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From:
Subject: Re: [DNA] Saami and Berbers - An unexpected mtDNA Link
Date: Mon, 28 Mar 2005 21:20:50 +0000


I really wonder about all this Ellen. We have apparently all come to accept that there were three European glacial refugia Franco - Cantabrian, Dinardic (Balkan) and Ukraine. This simply does not make any sense. Are there no archelogical sites anywhere else say 15,000 YBP? Of course many of the likely sites are now under water due to the melting of the glaciers and until we do some undersea excavations we are never going to be sure. One thing I do know is that there is a tendency for humans to seek out coastal environments where resources for sustenance are more abundant and the climate more benign.

Perhaps we could take California as a parallel sitation. There are large clusters of humans in three refugia know as San Francisco, Los Angeles, and San Diego. However there are also substantial settlements all along the coast (e.g., Santa Barabara) and as the environment becomes more hostile (inland) the numbers of people dwindle. There are however pockets of settlement amidst what I would term less than exotic settings such as Bakersfield and Fresno and even Sacramento. Humans, being the adaptable creatures that they are somehow manage to survive and thrive in otherwise hostile places such as Victorville (former home of the Roy Rogers Museum) and for the hardiest of souls there is Barstow ..........

Was it all that much different during the glacial ages? Humans could have survived in pockets in corridors in the Alpine regions; and certainly it makes no sense to me that Italy would be devoid of humans when the ice sheets where moving down from Scandinavia.

It is simply to simplistic to my way of thinking to fix on a convenient 3 locations as "the" glacial refugia. There were doubtless others, we have just not yet found them because they are under 200 feet of water or perhaps there is a catalogue of sites in Europe that date to circa 15,000 YBP but are outside the 3 clusters. Since your background is anthropology / archaeology, are you aware of any such sites outside the pale Ellen?

David F.



-------------- Original message --------------

> Ken:
>
> I think that one of the important aspects of this
> study may be in the fact that it indicates that those
> who took "refuge" in Iberia later spread to far north
> of Europe post-LGM. So far, I haven't seen any
> studies supporting the contention that there were
> other places of refuge during the LGM.
>
> Ellen Coffman
>

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