A website about human migration waves based on  mitochondrial DNA studies:
http://dsc.discovery.com/convergence/realeve/realeve.html
Also, the PBS program "Journey of Man" (I think) about a similar subject based on the Y-chromosome studies was absolutely fascinating.
Ozzie
 Ray A <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

Actually, people only first came to the Americas around 20,000 years ago.
Plants had evolved for millions of years in the Americas, separately from
plants eaten by humans in Europe, Austral-Asia, and Africa. 20,000 years
is not very long by evolutionary standards. Moreover, those of us with no
Native American ancestors have no chance of having specific evolved
adapations to foods from here.

There is a big difference between fruits and vegetables as far as the
Paleodiet is concerned. Plants (vegetable matter) and especially their
seeds often have defenses against being eaten. We have evolved some
ability to eat plants despite this (we can eat things like mint leaves and
spinach, etc). Through cooking and other processing people have learned to
eat other plants and seeds previously inedible (e.g. potatoes, beans,
grains, etc). Many fruits (but not all) do not require such processing
because they coevolved symbiotically with mammals - the plant "wants" you
to eat its fruit. Fruits from the Americas are a gray area because, though
they may have evolved to be eaten by mammals, humans have little
evolutionary experience with them.

Personally, I eat fruits from the Americas, but I'm more cautious about
them. For instance, I eat tomatoes, but I make sure that they're fully
ripened (lower glycoalkaloid content). It's nice to know that pumpkins
existed in Europe - at least we evolved with the cousins of modern
pumpkins.

Ray






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