A Chinese expert is pushing the theory that there are remarkable similarities in the traditional lifestyles of Native Canadians and the Chinese indicating the two peoples are of the same stock.

The founder of Beijing University's Canadian Studies Centre, Professor Yang Liwen says the fishing ways of Canadian aboriginals, for example, bear an uncanny resemblance to ancestral ways in southern China.

Symbols, rituals, altars and language - in some cases - also bear strong similarities.

One piece of evidence comes from the famous Lake Tahoe in California.

Tahoe is the local Indian word for 'great lake' while dahu means the same in Chinese. Professor Yang has even been struck by a symbol on a tribe's totem pole while attending an aboriginal cultural exhibition in British Columbia.

It was a Chinese yin-yang symbol.

When he visited the site commemorating those who died in the 1885 Riel Rebellion in Saskatchewan, he was told that the heads of the deceased were pointed westward because they believed their ancestors came from Asia.

In Arizona, symbols found on 7,000-year-old pottery resemble the 'Eight Diagrams' depicted in the Yijing, or Book Of Changes.

There are also plenty of symbols which appear to come from the Yangshao Culture, which once thrived in China's Henan province, according to Prof Yang.

These range from symbols similar to the legendary taotie - a fierce flesh-eating monster found on ancient Chinese bronze vessels - or Chinese characters such as wan (reverse swastika), tian (heaven), which were discovered at ancient sites in Mexico.

Words and place names also sound alike. Mexican aboriginals call rivers 'he' and Chilean aboriginals call their young children 'wawa'. Both sounds have the same meanings in Chinese.

According to Yang, he claims Americans criss-crossed the Pacific 4,000-5,000 years ago, bringing to Asia plants such as corn, peanuts and tobacco, formerly unique to the Americas.

The common-stock theory dated back to the 1960s when scientists found that people with 'China transferrins' - a beta globulin in blood serum - live in East Asia and South Asia, Finland, Central America and the northern part of South America.

Prof Yang even suggests a possible direct link between Tibetans and Native Americans. - AJRCom