in terms of the general idea of diffusionism, and the rabid cries against it by the mainstreamers, this is a book worth reading.
Man Across the Sea: Problems of Pre-Columbian Contacts
https://books.google.com/books?id=lmvUB ... gy&f=false
It was an official SAA symposia book, from around 1968. It is probably the last time such a diffusionist symposia was held without the term pseudo-science being in the title. The issues have hardly changed since then. You cannot be a little bit pregnant. Either the New World was thoroughly isolated from the Old World, or it wasn't. The professionals in this symposium will surprise you because they are approaching the ideas and evidence with reason. It was a small window of time, the mid-60s. Meggars was finding the Jomon pottery types in Ecuador, and she was Smithsonian brass. When I was involved in running after degrees in the 70s, the bottom line had turned radically reactionary, probably because of the increased awareness of civil rights and of the current plight of native americans, both mid-late 60s. I used to test the diffusionist question in bars and halls between papers at conferences. Diffusionists were now being vilified as racists. The common quip was, if you think old worlders came over and began civilizations in the new world, then it is obvious that you do not think that native americans had the intelligence to do it on their own, therefore diffusionists are racist. George Carter even wrote a short article on this egregious line of reasoning. There's been lots and lots of emotion dolled out over the decades. Plus the fact that boats easily decay over time.
Given all this academic emotion and vileness against diffusion, the mainstreamers are left with only one alternative to explain the exacting similarities of some artifacts (eg. Shang dynasty and Olmec). That is, psychic unity, the mental side of independent invention. And the academics don't want to touch psychic unity with a ten foot pole. To do that would take a firm grasp of the nature of consciousness.
Whether or not Africans et al
could make it to Brazil et al, shouldn't be an issue any more.
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British pair becomes first mother and daughter team to cross Atlantic in
rowboat
Wednesday, May 5, 2004
(05-05) 09:03 PDT BRIDGETOWN, Barbados (AP) –
Sarah and Sally Kettle have become the first mother-daughter team to cross the Atlantic in a row boat.
The British pair set off in a 23-foot plywood boat, the Calderdale, from the Canary Islands on Jan. 20, along with 13 other boats racing in the
Ocean Rowing Society's Atlantic Rowing Regatta.
Sarah, 45, and Sally, 27, arrived late Tuesday night in Barbados after the 2,907-mile journey.
"Fantastic, absolutely fantastic," Sarah Kettle said.
She said the trip was fueled by chocolate.
"We ate so much chocolate. I never ate so much chocolate until now," she said. [44]