April 3, 2018


News and Views


WHAT I WOULD REALLY LIKE TO KNOW IS WHO THIS SHOOTER IS, AND HOW DID HE KNOW THE LOCATION OF THE YOUTUBE HEADQUARTERS? WAS THIS ORCHESTRATED BY A GROUP? (I KNOW. THAT’S PARANOID.) IF DONALD TRUMP RANTS AGAINST THE NEWS AND INFORMATION SOURCES, OTHER THAN FOX AND BREITBART, WILL SOME OF HIS FOLLOWERS START MOUNTING PHYSICAL ATTACKS AGAINST THEM? OF COURSE, IT’S MORE LIKELY THAT THIS IS JUST THE ORDINARY P.O.’D EMPLOYEE.

IT’S 5:10 PM RIGHT NOW, HERE IN JACKSONVILLE, FLA, BUT HOPEFULLY SOON THE AUTHORITIES WILL KNOW MORE. THIS ARTICLE IS UPDATED FROM THE 4:40 PM VERSION. STARTLINGLY, THE SHOOTER IS A WOMAN!


https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2018/04/03/active-shooter-youtube-headquarters-california-police-say/483333002/?csp=chromepush
Female suspect dead, 4 injured after shooting at YouTube headquarters in California
Christal Hayes and Marco della Cava, USA TODAY Published 4:39 p.m. ET April 3, 2018 | Updated 5:53 p.m. ET April 3, 2018

Photograph -- Police in Northern California are responding to reports of a shooting at the headquarters of YouTube in the city of San Bruno. (April 3) AP

SAN BRUNO, Calif. — A female suspect is dead after opening fire at YouTube's headquarters in northern California on Tuesday in a shooting that left at least four people injured, authorities said.

Police swarmed the three-story building around noon after reports of an active gunman. The gunman, a woman, was found dead after an apparent suicide, San Bruno Police Chief Ed Barberini said at a news conference.

Barberini said the injured were found at the building and at an adjacent business. Police cautioned people to stay away from the building, which is on Cherry Avenue, about 11 miles south of San Francisco.

Several hospitals said they received patients, including Stanford Health Care, which told USA TODAY that it is receiving from four to five patients. Their conditions were not released.

Brent Andrew, a spokesman for San Francisco General Hospital, said it received three patients — a woman and two men. One person was in critical condition.

Andrew did not say whether the wounds were a result of gunshots.

Photos on social media showed dozens of people being escorted by law enforcement out of the building with their hands up. Employees of the company say they heard what sounded like shots and took cover.

After being escorted out of the building, helicopter footage showed those inside being patted down by police.


San Bruno Police
@SanBrunoPolice
We are responding to an active shooter. Please stay away from Cherry Ave & Bay Hill Drive.

4:28 PM - Apr 3, 2018
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Google, which owns YouTube, said in a statement on Twitter "we are coordinating with authorities and will provide official information here from Google and YouTube as it becomes available."

Those inside the building posted updates as the incident was unfolding.


Vadim Lavrusik
✔
@Lavrusik
Active shooter at YouTube HQ. Heard shots and saw people running while at my desk. Now barricaded inside a room with coworkers.

3:57 PM - Apr 3, 2018
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"Active shooter at YouTube HQ," Vadim Lavrusik posted on Twitter. "Heard shots and saw people running while at my desk. Now barricaded inside a room with coworkers."

Lavrusik, who said he works at the company, said he got out safely and was evacuated.

YouTube was originally created in a San Bruno storefront above a pizza parlor and later moved into a facility, still in San Bruno, about 30 miles from the main Google campus in Mountain View and 14 miles from San Francisco, right off the 280 freeway.

After Google bought YouTube, it has maintained a large campus in San Bruno, where many of its top executives work.

The building is clearly marked with a big YouTube sign on Cherry Avenue.

Three Photographs -- Active shooter at YouTube headquarters
Fullscreen
Officers run toward a YouTube office in San Bruno, Calif. JEFF CHIU, AP

Visitors enter a sparsely decorated lobby, where a receptionist sits under a YouTube logo. Guests are asked to sign in before going upstairs to the executive floors.

The layout is very Google-like with wide and open spaces and a "playground" area of sorts in the middle of the floors. Google-colored bean bags (red, blue, yellow), guitars and a bright red slide dot the floor. Unlimited free, healthy foods like granola, coffees and chocolates are displayed in kitchens.

The reports of a shooting come about seven weeks after a rampage at a Parkland, Fla., high school left 17 dead and re-ignited a debate about gun control.

A Snapchat Map of the YouTube area showed the scene as employees left the building and police entered the area.


SINCLAIR'S MANDATORY ANCHOR SCRIPTS AND THEIR “AMBITIONS”

https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2018/04/02/598794433/video-reveals-power-of-sinclair-as-local-news-anchors-recite-script-in-unison
AMERICA
Video Reveals Power Of Sinclair, As Local News Anchors Recite Script In Unison
April 2, 201811:47 AM ET
CAMILA DOMONOSKE

Deadspin @Deadspin
How America's largest local TV owner turned its news anchors into soldiers in Trump's war on the media: https://theconcourse.deadspin.com/how-americas-largest-local-tv-owner-turned-its-news-anc-1824233490 …

4:11 PM - Mar 31, 2018
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One company. One script. Many, many voices.

A video published by sports news site Deadspin over the weekend revealed dozens of TV anchors from Sinclair Broadcast Group reciting the same speech warning against "biased and false news."

It was the latest show of the vast reach of a company that owns local TV stations across the country and has long been criticized for pushing conservative coverage and commentary onto local airwaves.

Sinclair required local anchors to record promos where they denounce "the troubling trend of irresponsible, one-sided news stories plaguing our country" and say that "some members of the media use their platforms to push their own personal bias and agenda to control 'exactly what people think.' "

Sinclair says it is simply warning viewers about the dangers of fake news circulating on social media.

But media critics see a powerful company using local journalists to parrot one of President Trump's most consistent talking points — an allegation that the mainstream media cannot be trusted.

Sinclair Tells News Anchors To Denounce 'Fake News'

Sinclair owns more than 190 TV stations across the country, more than any other media company, and is seeking to acquire dozens more by purchasing Tribune Media. The Federal Communications Commission has allowed the company to consolidate more power and centralize more news production.

Last spring, reporting on the company's ambitions, NPR media correspondent David Folkenflik wrote, "If history is any guide ... Sinclair Broadcast will also pull news coverage on those stations in a more conservative direction and explore giving full rein to those beliefs on a national platform."

The broadcasting behemoth has a consistently conservative, pro-Trump bent and has required local stations to run right-wing commentary segments, including segments by former Trump advisers. (Last summer, John Oliver lambasted that practice in a segment on his HBO show, Last Week Tonight.)

And Sinclair has previously denounced fake news stories in a segment, recorded by a news executive, that local stations were instructed to air last year.

But instructing local TV anchors to read a script like this in their own voices is a new development.

Deadspin's video stops at a line that it repeats again and again, to drive home the video's critical message: "This is extremely dangerous to our democracy."

The viral video was released after multiple media outlets spent weeks reporting on Sinclair's use of the scripts.

CNN's Brian Stelter first broke the story in early March, reporting that local journalists were uncomfortable with being forced to read promos "echoing President Trump's inflammatory rhetoric about 'fake news.' "

Folkenflik spoke with Sinclair's top news executive a week later. Scott Livingston told David that Sinclair's "reporting is nonpartisan" — although the company has been frequently accused of favoring Republicans in news coverage. Livingston said that the news anchor script is "a warning about fake news circulating on social media."

Jane Hall, a professor at American University and a former media critic for Fox News, said that the promo is clearly supporting Trump's condemnation of most news outlets.

"It's naked in the sense that it's forcing people in the news to read something that is a corporate piece of propaganda, in my opinion," she told David.

Then, on Friday, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer published the script in its entirety.

But it's one thing to see a script; another thing to see it recited in unison. On Friday, the liberal website ThinkProgress released a video showing some samples of local stations airing the segments. And on Saturday, Deadspin published the video that took the Internet by storm.

Sinclair, which is headquartered outside Baltimore, told the Baltimore Sun the script is referencing fabricated stories like "Pope Endorses Trump" or conspiracy theories like "Pizzagate."

"That's the goal of these announcements: to reiterate our commitment to reporting facts in a pursuit of truth," Livingston told the Sun. "We consider it our honor and privilege to deliver the news each night. We seek the truth and strive to be fair."

As David has previously reported, Sinclair "takes not only an ideological line but at times a partisan line. It's been a very pro-Trump line."

Trump has tweeted in support of the media group, calling other news networks "among the most dishonest groups of people I have ever dealt with" and saying "Sinclair is far superior to CNN and even more Fake NBC."


Donald J. Trump
✔
@realDonaldTrump
So funny to watch Fake News Networks, among the most dishonest groups of people I have ever dealt with, criticize Sinclair Broadcasting for being biased. Sinclair is far superior to CNN and even more Fake NBC, which is a total joke.

9:28 AM - Apr 2, 2018
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It was a fairly typical Trump tweet — and exactly the kind of message that critics hear echoed in Sinclair's mandatory anchor scripts.


LEGALLY, HOW CAN SINCLAIR ENFORCE ITS’ GAG RULE? IS THIS KIND OF CONTRACT REALLY LEGAL?

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/thr-esq/sinclair-broadcasting-contracts-make-it-expensive-tv-news-anchors-quit-1099293
APRIL 03, 2018 1:19pm PT by Eriq Gardner
Can Sinclair Force TV Anchors to Pay Up If They Quit?


The company uses a liquidated damages clause for voluntary termination and also reserves the right to fire anchors for expressing political viewpoints or suffering disabilities that prevent a pleasant personal appearance.
For those disgruntled news anchors at Sinclair Broadcast Group's 200 television stations across the U.S., quitting isn't easy. Many are reportedly embarrassed and irate at having to recite "fake news" promos ordered by a management team that's widely viewed as favoring the Donald Trump administration. Some might wish to leave. A look at Sinclair's standard employment agreement, obtained by The Hollywood Reporter, illustrates how departing the Sinclair team is hardly a cheap or simple proposition.

According to the contract, a Sinclair employee who voluntarily terminates his or her contract must immediately pay liquidated damages in an amount equal to 40 percent of employee's then annual compensation multiplied by a "percentage equal to the greater of (a) twenty-five percent, or (b) the percentage of the current contract year remaining after such termination."

So, for example, take a news anchor making $200K a year. A stand against these promos by quitting might incur a price tag of $25,000.

It gets worse.

The contract contains a non-compete provision that prohibits the departing Sinclair employee from working at another radio or television station for 180 days after termination. Even if was possible to get another anchor position — Sinclair's proposed acquisition of Tribune stations would shrink the pool of potential jobs — this represents a further barrier.

Of course, some states like California prohibit restrictions hindering employee mobility and there could be good legal arguments why in other states, contractual handcuffs are presumptively illegal.

Kate Gold, an employment lawyer at Drinker Biddle, says that the enforceability of non-competes vary sharply from state to state. As for the liquidated damages provision, Gold says it's highly unusual. "You can't make someone work for you," she says. "You can pursue damages, but to have it pre-determined at 40 percent sounds like a penalty."

The standard Sinclair employment agreement also contains other eyebrow-raising provisions.

For instance, in a section titled "politics," employees agree that at no time will they "directly or indirectly express ... personal political viewpoints during any broadcast."

Sinclair employees also agree to a morals clause allowing for termination with cause for anything that brings the company into "public disrepute, contempt, scandal, or ridicule, or which shocks, insults, or offends the community, or which casts doubt upon Employee's journalistic fairness or credibility or which reflects unfavorably upon Employee, Employer or the Station, as reasonably determined by Employer."

Then, there is contractual language pertaining to one's personal appearance.

It might not be shocking that Sinclair anchors agree to maintain a "certain physical appearance" and get authorization in writing to "materially alter" from such appearance. Nor surprising that Sinclair is allowed to request reasonable changes to one's "hair color, facial cosmetics, and/or removal of facial hair."

But how about an employee who suffers a disability?

According to the contract, Sinclair is allowed to fire an employee when it's determined the employee has suffered a disability, "including but not limited to any which limits Employee's ability to prevent [sic] a pleasant personal appearance and a strong, agreeable voice."

Sinclair is allowed to determine whether the employee is then "unable to perform the essential functions of Employee's job even with reasonable accommodation."

Some of this could lead to legal disputes, but then, there's just one more big problem for Sinclair anchors wishing to quit.

Not only does the contract specify arbitration to adjudicate any dispute arising or relating to the employment agreement, but also allows Sinclair to recover "costs and expenses including, without limitation, reasonable attorney's fees."


MORE ON SINCLAIR

SO HOW DID SINCLAIR FORCE THE COOPERATION OF THESE EDUCATED (BUT POSSIBLY TIMID) NEWS ANCHORS TO KOWTOW IN THIS EMBARRASSING MANNER?

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/04/02/why-sinclair-made-dozens-of-local-news-anchors-recite-the-same-script.html
Why Sinclair Made Dozens of Local News Anchors Recite the Same Script
Jacey Fortin
Published 8:39 AM ET Mon, 2 April 2018

THE VIDEO -- Source: YouTube

On local news stations across the United States last month, dozens of anchors gave the same speech to their combined millions of viewers.

It included a warning about fake news, a promise to report fairly and accurately and a request that viewers go to the station's website and comment "if you believe our coverage is unfair."

More from The New York Times:
Live Nation Rules Music Ticketing, Some Say With Threats

It may not have seemed strange until viewers began to notice that the newscasters from Seattle to Phoenix to Washington sounded very similar. Stitched-together videos on social media showed them eerily echoing the same lines:

"The sharing of biased and false news has become all too common on social media."

"Some members of the media use their platforms to push their own personal bias."

"This is extremely dangerous to our democracy."

The script came from Sinclair Broadcast Group, the country's largest broadcaster, which owns or operates 193 television stations.

Last week, The Seattle Post-Intelligencer published a copy of the speech and reported that employees at a local news station there, KOMO, were unhappy about the script. CNN reported on it on March 7 and said Scott Livingston, the senior vice president of news for Sinclair, had read almost the exact same speech for a segment that was distributed to outlets a year ago.

A union that represents news anchors did not respond immediately to requests for comment on Sunday.

Dave Twedell of the International Cinematographers Guild, who is a business representative for photojournalists (but not anchors) at KOMO in Seattle and KATU in Portland, Ore., said Sinclair told journalists at those stations not to discuss the company with outside news media.

Although it is the country's largest broadcaster, Sinclair is not a household name and viewers may be unaware of who owns their local news station. Critics have accused the company of using its stations to advance a mostly right-leaning agenda.

"We work very hard to be objective and fair and be in the middle," Mr. Livingston told The New York Times last year. "I think maybe some other news organizations may be to the left of center, and we work very hard to be in the center."

Sinclair regularly sends video segments to the stations it owns. These are referred to as "must-runs," and they can include content like terrorism news updates, commentators speaking in support of President Trump or speeches from company executives like the one from Mr. Livingston last year.

But asking newscasters to present the material themselves is not something that Kirstin Pellizzaro, a doctoral candidate at Arizona State University's Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication, remembered from her experience as a producer at a Sinclair-owned news station in Kalamazoo, Mich., from 2014 to 2015.

The station had to air "must-run" segments that came from Sinclair, which is based outside Baltimore. "Some of them were a little slanted, a little biased," Ms. Pellizzaro said. "Packages of this nature can make journalists uncomfortable."

Sinclair representatives did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Sunday. But Mr. Livingston told The Baltimore Sun that the script was meant to demonstrate Sinclair's "commitment to reporting facts," adding that false stories "can result in dangerous consequences," referring to the Pizzagate conspiracy as an example.

"We are focused on fact-based reporting," Mr. Livingston continued. "That's our commitment to our communities. That's the goal of these announcements: to reiterate our commitment to reporting facts in a pursuit of truth."

Ms. Pellizzaro said she can talk about Sinclair more freely now because she is working in academia, whereas journalists at stations owned by Sinclair might feel pressured not to bite the hand that feeds them.

"I hope people realize that the journalists are trying their best, and this shouldn't reflect poorly on them," she said. "They're just under this corporate umbrella."

Sinclair has been accused of using connections in the Trump administration to ease regulations on media consolidation. In an effort to expand its reach, the company is seeking approval from the Justice Department and the Federal Communications Commission for a $3.9 billion deal to buy Tribune Media.



FOR YOUR NEWS DESSERT, WATCH THIS SPOOF OF THE PRESIDENT ON JOHN OLIVER’S “LAST WEEK TONIGHT.” Trump vs. The World: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver



EXCITING NEW ARCHAEOLOGICAL DISCOVERY ON THE CANADIAN WEST COAST

http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0193522
Terminal Pleistocene epoch human footprints from the Pacific coast of Canada
Duncan McLaren , Daryl Fedje, Angela Dyck, Quentin Mackie, Alisha Gauvreau, Jenny Cohen
Published: March 28, 2018https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0193522

Abstract

Little is known about the ice age human occupation of the Pacific Coast of Canada. Here we present the results of a targeted investigation of a late Pleistocene shoreline on Calvert Island, British Columbia. Drawing upon existing geomorphic information that sea level in the area was 2–3 m lower than present between 14,000 and 11,000 years ago, we began a systematic search for archaeological remains dating to this time period beneath intertidal beach sediments. During subsurface testing, we uncovered human footprints impressed into a 13,000-year-old paleosol* beneath beach sands at archaeological site EjTa-4. To date, our investigations at this site have revealed a total of 29 footprints of at least three different sizes. The results presented here add to the growing body of information pertaining to the early deglaciation and associated human presence on the west coast of Canada at the end of the Last Glacial Maximum.


[[PALEOSOL* -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleosol.
“In the geosciences, paleosol (palaeosol in Great Britain and Australia) can have two meanings. The first meaning, common in geology and paleontology, refers to a former soil preserved by burial underneath either sediments (alluvium or loess) or volcanic deposits (volcanic ash), which in the case of older deposits have lithified into rock.”]]

Figures
Fig 20Fig 21Fig 1Fig 2Fig 3Fig 4Fig 5Fig 6Fig 7Fig 8Fig 9Fig 10Fig 11Table 1Fig 12Fig 13Fig 14Fig 15Table 2Fig 16Fig 17Fig 18Fig 19Fig 20Fig 21Fig 1Fig 2Fig 3

Citation: McLaren D, Fedje D, Dyck A, Mackie Q, Gauvreau A, Cohen J (2018) Terminal Pleistocene epoch human footprints from the Pacific coast of Canada. PLoS ONE 13(3): e0193522. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0193522

Editor: Michael D. Petraglia, Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, GERMANY

Received: September 26, 2017; Accepted: February 13, 2018; Published: March 28, 2018

Copyright: © 2018 McLaren et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Data Availability: All relevant data are within the paper and its Supporting Information files.


INTRODUCTION

Based on modern estimates, an active individual human will make over 224,000,000 steps over a lifespan of 65 years based on an average of 9448 steps per day [1]. Most footprints that result from these steps are ephemeral, poorly defined and disappear quickly [2]. In some cases, a distinct cast of the foot is left in soft sediments, preserving a representation of the foot and motion of the individual. In many societies, specialists, such as trackers and gumshoes, can draw inferences about certain aspects of the individual that left their footprints behind [3,4]. In exceptional circumstances tracks are preserved in the geological record and paleontologists, paleoanthropologists and archaeologists can set about interpreting the tracks [5,6]. For example, the Australopithecine trackways from Laetoli in Tanzania have been intensively studied and reported upon [7–11].

ABSTRACT

Little is known about the ice age human occupation of the Pacific Coast of Canada. Here we present the results of a targeted investigation of a late Pleistocene shoreline on Calvert Island, British Columbia. Drawing upon existing geomorphic information that sea level in the area was 2–3 m lower than present between 14,000 and 11,000 years ago, we began a systematic search for archaeological remains dating to this time period beneath intertidal beach sediments. During subsurface testing, we uncovered human footprints impressed into a 13,000-year-old paleosol beneath beach sands at archaeological site EjTa-4. To date, our investigations at this site have revealed a total of 29 footprints of at least three different sizes. The results presented here add to the growing body of information pertaining to the early deglaciation and associated human presence on the west coast of Canada at the end of the Last Glacial Maximum.

Figures
Fig 20Fig 21Fig 1Fig 2Fig 3Fig 4Fig 5Fig 6Fig 7Fig 8Fig 9Fig 10Fig 11Table 1Fig 12Fig 13Fig 14Fig 15Table 2Fig 16Fig 17Fig 18Fig 19Fig 20Fig 21Fig 1Fig 2Fig 3

Citation: McLaren D, Fedje D, Dyck A, Mackie Q, Gauvreau A, Cohen J (2018) Terminal Pleistocene epoch human footprints from the Pacific coast of Canada. PLoS ONE 13(3): e0193522. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0193522

Editor: Michael D. Petraglia, Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, GERMANY

Received: September 26, 2017; Accepted: February 13, 2018; Published: March 28, 2018

Copyright: © 2018 McLaren et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Data Availability: All relevant data are within the paper and its Supporting Information files.

Funding: Funded by Tula Foundation, HALAP 2012-2017. https://tula.org/ to DM. The Tula Foundation provided funding for research expenses. The funders participated in meetings concerning the overall scope of this project. 'In kind' support was provided for transportation and accommodations while in the field. The funders encouraged us to pursue this line of investigation but had no role in the preparation of this manuscript.

Competing interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Introduction

Based on modern estimates, an active individual human will make over 224,000,000 steps over a lifespan of 65 years based on an average of 9448 steps per day [1]. Most footprints that result from these steps are ephemeral, poorly defined and disappear quickly [2]. In some cases, a distinct cast of the foot is left in soft sediments, preserving a representation of the foot and motion of the individual. In many societies, specialists, such as trackers and gumshoes, can draw inferences about certain aspects of the individual that left their footprints behind [3,4]. In exceptional circumstances tracks are preserved in the geological record and paleontologists, paleoanthropologists and archaeologists can set about interpreting the tracks [5,6]. For example, the Australopithecine trackways from Laetoli in Tanzania have been intensively studied and reported upon [7–11].

Although found in many different types of sedimentary contexts worldwide (for example in cave floors and volcanic ash), a high proportion of hominin trackways have been discovered in near-shore settings [2,5,12–15]. When it comes to footprints, coastal settings are unique in some respects in that they are places where exposed soft and semi-saturated sediments abound, and they are linear focal regions for human and animal activity. Tidal, wave and aeolian action can provide inputs of additional sediment which may work to fill and cap footprints, adding to the potential of preservation in the geological record [16–19]. In many cases, coastal erosion results in the re-exposure of trackways, although it will most often also result in the destruction of these features [16]. The footprints reported on here were found in a near shore context of the Central Coast of British Columbia (BC), Canada, although they were revealed through excavation as opposed to erosion.

During the Last Glacial Maximum, parts of the western edge of the Cordilleran Ice Sheet terminated at the Pacific coastline [20–22]. Some land between this meeting of ice and sea remained unglaciated, providing refugia for some plants and animals [23–25]. Between 19,000 and 16,000 years ago refugia became larger and more common along the outermost part of the coast [26–28]. These refugia were able to support vegetation as well as large land mammals. It is possible that humans also inhabited these refugia, in particular if they employed the use of watercraft and were able draw their subsistence from maritime and intertidal sources [29]. As such, the western margin of the Cordilleran Ice Sheet is one of the hypothesized means by which human populations moved from Beringia into mid-latitude North America during the last ice age [30]. Archaeological evidence along this proposed coastal migration route is, however, scant. To date, few archaeologists working in the area have attempted focused research projects to test if such evidence exists.

Very few late Pleistocene archaeological sites are known on the Pacific Coast of Canada. Until quite recently, the oldest known site in British Columbia (BC) was the Charlie Lake Cave site. The site is situated at the northern end of the interior “Ice Free Corridor” and the assemblage of artifacts includes a fluted projectile point, dated 12,500–12,100 cal BP [31]. Similar radiocarbon ages were found in association with a lithic assemblage at the Vermillion Lakes site in Alberta, near the southern end of the “Ice Free Corridor” dated between 12,700 and 11,800 cal BP [32]. Early coastal sites in British Columbia and southeast Alaska were, until recently, not known to predate the earliest Holocene [33,34]. To the south, on the Olympic Peninsula in Washington State, the Manis Mastodon site is the best known and oldest documented site from the glaciated coastal region, represented by a mastodon rib with a bone point lodged in it dated to 13,860–13,768 cal BP [35].

. . . . FOR MORE, GO TO THIS WEBSITE.


NEWLY DISCOVERED NORTH AMERICAN DNA

GENETICS AND THE COLONIZATION OF THE WESTERN HEMISPHERE

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2018/jan/03/what-the-ancient-dna-discovery-tells-us-about-native-american-ancestry
Genetics The Past and the Curious
What the ancient DNA discovery tells us about Native American ancestry
A new genome from a Pleistocene burial in Alaska confirms a longstanding model for the initial peopling of the Americas
Surprise as DNA reveals new group of Native Americans: the ancient Beringians
Jennifer Raff
Wed 3 Jan 2018 13.00 EST

Photograph -- Alaskan glacier. Photograph: Alamy

A little over 11,000 years ago, a grieving family in Central Alaska laid to rest a six-week-old baby girl, a three-year-old child, and a preterm female fetus. According to their custom, the children were interred under a hearth inside their home and provisioned with the carefully crafted stone points and bone foreshafts of hunting lances. We don’t know their names, but the peoples who live in the region today (the Tanana Athabaskans) call one of the girls Xach’itee’aanenh t’eede gaay (sunrise child-girl) and the other Yełkaanenh t’eede gaay (dawn twilight child-girl). Their remains were discovered a few years ago at a site known today as the Upward Sun River.

Surprise as DNA reveals new group of Native Americans: the ancient Beringians

These children carried the history of their ancestors within their DNA, and with the permission of their descendants they are now teaching us about the early events in the peopling of the Americas. A new paper in Nature, Terminal Pleistocene Alaskan genome reveals first founding population of Native Americans by Moreno-Mayar et al., analyzes the complete genome of one of these children. This genome gives us a glimpse of the genetic diversity present in Late Pleistocene Beringians, the ancestors of Native Americans, and confirms a decades-old hypothesis for the early peopling of the Americas.

To contextualize this work, it helps to start with what we know – and don’t know – about how humans first got to the American continents. We’ve known for a long time that the indigenous peoples of the Americas are descended from a group of people who crossed a land connection between Asia and North America sometime during the Last Glacial Maximum (26,500 to 19,000 years before present, or YBP).

The prevailing model for how this happened is known as the Beringian Standstill (or Pause or Incubation, depending on who you ask), which was originally conceived of based on classical genetic markers and fully developed by the analysis of maternally inherited mitochondrial genomes . This model states that the ancient Beringians must have experienced a long period of isolation from all other populations. (Estimates for the length of this isolation vary, but the lower end – roughly 7,000 years – is about as long as the period between the invention of beer brewing and the Apollo 11 landing). During this period they developed the genetic variation uniquely found in Native American populations.

This isolation likely took place in Beringia. Environmental reconstructions based on ancient plant remains taken from soil cores, as well as computer temperature models show that it was actually a relatively decent place to live during the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM). Large regions of Beringia would have had warmer temperatures than Siberia and shrub tundra with plants and animals available to support a sizeable human population. Although we don’t have any direct archaeological evidence of people living in central Beringia during the LGM – because that region is currently underneath the ocean – we do have evidence that people were living year round in western Beringia (present-day Siberia) at the Yana Rhinocerous Horn sites by 30,000 YBP and in eastern Beringia (present-day Yukon, in Canada) by about 20-22,000 YBP at the Bluefish Caves site.

At the end of the LGM, temperatures began to rise and the glaciers that covered North America slowly began to melt. The first peoples to enter the Americas from Beringia are thought to have done so shortly after a route opened up along the west coast, about 15,000 years ago. Travel by boat would have allowed very rapid southward movement, making it possible for people to establish themselves at the early site of Monte Verde in Chile by 14,220 YBP, as well as a number of other sites in North America of similar ages. Whether there was southward travel by Clovis peoples via the ice-free corridor once it opened remains unresolved, but there is at least some evidence against it.

Today there remain a number of questions about the details of the Beringian Incubation model: 1) Which population(s) contributed to the ancestry of the earliest Native Americans? 2) When and where did their ancestors become isolated, and how long did this isolation last? 3) How did people initially enter the Americas from Beringia? 4) When and how did the patterned genetic variation that we see in Native American populations emerge?

Ancient genomes from people who lived in the Americas and in Siberia during or shortly after the LGM can help provide answers to some of these questions. But there aren’t very many burials that date to this period, so the Upward Sun River child’s genome is very significant. It strongly confirms the Beringian Incubation/Standstill model. In this region of Alaska today, we only see a subset of Native American-specific mitochondrial haplogroups: those which are uniquely restricted to the Arctic and Subarctic. But the Beringian Standstill model predicted that ancestral Beringians should have all “founder” mitochondrial lineages present in ancient and contemporary Native Americans. In the absence of any ancient DNA dating to the Late Pleistocene, this remained an unsolvable puzzle.

But when the first genetic data from two of the Upward Sun River children was successfully recovered by Justin Tackney et al. in 2015, we (I was a minor co-author on the paper) discovered that they had mitochondrial lineages (C1b and B2) not typical of contemporary peoples of the region. We hypothesized that they might represent the descendants of a remnant ancient Beringian population, but it was impossible to test this hypothesis without additional data from the nuclear genomes. Moreno-Mayar et al.’s nuclear genome results from one of the children (the other didn’t yield enough nuclear DNA for analysis) confirm that she belonged to a group that had remained in Beringia after Native Americans began their migration southward into the Americas. We know that because this child is equally related to all indigenous populations in the Americas. She did not belong to either of the two major Native American genetic groups (Southern and Northern), but was equally related to both of them. One interpretation of this result is that her ancestors must have remained in Alaska after splitting from the ancestors of Native Americans sometime around 20,000 YBP. Her genome, provides new insight into the genetic diversity present in the ancestral Beringian population. One important component of that is that it gives us new estimates of the approximate dates of key events:

~36,000 YBP: The ancestors of the ancient Beringians began to separate from East Asians, but gene flow between them continues until about 25,000 YBP

~25-20,000 YBP: This population experienced gene flow with the ancient North Eurasian population (to which the Mal’ta boy belonged)

~20,000 YBP: The ancestors of the Upward Sun River child diverged from the ancestors of other Native Americans.

~17,000-14,600 YBP: The two major clades (genetic groups) of Native Americans differentiate from one another.

While this paper doesn’t yield any tremendous surprises, it does add new details to and confirms the predictions of a hypothesis for the initial peopling of the Americas that has been the focus of much research over the past few years. We ought to temper our excitement, however, with the recognition that a nuclear genome from a single individual might not represent the full range of genetic diversity within a population, and those questions I outlined above will need additional data to fully answer. We still have a tremendous amount to learn about the origins and evolution of the indigenous peoples of the Americas.

Further reading:

Moreno-Mayar et al. 2018. Terminal Pleistocene Alaskan genome reveals first founding population of Native Americans. Nature.

This article was corrected on 4 January to reflect the correct geographical placement of Canada and Siberia in relation to Beringia.