How continents shaped human culture

[circumspice]

Boy, this irritates the crap outta me. Here we go again... This article, while interesting, seems to ignore west to east migration in the Americas. Sure, there are significant speed bumps in the road along the way... e.g. the Rockies, the Grand Canyon, the Mississippi River, various deserts, etc. But why does their diffusion map show NO latitudinal migration at all? That map makes it seem like ALL migrations in the Americas dispersed on a North/South axis, with no migrations occurring on an East/West axis.

http://www.pasthorizonspr.com/index.php ... an-culture

[War Arrow]

Hmmm. See what you mean.

Maybe people arrived in the East by circling the globe seven or eight times in a longitudinal direction until they ended up wherever they wanted to go.

[Minimalist]

Perhaps all those Clovis and pre-Clovis sites on the East Coast are figments of our imagination?

And, how could I miss pointing out that there is no reason why Asians could not have coasted to the Americas in the same way Dennis Stanford has proposed for the Solutrean hypothesis ( and with a lot less distance!). Why walk when you can sail?

[kbs2244]

The winds and currents would blow the boats in an East-West direction over open water but in a North or South direction along the coast.

[Minimalist]

The north pacific current could do a lot of work.

[Digit]

Why walk when you can sail?
It's a good thing RS isn't here as I would go as far as to suggest that man's migration only got going after he developed water craft.
I should be remembered, I think, that Africa has some very large lakes, ideal proving grounds for seamanship.

Roy.

[Minimalist]

Had even more of them when the Sahara was a grassland as opposed to a desert, too.

[Digit]

And shell fish don't fight back! The shore lines would have been a happy hunting ground.
OOA or into Africa would have meant water craft, most likely developed on those lake and rivers.

Roy.

[Minimalist]

Did you ever wonder what the first guy to eat a lobster was thinking?

"Wow - I'll bet that's great with melted butter."

[Digit]

Or perhaps, 'where did I leave the tin opener'?

Roy.