Archaeologica.org

http://www2.canada.com/vancouversun/new ... 6806ebda2c

The Pacific Coast of the Americas was settled starting about 15,000 years ago during the last glacial retreat by seafaring peoples following a "kelp highway" rich in marine resources, a noted professor of anthropology theorized Wednesday.

The landlubbers will hate this remark.

"These kelp forests would have provided a migration corridor near shore with no major barriers," he said. "It would have been a very similar ecological zone to follow and a rich one."

It's hard to know what kind of vessels carried these early seafarers, although dugouts (perhaps carved from driftwood) and skin boats are possible, he said.

It has always seemed to me that, even today, there is a Northern vs. Southern hemisphere view of the oceans.
In the north, they are viewed as barriers.
In the south they are viewed as highways.

Minimalist wrote:

The Pacific Coast of the Americas was settled starting about 15,000 years ago during the last glacial retreat by seafaring peoples following a "kelp highway" rich in marine resources, a noted professor of anthropology theorized Wednesday.

The dates are likely to be far older than that, once the pre-Holocene impact sites are discovered. Due to rising sea levels since the end of the ice age, coastal sites are now under around 350 of water.

Given that rise, the only place to look is for related sites at higher elevations. If they were using dugouts from the large logs of the Pacific Northwest, then quarries would make good spots to search for. If skin boats, then elevated sites near walrus (?) rookeries would be good candidates, particularly if they had some other attraction in food stuff or resource.

E.P. Grondine
Man and Impact in the Americas

What "quarries", and to search 'm for what, E.P.?

If we agree that the overwhelming majority of possible find sites of pre-holocene hominin life are now under 400 feet of water, it follows that today's coastlines were then faaar inland relative to where those hominins lived and trekked: along the coast of that era.
I.o.w. the odds of finding any pre-holocene hominin remains on today's dry land are negligible, imo. And thus a wasted effort.

Where is Bob Ballard when you need him? Haven't heard of him for some time now.

As posted in the past I live a 5 minute bike ride from what was almost certainly a rest stop on the Kelp highways-English Bay.

The climate here is such that very very little survives the incessant dampness, one village in WA state was buried under a mud slide and so some record remains.

But further north along the fjords and channels there's nothing but bare rock and an occasional unidentifiable pictograph, anything else is long buried under the sea.

But those sites are not uniformly underwater. In the areas where glaciers were present they depressed teh Earth's crust. As they melted, the crust rebounded, hit a peak, and then sank just a little. On many islands off British Columbia and Alaska shoreline sites have been discovered well above today's sea level.

Even if they were, archaeological finds have been made in wet climates before. Outside of a desert environment, almost any find of an organic material is a miraculous event. But it does happen in peat bogs in Northern Europe for example and it is hard to imagine anything with a "wetter" environment. The key, or one of the keys, seems to be rapid burial so the air does not have a chance to work on the organic material.

Maybe they'll get lucky and stumble across an ancient campsite that was buried by a mudslide from one of those hills?

However....the emphasis is on the "lucky."

The peat bogs are a very low oxygen environment. i think that is why they are so good at preserving organic material

Venice was built by pounding wooden pilings into the mud. They are still there too.

Like here Min.
http://www.suffolk.gov.uk/Environment/A ... ckways.htm

Roy.

Interesting article. I remember seeing something about Flag Fen on Time Team several years ago.

Minimalist wrote:Venice was built by pounding wooden pilings into the mud. They are still there too.

As was/is Amsterdam.

Minimalist wrote:Maybe they'll get lucky and stumble across an ancient campsite that was buried by a mudslide from one of those hills?

However....the emphasis is on the "lucky."

"We" have been lucky before: Pompeii and Herculaneum.
I am in fact 'waiting' for HE/HSS finds in Toba ash (abo's ancestors on their long trek to Oz).

I remember a great quote on "luck," R/S.

I'm a great believer in luck and I find the harder I work, the more I have of it.

--Thomas Jefferson

Minimalist wrote:I remember a great quote on "luck," R/S.

I'm a great believer in luck and I find the harder I work, the more I have of it.

--Thomas Jefferson

OK, start digging into Sumatra's 14 meters of ash then... ;-P