Clovis Speakers Discuss Man's Origins In The United States

The State/AP ^ | 10-27-2005 | Meg Kinnard

[blam]

Posted on Thu, Oct. 27, 2005

Clovis speakers discuss man's origins in the United States

MEG KINNARD

Associated Press

COLUMBIA, S.C. - A University of Texas archaeologist opened the highly anticipated "Clovis in the Southeast" conference at the Columbia Metropolitan Convention Center Thursday by rejecting the premise on which many experts once based their theories on man's North American origins.

At the meeting, sponsored in part by the University of South Carolina, Michael Collins called the idea that the first inhabitants traveled by way of a land bridge from Asia "primal racism." Instead, Collins said, they arrived by water, because "the rich marine environments" along the northern Atlantic and Pacific coasts are "very attractive regions for human exploitation."

Conference staffer Thomas McDonald said that roughly 400 people had pre-registered for the four-day conference on Clovis - the culture traditionally thought to have been the first in North America.
In recent years, many experts have begun to consider other explanations, such as migration from Europe, and not Asia. That idea was advanced by Dennis Stanford, head of the archaeology division of the department of anthropology at the Smithsonian Institute's National Museum of Natural History.

Other speakers talked about the wide array of paleo-Indian artifacts throughout the southeastern region. University of South Carolina archaeologist Al Goodyear discussed his research at the Topper site in Allendale County, calling the spot "the Goldilocks location to be doing archaeology." In 1998, Goodyear announced that he had discovered artifacts thousands of years older than Clovis materials at Topper.

University of Tennessee professor David Anderson also encouraged private collectors to consider sharing their artifacts with the public. Be "thinking about where you're going to be 100 years from now," he said. "We're all part of the archaeological record."

Afternoon speakers discussed the discoveries of Clovis tools from sites throughout the Tennessee River Valley. Showing slides of the dozens of samples recovered from a Tennessee location, John Broster of the Tennessee Department of Conservation said, "It sorta gets boring in a way, after a while, I guess, but it's still really exciting."

On Friday, Jim Welch will moderate a discussion that Goodyear said "might get a little hot and heavy." Goodyear said he hoped artifact collectors would attend and help to heal some of the "antipathy" between professionals and collectors in the field.

Scheduled events culminate in a Saturday visit to the Topper site.

[JustDoItAlways]

As time and research goes on, we will find that the story of how homo sapiens populated the different continents and areas is much more complicated and full of lots more different twists and turns that we now imagine.

For example, Professor Oppenheimer's DNA research noted in post #6 above, places people of European ancenstry closer in genetic lineage to American Indians than to any other group.

The reason is that most of the group that originally populated Europe moved in from the East from an area north of the Caspian Sea which is also an origination point for most of the group of people that moved into North America and became the Indians.

Of course over 1,000's of years, there is some genetic drift and lots of interbreeding with other people along the way but the DNA is still closest between these two groups.

[Restorer]

Good points all. I was unaware of the Red Paint People hypothesis. It is important to remember that it is a hypothesis at this point. The proof of their existence and the exact extent of their contacts is pretty sketchy right now.

It is also true that North Atlantic conditions were probably a lot more hospitable during past episodes of global warming (caused, as we all know, by GW Bush).

However, I hope you will agree that North Pacific coast conditions are generally a LOT more friendly than North Atlantic ones. The Alaska Panhandle and BC areas are among the richest in food and other resources in the entire world that can be exploited by primitive peoples. Compare these conditions to those of Greenland and Labrador at similar latitudes in the Atlantic.

I know where I'd rather be shipwrecked! Which is likely how the first trips across these oceans were made.

[GSlob]

Hmm... I remember reading somewhere that the triangle between the lakes Van-Sevan-Urmia [SW from the Caspian, not N of it] was the cradle of the Indo-European language group of people. They tried to trace cognate words and figured out that the place needed to have birches, beech, snow [occasionally], salmonids and so on. That sort of meshed with counterclockwise centrifugal dispersion from there, traceable by other means.

[norton]

Yeah,
There is all that,
but mostly, when decades of self defined smarties have bought into the same set of theories it is a real embarrassment to be proved wrong.

[blam]

"Hmm... I remember reading somewhere that the triangle between the lakes Van-Sevan-Urmia [SW from the Caspian, not N of it] was the cradle of the Indo-European language group of people. They tried to trace cognate words and figured out that the place needed to have birches, beech, snow [occasionally], salmonids and so on. That sort of meshed with counterclockwise centrifugal dispersion from there, traceable by other means."

Some recent study placed 'it' in the Indus Valley. I would place it further north and east, probably in China.

[blam]

Thanks. I'm gonna order this book by Bruce Bourque.

[SunkenCiv]

"They tried to trace cognate words and figured out that the place needed to have birches, beech, snow [occasionally], salmonids and so on."

To add to what GS wrote, Indoeuropean languages don't exhibit common vocabulary for seas and oceans (large bodies of water), having acquired different loanwords from whomever was already there wherever they wound up. :') So, an inland origin is indicated, probably right up on top of the ice floe. ;')

[Prost1]

I always have problems with these discussions....

1.) Science always assumes the Earth today is same model for 10,000s or 100,000s years ago. Yet, they note the Earth has changed dramatically, excepting they postulate it has not changed radically since Man.

2.)Because they have found no great ships from long ago, they assume (per Darwin) that they did not exist ie; nothing was more sophisticated than the Trimene. Yet, as Barry Fell notes, Julius Caesar reports of the great Keltic ships capable of carrying several hundreds over the open oceans...Giant sailing ships defeated by the calm and the Roman grappling hooks.

3.) per 1 above, since no one can investigate Antarctica, it is assumed no civilization ever existed there. Yet, the Phoenicians had maps of the shoreline (without ice! ref; Charles Hapgood.)

So, why is it not possible that in ancient times, the ice amount on the northern hemisphere could have been massive, reducing the oceans by 100s or more feet and Antarctica could have been free of ice?
Such a possibility includes more favorable weather and seas in the south and an easier way for moving from continent to continent...

[blam]

"So, why is it not possible that in ancient times, the ice amount on the northern hemisphere could have been massive, reducing the oceans by 100s or more feet and Antarctica could have been free of ice?"

The oceans were 300-500Ft lower 15k years ago. Some believe there was a brief warm period (warmer than now) during the Ice Age when the Arctic ice melted...who knows?

[LiteKeeper]

YEC INTREP

[SunkenCiv]

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