pre clovis america

[stan]

Beagle wrote

Doug, I could fill a couple of pages with physical differences between the races. There are a couple of anthropologists calling for an end of discussion about the differences in races, and while I admire their motive,
it's just scientifically incorrect.

I disagree. (Maybe there should be a separate thread on race.)
I am speaking in favor of science when i say that we should avoid the term "race."

You say you have a long list of differences between the races.
Maybe it would be good to post these for sake of argument.
But how do you define race: culture?, skin color?, national origin?
If you define "negro" or "black" as having dark skin, kinky hair, flat nose, and large lips, How do you deal with all the exceptions to these
defining characteristics? Do you need three out of four to satisfy your definition, or all four? What do you do with all those "blacks" whose noses are not flat, skin not black, hair not kinky, and lips not thick?

And what about the other characteristics that we can't see? blood types,
handedness, maybe other organic differences?
In the US, as you know, anyone with 1/8 "black" ancestry is considered
"black." That's crazy. What about the other7/8?

I just think that the concept of race falls apart if you examine it closely.
I think it would be better to talk about only the attributes you are interested in rather than trying to lump people into racial categories.

[oldarchystudent]

my reference to the "northern gate being locked" is that we had a continuous ice sheet descending to, at least, a couple hundred miles south of the present us/canadian border.

my argument is that the early people would have taken the path of least resistance/best food source. which in all likelyhood would have not included continuous ice sheets, but travel on and subsistence from the ocean, until a liveable land-based existence was found. in short, coast hopping.

Agreed on the path of least resistance, which is why a land crossing makes more sense than putting out to sea. At glacial maximums Beringia would have reached a dry-land width of 16,000 kms, exposing a land margin between the ice and the sea starting as early as 200,000 BP. There are two potential routes, the sea coast, and there was a gap between the Laurentide and the Cordilleran ice fields that lead straight into central Canada.

rather than taking the trite argument that human occupation of the americas went from tierra del fuego north - for lack of a better term- i think that we will find that early groups fetched up on both the eastern and western shores of the americas in a "radial" fashion, following the path of least resistance. which means that, as we don't really know the extant microclimates of the sea and land at that time, we don't have a way to predict the landings on the eastern and western seaboards, and subsequent establishment of viable populations. given the much lower sealevels of that time, it will be close to a miracle to ever establish a continuous sequence of habitation.

i agree with you about 35k being the early horizon.

time will tell.

john

There is evidence for human occupation in Siberia as early as 43,000 BP. The Holocene kicks in around 10,000 BP so you've got around 33,000 years for bands to make the trek east. But with the coastline at the time being so far out to sea now, I agree we will have a tough time proving this.

[john]

my reference to the "northern gate being locked" is that we had a continuous ice sheet descending to, at least, a couple hundred miles south of the present us/canadian border.

my argument is that the early people would have taken the path of least resistance/best food source. which in all likelyhood would have not included continuous ice sheets, but travel on and subsistence from the ocean, until a liveable land-based existence was found. in short, coast hopping.

Agreed on the path of least resistance, which is why a land crossing makes more sense than putting out to sea. At glacial maximums Beringia would have reached a dry-land width of 16,000 kms, exposing a land margin between the ice and the sea starting as early as 200,000 BP. There are two potential routes, the sea coast, and there was a gap between the Laurentide and the Cordilleran ice fields that lead straight into central Canada.

rather than taking the trite argument that human occupation of the americas went from tierra del fuego north - for lack of a better term- i think that we will find that early groups fetched up on both the eastern and western shores of the americas in a "radial" fashion, following the path of least resistance. which means that, as we don't really know the extant microclimates of the sea and land at that time, we don't have a way to predict the landings on the eastern and western seaboards, and subsequent establishment of viable populations. given the much lower sealevels of that time, it will be close to a miracle to ever establish a continuous sequence of habitation.

i agree with you about 35k being the early horizon.

time will tell.

john

There is evidence for human occupation in Siberia as early as 43,000 BP. The Holocene kicks in around 10,000 BP so you've got around 33,000 years for bands to make the trek east. But with the coastline at the time being so far out to sea now, I agree we will have a tough time proving this.

why wouldn't the dry land exposure also be part of the glaciation?

j

[Minimalist]

which is why a land crossing makes more sense than putting out to sea

Actually, the vision of hunters following mammals along the edge of the ice pack makes the most sense to me. What does not make sense is the extension of the idea where someone sails back and tells the rest of the tribe "Hey guys....guess what we found!"

Further....it is hard to envision the kind of population pressure that would make people move north...towards the ice...during that time period.

Something does not compute.

[oldarchystudent]

why wouldn't the dry land exposure also be part of the glaciation?

j

It was, that's what I was saying with the 16,000 Beringian land width. It wasn't all under a wall of ice. There was a margin along the shore and gaps between ice fields that could be followed by migrating Siberians.

[oldarchystudent]

Further....it is hard to envision the kind of population pressure that would make people move north...towards the ice...during that time period.

Something does not compute.

But with the shorline retreating south they didn't have to go north so much as east.

[john]

why wouldn't the dry land exposure also be part of the glaciation?

j

It was, that's what I was saying with the 16,000 Beringian land width. It wasn't all under a wall of ice. There was a margin along the shore and gaps between ice fields that could be followed by migrating Siberians.

so its possible that there was a culture, similar to the inuit, that used both land and sea, i.e., sometimes walking, sometimes kayaks, to coast hop to more salubrious climes?


j

[oldarchystudent]

There is a theory of a coast hugging migration that hopped in the way you describe - essentially the same route but faster with the use of coastal craft. Again - no evidence remaining for it but it's a reasonable hypothesis.

[john]

There is a theory of a coast hugging migration that hopped in the way you describe - essentially the same route but faster with the use of coastal craft. Again - no evidence remaining for it but it's a reasonable hypothesis.

faster is the key word here. how else would you explain the amazingly fast spread of clovis culture - from both e and w coasts, n and s. they surely didn't start off in kansas.

j

[oldarchystudent]

I'm not sure it was as fast as all that. I think the clovis horizon keeps getting compressed to fit the 10k - 12k BP picture. There was the magafaunal overkill theory trying to explain the rapid expansion too. In my view the expansion wasn't that rapid, it just started earlier.

[Minimalist]

Further....it is hard to envision the kind of population pressure that would make people move north...towards the ice...during that time period.

Something does not compute.

But with the shorline retreating south they didn't have to go north so much as east.

Sorry, I wasn't clear there. The whole Out of Africa theory seems to be missing a "trigger mechanism" to me. If its true, then people who left Africa would have had to move north at some point in order to get to Siberia.

I'm wondering why they would do that unless forced to by external pressures.

[oldarchystudent]

I think we tend to conceptualize this like it was a rapid march to the north and suddenly one day it got really cold. This took thousands of years - getting out of Africa. The migrants adapted - followed herds. Spread slowly, not blitzkrieg style with no time to adapt.

[Minimalist]

I think we tend to conceptualize this like it was a rapid march to the north and suddenly one day it got really cold. This took thousands of years - getting out of Africa. The migrants adapted - followed herds. Spread slowly, not blitzkrieg style with no time to adapt.

I wonder. Certainly there was no blitzkrieg but it seems that, people being people, there would have been a tendency to settle in to areas with necessary game, shelter and water and then seek to hold on to it against future arrivals.

The new arrivals would have either had to pass through, or around those already there, or fight them.

[oldarchystudent]

There is a lot of discussion around Neanderthal / h. Sapiens contact and wether it was violent, peacful, co-operative or if there was even inter species mating.

We're not talking about a huge population at that point, and they are spreading out over vast tracts of land. I find it interesting though that going from Oldowan through to Mousterian tool assemblages, the points get smaller, indicating smaller game. Perhaps they out-hunted the land's ability to keep up and had to move on.

[Guest]

The ancient settlers of the Americas seem to have come by land, across Beringea, during the Ice Age, and by sea from the east, from Aztlan, the great eastern Atlantic naval empire of the Ice Age, and from across the Pacific, the so-called Lapida people, who landed from South America up to Baha.

The sun worshippers from Olmec land migrated north to become the tribes of the Mississippi River Drainge, from Oklahoma to the western slopes of the Appalacians, and probably the tribes of the western states, combining with the sun-worshipping Lapidas, a tribe of which may have been the Chumash of California.