Donald N. Yates - Old World Roots of the Cherokee: How Dna, Ancient Alphabets and Religion Explain the Origins of Americas Largest Indian Nation

The Cherokee Anomaly (copyright Donald N. Yates, 2011).

DONALD N. YATES

Foreword by RICHARD MACK BETTIS

McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers
Jefferson, North Carolina

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGUING DATA ARE AVAILABLE

BRITISH LIBRARY CATALOGUING DATA ARE AVAILABLE

e-ISBN: 978-0-7864-9125-4

2012 Donald N. Yates. All rights reserved

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying or recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

On the cover: clockwise from top wampum image 2012 clipart.com with inset of Tanawa from New Guinea cave (illustration by Christopher C. Vigil); DNA helix 2012 Shutterstock; map of places mentioned in the book created by author; background detail from The Constitution and Laws of the Cherokee Nation, published in Cherokee, 1875

McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers
Box 611, Jefferson, North Carolina 28640
www.mcfarlandpub.com

To Cherokee descendants everywhere

Donald Yates burst onto the scene clarifying Melungeons and went on to explain many more peoples via pioneering researches in DNA. A classically grounded scientist who is conversant with Hebrew, he detected Cherokee as Greek in what can only be called an epochal shift of thinking, posing the historical challenge of getting Alexandrine and Mediterranean koine to Tennessee ahead of Hernando De Soto.

Oklahomans have long recognized the passion for excelling of gifted Cherokee. As an Oklahoman I fully acknowledge that tradition and as a North Carolinian have been dismayed that this state does not equally celebrate it, as inevitably it will. Yates momentous book surely will have numerous noteworthy successors.

Cyclone Covey
Professor of History Emeritus
Wake Forest University
Winston-Salem, North Carolina

The road to this books appearance has been a long one. It is a pleasure for me to acknowledge the help of the following individuals for their roles small and large along the way: Bett Yates Adams, DeWayne Adamson, Steve Adkins, Judith Alef, William L. Anderson, Charles E. Austin, Bobbi Bacha, Joseph F. Bailey, Sandra Ballard, Dennis Banks, Michelle Baugh, Sharon Crisp Bedzyk, Rabbi Arnold Mark Belzer, Mabel Bentley, Richard Mack Bettis, the late Wallace Black Elk, Judy Douglas Bloom, Brent S. Vaughn Blount, Francesca Bortolaso, Lisa Bowes, Doris Cooper Bowman, the late John Bozowski, Edith Breshears, Donal Buchanan, Leah Laura Bulgariev, James H. Burchell, Linda Burckhalter, John (Dick) Caldwell, Virginia Caldwell, Helen Campbell, Francesca Cappellini, George Carter, Manfred Clauss, Ernest Cline, Doloris C. Cogan, William Collins, Grady Cooper, Jamie Cooper, Troy Cooper, Windham Cooper, Andre Copeland, Cyclone Covey, Brent Yanusdi Cox, Lauren T. Crews, Dr. Bruce Linton Dean, Gail Lynn Dean, the late Vine Deloria, Jr., Tom Diaz, Susan Drinan, Edmund F. Durfee, Werner Eck, Pamela G. Edwards, Bill Emmett, Momfeather Erickson, Debbie Erskine, the late Gloria Farley, Tommy Doyle Fields, Joseph Flynn, Flick Ford, Beatrice L. Frost, Ida Jane Gallagher, Mary M. Garrabrant-Brower, Michael E. Gilbert, Kelly Strater Gilroy, Mary Goodman, Cheryl Lynn Green, Alan Greth, Reagan L. Grimsely, the late Floyd Milton Grimwood, Billie Groening, R. L. Guffin, James L. Guthrie, Edmund Haag, Peter Haarer, Linda Haberlin, Ann Reagan Haines, Jess Hair, Linda Barnett Hall, Klaus Hallof, Zena Halpern, Florine Hamm, Nancy E. Hammes, Morton A. Harris, LaSonya Hayes, Marjorie Hecht, Kimberly McFadden Hill, Jacqueline Hines, Elizabeth Caldwell Hirschman, Denise Holmes-Kennedy, Raymond Hurst, John R. Ihlefeld, Paul Iverson, Ola Faye James, Stephen C. Jett, Roger L. Jewell, Carl Johannessen, the late Dorothy Randell Johnson, Nini Johnston, J. Jones, Pat Goin Jones, Rolling Thunder Justice, Pam Kahler, N. Brent Kennedy, Richard Kennedy, Miranda King, Willora Glee Krapf, Margaret E. Kross, Brenda LaForce, Everett LaForce, Page Lambert, Jessica Kiely Law, Eleanor M. Leonard, Rabbi Shmuel Lerer, David E. Lewis, Elisha Linder, Strawberry Luck, Bonnie J. Lyda, Juan B. Madrid, MeriDee Orvis Mahan, Thomas Mahar, Ronald Martin, Karen Mattern, Michelle Maxwell, Wayne May, Robert English McBeath, Peter McCormick, J. Huston McCulloch, Dorman McDonald, Barry McLerran, Russell Means, Matthew Mebust, Brian Mickelsen, Sebenia Ann Milbacher, Nicholas J. Millington, Thomas O. Mills, Karen Sue Mitchell, Debra Modrall, Holli S. Molnar, the late Jerry W. Moore, Michael M. Moore, Nola W. Moyers, Nelson Morgan, Nancy Sparks Morrison, Lars Mouritsen, David Mowa, Charley Myers, Maxine Nethercutt, Susan Newton, the late David Nitchman, Daisy Njoku, Stedman B. Noble, Esther P. Noffsinger, Barbara Roasting Ear Oliver, Rick Osmon, Teresa A. Panther-Yates (with special gratitude for all her assistance in making this long effort a success), Marshall Payn, Warren D. Pearson, Ella Mae Perkinson, Felicia Pickering, Dan E. Pomeroy, Gerald Potterf, Deborah Pritchett, Patrick Pynes, Alice E. Richards, the late James Riddle, Jimi Riddle, JonLyn L. Roberts, Nadine Rosenbush, Molly Running Wolf, Paul Russell, the late Sonyaquay Russell, Larry Rutledge, Kathy Ryder, Rick Sanders, Michael Satlow, Betty Sue Price Satterfield, Arcelle Sawyer, Steve Shaffer, Billy Shaw, Rose C. Shockerly, Carole C. Sides, Billy Sinor, Amy Yates Smith, Bruce Smith, David Ray Smith, Robert D. Starling, Billy Starnes, Julia Starnes, Keely Starnes, Phyllis E. Starnes, George Starr-Bresette, Neil Steede, Marc K. Stengel, Richard Stewart, Kenneth B. Tankersley, Malee Thomas, Bart Torbert, the late Lupe Trejo, Jr., Elizabeth Trupin-Pulli, Gunnar Thompson, D. J. Thornton, Elizabeth Pearl Thurman, Bertram Tsavadawa, Kaye M. Viars, Edward Viera, Christopher C. Vigil, Orlando Vigil, Jay Stuart Wakefield, Skip Whitson, Joe White, Willie Marie Williams, Cecil Wooten, George Wickliffe, Brian E. Wilkes, Marie Wilkins, Gayl A. Wilson, Paul Minus Williams, Wayne Winkler, Celia Wyckoff, Dana Yarbrough, the late Bessie C. Yates, the late Cooper Leland Yates, Dustin Blake Yates, Lawden H. Yates, Paul G. Yates, William E. Yates, Madolyn York and Ju Sun Yi.

This book is relevant and would have been so even two hundred or five hundred years ago. Histories of America conventionally start in 1492 with Columbus and other European explorers. They all are supposed to discover savages of the lowest order. Thankfully, Donald Yates is not burdened by such stereotypes. As an expert in genetics who knows history, he answers only to those seeking truth. His interdisciplinary approach is relatively new, but its use is exploding.

As a historical investigator who uses the science of DNA as the perfect tool, Yates does not buy into the idea that everything discovered must have the stamp of Western Europe on it to be civilized and worthwhile. His many questions come from an extensive education in the humanities, but his final answers derive from science. He rightfully probes some of our ironclad assumptions about early Americaits artifacts, architecture, skills, sciences of astronomy and mathematics and other knowledge surpassing that of the later explorers. He finds languages and customs from places around the world.