[blam]

There's an article in the September Smithonian about this work (article above) but it's not on line.

I will use this article as a vehicle for and article I will link next...the publisher will not allow us to post it to FR.

[AppyPappy]

Don Cornelius...pick up the courtesy phone

[blam]

GGG Ping.

A Mystery In The Green Mountains

"While an identity remains elusive, he acknowledges, "We're finding artifacts that carbon-date at 16,000 to 17,000 years old."

[Coyoteman]

Cool stuff! Thanks!

[wildbill]

Hmmm. The American culture has evolved.

From prehistoric soultrean flintknappers to anti-historic soul train rock rappers.

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks Blam. I think the title should remain as is, rather than having that correction from "Soutrean" to "Solutrean". I just wish I'd been faster with the joke, however, due to sour grapes, I can instead condemn it as being really obvious. ;')

To all -- please ping me to other topics which are appropriate for the GGG list. Thanks.

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[JasonC]

I have long thought that the evidence for the pre celtic civilizations of western Europe in the new stone age all point to a maritime civilization. Mound barrows etc all describe a littoral arc from Spain to southwest Scotland, including Ireland and Brittany. There is no way the clear architectural unity of that civilization was compatible with a complete absence of sea faring technology, as is typically supposed.

Then on the other side of the world, I never believed the whole Bering land bridge story. It always felt contrived, and based on a continuity with modern Inuit peoples there is no reason to suppose had anything to do with any of it, so long ago. They are clearly later arrivals. In the meantime, the polynesian seafarers, though later in time certainly, clearly had no problem whatever in crossing the Pacific from west to east. It is silly to think they could get all the way from Indochina to Hawaii, but somehow magically couldn't make it the remaining distance to the Americas.

And if they did, there is little reason to suppose others couldn't have, earlier. The most likely influx of Asian native Americans is by ship.

There just also isn't any reason to suppose they were the first humans on the continent. They were extremely warlike and exterminated the major game in a few centuries, that is clear. Why should existing human settlements that predated them, have fared any better?

Is this enough to establish that e.g. mound builders of the MI valley and US southeast predated the "native" Americans, or that they were in sporadic ship-borne contact with western Europe? No. The ship borne western European civilization is distinctly later. It might have involved flight from the Americas for all we know, but we can't tell. Just not enough evidence.

What is clear is that your typical archeologist of 100 years ago had far too limited an imagination about what earlier peoples were capable of. Absence of evidence became evidence of absence because it fueled a prior opinion that everything noteworthy had happened very recently, and in one direction. Which we can be pretty sure has to be false, just a priori.

[Little Bill]

Blam

This whole issue of Prehistoric migrations has been driving me crazy for 35 years, the deeper one digs the stranger it becomes. As I pointed out to an Archaeologist many years ago, what is the difference between a Temple and a Neolithic VFW? Interpretation.

[JerseyHighlander]

Ping, just saw the Smithsonian article, have to read it tonight...

[GovernmentIsTheProblem]

The Solutrean Connection...

[SunkenCiv]

(South Carolina) Fire Pit Dated To Over 50,000 Years Old (More)
AP | 11-18-2004 | Amy Geier Edgar
Posted on 11/19/2004 11:07:26 AM EST by blam
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1283899/posts