DNA Confirms that First North & South Americans Came From Siberia
Humans (Homo sapiens) ventured out of Africa Some 65,000 years ago. They finally arrived in South America some 14,000 years ago
Earliest Americans Arrived in Waves, DNA Study Finds
July 11, 2012
NYT
North and South America were first populated by three waves of migrants from Siberia rather than just a single migration, say researchers who have studied the whole genomes of Native Americans in South America and Canada.
(more…)
Saving the Incas’ Mother Tongue, Quechua
June 7, 2008
Armed With a Pen, and Ready to Save the Incas’ Mother Tongue
NYT
CALLAO, Peru
“Somewhere in La Mancha, in a place whose name I do not care to remember, a gentleman lived not long ago.”
Simple enough, right? But not for Demetrio Túpac Yupanqui.
Instead, he regales visitors to his home here in this gritty port city on Lima’s edge with his Quechua version of the opening words of “Don Quixote”:
“Huh k’iti, la Mancha llahta suyupin, mana yuyarina markapin, yaqa kay watakuna kama, huh axllasqa wiraqucha.”
(Above: A 16th century drawing of Francisco Pizarro meeting the Inca emperor Atahualpa, in Cajamarca, Peru in 1532)
Mr. Túpac Yupanqui, theologian, professor, adviser to presidents and, now, at the sunset of his long life, a groundbreaking translator of Cervantes, greets the perplexed reactions to these words with a wide smile.
“When people communicate in Quechua, they glow,” said Mr. Túpac Yupanqui, who at 85 still appears before his pupils each day in a tailored dark suit. “It is a language that persists five centuries after the conquistadors arrived. We cannot let it die…”
(more…)
