'First Americans Were Australians.'
Posted on 03/28/2014 9:09:21 AM PDT by Theoria
Niede Guidon still remembers her astonishment when she glimpsed the paintings.
Preserved amid the bromeliad-encrusted plateaus that tower over the thorn forests of northeast Brazil, the ancient rock art depicts fierce battles among tribesmen, orgiastic scenes of prehistoric revelry and hunters pursuing their game, spears in hand.
“These were stunning compositions, people and animals together, not just figures alone,” said Dr. Guidon, 81, remembering what first lured her and other archaeologists in the 1970s to this remote site where jaguars still prowl.
Hidden in the rock shelters where prehistoric humans once lived, the paintings number in the thousands. Some are thought to be more than 9,000 years old and perhaps even far more ancient. Painted in red ocher, they rank among the most revealing testaments anywhere in the Americas to what life was like millenniums before the European conquest began a mere five centuries ago.
But it is what excavators found when they started digging in the shadows of the rock art that is contributing to a pivotal re-evaluation of human history in the hemisphere.
Researchers here say they have unearthed stone tools proving that humans reached what is now northeast Brazil as early as 22,000 years ago. Their discovery adds to the growing body of research upending a prevailing belief of 20th-century archaeology in the United States known as the Clovis model, which holds that people first arrived in the Americas from Asia about 13,000 years ago.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/chat/1376953/posts
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1377276/posts
'First Americans Were Australians.'
Career suicide, yes, because all the tenured old guys had built careers on their theories and were making a bundle of money requiring their own books as college texts. It's an old saw that new theoretical work can't proceed until the previous generation of theorists is dead and gone. Unfortunately the "new generation" usually can't wait to assume the perks and privileges of the old one. They'll fight just as hard to suppress any ideas that conflict with their own.
This is a problem of human nature and institutional corruption that has nothing to do with the validity of the scientific method as Dr. Thorne implied.
Clovis first has been, at best, a hypothesis. It’s devilishly hard to prove anything through the absence of contradictory evidence. I’ve always had a rule of thumb that anything will prove to be more complicated than is first thought. Incontestable conclusions are usually the product of tenured professors guarding their turf.
People were able to get to Australia some sixty thousand years ago at least. The lower sea levels through the various ice ages including the recent hypothesis on Beringia leave a lot of room for speculation. DNA studies would seem to limit the European influences, however.
America B.C.A fascinating letter I received from a Shoshone Indian who had been traveling in the Basque country of Spain tells of his recognition of Shoshone words over there, including his own name, whose Shoshone meaning proved to match the meaning attached to a similar word by the modern Basques. Unfortunately I mislaid this interesting letter. If the Shoshone scholar who wrote to me should chance to see these words I hope he will forgive me and contact me again. The modern Basque settlers of Idaho may perhaps bring forth a linguist to investigate matters raised in this chapter. [p 173]
by Barry Fell
(1976)
find it in a nearby library
Settled science just turned to jello.
We have some linguists here on FR (or appear to be)
Perhaps a straight up comparison between Shoshone and Basque would be interesting challenge for one of them.
The settlement of Australia is a particularly hilarious example, imo, of the landlubber mindset at work — Flores Island was not connected to the mainland, even during glaciation, during the generally accepted time of hominim settlement of the Earth, and yet, there are tools on the island dating to 800,000 years ago. IOW, someone earlier than us decided as a one-off to go boating, ended up on Flores, and no one followed or left the place thereafter. Then, 740,000 years went by and boats were again invented by someone as a one-off, and they colonized Australia, never to leave again. Another 59,000 years passed and, during the Age of Sail, someone from outside discovered Australia. :’)
Hrdlicka’s view was that the Americas were first settled 3000 years ago, and until radiometric dating came along after WWII, that was still being pushed as reality — but the 3000 year floor gave way to another arbitrary floor, for no reason whatsoever.
A similar problem existed in Japan — a late settlement date was the accepted view, and when excavations of possible prehistoric human sites hit stuff of the right date, no one bothered to continue to dig.
The Basque political radicals would never be interested in the findings. :’)
(snip)
"Tierra del Fuego was inhabited by three unrelated groups: Ona, which lived by gathering wild fruits and guanaco hunt; Yahgan in islands south of the Isla Grande (Great Island) of Tierra del Fuego, and Alacaluf (inhabiting the Strait of Magellan - Brunswick Peninsula, Wellington, Santa In�s and Desolaci�n islands). The last two groups lived by gathering sea products and fishing. All these groups did not know farming, weaving, skin tanning, pottery and basket making. The fisherman groups did not know the fishing hook and nets, while the Onas, inhabiting an island surrounded by fish-rich waters, did not fish and nor even did they swim. "
(snip)
This sentiment has probably been echoed by every generation of men approaching codger-hood, but it seems to me that people are becoming increasingly ignorant as the years and decades roll by. Yet when people, paid writers no less, ignore the crutches technology provides to hide their lack of a genuine education we enter the realms of laziness and stupidity.
Well put. Science is a method, not a body of knowledge, but scientists are human first, just like everyone else. One obvious difference is, we’re discussing this in a topic about new findings and conclusions that overthrow an entrenched belief. That’s not a commonplace in most human activity outside of the marketplace, where accepted products are replaced by something either cheaper or with some kind of other appeal.
I remember a bogus story about prehistoric artifacts found in Antarctica, I wonder if that was posted here?
But anyway, that’s an excellent example, one of the most remote places on Earth, and three unlike cultures wound up stuffed in there.
Palaeoecological Evidence for Possible Pre-European Settlement in the Falkland Islands
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0305440398902977
Prevailing scientific consensus is generally the result of biased people working according to non-scientific methods.
In his writings, Humboldt mentioned the distinctiveness of these people he encountered down there.
I never did buy the ‘Land Bridge’ theory.
I bet humans came from all directions and modes of transport to settle in new lands.
Across the north and south Atlantic in boats, rafts etc.
The could have come by foot when the northern hemisphere was frozen under a mile of ice......................
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