Evolutionary rollercoaster

[Minimalist]

Ok.

I do care where the antecedent was. You know me. I'm not taken at all with "creationism."

[Digit]

So do I Min, I was simply making a point.
The Clovis people didn't appear out of nowhere complete with tool kit, they had to have an antecedent.
Perhaps with being away you missed some posts, I joined in with, unbelievable as it may seem, agreeing with Uni that Clovis couldn't have come from nowhere.
At the moment, using comparative measures on their tools, Solutrean is currently the nearest equivalent.
Maybe some day an immediate precursor will be found within the continental North America.
As I pointed out to Uni this is how it works, the gaps get filled in eventually. We can but wait and see.

Roy.

[Minimalist]

they had to have an antecedent.

Or a teacher. Even Stanford does not suggest any sort of "migration" by the Solutreans. But a lone hunting party coming into contact with paleo-indians could have easily shown them how their spear points were fashioned. Once the secret is learned, it spreads.

[Digit]

Or a teacher.

Granted, so we would have an explanation as to how the technology arose, but that would imply that those who subsequently became recognised as Clovis would either have had no stone technology prior to that contact or it has yet to be found.

Roy.

[Minimalist]

There are still any number of people who won't even look for it because it "can't possibly exist."

However, Al Goodyear at Topper:

http://www.archaeology.org/9907/newsbriefs/clovis.html

In 1998, inspired by potential pre-Clovis sites like Monte Verde, Chile, and Cactus Hill, Virginia, Goodyear decided to dig deeper. After some 40 cm of essentially barren deposits, the excavators began finding small flakes and microtools. Goodyear recalls that he "kind of went into shock. I had no idea we'd find artifacts." This year's excavations have confirmed that discovery.

The lower level, now exposed over a total of 28 square meters, has yielded some 1,000 waste flakes and 15 microtools (mostly microblades). The excavators also found a pile of 20 chert pebbles plus four small quartz pebbles, possible hammerstones.

Seek and ye shall find......but you have to be willing to seek!

[Rokcet Scientist]

Seek and ye shall find......but you have to be willing to seek!

Not necessarily: sometimes you stumble over it, like that guy's young son, recently in South Africa, who found the new Australopithecine sticking out of the dirt.

How was Lewis Black?

[Digit]

Goes back a long way I'm afraid Min. The 'experts' of the day could see nothing in nor through Galileo's telescope.

Roy.

[uniface]

[A] lone hunting party coming into contact with paleo-indians could have easily shown them how their spear points were fashioned. Once the secret is learned, it spreads.

Hypothetically true but astronomically improbable in practice as far as the odds of it having happened go.

A lot of things are possible, but not available. Scenarios like this (with history as the arbiter) generally fall into the latter category (the only notable exceptions being fundamentally new ideas).

In the realm of hand-tool carpentry, Japanese saws are immeasurably superior to their western counterparts. But they're "Japanese." End of consideration. Their shapes are funny, they cut the wrong way (on the pull stroke rather than on the push), and their handles are straight. As far as control, efficiency and ergonomic superiority go, there's no comparison. But you won't find them on offer at the local hardware store. They're "alien."

The only notable differences between Paleoindian lithic tools relate to the specific tasks they were made for, which varied with the environment. Otherwise, from Oregon to Georgia, and Arizona to Nova Scotia, Paleoindian lithic procedure was an uncanny parallel to "And the earth was of one language . . ."

Then, in conjunction with climate-environmental changes, the lithic repertoire starts pulling apart (and deteriorating) into semi-continental designs, followed by the plethora of increasingly local ones that remained the norm throughout the next 6,000 or so years. The only exceptions that come to mind are the Mound Builder designs that spread by cultural adaption and the (very late) triangular "arrowhead." The rule overall is differentiation and resistance to the practices of others. Local is better. The local way is the "right" way. It's like the deterioration of Christianity into an innumerable number of sects.

Further against the notion that it could have spread by contact is that Solturean-Clovis lithic procedure was the high water line of flintknapping technology. Flintknapping itself is fairly simple and straightforward procedure, but what the Paleoindians did is not something that can be learnt in a few hours (or even months), and mastery of it takes years on end of disciplined, attentive practice. While many avocational knappers can turn out plausible-looking Clovis points and blade tools, the number of people who can re-create them is very small, and there are individual items like the red Phosphoria chert Clovis point from the Fenn cache that have defied all attempts at replication to date.

It's a historical picture that fairly gives the skinger of forn to evolutionary doctrine.

(PS : The Peoples of the Flute by Bob Patten is an enthusiastically recommended overview of one under-appreciated facet of Clovis lithic technology).

[Digit]

In the realm of hand-tool carpentry, Japanese saws are immeasurably superior to their western counterparts. But they're "Japanese." End of consideration. Their shapes are funny, they cut the wrong way (on the pull stroke rather than on the push), and their handles are straight. As far as control, efficiency and ergonomic superiority go, there's no comparison. But you won't find them on offer at the local hardware store. They're "alien."

And as a woodworker with a very well filled shop I use them very sucessfully.

Roy.

[Minimalist]

Seek and ye shall find......but you have to be willing to seek!

Not necessarily: sometimes you stumble over it, like that guy's young son, recently in South Africa, who found the new Australopithecine sticking out of the dirt.

How was Lewis Black?

Hysterical. Even the warm up act was good.

[Minimalist]

Goes back a long way I'm afraid Min. The 'experts' of the day could see nothing in nor through Galileo's telescope.

Roy.

I know. But Goodyear's work does suggest that that the real pre-Clovis culture used micro-blades which is consistent with Asia.

[Minimalist]

But they're "Japanese."

You're projecting ethnocentrism on peoples who may have not have suffered from that particular problem.

[Digit]

But Goodyear's work does suggest that that the real pre-Clovis culture used micro-blades which is consistent with Asia.

No proof in support Min but I find it very difficult to accept that one people would make such a major change, no others seem to have done so.
It would have to be a on off.

Roy.

[Minimalist]

The plains Indians quickly adopted the horse from the Spanish and the North-Eastern Indians were just as quick to adopt the gun from Europeans. The scimitar is "Arab" but they have gone to the AK-47 with ease.

I recall in my college anthro class reading a study built on the effect which introducing modern metal axes into a stone age culture wrought. It was mind boggling. A whole system of interpersonal relationships within the tribe was based on borrowing a stone axe and the introduction of cheap, metal axes destroyed all that.

[Digit]

Granted. But is the microlith inferior so that it was deemed necessary to change?
The Ak47 is obviously superior to the scimitar and justifies the change, but is that so with the microlith?
I would add that others dispute Goodyear's conclusions on this.

Roy.