mtDNA Haplogroup M in America - 2007 paper revisited

Back in 2014 I posted about Ancient migrants into America carrying mtDNA M haplogroup 5,000 years ago. In it, I mentioned the only study published, in 2007*, on the analysis of remains from a site in British Columbia, Canada (China Lake) and reported finding mtDNA haplogroup M, and suggested, due to the age of the reamains, that it was, together with haplogroups A (A2), B (B2), C (C1b, Cc, C1d9), X (X2a), and D (D1) one of the founding maternal lineages in America.

This groundbreaking paper reported the following:

"We analyzed two mid-Holocene (∼5000 years before present) individuals from North America that belong to mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) haplogroup M, a common type found in East Asia, but one that has never before been reported in ancient or living indigenous populations in the Americas. This study provides evidence that the founding migrants of the Americas exhibited greater genetic diversity than previously recognized, prompting us to reconsider the widely accepted five-founder model that posits that the Americas were colonized by only five founding mtDNA lineages."

* Malhi, Ripian et al. (2007), Mitochondrial haplogroup M discovered in prehistoric North Americans. Journal of Archaeological Science 34, 642-648. doi:10.1016/j.jas.2006.07.004

Nineteen years of Silence

I find it surprising, that in almost 19 years after the publication of the original paper there haven't been andy new studies, research, publications, or confirmation (or refutation) of this finding... What is going on?

Citations

But Malhi's paper was noticed. I checked Google Scholar and saw that there were 85 papers that cited Mahli et al. Yet, none of them seem to deal with this new founding haplogroup.

Mahli's paper specifically thanks the support provided by the "Canoe Creek, Soda Creek, and Dog Creek Bands who allowed the DNA testing of their ancestors". A similar paper, also published in 2007, reported the presence of haplogroup A in 5,000 year-old remains from Big Bar Lake, British Columbia, In this case the haplogroup is one of the recognized founding lineages and the authors stated that "Testing for mitochondrial DNA indicated haplogroup A, which is widespread in living Native Americans. Comparative mtDNA data suggest long-standing genetic continuity in the Pacific Northwest, but with evidence for a genetically diverse population in existence at 5000 BP."

This scientific ratificaton is what Native American communities are looking for, and what they like: continuity and "original people" confirmation. The paper also notes the support from the first people: "Collaboration between anthropologists and the Canoe Creek and High Bar First Nations"

I did find a publication ( Ancient DNA In Canada Reveals New Founding Lineage of Native Americans, Mammoth Trumpet, April 2007, Vol 22 No. 2 p.18), that mentions Malhi's paper and gives advances of his findings. It says, among other things: "These remains are 5,000 years old, and mtDNA recovered from the bones belong to haplogroup M. Like the other five Native American haplogroups, M has its roots in Asia, so it is consistent with the accepted model of the peopling of the Americas that has Asian groups migrating across Beringia, or along the Pacific rim, and into North America. This discovery, however, calls into serious question other aspects of the traditional model. Dr. Malhi and his co-authors write, “Our discovery demonstrates that a more genetically diverse group of migrants colonized the Americas than previously thought and supports the hypothesis that significant undocumented genetic diversity likely still remains in the Americas.” In other words, the discovery of a previously unknown haplogroup not only demonstrates that ancient America was more genetically diverse than modern native America, it also increases the likelihood that more undiscovered haplogroups remain to be revealed by additional research." It also informs that the native tribes and the scientists agreed to rebury the remains after the studies. So, maybe that is why no further research was conducted on them.

A 2015 symposium included a paper by Alexa Walker, Brian Egan and George Nicholas (DNA & Indigeneity Proceedings, p. 5. The Changing Role of Genetics in Indigenous Rights, Tribal Belonging, and Repatriation. Oct. 22, 2015, Vancouover, BC, Canada) which gives a very brief summary of the discovery: "China Lake Ancestors In 1982, two individuals dated to over 6,000 years ago were found in a single burial site near China Lake, British Columbia. Genetic results found that both individuals belong to haplogroup M. Prior to this study, haplogroup M had not been found in any ancient or living North American populations. The results indicate that we still have much to learn about human expansion into the Americas. Further reading: Malhi et al. 2007."

Mahli also attended the symposium and his presentation can be read on page 49 (Partnerships with First Nations of British Columbia on Studies that include DNA Analysis). He again mentions the finding: "However, the China Lake individuals were found to possess a mitochondrial genome not currently found in sampled Indigenous individuals from the Americas. This lineage may either be in very low frequency or it may not exist anymore, possibly as a result of European contact and colonization."

Another paper published in Science (Victor Moreno-Mayar, 2018), in its Supplementary material (see p. 3), gives more details when it mentions the Big Bar Lake mtDNA results adding that "the two individuals recovered from the roughly contemporaneous, nearby China Lake site (the two sites are separated by just ~25 km), which could only be identified to mtDNA superhaplogroup M but excluding haplogroups C and D, a lineage common in East Asia, but otherwise unknown in the Americas. But, once again, it is citing the original, and for now, only paper on this subject, Malhi's 2007 work."

mtDNA M Haplogroup

I will summarize an interesting paper on this haplogroup by Marrero P, Abu-Amero KK, Larruga JM, Cabrera VM. Carriers of human mitochondrial DNA macrohaplogroup M colonized India from southeastern Asia. BMC Evol Biol. 2016 Nov 10;16(1):246. doi: 10.1186/s12862-016-0816-8. PMID: 27832758; PMCID: PMC5105315.

There are no "ancient and autochthonous mtDNA M lineages in western Eurasia", which is strange because the Out of Africa migration had to pass through this area in its initial dispersal, and the M haplogroup is ancient, splitting from the basal African L haplogroup at the time of the Out of Africa migration. The mtDNA M haplogroup is found in Australia, South East Asia, India, China, Arabia, Central Asia, Siberia. It is also found in some parts of North Africa and Europe (due to a back-mirgration from Asia).

The authors support a northern route for its dispersal and not a southern one that followed the coast of the Indian Ocean.

There are M1 lineages in the Mediterranean regions of Europe and the Middle East, and are believed to have arrived there from North Africa during the Paleolithic. And reached Africa from Southern Asia. The M haplogroup curently found among the Finno-Ugaric people in Lapland, the Urals, Northern Russia and Hungary is very recent, and due to a migration originating in East Asia (the Huns settled in Hungary, and we have the Mongols of Gengis Khan too!). There are also historic mixtures of Indian M variants in Mesopotamia and in the Roma (gypsy) people in Europe.

The Expansion route out of Africa: across the Middle East. the authors consider the archaich "fossils of early modern humans at Skhul and Qafzeh" as the first to successfully leave Africa, carrying the L3 haplo with them. They marched with a Northeastern course, and are associated with the early modern humans found in China ~100 ka. The authors propose an older age than generally accepted for the M haplogroup and say: "...we opine that the geneticists should resynchronize the mtDNA molecular clock with the Levant and East Asia fossil records instead of consider them as result of unsuccessful migrations."

These early migrants went north, reaching the Altai Mountains, admixed with Neanderthals and Denisovans there and then headed south due to the harsh weather there, crossing China into Southeast Asia, across Sunda, into Papua New Guinea, the Philippines, and Australia. From SE Asia they headed towards the NW, into India. Later "...in subsequent mild climatic windows, demographic growth dispersed macrohaplogroup M... northwards, most probably from overlapping areas that in time colonized northern Asia and the New World."

The maps below (fig. 2 in the paper) show the original dispersal (a) and the later one (b) including the backflow of M1 into Africa (dashed line).

Could these archaics, with Denisovan and Neanderthal admixture have continued their trek from Altai towards Beringia and then into America, 100,000 years ago? Did they carry the M haplogroup to America? Are the remains from China Lake in Canada the last of a long lineage that was stamped out by later arrivals c. 20 kya?

Considering also that the M haplo is also found in Melanesia... could it suggest an ancient +5ky old transpacific contact between Melanesia and British Columbia?

Continues in my next post.

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2026 by Austin Whittall © 

Japanese junks in Canada

While researching the Chinese and Polynesian voyages to America, I found some references that mentioned junks on the Northwestern coast of America that came from Japan, blown eastwards by typhoons, or dragged away from Japan by the Kuroshio Current (or "Black Current") that in a similar way to the Gulf Stream in the Atlantic, heads with a SW to NE direction along the eastern shores of Taiwan and Japan, towards Bering and the Aleutian Islands. (Kuroshio means "black") or Japan Current, is a powerful, warm ocean current flowing north along the eastern coast of Taiwan.

These wrecks and potential castaways suggest that rafts from Asia could have been dragged across the North Pacific Ocean to the coast of western Canada, Alaska, Washington, Oregon, California, and even further south, to Mexico and South America.

The evidence: shipwrecked junks and castaways

Julian Ralph in his work On Canada's Frontier (1892), recalls that when the first European traders visited the mouth of the Columbia River, they found in the sand a shipwreck and 12,000 pounds (5.4 MT) of beeswax in it, they surmised it was a Japanese junk that had been dragged by the oceanic currents acorss the Pacific. He also mentions a "local legend" about a junk that capsized by Cape Flattery in 1834, with a pottery cargo, and three men on it.

The junk with three men is also mentioned in a book published in 1861: "...in 1833 a junk was cast ashore on the American coast at Cape Flattery opposite Vancouver Island, three men being still alive out of an original crew of seventeen."

Much more detail on both the beeswax wreck and the 1833 junk can be found in the account by Samuel Parker in A Journey Beyond the Rocky Mountains in 1835, 1836, and 1837 (1841):

"Abouth thirty miles south of the river there are the remains of a ship sunk not far from the shore. It is not known by whom she was owned nor from what part of the world she came nor when cast away. The Indians frequently get bees wax from her It is not improbable that she was from some part of Asia.
A Japanese junk was cast away fifteen miles south of Cape Flattery in March 1833. Out of seventeen men only three were saved. In the following May Captain M Neil of the Lama brought the three survivors to Fort Vancouver where they were kindly treated by the gentlemen of the Hudson's Bay Company and in the following October they were sent in one of their ships to England to be forwarded to their own country and home. This junk was laden with rich Chinaware cotton cloths and rice. In the same year eleven Japanese in distress were drifted in a junk to Oahu Sandwich Islands [Note by AW: Now known as Hawaii] It is not very un common for junks and other craft to be found by whale ships in the great Pacific Ocean their crews in a state of starvation without the nautical instruments and skill necessary to enable them to find their way to any port of safety. Undoubtedly many are entirely lost while others drift to unknown shores. May not the above facts throw light upon the original peopling of America which has engaged the attention of men for a long period..."

One of the three men, was Manjiro Nakahama (1827-1898), a 14-year-old boy. Later he was known as John Manjiro and John Mung, by 1846 he had found work on a whaler and visited his former crewmates who remained in Hawaii (unable to return to Japan). John became wealthy in the 1849 California gold rush, and managed to return to Japan, where he became a translator, samurai, and government official; he helped Japan "Westernize" its navy.

The repatriation of the Sandwich Island castaways is described in detail in the January 1838 issue of the Army and Navy Chronicle. The men were sent to Canton, China (now Guangzhou) and were to be sent to Japan with a group of Christian Missionaries who were aiming at opening up Japan to foreigners (they failed, Japan only opened up in 1854 when a fleet of U.S. naval ships intimidated them into doing so. It was commanded by Commodore Matthew Perry).

The "closed country" policy known as shakoku that had been adopted by Japan in the 1600s was designed to keep foreigners out of their country (they had had bad experiences with Portuguese, the Christian missionaries and they had seen the negative consequences of Spanish and Portuguese influence in Asia). It also kept Japanese inside of Japan, a kind of "bamboo curtain" of the XVIth century. Deep sea sailing was restricted. Japanese vessels would only sail in their coastal waters. This led to less sophisticated designs. Below is a one-mast junk of the type that Perry encountered during his visits to Japan.

Japanese “junk” as recorded by the Perry mission in the official Narrative. Source

Unfortunately, the "opening up" of Japan, led to a period of rapid modernization and "Europeanization" (Westernization) known as the Meiji Restoration, where they excelled at being "Western", and by 1904 defeated Russia in a War, and in 1937, with fascist and nationalist ideals (allied with Italy and Germany in an Axis), invaded China, Korea, and on December 7, 1941 attacked Peral Harbor, Hawaii, drawing the United States into World War II. But, let's focus on the transpacific contacts.

There is an excellent book published in 1876 by Charles Wolcott Brooks (Japanese Wrecks stranded and picked up adrift in the North Pacific Ocean, Ethnologically considered). It documents different stray ships, starting with one found in Acapulco, Mexico in 1617. It also mentions the 1833 Cape Flattery castaways. In total, it lists sixty events involving junks. The ones who managed to reach America, had an influence on the local natives:

"Small parties of male Japanese have repeatedly reached the American continent by sea, cast upon its shores after floating helplessly for months. Until recently, the survivors must have remained permanently near where they landed, and naturally uniting with women of the native races, have left descendents more or less impressed with their physical peculiarities. Such a slow, limited, but constant infusion of Japanese blood, almost entirely from male seamen, was undoubtedly sufficient to modify the original stock of all coast tribes along our north-western shore. No marks exist of any immigration en masse, neither is there any present record of any Japanese woman saved from such a wreck, although cases may formerly have occurred, but must have been very rare. These unfortunate seamen, often illiterate, and separated from their sources of learning, necessarily lost their own language; but in doing so, doubtless contributed many isolated words to the Indian dialects of this coast."

Prior to the 1600s, the Japanese junks must have been largr and better equipped for deep-sea navigation. They could have reached America and returned to Japan. The Japanese followed the design of the large Chinese junks, with sails, despite an initial period of isolation (900-1300 AD). They then advanced their knowhow with ships that resembled caravels in the 1300s and 1400s. Civil war led to the design of warships. (Source).

My next post will look into the Japanese and ancient transpacific contact with South America.

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2026 by Austin Whittall © 

Fusang. The Chinese discovery of America c.450-490 AD

Fusang is an account written by a Chinese Buddhist monk named Hoei-schin which tells about a Chinese voyage which took place in the late fifth century AD, to a country called Fusang, located far to the east, 20,000 li (Chinese miles) from China, which some believe was America, and specifically, Mexico. The Fusang account also mentions a previous visit that took place earlier, in 458 AD, involving some Buddhist monks who took their religion with them to Fusang.

You can find the account digitalized online (Fusang : or, The discovery of America by Chinese Buddhist priests in the fifth century. Leland, Charles Godfrey and Neumann, Karl Friedrich, 1875.

The name Fusang is that of a Chinese plant, said to resemble one they found in the country they visited, which the notes and comments by Friedrich, translated from German to English by Leland, identify with the maguey.

The book is well balanced because it includes points of view that support the notion that Fusang was America, and others that say it is fiction. See this criticism as an example:

"'Hui-shen appears to have been a consummate humbug.' (Cf. 'The People of Central Asia,' by F. Hyacinth.) "I cannot, indeed, understand what ground we have for believing that Fusang is America..."

Earlier references about Fusang

There are older references on Fusang, as can be seen online here (1763), mentioning de Guignes, who is also mentioned here in 1761 (with a map showing Fusang), and earlier, in 1753.

There is also some disputed and controversial maps attributed to Marco Polo's travels to Asia that mention Fusang (See source) where it shows East Asia and Western North America, with "Focan = Fú Sāng (扶桑) [a mythical land to distant east of China and/or a mythical mulberry tree (桑) growing there]"

Fusang in the 18th-century cartography

A map published in 1776 by Zatta, A., Nuove scoperte de’Russi al Nord del Mare del Sud si nell’Asia, che nell America. Venice. Shows the Northern Pacific, on the coast at Cape Fortuna, you can see "Fou-Sang", this is NW USA, roughly 50° Lat. North and it reads "Colonia de Chinesi" (Chinese Colony). Next to it is the mythical strait of Anian, which was believed to be a link to the Northwest Passage (to the Atlantic Ocean), and also marked the boundary between Asia and America, like Bering Strait does nowadays. The location is roughly where Cape Flattery and Juan de Fuca Strait are located. It can also bee seen in another map from 1768 (online here) which reads "Four Sang according to yc. Chinese geogr." with Puerto Bravo and Cabo Fortunes along its coast, and the Juan de Fuca Strait on its southern side. It is probably Vancouver Island (map).

Juan de Fuca's voyage was published in Hakluytus Posthumus, vol. XIV, p. 415, in 1825, as told by Michael Lok, who in 1596 met de Fuca in Venice.

Zatta's map 1776, and detail showing Fou-Sang. Online, can be enlarged

Now, let's look at the text by Charles G. Leland, Karl F. Neumann, published in 1875.

The 1875 Text on Fusang

This is the literal translation of the original text:

"During the reign of the dynasty Tsi, in the first year of the year-naming, ' Everlasting Origin ' (a.d. 499), came a Buddhist priest from this kingdom, who bore the cloister-name of Hoei-schin, i.e., Universal Compassion, to the -present district of Hukuang, and those surrounding it, who narrated that Fusang is about twenty thousand Chinese miles in an easterly direction from Tahan, and east of the Middle Kingdom. Many Fusang trees grow there, whose leaves resemble the Dryanda cordifolia, the sprouts, on the contrary, resemble those of the bamboo-tree, and are eaten by the inhabitants of the land. The fruit is like a pear in form, but is red. From the bark they prepare a sort of linen which they use for clothing, and also a sort of ornamented stuff.
They have written characters in this land, and prepare paper from the bark of the Fusang. The people have no weapons, and make no wars ; but in the arrangements for the kingdom they have a northern and a southern prison. Trifling offenders were lodged in the southern prison, but those confined for greater offences in the northern ; so that those who were about to receive grace could be placed in the southern prison, and those who were not, in the northern. Those men and women who were imprisoned for life were allowed to marry. The boys resulting from these marriages were, at the age of eight years, sold as slaves ; the girls not until their ninth year. If a man of any note was found guilty of crimes, an assembly was held ; it must be in an excavated place." {Gruhe^ Grer. "a pit;" possibly within an embankment or circle of earth. — C. Gr. L.) " There they strewed ashes over him, and bade him farewell. If the offender was one of a lower class, he alone was punished ; but when of rank, the degradation was extended to his children and grandchildren. With those of the highest rank it attained to the seventh generation.
The name of the king is pronounced Ichi. The nobles of the first-class are termed Tuilu ; .of the second. Little Tuilu ; and of the third, Na-to-scha. "When the prince goes forth, he is accompanied by horns and trumpets. The colour of his clothes changes with the different years. In the two first of the ten-year cyclus they are blue ; in the two next, red ; in the two following, yellow ; in the two next, red ; and in the last two, black."

Oxen and Horses in Fusang (America?)

The text continues and mentions the locals have oxen, horses, and use the milk of deers. The notes mention that Humboldt had said there were two types of bovids in Mexico, and that some critics of the text had pointed out that there were no horses in America. The commentary argues the opposite: " "

" The horns of the oxen are so large that they hold ten bushels. They use them to contain all manner of things. Horses, oxen, and stags are harnessed to their waggons. Stags are used here as cattle are used in the Middle Kingdom, and from the milk of the hind they make butter. The red pears of the Fusang-tree keep good throughout the year. Moreover, they have apples and reeds. From the latter they prepare mats. No iron is found in this land ; but copper, gold, and silver are not prized, and do not serve as a medium of exchange in the market. "

The final part of the text is about marriage, and then it mentions a previous voyage of missionary Buddhist monks in 458 AD.

"Marriage is determined upon in the following manner : — The suitor builds himself a hut before the door of the house where the one longed for dwells, and waters and cleans the ground every morning and evening. When a year has passed by, if the maiden is not inclined to marry him, he departs ; should she be willing, it is completed; When the parents die, they fast seven days. For the death of the paternal or maternal grandfather they lament five days ; at the death of elder or younger sisters or brothers, uncles or aunts, three days. They then sit from morning to evening before an image of the ghost, absorbed in prayer, but wear no mourningclothes. When the king dies, the son who succeeds him does not busy himself for three years with State affairs.
In earlier times these people lived not according to the laws of Buddha. But it happened that in the second year-naming Great Light,' of Song (a.d. 458), five beggar-monks from the kingdom of Kipin went to this land, extended over it the religion of Buddha, and with it his holy writings and images. They instructed the people in the principles of monastic life, and so changed their manners."

The final part of the text mentions a tribe of Amazons! which is not translated in this work: "This land," he writes, "lies ahout a thousand Chinese miles in an easterly direction from Fusang, and is inhabited hy white people with very hairy bodies." The entire story is, however, intermixed with so. much fabulous matter, that it is not worth translating."

So if this has "fabulous" matter, why don't we consider other parts of the text as made up? It could all be false.

The domestic animals

On page 40, the book analyzes the deer, bovids, and horses:

"DOMESTIC ANIMALS.
The Aztecs had no beasts of draught or of burden. Horses were not found in the New World. The report of the Chinese missionary has, therefore, no connection with the later Mexican reigns. Two varieties of wild oxen with large horns ranged in herds on the plains of the Rio del Norte.³ These might have been tamed by the earlier inhabitants, and used as domestic animals. Stag's horns have been found in the ruins of Mexican buildings ; and Montezuma showed the Spaniards, as curiosities, immensely large horns of this description.

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³ Humboldt : Neuhispanien, ii. 138.
[My comment (A. Whittall). This quote is correct, Humboldt wrote: "The Mexicans had not yet attempted to domesticate the two species of wild oxen (Bos americanus and B. moschatus) that roam in herds on the plains along the River del Norte. These are the American bison and the muskox.]

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It is possible that the stags formerly ranged from New California, and other regions of North America, where they are still found in great numbers, to the interior of Mexico. To a native of China it must have seemed remarkable that the Mexicans should have prepared butter from hind's milk, since such a thing has seldom been done in China, either in ancient or modern times....
It is indeed possible that the Chinese have described an animal similar to the horse with the character Ma, or horse, for changes of this nature are of frequent occurrence.¹ In such a manner many names of animals in the Old World have been applied to others of an entirely different nature in the New. The eastern limits of the' Asiatic Continent are also the limits of the native land of the horse, and it appears that it was first taken in the third century of our era from Korea into Japan. But let the error in regard to the American horses have come from what source it will, the unprejudiced, circumspect inquirer will not be etermined on account of it to declare the entire story of Fusang-Mexico an idle tale. It appears to me that this description of the western coast of America is at least as authentic as the discovery of the eastern coast, as narrated in Icelandic sagas.

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¹It is usual for all ignorant or unscientific people to give to animals for which they have no name that of some other creature with which they are familiar. Thus the gipsies speak of a fox as a weshni jucTcal, or wood-dog ; of an elephant as a loro naJckescro gry, or great-nosed horse ; of a monkey as a ionibaros, and a lion as a horo iomlaros, or big monkey, from their connection in menageries. Professor Neumann was probably ignorant of the fact, to which I allude more fully in another place, that the fossil remains of many horses found in America are of so recent a period, according to Professor Leidy, that they were probably coeval with man. — C. G. L."

The oxen are taken up again on p. 153 with an interesting explanation that equates them with bison:

"We may, perhaps, even dispense with supposing that the oxen seen by Hoei-shin were bison, if we admit that domestic cattle may have existed in America, and been exterminated. Thus, in the "Relation de Choses de Yucatan de Diego de Landa," the author tells us that an Indian chief named Cocom showed him one day an ancient book containing the picture of a common European cow, and told him it had been prophesied that when such beasts should come into the country, the worship of the gods would cease — " Cessario el culto de los Dioses, y que se avia cumplido, porque los espanoles truxeron vacas grandes." It is true that this may have been a mere trick of the Indian to flatter the Spaniard.
D'Eichthal has vindicated Deguignes as regards the statement that hinds (biches) were domesticated in Fusang, and that cheese was made from their milk, by citing from the "Popol-Vuh" (Introduction, p. xl.)" Milk was known to the Mexicans, who were accustomed to milk bison-cows and tame hinds, and make cheese." The statement appears to have been taken from Castaneda."

My comment: Hind is a mature female deer. The word "biches" used by Deguinges is French for "hind".

Regarding the quote from Popol-Vuh, I disagree; there is no refrence in the Popol-Vuh about cheese-making by the ancient Mayas using deer milk. In fact, the quote mentioned above and cited as "Popol-Vuh, Introduction p. xl" is a circular reference, because going to D'Eichthal's work (see it here, p. 151) we see that the quote originated in the work of M. l’Abbé Brasseur de Bourbourg, in his introduction to the Popol-Vuh, but, where he quotes the Fusang book; the text on p. xl says [in Fusang] "They raise deer like oxen, and make a drink from milk."

The mention of father Diego de Landa (1524-1579) and his Relación de las Cosas de Yucatan (p.14) is correct, but excluded some relevant text. The original says: "Don Juan Cocom... le contó muchas antigúedades y le mostró un libro que fue de su abuelo, hijo de Cocom que mataron en Mayapán, y en él estaba pintado un venado; y que aquel su abuelo le había dicho que cuando en aquella tierra entrasen venados grandes, que así llamaban a las vacas, cesaría el culto de los Dioses; y que se había cumplido porque los españoles trajeron vacas grandes" which in English is: "Juan Cocom... told him many ancient stories and showed him a book that had belonged to his grandfather, the son of Cocom who was killed in Mayapán, and in it was painted a deer; and that his grandfather had told him that when large deer, which is what they called cows, entered that land, the worship of the gods would cease; and that it had come to pass because the Spaniards brought large cows."

So, were they cows or deer (venados)? or did the natives use the word "deer" and applied it to some local bovid, probably American bison?

I have posted several times in the past about American cows and horses (See two examples Native Pre-Hispanic Cattle in Patagonia?, and the survival of native horses in the Americas, so I am not surprised at them being mentioned in Mesoamerica.

It is very likely that Chinese ships crossed the North Pacific Ocean and took advantage of its natural resources (forestry, salmons, seals, Steller sea cows) and visited Alaska, and the west coast of Canada, the U.S., and Mexico.

My next posts will look into Eastern Asia (China and Japan) and their possible pre-Columbian contacts with America.

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2026 by Austin Whittall © 

Earliest human presence in America: 24Kya in Alaska

Jacques Cinq-Mars, a Canadian archaeologist studied and dated bones he excavated at the Bluefish Caves in western Canada during the mid and late 1970s. He reported that these bones had scrapes caused by humans and that they were 22-24,000 years old.

Orthodox scientists of those days opposed to his ideas bitterly because they undermined the "Clovis first" theory that proposed a later peopling of America (13 Kya).

Time has proven him right, these bones that show the marks left by humans butchering animals are indeed the earliest evidence of human presence in America.

Horse jaw bone from Bluefish Caves. Marks were done by humans.

These remains are now used to support the current prevailing ideas of a Beringian standstill, but could equally prove that humans were living in America 24,000 years ago, or even earlier.

The fact that humans were scraping horse and bison bones 24,000 years ago does not mean that they were stuck in Beringia for 8,000 years during a "standstill" event. It means that humans were there, period, and may have been there for 15,000 or even 50,000 years before that date.

Read more about it in a paper that revisited Cinq-Mars findings: Bourgeon L, Burke A, Higham T (2017) Earliest Human Presence in North America Dated to the Last Glacial Maximum: New Radiocarbon Dates from Bluefish Caves, Canada. PLoS ONE 12(1): e0169486. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0169486.

They report: "Our results, therefore, confirm that Bluefish Caves is the oldest known archaeological site in North America" and place its age at: "24,000 cal BP".

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2019 by Austin Whittall © 

Canadian lake monster

 
A few days ago, the media [1] reported that a strange and ugly lake monster washed ashore. The photographs (see [1] below)taken at the site show a mammal that may be a bear cub (puffy due to its submersion in the lake) or a beaver, otter, etc.

It is definitively not a "monster", just a normal mammal's carcass.

Which goes to show that not all strange sightings are actually lake creatures. And this is valid not only for Canada, but for all places, including Patagonia and its Nahuelito cryptids.

Bibliography.

[1] Mystery surrounds creature found in Ont. creek. CTV, Ontario. 21.05.2010.

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia

2010 International Year of Biodiversity Copyright 2009-2010 by Austin Whittall ©