Video: Final DNA analysis of Windover Pond People in Florida

This is an excellent example of why anthropologists need to stop trying to create “one size fits all” speculations about the peopling of the Americas. There are too many exceptions!

When the original archaeological reports from the Windover Pond People were publicized in National Geographic Magazine, I was extremely busy with my architecture practice and cheese creamery in Virginia, plus had just met a sweet mademoiselle at a National Geographic Christmas Party, who I thought would be the love of my life. I did not have much time to give it deep thought. However, this drawing above intrigued me. It was exactly like the Neolithic burials at an ancient pond, now a bog, on Ven Island, Sweden. On that same island were petroglyphs that in the Southeastern United States would be labeled “Uchee and Creek sacred symbols.” How could that be?

The day after graduating from Georgia Tech, I flew and sailed to Landskrona, Sweden to start a job with its Stadsarkitektkontoret (Town Architect’s Office). The City of Landskrona assigned me the design of a pedestrian village on Ven Island, which had been continuously occupied since the Ice Age and was the center of Bronze Age civilization in Scandinavia. Ven’s planning was under the city’s jurisdiction.

My boss, City Architect Gunner Lydh, did not want me working at a location where his nation’s heritage ran deep, without some appreciation of that heritage. I was to audit classes and attend lectures at nearby Lund University on Neolithic Archaeology, Bronze Age Archaeology, Swedish Medieval History, Swedish Renaissance History and historic preservation technology.

From talking with local archaeologists and Lund professors, I distinctly remembered them showing me photos and sketches of some ancient Neolithic burials in a large bog on Ven . . . Stormossen. The burials were exactly like the ones above. The archaeologists were intrigued because this type of burial was commonplace in southern Finland and Karelia (extreme NW Russia) about 6-8,000 years ago. Nordic and Russian archaeologists believed that they were the ancestors of the Sami.

Judging from the films on Youtube about the Windover Pond site, Florida archaeologists don’t seem to know that burials identical to those in Florida can be found in southern Sweden, southern Finland and Karelia, but given the results of the most recent DNA studies of Windover mummified bodies, this is highly significant. You will enjoy this video!