Archaeologica.org

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'.

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.

Digit wrote: 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

The pack ice could be miles away

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?

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.

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

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

Digit wrote:

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.

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!

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!

Digit wrote: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.

YOUNG, TENDER SEALS.

.and speared and retrieved using a line-attached 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.

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

and a full-fledged ice age going on.

They were looking for FOOD.

Digit wrote: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!'

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 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.

Digit wrote:

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.

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. 

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

Digit wrote:

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.

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

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.

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.

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.