14-36,000 Years Ago Winds Across North America From the East

[Digit]

But I can just as easily envisage a scenario with no boats involved at all. After all, hunting sea mammals and Great Auks on the ice is much easier, and a lot less risky, than hunting them at sea from frail 'boats'.

Below is a picture of sea Ice. I rather think that any ideas of camping on it is unlikely. The pack ice could be miles away

http://www.fotosearch.com/bthumb/DGV/DG ... 12-001.jpg

Pack ice is heavy stuff and when it arrives somewhere it has the effect of steadying the ocean swell. The continuous rolling motion of the sea is stopped completely by a relatively narrow band of pack ice only 100m or so wide.

Above a statement about pack ice, making boating very much more feasible than humping heavy loads over uneven pack ice I would suggest.
Next point.
Hunting from boats.
Firstly there is a common misconception that sea mammals are killed with a harpoon, they are not!
What is the point of stabbing something with a weapon that you cannot retrieve?
Sea mammals are normally killed with a lance, it is thrust in in an attempt to puncture the heart or lungs. The harpoon is normally used to attach either a floatation aid or marker so that the corpse can be located after the animal has bled to death.
No body in their right mind is going to attempt to heave a live and very angry bull Walrus aboard a small skin boat!
Who ever made the initial crossings would have had experience of such hunting as demonstrated from the tools, weapons and paintings they left behind.

Roy.

[Rokcet Scientist]

Below is a picture of sea Ice. I rather think that any ideas of camping on it is unlikely.

http://www.fotosearch.com/bthumb/DGV/DG ... 12-001.jpg

Very 'selective' picture, Dig...
Camping on THAT is clearly unlikely. But sea and pack ice have many, many more states than that.

The pack ice could be miles away

Who said is was easy?

Next point.
Hunting from boats.
Firstly there is a common misconception that sea mammals are killed with a harpoon, they are not!
What is the point of stabbing something with a weapon that you cannot retrieve?

FYI, Dig: a harpoon is a spear with hooks, attached to a line. Why? So that you can retrieve the harpoon and the prey it pierced.

No body in their right mind is going to attempt to heave a live and very angry bull Walrus aboard a small skin boat!

Of course nobody in a small skin boat is going to tangle with a two ton bull walrus. But heaving a dying 30 kilogram tender young seal aboard a small skin boat is perfectly possible. So that's quite another story. A young seal feeds your family for a week, and you can catch more than one per hunt!

It is, however, much easier, and much less risky to sneak up on seals and auks ON the ice, and clobber them to death! They ain't going anywhere fast!
So I think seaborne hunting was the exception. Not the rule.

Who ever made the initial crossings would have had experience of such hunting as demonstrated from the tools, weapons and paintings they left behind.

Of course they did. And it is now on the bottom of the ocean. At 2 miles depth. Go get it...

[Digit]

So that you can retrieve the harpoon and the prey it pierced.

Certainly, for a fish. Don't try and tell me please that you stand much chance of a killing thrust from a harpoon on a large sea mammal, nor would you necessarily wish to be attached to a large wounded one.

http://www.whalecraft.net/Lances.html

To this day harpoons are for marking and recovery, the lance is the killer!
Certainly sea ice varies, wind driven it can clear away to open water or pack up into solid sheets, either way walking on it is not good!

Roy.

[Rokcet Scientist]

So that you can retrieve the harpoon and the prey it pierced.

Certainly, for a fish. Don't try and tell me please that you stand much chance of a killing thrust from a harpoon on a large sea mammal, nor would you necessarily wish to be attached to a large wounded one.

Something wrong with your reading glasses, Dig? YOU DON'T HARPOON LARGE SEA MAMMALS FROM A SMALL SKIN BOAT. You harpoon only SMALL sea mammals from a small skin boat!

To this day harpoons are for marking and recovery, the lance is the killer!

No, Dig. Apparently you've never seen (20 ton) whales hunted and killed with harpoons.

Certainly sea ice varies, wind driven it can clear away to open water or pack up into solid sheets, either way walking on it is not good!

There are also thousands of square miles of perfectly flat, featureless, meters thick pack ice that you can 'walk' on. Recently a few teams walked from Greenland to the North Pole (not for the first time) in a matter of weeks! So the Solutreans could very well walk on the pack ice too, roughly following the ice edge, to America.

[Digit]

What would these small sea mammals be RS? Anything over a couple of feet long and still struggling would be a hell of a handfull whether on the ice or in a boat.
A struggling animal would also be lost if the harpoon tore lose.
Modern harpoons have an explosive on the end! Prior to this 'humane' method of killing, (that was the inventor's idea,) they were normally killed with thrusts from a lance, the 'killing iron!'

There are also thousands of square miles of perfectly flat, featureless, meters thick pack ice that you can 'walk' on. Recently a few teams walked from Greenland to the North Pole (not for the first time) in a matter of weeks!

Granted! Taking their supplies with them, would they have survived for generations?
Let us look at the question another way.
Why would Solutreans have gone some 3000 kilometers to the Americas.
Please don't suggest that they were chasing animals. The chances of their having exhausted local marine supplies is untenable.
I can not recall a single instance of explorers setting out 'into the wide blue yonder' without the belief that they were going to find land.

Roy.

[Rokcet Scientist]

What would these small sea mammals be RS?

Dig, you really need to have your prescription checked. Read the afore again: YOUNG, TENDER SEALS.

Anything over a couple of feet long and still struggling would be a hell of a handfull whether on the ice or in a boat.

So you select your prey carefully: nothing over 3/4 feet. But in any case hunting is lot easier on the ice than on the water, Dig.
And, FYI: hunting, in just about any situation, is hard, risky work. But nomadic hunters have no choice: either they pull their finger out, work bloody hard and accept the risks, or they starve. Simple as that.

A struggling animal would also be lost if the harpoon tore lose.

Shit happens. Part and parcel of hunting.

Modern harpoons have an explosive on the end! Prior to this 'humane' method of killing, (that was the inventor's idea,) they were normally killed with thrusts from a lance, the 'killing iron!'

...and speared and retrieved using a line-attached harpoon!

There are also thousands of square miles of perfectly flat, featureless, meters thick pack ice that you can 'walk' on. Recently a few teams walked from Greenland to the North Pole (not for the first time) in a matter of weeks!

Granted! Taking their supplies with them, would they have survived for generations?

Of course not. They would have had to hunt for their food. Which they didn't do on these 'trips', because the object of those was how fast they could reach the Pole. The object was NOT 'how can we survive as long as possible on the ice'.

Let us look at the question another way.
Why would Solutreans have gone some 3000 kilometers to the Americas.

They never went "some 3000 kilometers to the Americas". That was never their intention. How could it have been? They didn't know America was there to go to. So they got there by pure accident.

Please don't suggest that they were chasing animals.

I most definitely do. Their existence was one of survival, and nothing else. FOOD was the prime motivator of their actions. Before ALL else.

The chances of their having exhausted local marine supplies is untenable.

"Untenable"? You're suggesting that I proposed that Solutreans stepped onto the ice because 'local marine supplies' were exhausted. I proposed no such thing.
Solutreans, when still land-based, originally were mega fauna hunters like all the rest of 'm. But there was population pressure from the east and south (= competition for food), and a full-fledged ice age going on. And the mega fauna went extinct in exactly that period. So there was less food running around on land, and it got more and more difficult to find it. So the Solutreans stepped onto the ice because there they could find plenty, protein-rich, high-caloric prey – FOOD – that was much easier, and a lot less risky, to hunt than mega fauna was.

I can not recall a single instance of explorers setting out 'into the wide blue yonder' without the belief that they were going to find land.

They weren't 'explorers', Dig. They were HUNTERS. They weren't looking for land. They were looking for FOOD.

[Digit]

YOUNG, TENDER SEALS.

The minimum 'Great Circle' distance between Iberia and the Americas at the time was 2000 miles. Walking or boating would require a significantly greater distance than that to be covered. Walking would have taken, in my estimation in excess of 9 months, by which time the young seals would no longer small!

.and speared and retrieved using a line-attached harpoon!

But were killed with a lance before the explosive harpoon!

And, FYI: hunting, in just about any situation, is hard, risky work. But nomadic hunters have no choice: either they pull their finger out, work bloody hard and accept the risks, or they starve. Simple as that.

The Kung are still hunters and very few seem to be injured or killed by their prey, as you pointed out, they select suitable prey animals. Thus minimising any risk.

But there was population pressure from the east and south (= competition for food),

Please supply evidence in support of that statement. To the east of the area stated by the experts to have been occupied by the Solutreans was a barrier consisting of mountains and glaciers, and to the south was the Med.

and a full-fledged ice age going on.

And had been for some period of time before this event is suggested to have happened.

They were looking for FOOD.

And so a maritime people abandoned their maritime culture and became foot sloggers. What makes you think that they found it necessary to travel that far, where is the evidence that local supplies were were in short supply?
Surely the single largest reason for a maritime existence is that your prey has the single largest reservoir of prey animals on this planet!
Check, again, my point about the Great Auk. The knowledge of that bird's migratory habits were known to the Irish and Welsh, both of whom have claimed to have followed the bird to the Americas knowing that there was land to the west.
I doubt that the Solutreans were any dumber! And if there was any significant population pressure on the Solutreans the traditional method of dealing with it is migration.

Roy.

[Sam Salmon]

What would these small sea mammals be RS? Anything over a couple of feet long and still struggling would be a hell of a handful whether on the ice or in a boat.
A struggling animal would also be lost if the harpoon tore lose.
Modern harpoons have an explosive on the end! Prior to this 'humane' method of killing, (that was the inventor's idea,) they were normally killed with thrusts from a lance, the 'killing iron!'

You have an incomplete picture of the process.

Start with a method still used today here in British Columbia to subdue large Halibut @ boatside (we're not allowed to shoot them or use explosives)


The Harpoon is attached to a large buoy by means of a rope, the animal is stuck hard with a barbed or toggled spear/harpoon and of course dives fast and deep except it can't go very deep as the buoy keeps it from doing so.

The animal struggles until it's exhausted and then it's dinner.

Seals have been taken this way since time immemorial and it's also how NW Pacific natives subdued Whales of many types, sometimes using their own boat as as buoy.

Also you're mixed up as to hunting on land as opposed to the sea edge-there's much much more life right@ the edge than there is on a barren plain leading to nowhere-the Sea is our Mother many times over always has been.

Click Here you can see the bladder attached to the back of both the hunted Whale and a Seal

Here you can see whole Seal skins being used as bladders by Whale Hunters.



This Halibut is still attached to a fishing line but has also been stuck with a harpoon and is dragging a buoy-it's not long for this mortal coil

[MFK6]

Just wndering if the European archaeologists have accomplished any DNA from known Solutrean skeletons? Wouldn't they have been Cro-Magnon? I believe that we, in the present time, are under rating the abilities of peoples from the ice age period.

[Digit]

The Harpoon is attached to a large buoy by means of a rope, the animal is stuck hard with a barbed or toggled spear/harpoon and of course dives fast and deep except it can't go very deep as the buoy keeps it from doing so.

Exactly the point I made earlier Sam.

The harpoon is normally used to attach either a floatation aid or marker so that the corpse can be located after the animal has bled to death.

Roy.

[Rokcet Scientist]

The minimum 'Great Circle' distance between Iberia and the Americas at the time was 2000 miles. Walking or boating would require a significantly greater distance than that to be covered. Walking would have taken, in my estimation in excess of 9 months, by which time the young seals would no longer small!

Your estimation supposes they set off to walk in a(s) straight (a) line (as possible). To a destination: America. They didn't! They weren't going anywhere in particular. They hunted. So they roamed far and wide across the ice. For many years! Probably for many generations. Possibly even centuries.
I can assure you a lot of baby seals are born in a few centuries. And then there's fish. And Great Auks. And Great Auk eggs. etc. etc. Plenty to hunt and eat if you know where to look and how to catch it.

.and speared and retrieved using a line-attached harpoon!

But were killed with a lance before the explosive harpoon!

Sure, but with a harpoon to CATCH 'm in the first place, and haul 'm in. Or there wouldn't be anything to kill with their pretty lances.

But there was population pressure from the east and south (= competition for food),

Please supply evidence in support of that statement. To the east of the area stated by the experts to have been occupied by the Solutreans was a barrier consisting of mountains and glaciers, and to the south was the Med.

1) simple population growth (more mouths to feed).
2) steady influx of Homo Sapiens from the Middle East, Asia, and Africa for tens of thousands of years.
3) there was no Mediterranean. Only a few lakes where the Med is today. You could walk from Africa to Europe through the Med basin.
4) HN competing for the same prey as HSS.
5) less than half the habitable (and 'huntable') land area than today: most of Europe was covered by ice.

and a full-fledged ice age going on.

And had been for some period of time before this event is suggested to have happened.

In fact since 72,000 BCE. But it started slowly and reached 'glacial max' 18,000 years BCE. So the pressure to move became greatest 18,000 years BCE. Which was 'only' 4,000 years before early Americans (?) produced their 'Solutrean points'. Ties in nicely with the hypothesis that ik took 'm many generations to complete the crossing, doesn't it?

They were looking for FOOD.

And so a maritime people abandoned their maritime culture and became foot sloggers.

Of course! The America they found was still teeming with mega fauna. Which was already (nearly) extinct in Europe. The reason why they left in the first place.

What makes you think that they found it necessary to travel that far, where is the evidence that local supplies were were in short supply?

It is common scientific knowledge that the European mega fauna went extinct between 30,000 and 10,000 BCE.

Surely the single largest reason for a maritime existence

NO! THEY DIDN'T ASSUME A 'MARITIME EXISTENCE'. They HUNTED. For 99% ON THE ICE. NOT AT SEA. Far too dangerous.

is that your prey has the single largest reservoir of prey animals on this planet!

Care to rephrase that? I don't understand what you mean.

Check, again, my point about the Great Auk. The knowledge of that bird's migratory habits were known to the Irish and Welsh, both of whom have claimed to have followed the bird to the Americas knowing that there was land to the west.

That was when there was SEA to the west, Dig. In Solutrean times there was ICE to the west!

I doubt that the Solutreans were any dumber!

No, but they were in vastly different circumstances!

And if there was any significant population pressure on the Solutreans the traditional method of dealing with it is migration.

So that is exactly what they did: they migrated onto the ice, permanently, to go after their newly discovered prey animals!

[Digit]

Code: Select all

3) there was no Mediterranean. Only a few lakes where the Med is today. You could walk from Africa to Europe through the Med basin. 

I don't think you'll find that that is correct.

If they spent that amount of time actually on the ice they would have run out of land based supplies.

2) steady influx of Homo Sapiens from the Middle East, Asia, and Africa for tens of thousands of years.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/horizon/20 ... usqa.shtml

For Solutrean people in northern Spain and south western France, south was blocked by the glaciated peaks of the Pyrenees and Picos de Europa. In both cases, even had it been possible to traverse the mountains, south of them was a high, barren, wind-swept plain - a very uninviting and harsh area. We do see Solutrean-related people on and adjacent to the coasts of Portugal and Mediterranean Spain and France. Nevertheless, for people who live and are adapted to Arctic conditions going south was not the obvious option. The ice and sea were their garden and as the North Atlantic sea ice grew southward during the last Ice Age, it became one of the richest areas of sea life imaginable. West was the direction of plenty.

As I pointed out!

Ties in nicely with the hypothesis that ik took 'm many generations to complete the crossing, doesn't it?

No! If they took generations they would have run out of land based supplies, which even the Inuit rely on.

Of course! The America they found was still teeming with mega fauna

They wouldn't have known that till they got there so why abandon a maritime base and walk?

That was when there was SEA to the west, Dig. In Solutrean times there was ICE to the west!

South of the ice sheet would have been sea water all the way to the Americas.

So that is exactly what they did: they migrated onto the ice, permanently,

Something even the Inuit haven't achieved.

Roy.

PS. An addition, you can argue with as well.

http://www.redbubble.com/people/fnature ... rom-europe

[Rokcet Scientist]

A 'maritime base' is a base on the water. I.o.w. living permanently at sea. In boats (or other floatation devices).
The Solutreans never lived permanently at sea.

[Digit]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/horizon/20 ... usqa.shtml

It is not really correct to think of the Solutreans as a sea faring people, any more than we think of the modern Inuit of the Arctic as sea faring. A more proper term is maritime.

From the above.

Roy.

[Rokcet Scientist]

Code: Select all

3) there was no Mediterranean. Only a few lakes where the Med is today. You could walk from Africa to Europe through the Med basin. 

I don't think you'll find that that is correct.

It is if you study it.

If they spent that amount of time actually on the ice they would have run out of land based supplies.

They didn't need any.

For Solutrean people in northern Spain and south western France, south was blocked by the glaciated peaks of the Pyrenees and Picos de Europa.

If there were Solutreans in northern Spain (which is south of the Pyrenees) and in south western France (which is north of the Pyrenees) then clearly they had no problems crossing the Pyrenees! In either direction! Check the map.

for people who live and are adapted to Arctic conditions

...going west, where there are arctic conditions – on the ice, is a natural.

going south was not the obvious option. The ice and sea were their garden and as the North Atlantic sea ice grew southward during the last Ice Age, it became one of the richest areas of sea life imaginable. West was the direction of plenty.

So west is where they went! Ending up, accidentally, in America.

Ties in nicely with the hypothesis that ik took 'm many generations to complete the crossing, doesn't it?

No! If they took generations they would have run out of land based supplies, which even the Inuit rely on.

Which present day Inuit rely on!
200 years ago they didn't.

That was when there was SEA to the west, Dig. In Solutrean times there was ICE to the west!

South of the ice sheet would have been sea water all the way to the Americas.

However, they couldn't swim, and hardly 'boat'. So they did what they knew how to do: walking!

So that is exactly what they did: they migrated onto the ice, permanently,

Something even the Inuit haven't achieved.

Wrong, Roy: until 100 years ago most Inuit lived their entire lives on the ice, never even touching dry land.