Communalism: October 2006 Archives

Frank W. Street, in his article "Afro-European Genetic Admixture in the United States," highlights the recent research of molecular anthropologists who track ancient and modern human migrations. Evidence of those migrations can be found in every individual's DNA. He gives the example of how some persons are lactose-tolerant depending on whether their ancestry is Danish, Dutch, Watutsi or Maasai, while people may be lactose-intolerant if their ancestry is Sicilian, Greek, Bantu or Khoisan¹. Street also talks about the first inhabitants of North America who migrated across Beringia about 20 millennia ago until eventually rising sea leaves after the last ice age cut them off from the rest of human civilization. Consequently, their immune systems remained less developed, such that when the Spanish came in the early 15th century and brought with them European diseases, the Native Americans had no resistance and fell like flies - until 90 percent of their population died². From the 15th to the 18th centuries millions of Africans came to America along with Europeans, and genetic admixing took place amongst the Africans, Europeans and Native Americans.