Thursday, November 21, 2013

DNA and arrows of migration nonsense

There are several articles out today about a boy's body, found in Eastern Siberia, 24,000 years old, with DNA matching European and Native American DNA. The "obvious" conclusion is that the DNA got like this because Europeans came to Siberia and Siberians came to American. Apparently in the minds of Euro centric archeologists, all human migrations are west-to-east. Of course no such directions exist in the data - at least not the data presented.
 
For me, this is another example of how discredited is the whole subject of DNA comparison.

2 comments :

Curt Hoffman said...

DNA comparison may be legitimate, but not in a sample of only one individual! It seemed to me that they were making awfully grandiose conclusions on the basis of a single find.

pwax said...

Agreed.