At https://phys.org/news/2023-05-evidence-ice-age-human-migrations.html … mitochondrial DNA, via the female lineage, has shown that migrations from northern coastal China, reached the Americas – courtesy of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, genetics. They also migrated to Japan, the Jomon people [nowadays known as the Ainu]. One migration took place deep within the Late Glacial Maximum – and one shortly thereafter.There are distinct similarities in Palaeolithic stone tools between northern China, Japan, and the Americas. Ancestral links exist between Siberia, Austro-Melanesia, and SE Asia, but this new genetic link is different. Multiple waves of people, it is being suggested, journeyed to the Americas. The findings are confirmed by Y chromosome DNA [male ancestry]. The same story is at https://phys.org/news/2023-05-prehistoric-migrations-china-americas.html … which is more or less a repeat.
Another DNA study – on Mexican migrations, can be found at https://phys.org/news/2023-05-dna-migration-patterns-ancient-mexican.html … using genomic and Mitochondrial DNA data researchers have tested archaeological speculation that during periods of drought people migrated from the arid zone of northern Mexico, to the south, and it came up wanting. The arid zone was occupied by hunter gatherers but central and southern Mexico was inhabited by farmers, and potters etc. DNA does not support major migrations southwards – even in the worst of drought episodes. One may actually wonder if the droughts were caused by a shift in the rain belt, which would have affected the south more than the north.
At https://phys.org/news/2023-05-patagonian-ice-field-sediment-cores.html … southern Patagonia is quite frigid, with sea ice and glaciated mountains – the southern Andes chain. A 12.2 metre long sediment core was taken by researchers and has revealed when glaciers retreated, or advanced, during a large slice of the Holocene. The Patagonian ice field is big, stretching 200 miles in length. Lots of rain and snow. Many of the glaciers, we are told, have been shrinking since the end of the Little Ice Age. Apparently, they date this to around 1850 – when there was a cold snap in the 1840s, but one would have thought Little Ice Age conditions ended much earlier than that. Mind you, we must remember this is the date, 1850, when the global warming alarmists start their graphs on warming. It is estimated to have warmed up by 1.5 degrees since 1850 – which coincides with the beginning of the industrial revolution. The BBC is even telling us this week we are approaching the 1.5 degrees limit – and thereafter all hell will break out and we will all die from excessive heat [even though it is much hotter in the tropics].
Over at https://phys.org/news/2023-05-south-africa-desert-like-interior-human.html … this is another piece of research that strangely thinks the environment back in the day was much as it is now. Climate change is ongoing. It changes -as we shall see. Humans thrived in southern Africa between 195,000 and 123,000 years ago, during a previous glacial period. South African archaeologists have been invesigating caves lining the south coast. They were even occupied in more recent glacial periods , marine isotope stage 6 and more recently. It seems that far from being inhospitable southern Africa was host to human groups living and hunting around palaeo lakes. These are now in the desert, and picked out by flat pans – surrounded by higher ground. Lakes clearly could not exist in a desert – which surprised the researchers. The study can be found at https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2221.082120 … which clearly shows a different kind of environment to the modern world. The pans exist in the Karoo desert and they coincide roughly with the Late Glacial Maximum, and an earlier period between 55,000 to 39,000 years ago – when glacial conditions do not seem to have existed in western Europe either [coming to an end roughly at the Laschamp event]. Not only that, the lakes were big affairs. One was 83 miles across and 59 feet deep, and a bit less for the other two examples.