I sometimes find it hard to get my head around previous populations, both prehistoric and historic, existing and leaving behind bones, tools, buildings, and landscape modifications but not being connected to us in any way. This is becoming a more common caution as we see the genetic discontinuity, tool-making discontinuity, religious and cultural discontinuity. It used to be that there were eras, that came in succession There would be Gravettian and then Solutrean and then Magdalenian, and we saw those as development, with perhaps some warlike people coming in and taking over, but still something essentially like Middle Eastern and European histories, with an essential continuity of people and gradual changes.
The shockingly different history of European arrival in the new world somehow eluded us. We still discussed that in terms of European nations holding sway over this region or that. The almost complete population replacement seemed like a one-off, of unimportant peoples being removed.
Yet we now know that complete replacement happened a lot in history and prehistory, including in the New World before "we" got here. In Britain people will get romantic about "our ancestors" building Stonehenge. Um, no. Their ancestors eliminated the people who build Stonehenge. Of the Stonehengers, some distant relatives from the Continent mixed with the invaders beforehand, so that there are oddities like Cheddar Man having a relative still living nearby when they did the DNA a few years ago. But he wasn't a descendant, not by a long shot. The modern schoolmaster shared some even more distant ancestors with Cheddar Man.
Peoples go along for hundreds or even thousands of years with some continuity, trading, exchanging daughters. Oh, a whole tribe gets wiped out here and there, but most tribes mix, move about, expand and contract. Then some tribe wipes everyone out, unless they keep the women, and all those previous peoples have no further influence on mankind. Razib took the analogy of the Roanoke Colony, a real people but only a blip on the historic record. There have been rumors and suggestions of them having some cultural or genetic contribution to the Redbones or fully native tribes, but nothing substantial even if true.
Yet I think the analogy of modern travel fits better. I went to Romania through Hungary several times. In Romania I had an effect - we took children home, primarily; but I was part of physical medical care, I did teaching. In Hungary I just went through. I had no effect. I didn't kill anyone or save anyone or impregnate anyone. I didn't have a job, I didn't build anything or destroy anything. I left no trace. If I had gotten hit by a bus and died there, about all that could be concluded was "Gee, this guy came from really far away. I wonder why?"
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