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Comment by wnscooke | Hacker News Reader

There are some who think that if the First Nations weren’t “the first”, that diminishes modern day claims and grievances, making it easier for modern day Canada and the USA to ignore legitimate claims, and treat us as they’ve always wanted to treat us. So, this sort of research is important for many.

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Huh? You seem to be getting shit wildly mixed up.

Everyone agrees Native Americans / First Nations / Indigenous population have been in the Americas for over ten thousand years. The Vikings went there about -- or, according to this discovery, exactly -- a thousand years ago.

Absolutely nobody thinks proving the Viking journeys can in any way deligitimize the native's claim to primacy. Well, absolutely nobody who isn't totally befuddled.

Weird take. I have never read any claims that Europeans were in N America before the indigenous.

Even with visiting in 1000 AD, the "indians" have 10-20,000 year lead.

There's all the nonsense that happened around Kennewick man and all the controversies around it. Various bits of bad physical anthropology that tried to identify the skull as "Caucasoid", some dispute over the control over the remains, and in the end DNA testing showed continuity with today's indigenous populations; but white nationalists tried to seize on its initial description as "Caucasoid" as some evidence of "Caucasian" presence in the new world long ago.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kennewick_Man#Race_factor

'The New York Times reported "White supremacist groups are among those who used Kennewick Man to claim that Caucasians came to America well before Native Americans." Additionally, Asatru Folk Assembly, a racialist neopagan organization, sued to have the bones genetically tested before it was adjudicated that Kennewick Man was an ancestor of present-day Native Americans.'

Also the whole "Solutrean hypothesis", also disproven/discredited, but living on among the conspirational and often racist.

Thanks for sharing the examples, certainly an interesting read.

However, I don't think interest in the Viking archeology from the last 2,000 years can be written off in the same vein.

Since the Norse met native Americans (according to the Saga), I don't see how this changes who was there first? It was only a thousand years ago after all.

It doesn't matter if they were first, or if they themselves slaughtered whomever lived here before... being 'first' to be somewhere doesn't give you automatic rights over something. That is not how human civilization has ever worked.

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