Archaeologica.org

Two things.

One, I really don't like the word "migration" in this context. It implies an almost strategic planning which I think is not appropriate for scattered HG bands. Groups following herds of animals back and forth across Beringia had no idea that they were "migrating." Similarly groups which may have arrived in South America by sea are more far more likely to have been blown ashore. Let's call them "accidental tourists." Marine hunters sailing along the southern Beringian coast makes sense as they would be able to go ashore and camp but the basic activity is merely less difficult than it would be in the Atlantic where hunters would have had to pick their way along the edge of the ice sheet. Those Atlantic hunters would not have known that what they were doing was more difficult, only that it was the way they survived.

Second, the existence of microblade technology in Siberia has been known since the mid 1930's. Further, that same microblade technology has been detected in Alaska which certainly seems to indicate that it traveled across the bridge. Stanford is hardly making a radical claim, there. However, I recall seeing a chart in which it was shown that the vast majority of Clovis sites were east of the Mississippi which seems counter-intuitive if Clovis-equipped populations entered from the Northwest.

Of course, if Al Goodyear's 50,000 BC date holds up at Topper then everything goes out the window. That would precede the LGM by 33,000 years.

Weren't we talking about bigfoot?

When have we ever stayed on topic?

One, I really don't like the word "migration" in this context.
It implies an almost strategic planning which I think is not appropriate for scattered HG bands.

I can see your objection if you read it that way, but the implication wasn't intended. Just a word used, for lack of a better one, to describe the fact that some people, whose own or ancestral homeland was someplace else, ended up in America.

Groups following herds of animals back and forth across Beringia had no idea that they were "migrating."

You’re preaching to the choir, here. I’m aware of that, and agree.

Similarly groups which may have arrived in South America by sea are more far more likely to have been blown ashore. Let's call them "accidental tourists."

If you’re referring to transoceanic travel, I agree.

But I’m referring to a people following the coast because it’s their adaptive life style and preferred ecosystem. They might have supplemented their food with land animals, but would have been primarily catching and eating shellfish, fish, seals, and relying on traps as well as hunting. They’d have had plentiful food supplies from sea and land animals, as well as land plants. Enough for expansion into America to be based on increasing population sizes as a result of abundant food supplies, rather than on following herds. If they had followed herds, the herds would have led them to the interior and a huge “roadblock” as they reached the glaciers – if we’re talking about people during glaciations. (I don’t overlook the possibility of earlier entry than the glacial periods.) Coastal people not only wouldn’t have known when they crossed from one continent into another, but wouldn’t have had to make climate and ecosystem adaptations until they reached warmer coasts farther south in North America.

Marine hunters sailing along the southern Beringian coast makes sense as they would be able to go ashore and camp but the basic activity is merely less difficult than it would be in the Atlantic where hunters would have had to pick their way along the edge of the ice sheet.

I think “merely” is a significant word here. Apply some anthropological, geological, and meteorological analysis to this, and a Solutrean ice shelf crossing, carrying Solutrean points with them, seems much less probable.

Stanford has compared the survival ability of Solutrean people in the frozen Atlantic to modern Inuit. But modern Inuit have had thousands of years and several generations to evolve a successful culture for their environment.

An Arctic marine way of life is so different from a land based big game hunting lifestyle that a substantial transformation of social and material culture would have been necessary. Remember, as you pointed out, we’re not talking about a deliberate, planned, exploratory excursion of a few weeks to a land they couldn’t have known existed. We’re talking about people simply living their daily way of life. You don’t get an accidental group surviving in such a vastly different ecosystem without prior adaptation to it. That adaptation would require leaving behind the material culture that they’re supposed to have carried to America with them.

When the North Atlantic was frozen, the climate was much more severe than the climate that modern Inuit live in. It was more like modern Antarctica, but with no land base underneath it. The ice was 2 miles thick. No ice hole fishing, only open sea catches. No bears – polar or otherwise – and no wood, plants, or, more importantly, stones, all of which modern Inuit have access to. 3000 miles is quite a distance without land. Modern Inuit can island hop. Ancient Solutreans would not have been able to do that once they were in the middle of the ocean.

Living totally on the sea, as a daily lifestyle, is doubtful. Even Venice has land between the canals. How high above the unfrozen water was the ice shelf? Could people have climbed onto the ice shelf to build shelters, leaving it only to fish and hunt the edges from their boats?

Cold blasts from the ice shelf, just as in Antarctica, would create formidable wind chill factors. Even without the wind, the temperatures were so low that I doubt human beings – even well-clothed in furs and skins – could have endured.

Unsuccessful kills would cost them stone points. Even successful kills would damage and sometimes destroy points. Where’s the stone to replenish their supplies 1500 miles out at sea? They would have needed to rely on bone and ivory tools in place of unavailable stones.

Hunting societies, whether on land or at sea, know their prey intimately – its habitat and habits. Hunting isn’t simply transferrable from one species of prey to another, much less from one ecosystem to another. Modern Inuit, with thousands of years experience and the evolution of a specific technology suited to their environment, use planned strategies based on knowledge of their prey and coordination of a group of hunters.

And, where were the women and children while all this was going on? Did they go with the hunters? Only if it was a part of their lifestyle prior to getting out into the Atlantic, which would be true of a culture already adapted to an arctic marine style prior to getting into the ocean. If they were a land-based, hunter-gatherer group, the family probably stayed at home during big game chases and tended to gathering plants and trapping smaller game.

I don’t know how long it would have taken, just living off the sea and ice as a daily way of life, for marine-adapted Solutreans to reach America. But, in order to survive and succeed at such a lifestyle, with little boats (of skin?) in the Atlantic, they’d have to have had generations of adaptation before getting out to sea very far. By that time, they would no longer have been land-based hunter-gatherers following land herds of big game, making their distinctive Solutrean points and carrying them into America.

The same would apply to the proposal that a “proto” Solutrean culture brought a precursor of both Solutrean and Clovis points that evolved separately on both sides of the Atlantic.

Second, the existence of microblade technology in Siberia has been known since the mid 1930's. Further, that same microblade technology has been detected in Alaska which certainly seems to indicate that it traveled across the bridge.

Yes, it does. I wouldn’t argue with that. But it doesn’t preclude a coastal culture extending along the northeastern coast of Asia, southern coast of Beringia, to the northwestern coast of North America.

Sounds like a problem that’s been discussed regarding a few other geographical areas. The old coasts are submerged now. The inland technology wouldn’t be representative of a coastal people.

I don’t expect to see proto-Clovis or Clovis technology in Siberia, Alaska, or northwestern Canada and the US. I don’t believe that Clovis technology had an external source, but was developed independently in America. That’s one area where Stanford and I partially agree. He believes that Clovis was developed in America, too, but from an external source.

Stanford is hardly making a radical claim, there.

I think he is when he says that a land-based hunter-gatherer society switched to being a water and ice based fishing and sea mammal hunting culture (no gathering – nothing to gather), but somehow brought the hunter-gatherer culture’s tools with them to America.

However, I recall seeing a chart in which it was shown that the vast majority of Clovis sites were east of the Mississippi which seems counter-intuitive if Clovis-equipped populations entered from the Northwest.

Not a problem for me, since I don’t believe that a Clovis-equipped population entered from the Northwest. I believe that a pre-Clovis (not proto-Clovis) population entered from the northwest and their descendents developed the Clovis technology independent of an external source.

Although diffusion plays a part in the dispersion of ideas and technologies, some developments are independent. Agriculture and irrigation developed independently in several regions of the world as a common human behavioral adaptation to environmental opportunities and needs. Even some very specific-seeming developmental similarities are independent. Tenochtitlan was built on reclaimed watery land with canals for streets, in 1325. But, if Venetians had anything to do with it, they certainly kept it secret from Columbus only 160 years later.

Of course, if Al Goodyear's 50,000 BC date holds up at Topper then everything goes out the window. That would precede the LGM by 33,000 years.

And would suggest very early open sea travel over a much larger distance than Australians crossed. Or, an earlier crossing from northeast Asia.
Or, island hopping in the North Atlantic. Or any possible combination of the above in prehistoric America.

Weren't we talking about bigfoot?

Yes we were. Sorry for getting so sidetracked.

I've been making my way through some of the stories you linked.

Wondering where there might be stories from the Asian side about Yeti. Know of any?

Don't mind Frank....he just likes to complain.


Anyway, while I don't want to denigrate the hardships of crossing the Atlantic there are people, today, who go out do it just for the challenge.

http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/TurningPoints ... 431&page=1

This guy is far from alone. One guy was in the middle of doing it when Hurricane Bill caused him to stop just last week. The point is that it is hardly the certain death that you have envisioned. Doubtlessly casualties among the hunters were high...but then again, they seem to have been high among those hunting land mammals.

We can't assume that ancient Solutrean hunters simply decided one day to go for a boat ride. Nor can we be certain that they had not been hunting sea mammals. I don't see the ice sheet as a problem in and of itself. Broken stone tools would be a problem but I don't recall anyone suggesting that the artifacts found at Cactus HIll were brought from Europe. I would think a geologist could settle that debate in a heartbeat just by testing the stone. So what has really been transported is the knowledge of how to make a Solutrean point. All that is needed is someone who knows how to do it and an appropriate piece of stone. I understand from knappers that a good point can be made in a couple of hours if you know what you are doing.

Now, again, I don't sense any great migration but it isn't required. The bigger question is, was there anyone here when they waded ashore? And, if so, where did they come from?

And would suggest very early open sea travel over a much larger distance than Australians crossed. Or, an earlier crossing from northeast Asia.

Robert Bednarik has Homo Erectus sailing the seas at 800,000 BC.

http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Erectus+a ... 0110459326

I'm not complaining. I actually like this discussion. Stole my thread, but that's ok. This is another subject about which I am passionate. I think we can look at where microlith technology persisited and where it did not and see which people went where. I also agree that clovis was a technology that was invented here, not brought from somewhere else. Who invented it is the question. My theory is that the "microlithians" from Asia bypassed north America because there were already people here. They moved further south, that's where you see more of it. Central and south America.

jw1815 wrote:
[...] I think he is when he says that a land-based hunter-gatherer society switched to being a water and ice based fishing and sea mammal hunting culture (no gathering – nothing to gather) [...]

Grabbing a Great Auk, a baby seal, or maybe even a(n ancient northern hemisphere) Penguin can hardly be called 'hunting', jw. 'Gathering' is much more appropriate description, because it is dead easy, and with very little physical risk/danger. Even kids can do it.
I.o.w. while the men were hunting bigger sea animals/mammals, and fishing – on the very edge of the ice, or possibly in small skin boats – the women and children could be gathering everything on the ice that couldn't run away fast.

Stole my thread, but that's ok.

I just don't feel like moving things. Tell you what. When you find Bigfoot you can steal it back!

jw1815 wrote:Sounds like a problem that’s been discussed regarding a few other geographical areas. The old coasts are submerged now. The inland technology wouldn’t be representative of a coastal people.

So are many Mid-Atlantic islands

Rokcet Scientist wrote: Grabbing a Great Auk, a baby seal, or maybe even a(n ancient northern hemisphere) Penguin can hardly be called 'hunting', jw. 'Gathering' is much more appropriate description, because it is dead easy, and with very little physical risk/danger. Even kids can do it.
I.o.w. while the men were hunting bigger sea animals/mammals, and fishing – on the very edge of the ice, or possibly in small skin boats – the women and children could be gathering everything on the ice that couldn't run away fast.

Although there were bears in the road, of course: polar bears! A recurring nightmare IRL. Like the IRS today, basically.

RS

Grabbing a Great Auk, a baby seal, or maybe even a(n ancient northern hemisphere) Penguin can hardly be called 'hunting', jw. 'Gathering' is much more appropriate description, because it is dead easy, and with very little physical risk/danger. Even kids can do it.
I.o.w. while the men were hunting bigger sea animals/mammals, and fishing – on the very edge of the ice, or possibly in small skin boats – the women and children could be gathering everything on the ice that couldn't run away fast.

Traditional Arctic Inuit of modern times didn’t know that getting seals was as simple as sending the kids out to grab ‘em. Inuit men went to the bother of making hunting weapons, stalking seals’ breathing holes in the ice, getting women and children to stomp the ice to flush seals in the right direction, choosing the best time of year and location for the species of seal they wanted, and then actually spearing them with harpoons.

Doubtful that Solutreans on the ice shelf edge would have hunted seals through ice holes. The ice shelf was 2 miles thick. Too far down for seals to swim under it and breathe through air holes as they do with the thinner ice of the modern Arctic. Anyway, I don’t think Solutreans would have had harpoons that long. Seal habitats are rocky beaches and sand dunes where they feed off of shallow water crustaceans and fish. No baby seals in the open ocean. They can’t swim, so mama keeps them near shallow water to learn.

Regarding other fish and game, the Atlantic ice shelf of the LGM was pretty barren – not the Arctic of today. From the middle of the North Atlantic, there was nothing to the north, west, and east but glaciers on land, 2 mile thick ice on the ocean. Wouldn’t have had the grazing animals of today’s Arctic tundra (hare, fox, caribou).

A few cold climate birds might have shown up for the fish off the ice shelf. No walruses since they’re shallow water creatures. But, there probably were whales, porpoises, jellyfish, other fish. No wood for the frames of skin boats, but they might have used bones. No stones to make Solutrean points, but they might have used sharpened bones and bone hooks. Without seals and land animals, warm clothing might have been a problem. Maps:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Last_glacial_maximum