Origins

[uniface]

Don't argue with me. I just work here.

How Dogma Trumped Science
Alex Ewen
6/13/14

The discovery and examination of the ancient Mexican skeleton, Naia, has led scientists to once again rethink the origins of American Indians. While there has been a rancorous debate over some details regarding who the first peoples of the Americas might have been, the broader context is usually the Bering Strait Theory, the idea that Paleoindians walked from Asia over an ancient land bridge approximately 15,000 years ago. Among scientists, this theory appears unshakable, despite the lack of scientific evidence to support it. Indeed, a host of scientific evidence, from linguistics to genetics, does not support the theory.

(Links to two articles)

As recent scientific discoveries have undercut the Bering Strait Theory, a new hypothesis has emerged, the “Beringian Standstill Theory.” The Standstill hypothesis, which proposes that Paleoindians lived isolated in the land bridge area for almost 20,000 years before migrating to the Americas, is also a controversial conjecture that has questionable scientific merit.

The reason for the insistence by scientists in the primacy of the Bering Strait Theory is not because of science, but because of dogma. This is well known among the scientists, many of whom have chafed under its strictures. So in 1998, Dennis Stanford, director of the Paleoindian program at the Smithsonian Institution, coined the term “Clovis Police” to refer to those “die-hard archaeologists who insist upon Clovis as representing the earliest culture in the New World.” James Adovasio, known for his excavations of the Meadowcroft Rockshelter in Pennsylvania, devoted an entire chapter of his 2002 book, The First Americans: In Pursuit of Archaeology’s Greatest Mystery, to the “Paleo-police” who have frustrated his attempts to gain recognition for the antiquity of the site.

When genetic studies that proposed an ancient contact between Polynesians and American Indians – not in conformity with the Bering Strait Theory – were published by University of Hawaii geneticist Rebecca Cann, they were met with a swift and fierce rebuttal. Cann is a pioneer among geneticists, her research having developed the concept of the “Mitochondrial Eve” and the currently accepted “Out of Africa” theory of modern human origins. She was not someone to be trifled with, and she shot back in a letter in the American Journal of Human Genetics, dismissing much of her critics’ data, interpretations, and point of view; “Rather than make dogmatic statements, we feel that it is better to encourage the open exploration of this debate, with more genetic markers and the use of data already in the literature.”

But open exploration of the debate is not going to happen, because the debate itself is moderated by ideologues, who determine the evidence that may be used, and ignore the evidence that does not fit the theory. In order to understand why this is, one must look at the history of the Bering Strait Theory, which will only shed a little light on the development of science, but offers important lessons on how and why a dogma is created.
 
The Birth of a Theory

When Columbus stumbled upon the Americas in 1492, he set off an endless round of speculation in Europe regarding the lands and its people. By 1797, Benjamin Smith Barton could write in his book New Views of the Origin of the Tribes and Nations of America that the “opinions of writers concerning the origin, or parental countries, of the Americans are as numerous as the tribes and nations who inhabit this vast portion of the earth . . .

(Four more pages of text)

http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.c ... nce-155284

[kbs2244]

I was under the impression the originator of the Bering Strait Theory was a Spanish Priest who wanted to sell the idea of the Indians were human in order to stop the beast like slavery they were subjected to in the mines.

The mine operators argued they were not human since all humans had come from the lands connected to the Garden of Eden. Thus natives of Europe, Asia and Africa could be human. But the Americas were separated by oceans that could not be crossed by animals as primitive as the Indians. Therefore they could not be human.

The priest argued that the newly discovered Bering Strait Islands were the path the humans used to people the Western Hemisphere. No scientific evidence. Just a soft hearted wish.

His argument was accepted back at the Spanish Court and therefore became the accepted dogma. The mine operators were ordered to treat the Indians better. But it was too late. They had virtually worked the natives to extinction and began importing workers from Africa.

It will be fun to read this series.
Indian Country News is not exactly without an agenda.

[Minimalist]

a new hypothesis has emerged, the “Beringian Standstill Theory.”

Whenever a theory has to be propped up by new, equally unsubstantiated, revisions you know it is in trouble.

[hardaker]

The Spanish priest story is fascinating. I'd never heard that. But in terms of archaeology theory of NW origins, it is a question of did they walk or come by boat. To the priest, it probably didn't matter. To 20th century archaeology it determined the heretics.

[hardaker]

Uniface, not the "clovis police" but the Clovis Mafia. pretty vitriolic, pretty sure it was Adovasio.

[Cognito]

The Spanish priest story is fascinating. I'd never heard that.

That would be Jose de Acosta, see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jos%C3%A9_de_Acosta

From Wiki: "It is chiefly the Historia natural y moral that has established the reputation of Acosta, as this was one of the very first detailed and realistic descriptions of the New World. In a form more concise than that employed by his predecessors, Francisco Lopez de Gómara and Oviedo, he treated the natural and philosophic history of the New World from a broader point of view. In it, more than a century before other Europeans learned of the Bering Strait, Acosta hypothesized that Latin America's indigenous peoples had migrated from Asia to Latin America."

[Minimalist]

Just add in boats and it is quite plausible.