First columbus

Pippin · Post by **Pippin** » Thu Mar 20, 2008 10:21 am

Hi

I saw a 2 hour show called "First Columbus". It was a fiction story, but they said it was based on archealogy. I told a story of persons walking along an icesheed from Europe to America in the last iceage. It wasnt quite clear about the profs of the story, only some stoneimpliments found under water near Canada. It didnt seem much to go by.

http://www.thehistorychannel.co.uk/site ... e_3024.php

Kim

Post by **Minimalist** » Thu Mar 20, 2008 10:40 am

It's Stanford's Solutrean hypothesis.

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

The Solutrean hypothesis proposes that stone tool technology of the Solutrean culture in prehistoric Europe may have later influenced the development of the Clovis tool-making culture in the Americas, and that peoples from Europe may have been among the earliest settlers in the Americas.[1]. First proposed in 1998, its key proponents include Dennis Stanford of the Smithsonian Institution and Bruce Bradley of the University of Exeter.

In this hypothesis, peoples associated with the Solutrean culture migrated from Ice Age Europe to North America, bringing their methods of making stone tools with them and providing the basis for later Clovis technology found throughout North America. The hypothesis rests upon particular similarities in Solutrean and Clovis technology that have no known counterparts in Eastern Asia, Siberia or Beringia, areas from which or through which early Americans are known to have migrated.

Digit · Post by **Digit** » Thu Mar 20, 2008 1:47 pm

So to end up on the sea floor these tools muct have fallen through the ice must they not?
Couldn't have been lost overboard could they?

Rokcet Scientist · Post by **Rokcet Scientist** » Thu Mar 20, 2008 2:53 pm

Digit wrote:So to end up on the sea floor these tools muct have fallen through the ice must they not?
Couldn't have been lost overboard could they?

Sure they could have fallen overboard. IF they were on a boat. I don't think there were boats involved in crossing the ice pack. I think they walked. Boats (I'm guessing 1 or 2 person affairs max; possibly something like hide covered frames) may have been used for hunting and fishing. Not for moving whole tribes, gear, and (deep frozen) provisions.

Digit · Post by **Digit** » Thu Mar 20, 2008 3:02 pm

I know RS, you've told us. But youve never explained how trekers could carry all the necessary provisions to accomplish it.

Rokcet Scientist · Post by **Rokcet Scientist** » Thu Mar 20, 2008 3:13 pm

You don't need much in the way of provisions if high-calorie prey is all around you, and you only have to stretch your arm to grab a fat penguin. The 'clothes' on your back and your tools (a half dozen hand axes/scrapers?) are really all you need to haul. Whatever they could not carry – but that would be the great exception, not the rule – could be hauled on sleds. Just like today.

Digit · Post by **Digit** » Thu Mar 20, 2008 3:23 pm

Like I said. There ain't not no Penguins in the Arctic. Auks stayed away from the ice, so that's a dead end.
Fuel for cooking and keeping warm, a fireproof hearth, cooking untensils, fire starting equipment, sewing equipment, as ice is hard on foot wear, Knapping tools, sleeping skins etc.
Try carrying that lot!

Post by **Minimalist** » Thu Mar 20, 2008 3:40 pm

No, no...they made it all the way across and THEN dropped the tools.

Cactus Hill is an archaeological site in the U.S. state of Virginia. It lies in the southeastern part of the state on the Nottoway River roughly 45 miles south of Richmond. The site, owned by the International Paper Corporation, is situated on sand dunes above the river.

The site has yielded multiple levels of early occupation. Archaic stage material is underlain by fluted stone tools associated with the Clovis culture dated to 10,920 BP. A lower level yields artifacts including unfluted bifacial stone tools with dates ranging from c. 15,000 to 17,000 years ago. White pine charcoal from a hearth context on this level dates to 15,070 radiocarbon years BP[1]. Further charcoal deposits retrieved at the site date to as early as 19,700 years ago, although these deposits may have been made by forest fires.

Rokcet Scientist · Post by **Rokcet Scientist** » Thu Mar 20, 2008 3:59 pm

Digit wrote:Like I said. There ain't not no Penguins in the Arctic. Auks stayed away from the ice, so that's a dead end.

The arctic doesn't have penguins. The antarctic does. What's the difference? People are the difference! Look at the map: in the northern hemisphere people could (easily) get at them. And the penguins/Auks didn't, couldn't, run or fly away. So the people ate them, because it's fantastic high-caloric food. And eventually, after a few millennia of being decimated, they went extinct. In the southern hemisphere it was completely impossible for people to get at the penguins in the antarctic until 200 years ago. That's why they're still there. In the millions. I was there. You can simply grab a penguin with your bare hands. They don't run away. They can't.

Fuel for cooking and keeping warm

Fat from prey. The Inuit/Eskimos of today still use it.

a fireproof hearth

Dunno how they did that. But I'll bet you a hundred bucks today's Inuit/Eskimos have a solution for that, and the Solutreans used the same m.o.

cooking untensils

'Cooking utensils'? Never been a boy scout and roasted your marshmallows on a stick over an open fire? Next you'll be telling me they needed to haul cutlery and crockery too,

fire starting equipment

Also like the Inuit/Eskimos do it.

sewing equipment, as ice is hard on foot wear,

Ditto. Plus how hard can it be to carry a dozen bone threading 'needles'? For thread they would use sinew and tendons from their prey.

Knapping tools

Like I said: a half dozen hand-axes, scrapers, and knapping tools, p.p.

sleeping skins

Yes, that they'd have to carry. But they were probably very glad they did in those sub-zero temps! Sleeping skins would double as winter coats/cloaks. So they weren't a burden, but an asset.

dannan14 · Post by **dannan14** » Thu Mar 20, 2008 4:17 pm

The Inuit have adapted their technology for living ON the ice. Why would the people that made Solutrean tools, who seem to have mainly lived on solid ground and merely traveled across the ice, have the technological adaptations to make a several thousand mile presumably one way journey?

i like the idea of migration across the ice pack, but boats make more sense.

Post by **Minimalist** » Thu Mar 20, 2008 4:20 pm

Yeah...pack ice is not such a good medium for travel. I went to college on the shores of Lake Ontario. Every winter there was pack ice out to the horizon. Every year it seemed some moron went for a walk on it and drowned after falling through. Pack ice is not solid. Boats make a lot more sense and every two people can have their own boat. Does not seem like an overwhelming problem to me.

Rokcet Scientist · Post by **Rokcet Scientist** » Thu Mar 20, 2008 4:31 pm

dannan14 wrote:
Why would the people that made Solutrean tools, who seem to have mainly lived on solid ground and merely traveled across the ice, have the technological adaptations to make a several thousand mile presumably one way journey?

Because they lived 'on solid ground' until scarcity of mega fauna drove them onto the ice in pursuit of prey. The transition to the ice-bound life probably took several millennia. Enough time to adapt life styles. Especially since neccessity is the mother of invention. The trip across, BTW, also took several millennia, as they were only pursueing their prey. They weren't going anywhere special. They weren't heading for America, because they didn't know it was there to go to in the first place. They eventually landed in Martha's Vineyard by pure accident. Sheer coincidence.

Digit · Post by **Digit** » Thu Mar 20, 2008 4:36 pm

Accept that Auks are not known to get near the ice. So if you don't catch a seal you have no food, no heating, no lighting. The Inuit use sledges or boats, they use them to carry stuff, like several hundred pounds of seal meat 'cos you don't wait till you've got nowt to eat before you kill again.
Using oil for heating, cooking, lighting, requires that the fat to be rendered, this requires heat! Then you've got to carry that as well.
The Inuit work from fixed bases for hunting, for long trips, guess what they use RS, boats!

Digit · Post by **Digit** » Thu Mar 20, 2008 4:42 pm

What scarcity of mega fuana? Reindeer never died out, neither did Red Deer, nor Fallow Deer.
No shortage of birds, fish, or shell fish, and the people contiued to live in their original homeland right up to today.

dannan14 · Post by **dannan14** » Thu Mar 20, 2008 4:46 pm

Rokcet Scientist wrote:
Because they lived 'on solid ground' until scarcity of mega fauna drove them onto the ice in pursuit of prey. The transition to the ice-bound life probably took several millennia. Enough time to adapt life styles. Especially since neccessity is the mother of invention. The trip across, BTW, also took several millennia, as they were only pursueing their prey. They weren't going anywhere special. They weren't heading for America, because they didn't know it was there to go to in the first place. They eventually landed in Martha's Vineyard by pure accident. Sheer coincidence.

If they spent several millennia adapting to the ice, why would they suddenly jump off when they hit land? Wouldn't they have more likely stayed on the ice and retreated northward with it since that was the only lifestyle they knew? Or did the ice pack run out of prey as soon as they reached land?