pre clovis america

[Minimalist]

Not in the Pacific.

[john]

the thought that sealevels rising 100 meters in a relatively short period of time - thus possibly displacing coastal populations, who presumably knew how to handle small boats, and how to migrate from point to point along a changing coastline - is a good one. diaspora, in more than one sense, as populations of fish and game and birds would also have been disrupted. i'm not disputing that the occasional boat might have gone clear across the pacific, three/four thousand miles, but statistically the chances of survival, compared to coast hopping, are mighty slim.

if you pull up a map of clovis find density in north america, you will see that the heaviest density is along a broad swath of se north america, and that the density tapers off drastically the further west and north you go. so does this mean that the purported, siberian, "beringians" (who were a micro-blade culture) somehow made it across from alaska to georgia and settled down and along the way completely changed their hunting methodology, or that a people from the east, with a flint knapping technology hauntingly similar to the solutreans, went west, and with the rise of the sea were pushed into the se of north america and migrated west, following the larger game that solutrean point technology was developed for?

i know of no clovis points north of, say, washington or montana.

i know of no microblade technology in the continental newnited states.

Correct me if i've missed something here...........


john


ps

there also seems to have been a baja-california culture only recently killed off by the european invasion, whose morphology - not absolutely proven yet - seems to follow the australo/ainu pattern.


cheers

j

[grunabona246]

in my mind, the first person to set foot in the new world was an accidental immigrant.

imagine being being a castaway on an island the size of north and south america combined, and all alone. it could have happened.

of course, someone had to be first. that actually did happen. i wish i knew when, and who, and how. it would be an interesting story, i'm sure.

the story of the first man and woman together in the new world would be interesting, also. and that actually happened, too.

it's a shame i don't have talent. i could write a book.

[Minimalist]

But did they get back to tell anyone else?

I have long felt that Columbus' principal contribution to the discovery of the New World is that he figured out a way to get back and publicize the fact.

[john]

in my mind, the first person to set foot in the new world was an accidental immigrant.

imagine being being a castaway on an island the size of north and south america combined, and all alone. it could have happened.

of course, someone had to be first. that actually did happen. i wish i knew when, and who, and how. it would be an interesting story, i'm sure.

the story of the first man and woman together in the new world would be interesting, also. and that actually happened, too.

it's a shame i don't have talent. i could write a book.

jean auell (sp?) already did it, although for europe only, so you're shit out of luck there, unless you want to write the american version.

one canoe of accidental immigrants did not populate the americas.

think of a bead necklace. the beads being tribal bands strung along both the north atlantic and north pacific coastal arcs, with knowledge of the american continent. sure they went back and forth, north and south. but they ended up living, and travelling further, beyond the end of the coastal trail, inland.

john

[grunabona246]

in my mind, the first person to set foot in the new world was an accidental immigrant.

imagine being being a castaway on an island the size of north and south america combined, and all alone. it could have happened.

of course, someone had to be first. that actually did happen. i wish i knew when, and who, and how. it would be an interesting story, i'm sure.

the story of the first man and woman together in the new world would be interesting, also. and that actually happened, too.

it's a shame i don't have talent. i could write a book.

jean auell (sp?) already did it, although for europe only, so you're shit out of luck there, unless you want to write the american version.

one canoe of accidental immigrants did not populate the americas.

think of a bead necklace. the beads being tribal bands strung along both the north atlantic and north pacific coastal arcs, with knowledge of the american continent. sure they went back and forth, north and south. but they ended up living, and travelling further, beyond the end of the coastal trail, inland.

john

i wasn't thinking of adoption or neanderthals. isn't that what ms. auel wrote about?

i must not be making myself clear. i'm trying to make the point that i believe the reason there is so little evidence of humans in the new world before beringea, is not that there were no humans here then, but that they were very few in number and there was little or no opportunity for increasing the population before the land bridge, due to a scarcity of females. i think female castaways were few and far between.

surely from the time humans learned how to build boats, and to use them in the atlantic or the pacific, which had to have been at least fifty to sixty thousand years ago, or more, some humans, nearly all male, i think, found themselves inexplicably in this strange new world, with no option but to live out their lives in relative or actual solitude. i believe evidence of this will eventually be found.

[marduk]

Not in the Pacific.

Mu ?

a rose by any other name would smell as sweet

[marduk]

think of a bead necklace. the beads being tribal bands strung along both the north atlantic and north pacific coastal arcs, with knowledge of the american continent. sure they went back and forth, north and south. but they ended up living, and travelling further, beyond the end of the coastal trail, inland.

The samoan creation myth, the original that was recorded before the involvement of christian missionaries

35. Then Tangaloa, the messenger, went back to the heavens, and said—'We have (now) got countries, the Eastern group and the Fiji group, and the Tongan group, and Savai‘i.' Then, as all these lands were grown up, Tangaloa, the creator, went down in a black cloud to look at the countries, and he delighted in them; and he said, 'It is good;' then he stood on the top of the mountains to tread them down, that the land might be prepared for people to dwell in. Then he returned [on high]. And Tangaloa, the creator, said [to Tangaloa, the messenger],—'Come now; go back by the road you came; take people to possess the Eastern groups; take Atu and Sasa‘e; that is a pair; they were called conjointly Atu-Sasae; these two people came from the heavens from among the children of Tangaloa.

36. Then Tangaloa, the messenger, went again to the Fiji group; he also again took two persons, a pair—their names were Atu and Fiji—from among all the children of Tangaloa; so that group of islands was called Atu-Fiji.

37. Then he turned his face towards Tonga; he took [with him] a couple; their names were Atu and Tonga; these two peopled that group of islands; their names were the Atu-Tonga; these two were the people of Tangaloa.

38. Then Tangaloa, the messenger, came back to this Manu‘a, to Le-Fatu and Le-‘Ele-‘ele and their children; because the command of Tangaloa, the creator, [had gone forth] from the heavens, that Le-Fatu and Le-‘Ele-‘ele should go there to people this side of the world. Then went out Valu‘a and Ti‘ăpă to people Savai‘i; these two are the children of Le-Fatu and Le-‘Ele-‘ele; these two people are from this Manu‘a; Savai‘i and this Manu‘a are one; these two were the parents of I‘i and Sava; I‘i was the girl, and Sava was the boy; that island was peopled by them, and was named Savai‘i.

the Samoans were adept with boats and along with
the Fijians they hunted sperm whales as did the Tongans.
this "myth" says that the islands of Fiji and Samoa and Tonga were all in contact with each other from the earliest times
you think maybe they ended up there by accident because they got lost.
Johns right except hes too far north
1.the island peoples were aware of each others existence long before we knew America was there
2. they mention in some myths a great continent to the east. to some it is called the underworld
3. south american indian groups don't ever say they walked there. they say they paddled there by canoe. So do a lot of NA tribes especially the Hopi who say that they emigrated to Arizona from south america. because they knew it was there before they left

[grunabona246]

i know i'm beating a dead horse as far as the majority opinion is concerned, but i still say the first people to set foot in the new world got here by accident, not by design.

[stan]

Grunabona, if they go here by accident, that suggests there were not many of them....how could an accidental landing produce enough people to build a large and viable population?

Seems more likely that there was some intention, some going back and forth, some planning.
Just speculating, of course.

If they had the boats and were familiar with sailing long distances,
maybe they releived overcrowding on the islands by looking for
new places to settle.

[grunabona246]

stan,

my whole point is that there was no population growth that amounted to anything until it became possible to emigrate from the old world to the new on foot via the land bridge of beringea.

[stan]

OK, now I see where you stand...on the land bridge.

No doubt that was a biggie...But how far back do you think people got here?

[grunabona246]

i wouldn't be surprised if it were eventually proven there was a small presence in the new world as long as fifty thousand years ago, perhaps even earlier. it is inconcievable to me that humans had boats for forty thousand years or so before the land bridge opened, and made ocean voyages for most or all of that time, but never made it to this part of the world, even by accident.

[Minimalist]

Not in the Pacific.

Mu ?

a rose by any other name would smell as sweet

Gotta call it something.

[john]

in my mind, the first person to set foot in the new world was an accidental immigrant.

imagine being being a castaway on an island the size of north and south america combined, and all alone. it could have happened.

of course, someone had to be first. that actually did happen. i wish i knew when, and who, and how. it would be an interesting story, i'm sure.

the story of the first man and woman together in the new world would be interesting, also. and that actually happened, too.

it's a shame i don't have talent. i could write a book.

jean auell (sp?) already did it, although for europe only, so you're shit out of luck there, unless you want to write the american version.

one canoe of accidental immigrants did not populate the americas.

think of a bead necklace. the beads being tribal bands strung along both the north atlantic and north pacific coastal arcs, with knowledge of the american continent. sure they went back and forth, north and south. but they ended up living, and travelling further, beyond the end of the coastal trail, inland.

john

i wasn't thinking of adoption or neanderthals. isn't that what ms. auel wrote about?

i must not be making myself clear. i'm trying to make the point that i believe the reason there is so little evidence of humans in the new world before beringea, is not that there were no humans here then, but that they were very few in number and there was little or no opportunity for increasing the population before the land bridge, due to a scarcity of females. i think female castaways were few and far between.

surely from the time humans learned how to build boats, and to use them in the atlantic or the pacific, which had to have been at least fifty to sixty thousand years ago, or more, some humans, nearly all male, i think, found themselves inexplicably in this strange new world, with no option but to live out their lives in relative or actual solitude. i believe evidence of this will eventually be found.

look up the Buhl woman, and "luzia", and the monte verde site in southern chile. one of the more extraordinary finds at monte verde was a footprint, in the mud floor of the site, of a child. and these sites are widely dispersed geographically.

i'll stick to my guns that small bands of highly mobile hunter-gatherers occupied the americas way earlier than we thought, and that they coast hopped to get here (although the post on early pacific island cultures was awesome! thanks marduk). note also that the geological evidence is growing for the argument that the northern land "gate" was solidly blocked by ice. no "ice free corridor" running south from the bering bridge.

and i'll re-emphasize the point that the siberian cultures were solidly microlithic at this juncture - so one could expect to find microliths instead of clovis points if, in fact bands of siberians made their way south.

i'll reiterate that this whole issue is a field of knowledge in the early stages of development/discovery, so it is impossible to hold a dogmatic position. with that, the more free thinking and analysis of what little we've got, the better.




john