Destination: The Americas

Once again, mainstream archaeology is enlarging the scope of the peopling of the Americas. The 'ice-free corridor' of the Younger Dryas is no longer the key, and Clovis First has been thoroughly supplanted. Proceedings of last year's Paleoamerican Odyssey conference in Santa Fe further change the way we look at our roots on the continent.

... recent excavations at Gault are part of a growing list of digs contributing new evidence that not only asserts that there were other peoples in the Americas at the same time as those who made Clovis points, but that humans had reached these lands earlier, and possibly by different routes. At the conference, when it was Collins’ turn to speak, he said just that. “By the beginning of the Younger Dryas [a 1,300-year cold snap that began about 12,800 years ago], this was already a fairly crowded archaeological landscape.” Archaeology.org

a reply to: JohnnyCanuck
That point in time seems to be one of those pivotal moments in the history of the human species. I suspect this new evidence will bring about a lot of conjecture about those previous inhabitants. Hopefully, this will spur the funding of new digs. S&F.

a reply to: JohnnyCanuck

Nice johnnycanuck,
I will kick my self till I die for not making that conference.

Yes, by the time of the YD the world was populated from the arctic to Patagonia.
So many sitess clearly show that humans have been here for much longer than is even currently being accepted.
There are human finger prints in fired clay 23k yo, in new mexico, 40k at Monte Verde, a well documented presence in the Mojave going back 25k and disputed dates going back 100-200k.
5o-60k now seems to be elusive target date for entry. I am now more than ever convinced that likely the first people here were he, didn't survive though, and then neanderthal, who did contribute to modern native Americans, indigenous Mexicans inherited the diabetes risk gene from hsn.

By the way, you do realize that that conference was where all the evil scientists met with their tptb puppet masters to plan future suppresion of knowledge.

a reply to: JohnnyCanuck

Excellent just excellent

a reply to: JohnnyCanuck

Good stuff!

I think one of the biggest reasons why the earliest estimates (45-60+ kya) for habitation at places like Pedro Furada (Brazil) have not gained wide acceptance among North American archaeologists is a lack of discovery of similarly ancient sites in North America and what one might call the "Beringia Bias." That is to say, the assumption has been for a very long time that human migration into the Americas was exclusively across the Bering Strait and therefore, the very oldest sites should all be located in North America.

In my opinion, evidence has been mounting for some time that supports alternative migration hypotheses. I mention Pedro Furada because if the dating is accepted, it very well could point to migration, presumably by boat, from Western Africa directly to South America. I find it entirely plausible that there were failed migrations, populations that could have arrived in the Americas and died following events like the Mount Toba eruption ~70 kya and groups wiped out following migrations by the ancestors of the people occupying the Americas when Europeans arrived after the "discovery of the New World" by Columbus.

I have to wonder how many prehistoric sites are submerged miles out from the present coastlines considering the fluctuation of sea levels occurring during the glacial periods of the last ice age.

originally posted by: theantediluvian
a reply to: JohnnyCanuck

I have to wonder how many prehistoric sites are submerged miles out from the present coastlines considering the fluctuation of sea levels occurring during the glacial periods of the last ice age.

probably a lot. they just recently pulled up some bipoints and a mammoth skull from the water off the coast of Maryland and they've been dredging up tools from Puget Sound for decades. I've always been a big proponent for looking at coastal areas that would have been dry land during the last glacial maximum. It's just a very difficult and expensive endeavor.

Hey johnnyc,


I found this really cool site with lots of info and graphics, such as 

Our main point was that at the end of the last Ice Age in North America there seemed to be two cultural entities of roughly equal antiquity present which were represented in the archaeological record by distinctive stone tools, e.g. projectile points: one hallmarked by thick-bodied unfluted, lanceolate projectile points and the other by thin-bodied, lanceolate projectile points.

That quote really struck me.


A little about the website,

A Power Point Presentation about a projectile point style being employed as a cultural and chronologic diagnostic over an extensive geographical range and the interesting picture/possibilities this application presents.


Mike Kunz wrote and gave this presentation at the 38th annual meeting of the Alaska Anthropological Association (March 9-12, 2011).


Tony Baker, John Garrett and Joshua Ream contributed images of the Clovis, El Jobo, and Haskett points.;

And a map of Clovis/Folsom ranges.





The points in question

All are: relatively large, thick bodied, well made, heavily edge-ground, unfluted lanceolate forms, with convex bases (if not it's because the base has been damaged or reworked) with the blade expanding from the base to a point beyond half its length, re-sharpening of broken points is extremely common. All except Agate Basin are as old or older than Clovis. It is interesting that at this time, the oldest sites associated with these points are in South America with antiquity of sites incrementally decreasing northward to the Arctic. This seems odd to me as I think the weight of evidence indicates Alaska as being the point of entry for humans into the New World. In my opinion this suggests several possibilities; evidence that would clarify the situation remains undiscovered and/or lies beneath the coastal waters of Alaska and the Northwest Coast where it currently is inaccessible; and/or the associations between the radiocarbon dates and the cultural manifestations at the South American sites are in error or, God forbid, people actually were in South America first.

Even more questions to be answered.

              



www.ele.net...

a reply to: punkinworks10

Very nice addition to the thread. Thanks for taking the time to dig that up and include it. I'm supposed to be mowing my lawn but I guess the last acre and a half can wait a little longer while I read through this in a slightly extended break.

a reply to: peter vlar
Right on peter v,
I put it together while doing laundry this morning.

The south to north distribution of dates is very interesting, with the older dates being further south.

originally posted by: punkinworks10
a reply to: peter vlar
Right on peter v,
I put it together while doing laundry this morning.

The south to north distribution of dates is very interesting, with the older dates being further south.

That tends to point to a coastal migration with any stops on the way down lost to sea rise and the guys getting into the bad weather at the tip of SA and saying, 'let's live here'.

...or its an artifact of luck, we have just discovered those sites that give us that impression.

We shall see

a reply to: punkinworks10
Very cool...thanks for that. Things are changing quickly...Dillehay opened the floodgates at Monte Verde, and there's no looking back.

a reply to: JohnnyCanuck

I actually found that presentation while looking for a reference to a fluted point found in Maryland, that came from a stone source on baffin island.


 I also came across some new work with regards to the origins of the calabash.

 

In February 2014, the original hypothesis was revived based on a more thorough genetic study. Researchers examined the entire genome, including the plasmid genome and concluded that American specimens were most closely related to wild African variants and could have drifted over the ocean several or many times as long as 10,000 years ago.[10]

en.m.wikipedia.org...


Combine that with the fact that the oldest calabash lineages are from Venezuela, and that some of the oldest sites in SA are on the east coast, the question of am African arrival comes back to the surface.

a reply to: punkinworks10

I wonder if anyone has done an anthropology study to see if calabashs are still washing ashore? If they did back then they would still be doing so today. Old folks in fishing villages would be the ones to ask.

a reply to: Hanslune
That would be one way to shed some light on the question, but there is a problem with that, it's the fact that the only stand of calabashes in the wild is in eastern Africa. So not only would they have to find a way to the ocean , they would have to sail against the wind and curents to get from the Indian ocean to the Atlantic. And if they were once so widespread and plentiful that they could be washing up on foreign shores then they should still be found in the wild in places where could be washing from.
Since they are not found in the wild near anyplace that they could wash into the Atlantic it's highly likely none are or have been washing ashore in the near past. I find the notion that viable calabashes washed ashore from African drifts, about as plausible as the Egyptians leaving buried treasure in the grand canyon.

a reply to: punkinworks10


I would note that calabash's (AFAIK) can float nearly as well as coconuts.

Floating seeds

Sea dispersal of Calabash

Hmmm now this study says it came by land from Asia!

When was the date of study you were referring to?

a reply to: Hanslune
Hans,
Yes a bottle gourd can drift for seven months ans remain viable.
One would expect the wild bottle gourd to he present on the islands around Africa, but as far as I can tell from the lit. it is not, nor is it widely dispersed the wild in Africa.


The study was published 1/2014

Bottle gourd, one of the most cross-culturally ubiquitous crops, had a pan-tropical distribution by the beginning of the Holocene. Our findings overturn a major component of the current model for bottle gourd’s early global dispersal, specifically regarding how it entered the Americas. Our findings also indicate that the domestication process itself took place in a diffuse pattern throughout the bottle gourd’s New World range, explaining early and nearly contemporaneous use of bottle gourds in North, Central, and South America. Bottle gourd’s weedy growth habit and the diffuse domestication pattern also suggest that early cultivation were probably not restricted to known centers of domestication. It is likely, however, that domesticated phenotypes emerged in these centers alongside food crops.

Bottle gourd (Lagenaria siceraria) was one of the first domesticated plants, and the only one with a global distribution during pre-Columbian times. Although native to Africa, bottle gourd was in use by humans in east Asia, possibly as early as 11,000 y ago (BP) and in the Americas by 10,000 BP. Despite its utilitarian importance to diverse human populations, it remains unresolved how the bottle gourd came to be so widely distributed, and in particular how and when it arrived in the New World. A previous study using ancient DNA concluded that Paleoindians transported already domesticated gourds to the Americas from Asia when colonizing the New World [Erickson et al. (2005) Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 102(51):18315–18320]. However, this scenario requires the propagation of tropical-adapted bottle gourds across the Arctic. Here, we isolate 86,000 base pairs of plastid DNA from a geographically broad sample of archaeological and living bottle gourds. In contrast to the earlier results, we find that all pre-Columbian bottle gourds are most closely related to African gourds, not Asian gourds. Ocean-current drift modeling shows that wild African gourds could have simply floated across the Atlantic during the Late Pleistocene. Once they arrived in the New World, naturalized gourd populations likely became established in the Neotropics via dispersal by megafaunal mammals. These wild populations were domesticated in several distinct New World locales, most likely near established centers of food crop domestication.

m.pnas.org...

 

a reply to: punkinworks10

Well looks like the present study stance is in the favor of the African over the Asian but the study seemed to think ocean floating was the method, but I'm not sure how they would have arrived at that.

Interesting, I must keep up on my bottle gourd reading! Thanks

In contrast to the earlier results, we find that all pre-Columbian bottle gourds are most closely related to African gourds, not Asian gourds. Ocean-current drift modeling shows that wild African gourds could have simply floated across the Atlantic during the Late Pleistocene. Once they arrived in the New World, naturalized gourd populations likely became established in the Neotropics via dispersal by megafaunal mammals.

originally posted by: Hanslune
a reply to: punkinworks10

I wonder if anyone has done an anthropology study to see if calabashs are still washing ashore? If they did back then they would still be doing so today. Old folks in fishing villages would be the ones to ask.

I don't subscribe to PNAS anymore so I can only pull up the abstract, but I believe this paper models ocean currents to account for L. siceraria's arrival in the Americas. One thing made clear in the abstract, and confirms what Punkinworks said, is that DNA testing on the gourds indicates that all precolumbian gourds have an African origin despite earlier conflicting data that showed that Pleistocene immigrations from North East Asia into North America via Berringia brought gourds with them as well, likely for drinking water. The earlier data involving Pleistocene crossings had a conflicting point in that the gourds we see in South America were clearly a tropical variety which means they likely weren't growing them in Arctic climes and bringing them across. It is still possible that they carried seeds with them when they crossed from Asia but the new data seems to indicate an ocean crossing assisted by wind and currents from Africa.

www.pnas.org...


Oops, never mind, Punkinworks beat me to it. I should have read all the way down before answering.

Here is a pdf of a presentation, by the maverick anthropologist, Alva Hicks,from the PaleoAmerican oddessy.
www.centerfirstamericans.com...