Posted on 05/02/2012 10:12:27 PM PDT by Theoria
For decades, scientists thought that the Clovis hunters were the first to cross the Arctic to America. They were wrong — and now they need a better theory
The mastodon was old, its teeth worn to nubs. It was perfect prey for a band of hunters, wielding spears tipped with needle-sharp points made from bone. Sensing an easy target, they closed in for the kill.
Almost 14,000 years later, there is no way to tell how many hits it took to bring the beast to the ground near the coast of present-day Washington state. But at least one struck home, plunging through hide, fat and flesh to lodge in the mastodon's rib. The hunter who thrust the spear on that long-ago day didn't just bring down the mastodon; he also helped to kill off the reigning theory of how people got to the Americas.
For most of the past 50 years, archaeologists thought they knew how humans arrived in the New World. The story starts around the end of the last ice age, when sea levels were lower and big-game hunters living in eastern Siberia followed their prey across the Bering land bridge and into Alaska. As the ice caps in Canada receded and opened up a path southward, the colonists swept across the vast unpopulated continent. Archaeologists called these presumed pioneers the Clovis culture, after distinctive stone tools that were found at sites near Clovis, New Mexico, in the 1920s and 1930s.
As caches of Clovis tools were uncovered across North America over subsequent decades, nearly all archaeologists signed on to the idea that the Clovis people were the first Americans. Any evidence of humans in the New World before the Clovis time was dismissed, sometimes harshly.
(Excerpt) Read more at nature.com ...
ping.
Jaredite ping!
The Soloutrean hypothesis explains the who the first arrivals in North America were. Anthropologists have long since discovered numerous Caucasoid skulls & skeletons which are much older than the first arrival of the Amerindians. The original inhabitants of Europe [ which only the Basques remain as the others were absorbed into the Indo Europeans who arrived later ] were also the original inhabitants of North America as well. This is a very interesting topic.
Sigh. Academics.
It took only one stab with a spear to kill even a mastodon, and it involved a technique that was both reliable and relatively easy. When humans arrived, the animals had no concept for them as a threat. A hunter could simply walk right up, gut-stick it. Then just follow the meal until it drops. The animal would die of peritonitis in about three days. That is why so many carcasses are found near bogs. The animals would head to water to relieve the fever.
How do I know that? I learned it from Dr. Charles Kay, a researcher at Utah State and one hell of a big game hunter. He learned of the method from local tribesmen while hunting in Africa. His book, Wilderness & Political Ecology: Aboriginal Influences and the Original State of Nature, discusses this very issue at great length in a chapter entitled: False Gods, Ecological Myths, and Biological Reality. Humans can be amazingly proficient hunters.
Thanks for the laugh ... by recalling the story of the Jaredite migration ... one of the most ridiculous tales in the Book of Mormon ... which is saying a lot.
For the benefit of the uninitiated, the Jaredites were supposedly a group of Semitic people who traveled to the Americas from Babylon around the time of construction of that city's Tower of Babel. They made the journey in submarine barges that were designed by a rather stupid Mormon god.
Dr. Kent Ponder, an engineering professor at the U.S. Naval Academy, describes some of the critical scriptural passages and has a lot of fun analyzing them HERE.
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Thanks Theoria and Carry_Okie.For most of the past 50 years, archaeologists thought they knew how humans arrived in the New World.That one gave me a good laugh. The basic "Bering Land Bridge and That's It" crap has been around much longer than that. Clovis-First-and-Only has been around since the 1000 BC glass floor bit the dust due (primarily) to the radiocarbon dating revolution. |
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“Anthropologists have long since discovered numerous Caucasoid skulls & skeletons which are much older than the first arrival of the Amerindians.”
Do you have any links? I went looking using a dogpile metasearch, but didn’t find anything, then it was two in the morning...
Anyway, thanks for any info.
I cite the Clovis First academic intimidation as proof of how the 'consensus' in AGW has been built - and is wrong in both cases.
Kennewick Man is the most famous.
I searched around to see if he’d done anything on Noah’s Ark which was built in the same way as the Jaredite’s ships, but he didn’t.
Here’s a link to the atheist page on which his analysis is listed: http://packham.n4m.org/
He rips into Jesus and the Bible pretty hard as well.
http://packham.n4m.org/bible.htm
http://packham.n4m.org/atheist5.htm
http://packham.n4m.org/evidence.htm
He also has a rather interesting discussion as to whether Mormon’s are Christian: http://packham.n4m.org/lds-xian.htm
So they crapped on the Clovis orthodoxy - who could immagine such a thing could happen tp a scientific consensus?
I agree with the good Doctor on that one but would like to add a little more to it. Having witnessed the fact that a wounded or sick animal will nearly always go to water does help explain the high amount of remains around old bog’s, I have another that I’ve also witnessed. As everybody knows the drought in Texas last year was a bad one, we lost 7 out of nine big ponds, as they dried up the banks became mud traps for the cows, deer and hog’s. We lost close to 80 cows from being stuck in the mud, well over 120 deer and at least 30 feral hog’s. We also had several coyotes and other predators get stuck in the mud trying to feed on the remains.
Now with the recent rains a wave of silt has washed into the ponds covering most of the bones and what hasn’t been covered eventually get pushed down into the mud by cows coming to water at the edge.
He’s a brilliant thinker and lecturer.
Predator-Mediated Competition: http://www.skinnymoose.com/bbb/2010/07/25/dr-charles-e-kay-predator-mediated-competition/
Here’s two videos on the liberal ecological disaster of wolf introduction:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TQ2g8BpYODU
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FAXq9YxjiY4&feature=relmfu
Too bad they came over in gas guzzling, climate warming, muscle cars w/o emission controls.
Had they not, we might still have the land bridge between Russia and Alaska.
Last time I checked, Noah's Ark was not a submarine barge. And it is my understanding that people have build replicas of the ark and these boats float. That can't be said for Joseph Smith's Jaredite vessels.
Here’s a link to the atheist page on which his analysis is listed ... he rips into Jesus and the Bible pretty hard as well.
Packham came out of Mormonism and became an atheist. It is my understanding that, unfortunately, the same is true for the majority of those who leave the cult.
Last time I checked (admittedly a few years ago), his site contained arguments that were debunked decades ago. Christian apologists such as Lee Strobel and Josh McDowell have written extensively on the topic and are worth checking into before you or anyone else make a final decision.
Perhaps Joseph Smith made the story more and more ridiculous just to see how gullible his followers really were.
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