Posted on 12/10/2001 7:30:51 PM PST by blam
The First Americans May Have Come by Water
by E. James Dixon
If the foragers who created Clovis culture walked into North America, they had to pass through the long-described “ice-free corridor.” But a growing body of evidence indicates that pathway between the great glaciers of the last Ice Age was closed — in fact, the way south may have been blocked until centuries after the dawn of Clovis.
If the first Americans could not walk into the New World, how did they get there? Coastal or ocean routes navigated by watercraft are the most likely explanation.
No reliably dated human remains from the Americas are older than about 11,500 radiocarbon years (13,350 calendar years). This, along with other evidence, suggests humans first arrived in the Americas not more than 15,000 years ago (17,950 cal BP), near the end of the last Ice Age, the Late Wisconsin.
The climate was much colder then, and massive glaciers in the east and west formed a huge ice sheet covering most of Canada. The ice blocked access between what is today Alaska and the continental United States. Polar sea ice extended south into the Atlantic, covering Greenland, Iceland, and all but the southernmost areas of Ireland and England.
Because much of the earth’s water was trapped in glacial ice, sea level was lower. The continental shelves and the floor of the Bering and Chukchi seas were exposed, creating the Bering Land Bridge. The geography of the Ice Age limited possible migration routes into the Americas to the following: the Beringian mid-continental, the Northwest Coastal, the Pacific, and the Atlantic routes.
The Beringian mid-continental route presumes that hunters and gatherers first entered North America from Asia across the Bering Land Bridge. They then moved south into central-western Canada through the hypothetical ice-free corridor. But geologists working in Canada have recently demonstrated that the “ice-free corridor” did not exist at that time, and that connections between eastern Beringia and areas south of the continental glaciers were not established until about 11,000 years ago (13,020 cal BP).
Supporting this conclusion, paleontologists have found no animal bones dating between about 21,000 to 11,500 years ago in the region formerly believed to have been the ice-free corridor. This evidence demonstrates fairly conclusively that the ice-free corridor did not exist during the last Ice Age. And it precludes a mid-continental route for human entry before about 11,000 years ago.
Deglaciation along the Northwest Coast of North America had begun by about 14,000 years ago (16,800 cal BP) and was sufficiently advanced to enable humans using watercraft to colonize coastal areas by 13,000 years ago (15,350 cal BP). The remains of land and sea mammals, birds, and fish dating to this time have been discovered along the Northwest Coast, demonstrating sufficient resources existed along the coast for people to have survived.
Because earlier geologic interpretations had indicated that the region had been entirely glaciated until about 10,000 years ago (11,350 cal BP), very little archaeological work has been undertaken to explore this region as a possible migration route. So far, no sites have been found that are older than about 10,500 to 10,000 years ago.
Some researchers believe humans may have crossed the vast expanse of the Pacific and colonized South America before anyone reached North America. Support for this theory is based on sites such as Monte Verde in southern Chile and Tiama-Tiama in northern Venezuela, which may be older than the oldest sites in North America. Biological evidence suggests some of the earliest skeletons in South America may share similarities with inhabitants of Polynesia and Australia.
The Atlantic route is championed by archaeologists Dennis Stanford and Bruce Bradley, who have documented a surprising number of technological traits shared between the Clovis complex of North America dating to between 11,500 and 10,900 years ago and the Solutrean tradition of Europe, which ended possibly as late as 16,000 years ago (19,100 cal BP). They hypothesize that Solutrean maritime hunters and fishers may have worked their way along the southern margins of the Atlantic sea ice to the New World during the Late Wisconsin.
The preponderance of linguistic and biological evidence indicates that Native Americans most likely originated somewhere in northeastern Asia. Only the Northwest Coastal and mid-continental routes lead from there to the Americas. Because the mid-continental route was not open until about 11,000 years ago, the most plausible route for the initial colonization of the Americas seems to be along the Northwest Coast.
The colonization of continents is a complex process that spans a long period of time and probably involves many groups of people from different places. Archaeologists must keep their minds open to the many ideas being offered to explain the peopling of the New World.
There are tantalizing biological and technological clues that suggest possible contact, perhaps even colonization, between the Americas and Australia, Polynesia, Europe, and even Africa. The timing and processes of the colonization of the Americas are important because the cultural adaptations of the New World’s first populations established the foundation for all subsequent cultural development in the Americas and for the rich and diverse cultures that followed.
E. JAMES DIXON is Curator of Archaeology at the Denver Museum of Natural History. His latest book, Bones, Boats & Bison: Archeology and the First Colonization of Western North America, is in publication by University of New Mexico Press.
these were already added and pinged, and are related:
Evidence Aquits Clovis People Of Ancient Killings, Archaeologists Say
University Of Washington ^ | 2-25-2003 | Joel Schwartz
Posted on 02/25/2003 4:46:54 PM PST by blam
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/851809/posts
First Americans
Discover ^ | 2-1999 | Karen Wright
Posted on 10/06/2002 9:57:05 PM PDT by blam
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/764305/posts
First Americans
Discover ^ | 9-1999 | Karen Wright
Posted on 07/15/2003 5:52:59 PM PDT by blam
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/946813/posts
Jomon Fishing Site Discovered
Yomiuri.com ^ | 3-29-2004 | Yomiuri Shimbun
Posted on 03/29/2004 11:58:24 AM PST by blam
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1107336/posts
Rediscovering America.
(The New World May Be 20,000 Years Older Than Experts Thought)
Blue Corn Comics (?) ^ | Charles W, Petit
Posted on 12/10/2003 1:30:57 PM PST by blam
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1037905/posts
You mean this?
Have you seen the latest from the Topper site in South Carolina? Goodyear (archaeologist) is reporting dates of human occupation exceeding 50,000 years. (It was posted 3-4 times on FR)
Immigrants From The Other Side (Clovis Is Solutrean)
"The Topper site is interesting...you and other archeo-freepers keep us amateurs well-informed!"
We're all amateurs except I believe FReeper Coyoteman is a practicing archaeologist...PhD I think.
Wow. Woeful ignorance and religious bigotry all in one post.
Kudos.
Don't you know that Catholics follow the dictates of the Anti-Christ? It's all right there in that old invalid RC "bible". C'mon, you should know this stuff . . .
well, the first brits are thought to have come across during the Ice age when the English channel was either shallow or non-existant (and the Mediterranean was an inland lake)
Be thankful for global warming. Without it you would not be here.
If other populations pre-date the Indian, then what happened to them? If the Indians aren't the perfect beings who fell to the ravenous Whites, then perhaps they simply conquered the others. Many other peoples have done so throughout history.
your point is well taken. when it suits people to use darwin's third claim in their theory of evolution (survival of the fittest), they do so. when it is not politically expedient to so do, then victimhood is played out to its fullest.
the king james bible was the greates work of its kind of its time. however, if i spoke the english that king james spoke in the 1600s, i would be perfectly happy to use his bible. rather, i want a bible translated from the original manuscripts that use the language that i use to today. to do otherwise, is to present a work that cannot be fully appreciated or understood.
If the continents were originally connected at the Atlantic Ocean, and then drifted apart, then Alaska an Siberia would have been further apart in the past, not linked by a land bridge.
South America and Africa began breaking apart about 120 million years ago...and, continue to drift apart at about the same rate that your fingernails grow. Don't know about Alaska - Siberia.
All humans come by water.
Please note, that I have sent a formal complaint message to the moderator, as I have no recollection of ever saying this in December of 2001. I do not know how this happened. If I did say this in 2001, then please know, that this is not my current thinking.
I am in the process of going back through my replies to investigate this. I do not know how far back comments are stored.
To blam..do you remember if this is completely in context?
I am busy now, but I will get to this later.
ooops, didn't notice the date of the post -- just saw red and went in, all guns firing! Apologies!
DAMN! That blows my theory that they flew here!
No problem, I just can't figure out my comment. I don't believe I've ever taken that position, and I can't figure out why or how I would ever had said that.
sorry, i did not mean to offend you to the point where you would have felt the need to file a complaint. i apologize.
i was not paying attention to the date -- 2001 -- and thought that it was more current. i typically do not respond to things that old.
please do not waste your time tracing this down on my account.
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