Thoughts on Pre-Clovis

[shawomet]

Recent New York Times article discussing sites in both SA and NA. Article contains links to other stories of interest pertaining to the changing landscape of American archaeology.

I recommend the video link, for a closer look at the controversial Dr. Guidon, and a look at SA sites we don't get a chance to see very often.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/28/world ... ef=science

"Reflecting how researchers are increasingly accepting older dates of human migration to the Americas, Michael R. Waters, a geoarchaeologist at Texas A&M University’s Center for the Study of the First Americans, said that a “single migration” into the Americas about 15,000 years ago may have given rise to the Clovis people. But he added that if the results obtained here in Serra da Capivara are accurate, they will raise even more questions about how the Americas were settled.

“If so, then whoever lived there never passed on their genetic material to living populations,” said Dr. Waters, explaining how the genetic history of indigenous peoples links them to the Clovis child found in Montana. “We must think long and hard about these early sites and how they fit into the picture of the peopling of the Americas.”

[circumspice]

It seems incredible to me that if archaic humans could cross the Wallace line to populate Flores & anatomically modern humans can migrate across a substantial distance to populate Australia, New Guinea & Tasmania... (by boat!) Then why is there such resistance to the idea of multiple migrations into the Americas? People migrate. They move. They want to see what's over the next hill, what's on the other side across that long stretch of water. To be human is to be curious. The full story hasn't been told yet. We may never know the whole story. But it'll be fun to watch as new discoveries are made.

[uniface]

"Please Log In."

Right.

[Minimalist]

Registration to the NY Times is free.... you only get 10 articles per month but that should be sufficient.

[uniface]

You're right, of course.

Just indulging my inner crabby old "You kids get off my lawn !" fart.

Any place that won't tell me what they're saying without me changing my settings to let them put their cookie on my computer that I'll go back & crunch can take a long walk on a short pier, from general principles.

[kbs2244]

It is a big hemisphere.
It is hard to believe that only one group from a equally big hemisphere found it.

[uniface]

But by the same token : who or what cast it in concrete that people had to have come here from somewhere else ?

It's an article of faith that they must have. If this isn't registered, the usual dysfunctionality we're seeing here can only continue.

There must be more people than one who have held fossilized Australopithicene skullcaps in their hands, or been confronted with equally inarguable evidence to the contrary.

An acquaintance exhibited a huge assemblage of Mousterian lithic technology at a major Paleoindian academic conclave. Complete with decisive confirmation that it was, indeed, what it appeared to be provided by one of the foremost experts on the topic in England, who had spent his life up to his elbows in it.

He recounts that the first group of archaeologists who saw it were electrified, imploring him to tell them where the artifacts in his display had come from. When he told them he had collected them in an eroding ditch in Indiana there was an instant change in their attitude, from wild enthusiasm to cold dismissal. One of them muttered, "Clouds can look like animals if you stare at them long enough" as they walked away.

If this intellectual psychopathology is not recognised and addressed first, the conditioned poo-fling response will continue to dominate attempts at discussing it.

[kbs2244]

Good point.

The only reason we have assumed an East Hemisphere to West Hemisphere is the Middle East centric history we in the Western Culture have had the longest exposure to.

The early history of “accepted” archeology is Bible centric.
China and all of Africa but Egypt was ignored.
The start of humanity, the Garden of Eden, was in the Middle East.
With the acceptance of Darwin, Africa instead of the Garden of Eden became accepted as a starting point.
But still Eastern Hemisphere.

So it was always obvious that human migration had to be East Hemisphere to West Hemisphere.

Now that things are being found that show equal, if not greater, technology at other locations it just cannot be accepted.

Could a Leakey type get funding for a NA or SA project?

[Cognito]

Could a Leakey type get funding for a NA or SA project?

Leakey tried at Calico and was ridiculed to his grave. Mainline archaeology is simply not ready yet for anything beyond 15,000bce to show itself. There remains an incredible lack of professional imagination when it comes to NA and SA.

I suspect that many "one-offs" wandered into the Americas at a very early date, resulting in the anomalous finds that we see showing up from time to time. A half dozen fishermen riding the Japanese current to the Pacific Northwest 40kya wouldn't do much except maybe leave some traces of themselves if they went inland - maybe. And young mothers don't participate in extended fishing trips with their young so those dudes are gone within one generation. And who says they couldn't figure out how to sail back whence they came?

To successfully colonize a continent takes a concerted effort of a small tribe with at least two dozen fertile females (or, up to 100 individuals). Due to the risk involved, they'd better know what they're doing and where they're going, or it's an extinction event in the making. Many failed attempts could have occurred before a population became self-sustaining. It didn't just happen overnight ... with one, two, three, or even a few attempts. The process took many thousands of years with many attempts and failures.