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.
native americans were here first. european forefathers colonized and then took their land. fact of history, but not one i feel guilty about or would blame on today's culture or events. everyone is responsible for their own actions and behaviours and nobody else's.
admit history and get on with your life.
I'm not interested what-so-ever in the politics of who did or did not get here first. I am very interested in the movement of humans (and when) all over the world. The paleoIndians are different than the Indians of today. That interests me.
BTW, the Hispanics of New Mexico were here before the English colonists. This is often overlooked.
No. All I can add is that some of the Europeans reported meeting some unexpected looking Indians during their western migrations. That's all.
There is a quaint supernaturalist cult operating
in much of the western world which actually believes this.
Yup I agree, unless they went extinct before today's American Indians arrived. The DNA seems to suggest there may have been some minimum amount of mixing.
"BTW, the Hispanics of New Mexico were here before the English colonists. This is often overlooked."
Yup. I have a friend in Texas who claims to be descended from these Spainards.(as he called them)
Yes, the First Americans did arrive by water, The NORSEMEN.
Interesting. I didn't know that.
"I'm not interested what-so-ever in the politics of who did or did not get here first. I am very interested in the movement of humans (and when) all over the world. The paleoIndians are different than the Indians of today. That interests me."
I agree. But Al Gore probably discovered America thousands of years ago. ;o)
yes indeed. we share a common interest.
(abstract only)Mitochondrial DNA and the Peopling of the New WorldAnthropologists have long speculated on the origins of the native populations in the Americas. One of the more recent theories holds that three distinct waves of immigrants--corresponding to three proposed linguistic groups among Native Americans (Amerind, Na-Dene and Eskaleut)--crossed the Bering strait from Asia no earlier than 13,000 years ago. Molecular anthropologist Theodore Schurr’s research on genetic variation in the mitochondrial DNA of native populations in Asia and the Americas casts some doubt on this view. His research suggests that the first Americans may have come to the New World more than 30,000 years ago. Although there is concordance between the linguistic and genetic affinities of Na-Dene Indians and Eskimo-Aleuts, this type of linkage is less robust for the so-called Amerinds. According to Schurr the genetic evidence is, instead, more consistent with a complex migration pattern involving at least two ancient expansions of ancestral populations who may have come from widely separated parts of the Asian continent, as well as the re-expansion of Beringian populations into the New World following the last period of glaciation.
Theodore G. Schurr
American Scientist
May-June 2000
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PBS's NOVA had a good episode on this a few weeks ago.
I was extremely bothered by the idea of the pre-historic French getting the credit
not only for floating to North America, but even for creating the Clovis point.
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