On Sun, 27 Oct 2002, Janice Klein wrote:

+++++ [CLIP] +++++
> I can't say that I find it terribly sinister when the Native American
groups expect that we will represent their creation stories in as
straightforward and non-biased way as we represent scientists' creation
stories.   Just because the former has great turtles and holes in the sky
and the latter includes an ape-like creature named Lucy and a mythological
land bridge between Asia and North America...
>
================================

Dear Janice:

I have no problem at all with this in the context of an anthropological
museum or presentation, and I'm sure that wasn't the issue that started
this "thread" on Museum-L.  The political (and other) pressures are not
focused on this: indeed I suspect that Christian Fundamentalists would
be the ones who would object to a museum presenting as fact non-Christian
cosmologies such as those of Native Americans.

However, the physical connection between Asia and N. America during the
lowered sea levels of the height of the last Glaciation, and that this
ended around 10,000 years ago, are not "mythological".  They are
demonstrable scientific facts, at least as secure as e.g. the forensic
evidence relied on hundreds of times a day in the criminal
courts.  A  "land bridge" of the traditional model probably wasn't
necessary anyway, since it is clear that the human migration to the
Australian continent (probably tens of thousands of years before the
arrival of humans in the Americas) must have involved ocean
navigation. There are also tantalising rumours or hints emerging from the
current global DNA mapping that at least one of the main genetic lineages
in N. America suggests a possible European, not Asian, origin for one of
the half dozen or more Native American lineages, but as far as I know
there has not yet been any "peer-reviewed" publication of this evidence
yet.




Patrick Boylan

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