Posted on 02/19/2006 9:08:52 PM PST by anymouse
ST. LOUIS—The first humans to spread across North America may have been seal hunters from France and Spain.
This runs counter to the long-held belief that the first human entry into the Americas was a crossing of a land-ice bridge that spanned the Bering Strait about 13,500 years ago.
The new thinking was outlined here Sunday at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
The tools don’t match
Recent studies have suggested that the glaciers that helped form the bridge connecting Siberia and Alaska began receding around 17,000 to 13,000 years ago, leaving very little chance that people walked from one continent to the other.
Also, when archaeologist Dennis Stanford of the Smithsonian Institution places American spearheads, called Clovis points, side-by-side with Siberian points, he sees a divergence of many characteristics.
Instead, Stanford said today, Clovis points match up much closer with Solutrean style tools, which researchers date to about 19,000 years ago. This suggests that the American people making Clovis points made Solutrean points before that.
There’s just one problem with this hypothesis—Solutrean toolmakers lived in France and Spain. Scientists know of no land-ice bridge that spanned that entire gap.
The lost hunting party
Stanford has an idea for how humans crossed the Atlantic, though—boats. Art from that era indicates that Solutrean populations in northern Spain were hunting marine animals, such as seals, walrus, and tuna.
They may have even made their way into the floating ice chunks that unite immense harp seal populations in Canada and Europe each year. Four million seals, Stanford said, would look like a pretty good meal to hungry European hunters, who might have ventured into the ice flows much the same way that the Inuit in Alaska and Greenland do today.
Inuit use large, open hunting boats constructed from animal skins for longer trips or big hunts. These boats, called umiaq, can hold a dozen adults, as well as several children, dead seals or walruses, and even dog-sled teams. Inuit have been building these boats for thousands of years, and Stanford believes that Solutrean people may have used a similar design.
It’s possible that some groups of these hunters ventured out as far as Iceland, where they may have gotten caught up in the prevailing currents and were carried to North America.
“You get three boats loaded up like this and you would have a viable population,” Stanford said. “You could actually get a whole bunch of people washing up on Nova Scotia.”
Some scientists believe that the Solutrean peoples were responsible for much of the cave art in Europe. Opponents of Stanford’s work ask why, then, would these people stop producing art once they made it to North America?
“I don’t know,” Stanford said. “But you’re looking at a long distance inland, 100 miles or so, before they would get to caves to do art in.”
If European settlers had just delayed few hundred years, the savages would have killed each other off and there wouldn't be any Indian casinos.
Don't look for the National Geographic to feature this. They would never bump a spread on the glories of Cuba under Castro or Chavez's Venezuela.
Where do you live?
As all human life originated in what is now Africa, shouldn't that title read 'Original Americans were African'?
So women went on these hunting trips? If not they would have not been able to reproduce.
I do too. I'll point out two other things that bug me. The author refers to ice flows which should be floes and uses may instead of might in the title.
Seems logical!
Ja, wohl! Ich bin auch ein echter "Ur-Amerikaner!"
Geben Sie mir jetzt, die ganze Casinos zuruck!
But we're discussing crossing the Atlantic from Spain to the New World via the Equatorial current. It took Columbus 33 days at an average of ~5.4 kts before landfall. That's 4,200 nautical miles.
Even with a generous 1kt equatorial current, you're talking nearly 6 months at sea. And contrary to your belief, there's very little to 'harvest' once you get beyond the continental shelf.
Certainly Thor Heyerdahl crossed the Atlantic from Morocco to Barbados (3,300 miles. 57 days) in a reed boat. But they used sails and were provisioned with food and water. A few things I doubt pre-agricultural humans had.
Captain Obvious strikes again.
;->
I find it hard to believe that a lone lost hunting party had enough females in it to survive and populate the whole country. This is a theory full of lots of hot air.
Boy, if this proves out will he ever feel like a chump!
Easy answer: They left the artists at home when they went hunting.
No. That's not the lesson here, really. Everybody kind of spread out. I believe the Americas wer pretty multiculti way back when. The Indians from different parts of the US had different aspects altogether back when artists were painting them in their unassimilated state. And later groups did tend to take over. That's how we would get to see them in the record and the gene pool. Perhaps the Euros were before the Asians and perhaps they were a less successful group because they were subsumed. So which is the occasion of pride and whatever for?
Undeniably brought the world the best system of government and justice - even if in some parts of the world is at first only appied to him
I think maybe you are a little bit biased in youre history.
A few examples, The incas had a governmental system that granted everyone food and housing, the asians had a political system far more advanced than that of contemporary europeans, the sumerians and egyptians had a vast governmental system which distributed power and responsibility to reach every corner or their lands.
Europeans and american descendents where not the ones that invented succesfull governments. They did had a lot of influence in modern times due to colonisation and trading.
LOL! I know! I remember when this story came out almost a year ago... Seems the First North Americans(Europeans)were wiped out by Asians and South Americans who came here later.
There was a 5000 year old Caucasian skeleton found in
Washington State during the Clinton administration. Clinton tried his best to do a cover-up and the MSM (buried)the story.
PING.
Some new information on this at the following link.
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