posted on Nov, 7 2017 @ 06:22 PM
a reply to:
Harte
Whales are seasonal and their migrations take them far out to sea. Even the "whaling cutlures of the Pacific N/W only hunt whales seasonally, and
lived off of the more mundane sea mammals, such as seal, sea lions, sea otters, porposies and the like.
Whales are also an extremely risky hunt for small communities, its much easier to get seals and otters, catch some fish and dive for shell fish. The
sites on the channel islands(CA) are showing the earliest inhabitants were diving to depths of 60' for shellfish found in the kelpbeds, as well as
exploiting open ocean waters(200 miles out).
One current model for long term movements of paleocoastal people is that they moved to follow shellfish beds. Once they settled a coastline, they
would fishout the shellfish beds in short order and would move down the coast to the next best beds. Once you get into north america, the rugged and
irregular coast line made for big jumps to the next beds, where you had a coastline the humans could live along, that had access to resources.
This model was somewhat confirmed, by recent finds in BC and the local oral traditions. These people lived this way until fairly recently, and their
historic movments can be traced and compred to what is found in the arch. record.
In this area, which was very productive, a small social group(villiage) would work the clam beds of a cove until it didnt produce, that would take a
couple three years, then they would move down the coast to a new cove, so on and so forth. Since the coast of BC is a vast inland waterway, there were
plenty of coves and remote beaches, so they didnt have to move completely on, they could do a "lap" and come back to the same sites every 20-25years.
Local arch. has backed up this pattern.