Como bien plantearon algunos estudiantes, existen diversas teorías que pueden explicar el poblamiento de nuestro continente. Todas estas teorías surgen de la interpretación de diversas fuentes y de reflexiones sobre el entorno cultural, social, material que nos rodea.
A continuación las 4 principales teorías de poblamiento de nuestro continente Americano:
Representación según color: a) Roja y Verde: Teo. Asiática. b) Morada: Teo. Oceánica. c) Negra: Teo. Australiana.
Teoría Asiática:La teoría Asiática es una explicación del poblamiento tardío del continente americano planteada por Alex Hrdlicka. El autor se basa en los rasgos mongoloides de los habitantes de América y en los restos encontrados en el norte del continente que sugieren el paso de Asiáticos por el puente de Beringia, en un periodo donde el hielo y la disminución del nivel del mar permitieron cruzar a pie a nuestros antepasados en búsqueda de alimentos (quizás siguiendo a animales que también buscaban alimento). Esta teoría planteaba en un primer momento solo la migración de los asiáticos hacia América mediante barcazas con las que recorrieron la costa, pero posteriormente se confirmó que también se realizó a pie, en el tan conocido "puente de hielo de Beringia".
Otros argumentos para justificar la teoría de Hrdlicka son la "mancha lumbar" de nacimiento que tienen en común americanos y mongoloides, además de los dientes en forma de "pala", pómulos prominentes, cabello negro y lacio, etc. Esta teoría es también llamada "teoría monoracial de poblamiento americano".
Teoría Oceánica: Esta teoría, también conocida como "multi-racial", no se opone a la de Hrdlicka, sino que cuestiona su planteamiento "monoracial" postulando que el poblamiento de América se debió también a viajes tardíos realizados por pueblos de Oceanía, los cuales manejaban buenas técnicas de navegación y por
Balsa Kon-Tiki de la Teoría Oceánica.
lo tanto, habían llegado a nuestro continente pasando por las islas del océano pacífico, llegando finalmente al continente. Entre los argumentos para justificar esta teoría se encuentra la similitud cultural e incluso física entre los pueblos Maoríes y los pueblos de los Andes Centrales (principalmente de influencia Quechua-Incaica).
"(...) Semejanzas lingüísticas: palabras maorís semejantes al quechua de Perú: kumara (camote), uno (agua), pucara (fortaleza), etc.
Semejanzas culturales: uso común de la pachamanca, la taqlla o palo cavador, cultivos, dioses y leyendas. (...)"(link)
Teoría Australiana:El antropólogo portugués Méndez Correa (Mendes Correia) plantea que el poblamiento americano se debió a viajes realizados por pueblos australianos que bordearon la costa antártica para poblar desde el sur el continente. Esta teoría se basa en las similitudes culturales entre los habitantes de Tierra del Fuego y la Patagonia y los aborígenes Australianos.
Otros argumentos que utiliza el autor para justificar su teoría son el tipo de sangre similar en estos pueblos, características físicas y el uso de algunas herramientas en común, como el búmeran (boomerang) y las boleadoras.
Teoría Autóctona:Florentino Ameghino propuso, a diferencia de quienes planteaban las teorías de ocupación extranjera del continente, que el ser humano pobló este continente a causa de un proceso evolutivo autóctono. El proceso evolutivo daba por resultado un "homo pampeanus" (hombre de la pampa), teoría que se sostenía en restos óseos que habrían pertenecido a una era previa a la llegada de las personas que migraban de los demás continentes.
El homo-pampeanus habría recorrido el continente y poblado desde diversas áreas.
Hrdlicka cuestionó esta teoría planteando que esos restos óseos eran de periodos más actuales y había partes que pertenecían a animales autóctonos, por ello la confusión. Finalmente el investigador checo desacreditó la teoría del argentino.
4 - Their skull morphology and recent genetic studies strengthen the theory that the Pericues did not originate in Northern Asia, where some experts believed Native Americans first came from. Instead, the Pericues are closer to the ancient populations of southern Asia, Australia, and the South Pacific Rim.
Pericu people are located inLos Cabos, Baja Sur, Mexico
Some Olmec Heads in Mexico suggest Southeast Asian features
There has been no actual genetic evidence of Polynesian/Austronesian admixed groups in the Americas though except the Botocudo samples from Brazil who turns out to be pure blood Polynesians.
But to this day, there has been no Amerindian samples who have Polynesian or Austronesian admixture.
By about 1200 C.E., Polynesians were masters of oceanic exploration, roaming 7000 kilometers across the Pacific Ocean in outrigger canoes. Guided by subtle changes of wind and waves, the paths of migrating birds, bursts of light from bioluminescent plankton, and the position of the stars, they reached and settled islands from New Zealand to Rapa Nui, or Easter Island, the closest Polynesian island to South America.
So it’s natural to wonder: Did these world-class explorers make it the last 3800 kilometers to South America? A genomic study of more than 800 modern Polynesians and Native Americans suggests they did.
The work strengthens earlier evidence that somewhere—perhaps on the northern coast of South America—the two groups met and mixed well before the era of European colonialism. And it shakes up the most popular model of where Native American genes first took root in Polynesia, shifting the focus from Rapa Nui to islands farther west.
“This is an excellent, exciting study,” says Lars Fehren-Schmitz, an anthropological geneticist at the University of California (UC), Santa Cruz. Expanding genomic research to islands beyond Rapa Nui “was what was missing from the whole picture.”
Earlier hints of contact between the two regions included the sweet potato, which was domesticated in the Andes but grown and eaten all over Polynesia for hundreds of years before Europeans arrived. And a 2014 study of 27 modern people from Rapa Nui found they had Native American ancestry dating back to between 1300 C.E. and 1500 C.E.—at least 200 years before the first Europeans landed there in 1722 C.E. But a 2017 ancient DNA study, led by Fehren-Schmitz, found no sign of Native American ancestry in five people who lived on Rapa Nui before and after European contact.
Population geneticist Andrés Moreno-Estrada and anthropologist Karla Sandoval, both at Mexico’s National Laboratory of Genomics for Biodiversity, traveled to Rapa Nui in 2014 and invited the community to participate in a study. They analyzed genome-wide data from 166 people from the island. Then they combined those data with genomic analyses of 188 Polynesian people from 16 other islands, whose genetic samples had been collected in the 1980s.
“It’s an amazing data set,” says Anna-Sapfo Malaspinas, a population geneticist at the University of Lausanne who led the 2014 work that found evidence for contact.
Moreno-Estrada, Sandoval, and their team found that people on many islands had both Polynesian and European ancestry, reflecting their colonial histories. But they were also able to detect a small amount of Native American ancestry in people from the eastern Polynesian islands of Palliser, the Marquesas, Mangareva, and Rapa Nui. The Native American sequences were short and nearly identical—seemingly a legacy of one long-ago meeting with a Native American group, rather than sustained contact over generations, Moreno-Estrada says.
Comparing those sequences with genomes from people from 15 Indigenous groups from the Pacific coast of Latin America, researchers found most similarity to the Zenu, an Indigenous group from Colombia, the team reports today in Nature.
Analyses of the length of the Native American sequences show this ancestry appeared first on Fatu Hiva in the South Marquesas roughly 28 generations ago, which would date it to about 1150 C.E. That’s about when the island was settled by Polynesians, raising the possibility the contact happened even earlier. The genetic legacy of that mixing was then carried by Polynesian voyagers as they settled other islands, including Rapa Nui.
Where exactly the first encounter took place, the team can’t say. Modern Latin American fishermen lost at sea have been known to drift all the way to Polynesian islands. “It could have been one raft lost in the Pacific,” Moreno-Estrada says.
But it’s more likely that Polynesians traveled to the northern coast of South America, says Keolu Fox, a genome scientist at UC San Diego. Polynesian voyagers frequently traveled between islands and could have journeyed to South America and back, perhaps multiple times, Fox says. “In the process, these Polynesians bring back the sweet potato, and they also bring back a small fragment of Native American DNA” from relationships on the mainland. “The ocean is not a barrier” for Polynesians, he says.
Fehren-Schmitz and other researchers agree contact is likely, but stress that only ancient DNA can provide direct evidence of an encounter. But DNA degrades quickly in the tropics—and Polynesian communities that remember being disrespected by Western scientists in the past may be reluctant to grant permission for genetic studies of their ancestors, says Fox, who is Kānaka Maoli (Native Hawaiian). To move forward, he says, researchers need to deeply engage on an ongoing basis with descendant communities on many islands.
For now, “This study shows us a new path to follow,” says Francisco Torres Hochstetter, an archaeologist at the Father Sebastian Englert Anthropological Museum in Hanga Roa on Rapa Nui. “It opens our minds.”
Geneticist will likely have to do more testing in the Pacific Islands, Mexico and throughout the Americas to get a better understanding of the migration to the New World. The Pacific Ocean wasn't a barrier considering that sailing or walking through ice and snow of the Bering Strait of Siberia to Alaska is extremely cold and the rough ocean waves would have deterred some nomadic people from taking this route. There are also other danger factors in Beringia such as crevasses, avalanches, blizzards, ice bergs and when they fall they create rogue waves. Also Southeast Asian Islanders and Pacific Islanders were not accustomed to the cold frigid regions of the Arctic Circle. Several wouldn't have the survival skills of the Inuits/Eskimos such as kayaking, constructing igloos, wearing snow shoes, hunting seals, dog-sledding and plus more. Southeast Asian Islanders and Pacific Islanders would rather take the Pacific Ocean route since they had the navigational skills and survival skills. Southeast Asian Islanders were already traveling as far west to Madagascar and throughout Micronesia while Pacific Islanders were traveling throughout Micronesia and Polynesia in the Pacific Ocean which suggest that traveling to Mexico and South America is possible. Rapa Nui people of Easter Island traded with the South Americans since they received sweet potato and they introduced the chicken (jungle fowl) to South America. The Botocudo Tribe, Surui Tribe and plus more in Brazil have shown to have Polynesian genes. The Haida Indians in the Pacific Northwest have Polynesian ancestry. The Pacific Ocean is actually calm and these intrepid sailors of Southeast Asian Islands and Pacific Islands would have sailed on the trade winds to the Americas and back as Polynesians were known for a thousand plus years.
Haida Indians appearances and their water crafts resembles Polynesians