What's the difference between a handaxe and a Folsom point?

Rokcet Scientist · Post by **Rokcet Scientist** » Wed Jul 11, 2007 8:42 am

Digit wrote:Well that's what I said! I said many were one offs, not all.

Precisely: you said 'many'. I said 'some', though. I think they were the minority of cases. Imo there is quite a difference between 'many' and 'some'...

So if the Bow was a one off, as I believe it is supposed to have been,

Why do you believe that? Are there any indications that it was?

and NA was cut off before it spread there, then people must have reached NA before the invention reached them!

According to this guy

Hunting flourished during the so-called middle part of the Upper Palaeolithic. In my opinion, this was promoted considerably by the improvement of hunting implements, particularly the ability to launch projectiles over a longer range after the bow was invented and brought into use between 30 000 and 25 000 b.p.

http://donsmaps.com/lioncamp.html

(Boldface is mine.)

NA indians were 'cut off' from the rest of the world by the thawing sea ice packs at the end of the ice age: 10,000 BP!
So that was at least 15,000 years after the occurrence of the bow in the Ukraine...!
Yet the Beringian land bridge trekkers had no clue, and their descendents never had the brainwave to develop the bow themselves, indeependently. In ten thousand years!

The alternative is that the colonisers of NA had the Bow and abandoned it when they crossed from Asia into the New World, which is a little unlikely.

A 'little unlikely'?
I'd say that is extremely unlikely! Even downright stupid if they did that!

If the Native Americans were a Stione Age people before Columbus then logically they made the crossing as Stone Agers, not that they abandoned metal working etc when they got there.

Yes.
And they hardly developed since, while the rest of the world did. Like mad, to be sure.
Why? What's the big difference?

Digit · Post by **Digit** » Wed Jul 11, 2007 10:13 am

Why do you believe that? [/quote]
Cos that's what I read.
As you say the NA Indians were cut off by rising sea levels. BUT they reached NA before the invention of the Bow reached them, whether one off or not, or they knew of it and decided not to use it.
One or the other, which?
They also dug Copper, but as far as I can find out they had no bronze. IF that is correct the above logic must prevail on that subject also.
Same for some Pacific Islanders as well.

Charlie Hatchett · Post by **Charlie Hatchett** » Wed Jul 11, 2007 12:12 pm

Yes.
And they hardly developed since, while the rest of the world did. Like mad, to be sure.
Why? What's the big difference?

As I think we discussed previously, I think they may have been very happy with the way things were. "If it ain't broke, don't fix it". Vast amounts of land, plentiful natural resources, temperate climate, etc...made it unnecessary to create "sophisticated" "civilizations". Kind of like farmers up until the early 1900's here in North America. For the most part, they made their living off the land, with some minor trading. Where my grandfather farmed in west Texas settlements of families were separated by 10-20 miles, on average. Imagine in the 1800's in the same area.

Digit · Post by **Digit** » Wed Jul 11, 2007 12:31 pm

And that type of settlement, Charlie, can make archaeology very difficult as you could spend a lifetime digging in between sites and never know of their existance.
It's happened in a country as small as the UK, so how much more likely in yours?
What you said in your last post may well be correct, but what I was trying to establish is whether or not you could establish a date for colonisation of NA from those innovations the first settlers arrived with.
If they arrived with the Bow, for example, the Bow had to have been familiar to them, if they didn't bring the Bow with them that might help with dating. Same with Bronze.
It might also help with the route.

Charlie Hatchett · Post by **Charlie Hatchett** » Wed Jul 11, 2007 1:31 pm

What you said in your last post may well be correct, but what I was trying to establish is whether or not you could establish a date for colonisation of NA from those innovations the first settlers arrived with.

You're talking to the wrong guy, Dig.

I think Erectus and Neanderthal may have been here.

Digit · Post by **Digit** » Wed Jul 11, 2007 1:47 pm

Actually not Charlie. If the Bow was invented 30 to 40000yrs ago one scenario for its non-appearance in certain partsof the world is that the people were there before the Bow caught up with them.
Think Aboriginies, they had the spear but not the Bow, this could mean that they made landfall before the Bow caught up with them.
I refuse to believe that people once exposed to the Bow would then ignore it.

Charlie Hatchett · Post by **Charlie Hatchett** » Wed Jul 11, 2007 1:55 pm

Digit wrote:Actually not Charlie. If the Bow was invented 30 to 40000yrs ago one scenario for its non-appearance in certain partsof the world is that the people were there before the Bow caught up with them.
Think Aboriginies, they had the spear but not the Bow, this could mean that they made landfall before the Bow caught up with them.
I refuse to believe that people once exposed to the Bow would then ignore it.

Ahhhh...I see your point. Good heads up.

Beagle · Post by **Beagle** » Wed Jul 11, 2007 1:58 pm

The aborigines also had the boomerang, which they used very effectively. And the Native Americans used the atlatl. The atlatl could easily hurl a spear over 100 yards. Against the Spanish, the atlatl thrown spear went through Spanish armor, through the Spaniard, and out the other side. That's a heck of a weapon.

I cautiously agree with you that once introduced to the bow, the technology would be adopted.

Charlie Hatchett · Post by **Charlie Hatchett** » Wed Jul 11, 2007 2:01 pm

I cautiously agree with you that once introduced to the bow, the technology would be adopted.

A good analogy is a .22 and an elephant gun. Both come in handy in the appropriate situation.

Digit · Post by **Digit** » Wed Jul 11, 2007 2:07 pm

Right gentlemen, going back to the Abos. Their arrival in Oz is variously dated as anything from 60000yrs ago to last Monday's QUANTAS flight.
If you accept the non existance of the Bow as evidence that they never knew it, the Bow hadn't reached their homeland when the left. Like the NA colonisers they were a Stonge Age people and that opens a very long time period for entry into NA.
Also the predominant type of stone tool in the far east of Asia, I believe, was based on the micro lith.
NA stone tools are not, why?

Charlie Hatchett · Post by **Charlie Hatchett** » Wed Jul 11, 2007 3:12 pm

Digit wrote:Right gentlemen, going back to the Abos. Their arrival in Oz is variously dated as anything from 60000yrs ago to last Monday's QUANTAS flight.
If you accept the non existance of the Bow as evidence that they never knew it, the Bow hadn't reached their homeland when the left. Like the NA colonisers they were a Stonge Age people and that opens a very long time period for entry into NA.
Also the predominant type of stone tool in the far east of Asia, I believe, was based on the micro lith.
NA stone tools are not, why?

A differrent path of technological evolution, imo. There's a fourth dimension to keep in mind, though. If you back up to the the Lower Paleolithic, the tools found in California and Texas do resemble Asian tools of the same technological era (though we have to keep in mind who influenced the Asian technology). It seems reasonable, with the evidence available to date, that several Asian migrations occurred during the Wisconsin and Illinoisan, by sea and land. I think the same goes for European migrations except the land was ice. The Africa-direct option also seems plausible. It was certainly shorter, and much warmer.

Rokcet Scientist · Post by **Rokcet Scientist** » Wed Jul 11, 2007 3:22 pm

Digit wrote:
If the Bow was invented 30 to 40000yrs ago one scenario for its non-appearance in certain partsof the world is that the people were there before the Bow caught up with them.

It also means that neither the aboriginals, nor the NA indians invented the bow concept independently.

Digit wrote:
I refuse to believe that people once exposed to the Bow would then ignore it.

Looks logical, doesn't it? However, there is a precedent for people 'forgetting' a major technology: concrete! The Romans knew and used it, but then people plain forgot about it until late in the middle ages, a 1,000 years later!
But that seems very unlikely in the case of the bow.

Like the NA colonisers [the aboriginals] were a Stonge Age people and that opens a very long time period for entry into NA.

Sure. But that entry window closed relatively abruptly, at the end of the last ice age, 10,000 BP.
Now, I submit that an idea, a concept, 'travels' (migrates) much faster than people do (without trains, planes and automobiles of course). That means that the bow concept had a 'window' of at least 15,000 years to cover the distance from Ukraine to the Bering Strait. It could have covered that distance 1,000 times over in that time window! Yet the Bering land bridge trekkers didn't bring the bow with them to NA, nor did they – later – develop it independently... Like the dozens of other 'inventions' they never did!

Charlie Hatchett · Post by **Charlie Hatchett** » Wed Jul 11, 2007 3:31 pm

Like the dozens of other 'inventions' they never did!

Well, in NA the Stone Age began 1.1 million years ago, according to latest research.

And the the N.A. Copper age:

http://www.uwfox.uwc.edu/academics/dept ... opper.html

http://www.copperculture.homestead.com/

http://www.uwlax.edu/MVAC/PreEuropeanPe ... lture.html

http://www.mnsu.edu/emuseum/prehistory/ ... opper.html

We'll see if this preClovis iron smelting bit pans out, along with the heat-treating of rock for tool making (Oops, out of order...shucks).

Digit · Post by **Digit** » Wed Jul 11, 2007 3:40 pm

Whether we like it or not RS 99.999% of us invent nothing! The fact that the NA Indians didn't invent the things you have listed is probably correct, I cannot think of a single invention, prior to Victorian times, that was known to have been invented in the British Isles.
I suspect it would be difficult to locate the point in time when many things were invented but I do not accept that the NA Indian was more stupid than anybody else.
The 15000yr window you mention raises the point of why did the Bow not get to NA in that time. The NA Indian grabbed the Bow when it did get there.
The logical answers are that the Bow didn't get to the straits during that time, or that it did, and we haven't found it yet, or that the people didn't enter NA from Asia.
Can't think of an alternative can you?

Digit · Post by **Digit** » Wed Jul 11, 2007 3:46 pm

The trouble with the many thousands of tons of copper mined in NA in early times is that it doesn't seem to been used in NA, and certainly not for bronze.