residence was in the new county near Versailles.
In 1792, he was one of the founders of the town of Versailles (see Collins' History of Kentucky, Volume II, p.763). He was a member of the convention of 1792 that formed the first constitution of Kentucky (see Collins', p. 355). He was elected to the Kentucky's House of Representatives and was re-elected successively from 1792 to 1803 (see Collins', p. 764).
He served in the Revolutionary war as a Colonel and died 23 Oct 1815 before the pension laws of 1818 were made, hence his name is not recorded.
He had 3 sons: Richard M., Merritt, and A.G. (full name unknown). He had 4 daughters: Mrs. Henry Lee, Mrs. Benjamin Vance, Mrs. Francis Johnson, and Mrs. Alice Jackson (wife of John Jackson).
The History of Woodford County, Kentucky by William E. Railey, Genealogical Publishing Company - 1938, Library of Congress Catalog Number 74-21773 talks about him on page 70 and on page 72 it says "Admiral Lucian Young of the Navy, and Dr. Frank O'Neal Young, of Lexington, Kentucky, were related to Col. Richard Young.". They had to be his descendants because Admiral Lucien Young was born 31 March 1852 in Lexington, KY and Dr. Frank Young was his brother.
Family Tree DNA - Genealogy by Genetics, Ltd
Y-DNA - Ancestral Origins: R1b1a2 (R-M269)
Exact Match Country Match
Ireland 24,064
Northern Ireland 1,816
Scotland 21,425
Genetic Distance -10 Country Match
England 13,931
France 13,366
Germany 12,073
Ireland 24,064
Italy 3,335
Northern Ireland 1,816
Scotland 21,425
Spain 3,351
United Kingdom 10,657
United States Native
American 12,563
67 Marker - 1 Country Match Russia 19,687
About Your Haplogroup
The R-M269 lineage has been shown to have originally begun about 25 to 30 thousand years ago in West Asia from the area between the Ural and Caucasus Mountains of modern day Central and Southern Russia. It is the descendant of the major R-M343 lineage. (Note: this is where the term Caucasian came from)
A large portion of your ancient genetic cousins migrated from Western Russia and on to Europe (to include Scotland, Ireland, France, Spain and Italy) around twenty thousand years ago. This was your R1b ancestors. A part of this group that settled in France, Spain, and Italy (around the western edge of the Iberian Peninsula) were part of the Solutrean culture that migrated to the North American continent across the Atlantic ice during the Ice Age that happened from fifteen to twenty thousand years ago. They probably walked on the ice when that was possible and by animal skinned boats which they carried with them for when it was not possible to walk. This is your United States Native American match.
Another small part of the above ancestors split off from the main group and migrated to various Scandinavian countries which includes the countries of Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Finland and Iceland. Some of them may have ventured to the North American continent with the Vikings and may have stayed here instead of returning home.
A much smaller portion migrated south and entered the Levant Region. Levant, a name applied to the lands of the eastern Mediterranean. The term, once widely used but now becoming obsolete, refers to Israel when talked about today.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
This part of the report is what I researched after I received the above DNA report
A new discovery of ancient DNA may overturn the idea that the Native Americans were the first to have populated the American continent. Instead, according to rawstreetjournal.com, a new group known as the ancient Beringians, who are more closely related to modern white Europeans has been discovered by researchers.
The newly-discovered group, named “ancient Beringians,” appears to have split off from the Western Asians around 15,000 to 20,000 years ago and made their way to today's North America when frozen northern Atlantic ice made the crossing from Europe into North America possible. The ancient Beringians then pushed south as the ice caps melted and eventually mixed with other Asian Native American populations who had later come across the Alaskan ice bridge, which is why many Native Americans today also exhibit physical characteristics more commonly associated with whites.
According to the National Park Service: "The Shared Beringian Heritage Program recognizes and celebrates the unique natural resources and rich cultural heritage shared by Russia and the United States across the landscapes and seascapes known as Beringia."
(https://www.nps.gov/subjects/beringia/index.htm)
Watch Video's of proof of Stone Age Europeans were the first Americans
12 minutes - DNA and skull proof - http://www.youtube.com/watch?annotation_id=annotation_508076&feature=iv&index=17&list=UUzscBxFIRWGMXGs3g4N103w&src_vid=kNTXCMYjwEk&v=ccjAYIHihpc
1 hour 30 minutes - Ice Age Columbus - http://www.hotdocumentaries.com/ice-age-columbus-who-were-the-first-americans-2/
Books & Articles
http://www.naturaleater.com/science-articles/north_atlantic_ice-edge_corridor.pdf
Across Atlantic Ice - http://books.google.com/books?id=hq8cUUHPRJkC&printsec=frontcover&dq=across+atlantic+ice&hl=en&sa=X&ei=3tW9UeHwBIyy9gSp9YHYCQ&ved=0CC8Q6AEwAA
Traveling across the Ice
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nyfw-kmI-pE
Across Atlantic Ice is the result of more than a decade’s research by leading archaeologists Bruce Bradley of the University of Exeter in the United Kingdom, and Dennis Stanford of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C. Through archaeological evidence, they turn the long-held theory of the origins of New World populations on its head.
Groundbreaking discoveries from the east coast of North America are demonstrating that people who are believed to be Clovis ancestors (pre-Clovis) arrived in this area no later than 18,450 years ago and possibly as early as 25,000 years ago. These people went on to populate America’s east coast, eventually spreading at least as far as Venezuela in South America.
Early evidence of humans in Wisconsin is suggested by the cut and pry marks on the lower limb bones of a mammoth recovered from Mud Lake. These bones have been carbon-dated to 16,000 years ago (2,500 years before Clovis man) and scientist today are also using a newer technique known as optically stimulated luminescence. This measures light energy trapped in minerals to reveal how long ago the soil was last exposed to sunlight.
Four other sites-Meadowcroft Rockshelter (Pennsylvania), Page-Ladson (Florida), Buttermilk Creek (40 miles northwest of Austin, TX), and Paisley Cave (Oregon) provide additional evidence of humans in North America dating to about 14,600 years ago (or 1,000 years before Clovis man).
In 2008, researchers from the University of Oregon and the University of Copenhagen recovered human DNA from coprolites — preserved human feces — found in the dry Paisley Cave in eastern Oregon. The coprolites had been deposited 14,600 years ago, placing humans in the Americas before the Clovis people.
This discovery inspired other scholars to re-examine old finds with new techniques. In the 1970s, for instance, a farmer in Washington State found a mastodon rib with a bone shard lodged in it, as if the mastodon had been killed with a weapon. Since the mastodon remains predated the earliest Clovis sites by eight centuries, the nature of the finding was initially disputed. But in 2011, researchers led by the Texas A&M archaeologist Michael R. Waters announced that by analyzing the rib and the embedded fragment using scanning and modeling techniques, they had confirmed that the embedded bone was a spear point — showing that humans in the Americas were hunting the animals with bone-tipped spears long before the end of the ice age and before the Clovis peoples.
As Europe’s climate worsened during the run-up to the last ice age, our ancient cousins would have done what they needed to do to survive. They learned to exploit the available resources and developed many technological innovations to improve their efficiency at doing so. If they couldn’t live in the barren Alps, they moved to the river valleys and seacoasts. If they couldn’t track bison and elk, they learned to fish for cod and flounder. As the worsening climate brought sea ice farther south over many centuries - until the Atlantic froze solid from France to Canada - they learned to hunt the seals, walruses and flightless great auks that frequented ice floes. The fisherman who knew where to cut an ice hole could find the fish. Caribou migrating south could be caught in quantities to survive through the winter, providing a good supply of meat and fat. Seals need a breathing hole to obtain air and knowledgeable hunters knew how to identify those critical locations. In the Subarctic forests, moose leave clear tracks, ruffed grouse collect in groups near tree roots and rabbit's winter tracks make them easy to locate. Hunters can provide themselves with an excellent diet, in fact, because of the winter.
The Solutreans were maritime people; there are shellfish remains at their sites, as well as cave paintings of seals and ocean fish. The Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) forced the Solutrean population to the coast. For people adapted to Arctic conditions, seaward was the direction of plenty. Unlike the glaciated inland, the sea ice edge was one of the world’s richest environments for food. And an archipelago of ice stretched across the North Atlantic at the time, connecting Europe and America.
These were not the mammoth hunters of cartoon drawings, wearing off-the-shoulder hides and brandishing clubs. Like indigenous peoples of Arctic regions in recent centuries, they must have worn protective clothing. Being out on the ice, they would have learned to harvest the fruits of what todays Inuit elders called the ‘garden at their doorstep'; camping on ice floes, drinking water from icebergs, and burning blubber for
heat . Caribou-skin or polar bear-skin clothing can provide warmth for a hunter who lies on the ice for hours waiting for his target to appear. The caribou fur, for example, provides very effective insulation especially in the early autumn when the caribou are growing new winter coats. The density of the new hair is amazing: each follicle of hair is hollow, providing a "cushion of air." Skilled at preparing hides and sewing seams, the women designed very well-insulated clothing. Dressed in two layers of caribou hide, with the inner fur against the skin and the outer toward the air, a hunter can stay warm even in the most extreme conditions.
Proof of these adaptations are found in cave art and bone artifacts such as eyed needles - handy for sewing seal gut into waterproof parkas and walrus hides into kayaks.
As they traveled across the ice they would needed to stop to rest for several days to replenish their meat supplies. They would build an igloo made from blocks of wind-packed, dry snow. An igloo can be erected in as little as half an hour. The snow, like the hair of the caribou, traps the air within. Inside, a seal-oil lamp can provide enough warmth for people to sit comfortably in a single layer of clothing.
Exploratory instincts can be powerful, but a successful colonizing propagule (any structure capable of being propagated or acting as an agent of reproduction) would need to be quite large—probably in excess of 30 people—and gender balanced, and the high risk of failure in leaving familiar hunting grounds and venturing far along the ice-front must have been obvious from the outset.
The first Ice Age Europeans to reach the North American continent had boats, though no traces of boats have ever been found. Nor are they likely to be found, because early mariners sailed seas that were 400 feet lower than now, and the coasts lay as much as 40 miles seaward of modern shores; marine Solutrean sites would be under water today.
When they reached the temperate prairies, the migrants found an environment far different from what we know today—both fantastic and terrifying. There were mammoths, mastodons, giant sloths, camels, bison, lions, saber-toothed cats, cheetahs, dire wolves weighing 150 pounds, eight-foot beavers and short-faced bears that stood more than six feet tall on all fours and weighed 1,800 pounds.
Eventually the American descendents of Solutrean immigrants met up with the people who crossed from Beringia (eastern Russia), and the Clovis technology was born.
A haplogroup is a means of grouping people according to the presence of a common set of genes in their DNA. Haplogroups are large – that is, many individuals will share the same haplogroup marker genes – and tend to be concentrated in geographic regions. By understanding the rate at which a marker mutates, haplogroups can serve as means of tracing human migrations using genetics.
There are five haplogroups found in the genes of present-day Native Americans, labeled A, B, C, D, plus an appropriately named haplogroup X. The first four haplogroups are commonly found in East Asia. But it is the origin of haplogroup X that may have the most significance for the Solutrean Hypothesis. While less common than the other four haplogroups, it is still widespread, even in South America, and is found in greatest frequency in the tribes of the northeastern United States. This marker cannot be traced back to a shared ancestor anywhere in Siberia or eastern Asia, but it is similar to a haplogroup in European populations.
)
Early records of births and deaths in Virginia are almost non-existent. Official records of births and deaths were not kept until 1853. The Virginia Historical Society says that Virginia wills prior to 1800 are listed in Clayton Torrence's Virginia Wills and Administrations, 1632–1800
1623 Census of Jamestown, Virginia
Dr. John Woodson
Record of attending Oxford University to become a doctor (look under Wooddeson, John)
https://www.british-history.ac.uk/alumni-oxon/1500-1714/pp1674-1697
http://files.usgwarchives.net/va/jamestown/census/1623cens.txt
In this document, on page 172, it shows John Woodson as living at Jordan's Jorney. A little further down it shows Sara Woodson's name and that she had 6 "Negors".
English settlers began arriving at Jamestown in 1607, and the property at Jordan's Point was first known as Beggars Bush and then as "Jordan’s Journey" in 1619. It was then located in Charles Cittie (sic), a "burrough" (sic) or "incorporation" (sic) of the Virginia Company of London, the early proprietor of the Virginia Colony. The first recorded owner was Samuel Jordan, who with his wife, Cecily, her two daughters, and their adult male servants, took up residence around 1620, Samuel Jordan died in 1623, and his widow married William Farrar, who moved to Jordan’s Journey, which appears to have been abandoned by 1635.
It is recorded in The Generall Historiie of Virginia, New-England and the Summer Isles, by John Smith (1624) that during the Indian uprising by the Pamunkeys in 1622 when many settlers were killed that “Master Samuel Iordan gathered together but a few of the straglers about him at Beggers Bush which he fortified and lived in despight of the enemy”. (http://docsouth.unc.edu/southlit/smith/smith.html)
Then, according to the Muster records of 20 January 1624/5, John Woodson was living at Peirseys Hundred.
(http://www.virtualjamestown.org/Muster/search.muster.cgi?muster=Woodson+John%&start_page=0&search_)
The originals of the 1623/4 census and the 1624/5 Muster are in the Public Record Office, London, England.
Thomas Young, born 1745 in Augusta County, VA
From Nita : You know, it's quite logical to think that Richard and Thomas were, if not brothers then cousins. And I'm sure we are going to fit in there too. Did you notice how the report kept saying we are Scots. That's exactly what grandpa and his uncles always said. Funny how families always seemed to know where they were from. Not so much anymore. Anyway, about Thomas. He first showed up in Augusta co, Virginia. He is supposedly in the books on the Scots Irish. He migrated to Burke Co NC, later split and where lived he lived became McDowell Co. We are also McDowell's but that another story. Thomas was a Loyalist as was his father in law. He also had many sons. I'm sure I have more info on him, but I'll have to get it out tonight.
Augusta County's original territory included most of western and southwestern Virginia, as well as most of what would become the state of West Virginia, the future state of Kentucky, and the Illinois territory. Major reductions to Augusta's territory included the creations of the counties of Hampshire (1754) and Botetourt (1770), and the loss of the other far western lands of the county (the creation of Yohogania, Monongalia, and Ohio counties from the District of West Augusta in 1776 and the creation of Illinois County in 1778). The subsequent creations of the counties of Rockingham and Rockbridge (both 1778), Pendleton (1788), and Bath (1791) brought Augusta County to its current boundaries.
Col. Richard Young
Was born in Fauquier county, Virginia about 1745. He emigrated to Kentucky in 1780, having married previous to that time to Mary Moore of Fredericksburg, VA. He settled in Fayette county and owned many thousands of acres, and 22 slaves. The county of Woodford was formed in 1788 and his residence was in the new county near Versailles.
In 1792, he was one of the founders of the town of Versailles (see Collins' History of Kentucky, Volume II, p.763). He was a member of the convention of 1792 that formed the first constitution of Kentucky (see Collins', p. 355). He was elected to the Kentucky's House of Representatives and was re-elected successively from 1792 to 1803 (see Collins', p. 764).
He served in the Revolutionary war as a Colonel and died 23 Oct 1815 before the pension laws of 1818 were made, hence his name is not recorded.
He had 3 sons: Richard M., Merritt, and A.G. (full name unknown). He had 4 daughters: Mrs. Henry Lee, Mrs. Benjamin Vance, Mrs. Francis Johnson, and Mrs. Alice Jackson (wife of John Jackson).
The History of Woodford County, Kentucky by William E. Railey, Genealogical Publishing Company - 1938, Library of Congress Catalog Number 74-21773 talks about him on page 70 and on page 72 it says "Admiral Lucian Young of the Navy, and Dr. Frank O'Neal Young, of Lexington, Kentucky, were related to Col. Richard Young.". They had to be his descendants because Admiral Lucien Young was born 31 March 1852 in Lexington, KY and Dr. Frank Young was his brother.
Family Tree DNA - Genealogy by Genetics, Ltd
Y-DNA - Ancestral Origins: R1b1a2 (R-M269)
Exact Match Country Match
Ireland 24,064
Northern Ireland 1,816
Scotland 21,425
Genetic Distance -10 Country Match
England 13,931
France 13,366
Germany 12,073
Ireland 24,064
Italy 3,335
Northern Ireland 1,816
Scotland 21,425
Spain 3,351
United Kingdom 10,657
United States Native
American 12,563
67 Marker - 1 Country Match Russia 19,687
About Your Haplogroup
The R-M269 lineage has been shown to have originally begun about 25 to 30 thousand years ago in West Asia from the area between the Ural and Caucasus Mountains of modern day Central and Southern Russia. It is the descendant of the major R-M343 lineage. (Note: this is where the term Caucasian came from)
A large portion of your ancient genetic cousins migrated from Western Russia and on to Europe (to include Scotland, Ireland, France, Spain and Italy) around twenty thousand years ago. This was your R1b ancestors. A part of this group that settled in France, Spain, and Italy (around the western edge of the Iberian Peninsula) were part of the Solutrean culture that migrated to the North American continent across the Atlantic ice during the Ice Age that happened from fifteen to twenty thousand years ago. They probably walked on the ice when that was possible and by animal skinned boats which they carried with them for when it was not possible to walk. This is your United States Native American match.
Another small part of the above ancestors split off from the main group and migrated to various Scandinavian countries which includes the countries of Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Finland and Iceland. Some of them may have ventured to the North American continent with the Vikings and may have stayed here instead of returning home.
A much smaller portion migrated south and entered the Levant Region. Levant, a name applied to the lands of the eastern Mediterranean. The term, once widely used but now becoming obsolete, refers to Israel when talked about today.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
This part of the report is what I researched after I received the above DNA report
A new discovery of ancient DNA may overturn the idea that the Native Americans were the first to have populated the American continent. Instead, according to rawstreetjournal.com, a new group known as the ancient Beringians, who are more closely related to modern white Europeans has been discovered by researchers.
The newly-discovered group, named “ancient Beringians,” appears to have split off from the Western Asians around 15,000 to 20,000 years ago and made their way to today's North America when frozen northern Atlantic ice made the crossing from Europe into North America possible. The ancient Beringians then pushed south as the ice caps melted and eventually mixed with other Asian Native American populations who had later come across the Alaskan ice bridge, which is why many Native Americans today also exhibit physical characteristics more commonly associated with whites.
According to the National Park Service: "The Shared Beringian Heritage Program recognizes and celebrates the unique natural resources and rich cultural heritage shared by Russia and the United States across the landscapes and seascapes known as Beringia."
(https://www.nps.gov/subjects/beringia/index.htm)
Watch Video's of proof of Stone Age Europeans were the first Americans
12 minutes - DNA and skull proof - http://www.youtube.com/watch?annotation_id=annotation_508076&feature=iv&index=17&list=UUzscBxFIRWGMXGs3g4N103w&src_vid=kNTXCMYjwEk&v=ccjAYIHihpc
1 hour 30 minutes - Ice Age Columbus - http://www.hotdocumentaries.com/ice-age-columbus-who-were-the-first-americans-2/
Books & Articles
http://www.naturaleater.com/science-articles/north_atlantic_ice-edge_corridor.pdf
Across Atlantic Ice - http://books.google.com/books?id=hq8cUUHPRJkC&printsec=frontcover&dq=across+atlantic+ice&hl=en&sa=X&ei=3tW9UeHwBIyy9gSp9YHYCQ&ved=0CC8Q6AEwAA
Traveling across the Ice
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nyfw-kmI-pE
Across Atlantic Ice is the result of more than a decade’s research by leading archaeologists Bruce Bradley of the University of Exeter in the United Kingdom, and Dennis Stanford of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C. Through archaeological evidence, they turn the long-held theory of the origins of New World populations on its head.
Groundbreaking discoveries from the east coast of North America are demonstrating that people who are believed to be Clovis ancestors (pre-Clovis) arrived in this area no later than 18,450 years ago and possibly as early as 25,000 years ago. These people went on to populate America’s east coast, eventually spreading at least as far as Venezuela in South America.
Early evidence of humans in Wisconsin is suggested by the cut and pry marks on the lower limb bones of a mammoth recovered from Mud Lake. These bones have been carbon-dated to 16,000 years ago (2,500 years before Clovis man) and scientist today are also using a newer technique known as optically stimulated luminescence. This measures light energy trapped in minerals to reveal how long ago the soil was last exposed to sunlight.
Four other sites-Meadowcroft Rockshelter (Pennsylvania), Page-Ladson (Florida), Buttermilk Creek (40 miles northwest of Austin, TX), and Paisley Cave (Oregon) provide additional evidence of humans in North America dating to about 14,600 years ago (or 1,000 years before Clovis man).
In 2008, researchers from the University of Oregon and the University of Copenhagen recovered human DNA from coprolites — preserved human feces — found in the dry Paisley Cave in eastern Oregon. The coprolites had been deposited 14,600 years ago, placing humans in the Americas before the Clovis people.
This discovery inspired other scholars to re-examine old finds with new techniques. In the 1970s, for instance, a farmer in Washington State found a mastodon rib with a bone shard lodged in it, as if the mastodon had been killed with a weapon. Since the mastodon remains predated the earliest Clovis sites by eight centuries, the nature of the finding was initially disputed. But in 2011, researchers led by the Texas A&M archaeologist Michael R. Waters announced that by analyzing the rib and the embedded fragment using scanning and modeling techniques, they had confirmed that the embedded bone was a spear point — showing that humans in the Americas were hunting the animals with bone-tipped spears long before the end of the ice age and before the Clovis peoples.
As Europe’s climate worsened during the run-up to the last ice age, our ancient cousins would have done what they needed to do to survive. They learned to exploit the available resources and developed many technological innovations to improve their efficiency at doing so. If they couldn’t live in the barren Alps, they moved to the river valleys and seacoasts. If they couldn’t track bison and elk, they learned to fish for cod and flounder. As the worsening climate brought sea ice farther south over many centuries - until the Atlantic froze solid from France to Canada - they learned to hunt the seals, walruses and flightless great auks that frequented ice floes. The fisherman who knew where to cut an ice hole could find the fish. Caribou migrating south could be caught in quantities to survive through the winter, providing a good supply of meat and fat. Seals need a breathing hole to obtain air and knowledgeable hunters knew how to identify those critical locations. In the Subarctic forests, moose leave clear tracks, ruffed grouse collect in groups near tree roots and rabbit's winter tracks make them easy to locate. Hunters can provide themselves with an excellent diet, in fact, because of the winter.
The Solutreans were maritime people; there are shellfish remains at their sites, as well as cave paintings of seals and ocean fish. The Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) forced the Solutrean population to the coast. For people adapted to Arctic conditions, seaward was the direction of plenty. Unlike the glaciated inland, the sea ice edge was one of the world’s richest environments for food. And an archipelago of ice stretched across the North Atlantic at the time, connecting Europe and America.
These were not the mammoth hunters of cartoon drawings, wearing off-the-shoulder hides and brandishing clubs. Like indigenous peoples of Arctic regions in recent centuries, they must have worn protective clothing. Being out on the ice, they would have learned to harvest the fruits of what todays Inuit elders called the ‘garden at their doorstep'; camping on ice floes, drinking water from icebergs, and burning blubber for
heat . Caribou-skin or polar bear-skin clothing can provide warmth for a hunter who lies on the ice for hours waiting for his target to appear. The caribou fur, for example, provides very effective insulation especially in the early autumn when the caribou are growing new winter coats. The density of the new hair is amazing: each follicle of hair is hollow, providing a "cushion of air." Skilled at preparing hides and sewing seams, the women designed very well-insulated clothing. Dressed in two layers of caribou hide, with the inner fur against the skin and the outer toward the air, a hunter can stay warm even in the most extreme conditions.
Proof of these adaptations are found in cave art and bone artifacts such as eyed needles - handy for sewing seal gut into waterproof parkas and walrus hides into kayaks.
As they traveled across the ice they would needed to stop to rest for several days to replenish their meat supplies. They would build an igloo made from blocks of wind-packed, dry snow. An igloo can be erected in as little as half an hour. The snow, like the hair of the caribou, traps the air within. Inside, a seal-oil lamp can provide enough warmth for people to sit comfortably in a single layer of clothing.
Exploratory instincts can be powerful, but a successful colonizing propagule (any structure capable of being propagated or acting as an agent of reproduction) would need to be quite large—probably in excess of 30 people—and gender balanced, and the high risk of failure in leaving familiar hunting grounds and venturing far along the ice-front must have been obvious from the outset.
The first Ice Age Europeans to reach the North American continent had boats, though no traces of boats have ever been found. Nor are they likely to be found, because early mariners sailed seas that were 400 feet lower than now, and the coasts lay as much as 40 miles seaward of modern shores; marine Solutrean sites would be under water today.
When they reached the temperate prairies, the migrants found an environment far different from what we know today—both fantastic and terrifying. There were mammoths, mastodons, giant sloths, camels, bison, lions, saber-toothed cats, cheetahs, dire wolves weighing 150 pounds, eight-foot beavers and short-faced bears that stood more than six feet tall on all fours and weighed 1,800 pounds.
Eventually the American descendents of Solutrean immigrants met up with the people who crossed from Beringia (eastern Russia), and the Clovis technology was born.
A haplogroup is a means of grouping people according to the presence of a common set of genes in their DNA. Haplogroups are large – that is, many individuals will share the same haplogroup marker genes – and tend to be concentrated in geographic regions. By understanding the rate at which a marker mutates, haplogroups can serve as means of tracing human migrations using genetics.
There are five haplogroups found in the genes of present-day Native Americans, labeled A, B, C, D, plus an appropriately named haplogroup X. The first four haplogroups are commonly found in East Asia. But it is the origin of haplogroup X that may have the most significance for the Solutrean Hypothesis. While less common than the other four haplogroups, it is still widespread, even in South America, and is found in greatest frequency in the tribes of the northeastern United States. This marker cannot be traced back to a shared ancestor anywhere in Siberia or eastern Asia, but it is similar to a haplogroup in European populations.
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