Day+35

Even though I had an enlightening time with the Chukchi, I am glad to be heading home to my home country and to get out of the blistering cold. I am now headed to Arizona. I'm trading in my hat, gloves, and puffy jacket for shorts, shades, and suntan lotion. I booked a flight for $2636. I couldn't wait to arrive in a place where people actually spoke my language. The Indians are where they are today because of the migration of people across the Bering Strait. They walked across this landmass and ended up in sunny Arizona. They are part of haplogroup Q. Some of the Native Americans were a bit apprehensive when I explained my journey. They understood that their group of people had always been living on the land where they were living now. This conflicted a bit with what I had to say, but they were still very hospitable. I didn't spend too much time with them since I now had the luxury of hotels. These Native Americans were no longer living in the dwellings that they used to. They wore modern clothes and spoke English just like me. I think that this shows somewhat of the homogenization that is leading to the death of cultures and language. We are at a unique time in history. We are able to trace genetic trails of human populations but pretty soon this will not be the case. Because of the movement of these peoples, their unique genetics from marriage within a small population is slowly disappearing. Within the next hundred years or so it is possible that everyone will speak one of a handful of languages and everyone's facial features will look approximately the same. I think that this would be a horrible thing to happen. Cultural diversity makes life so much more interesting and defines us humans as a species.