Posted on 11/07/2005 3:24:22 PM PST by blam
Kennewick Man, meet your distant cousins
By Kate Riley
Monday, November 7, 2005 - Page updated at 12:00 AM
COLUMBIA, S.C. — Discerning the story of America's prehistoric past is a bit like groping through an unfamiliar room in the dark.
One learned scientist's tattooing tool is another's piece of rock. Ask them to agree how long it has been there and you're bound to set off an argument that makes Seattle's whether-to-monorail conflict seem like a tea party.
So it goes with evolving thought in archaeology. We all know the prevailing theory. Our children's high-school textbooks talk about the first Americans coming from Asia about 13,000 years ago across the Bering land bridge, chasing big game through Siberia, Alaska and down through Canada and the Pacific Northwest between two ice sheets. That would be about 4,000 years before Kennewick Man is believed to have died on the shores of the Columbia River.
The controversy over whether scientists should study those 9,300-year-old bones — they prevailed in court over tribal objections — piqued my interest about the earliest Americans. I'll be spending the next year exploring these issues.
My first stop was a four-day archaeological conference, "Clovis in the Southeast," that attracted about 400 archaeologists and others. And I thought I was in for a break from politics when I left town during election season. Not quite.
Under the established theory, the land-bridge travelers' descendents were or became Clovis — the first identifiable culture in early America, distinguished by a distinctive spear or arrow point. But in recent years, evidence emerged to challenge Clovis as the first people in America. Clovis culture shows up beginning about 11,500 years ago. But human artifacts some archaeologists believe to be 1,000 to a few thousand years older have been found at a handful of sites from Wisconsin to Monte Verde, Chile.
The "Clovis in the Southeast" conference was called, in part, to showcase the theory-busting findings of University of South Carolina archaeologist Al Goodyear. Though he counted himself firmly among the "Clovis First-ers" a decade ago, he is having a serious case of second thoughts.
At the Topper site in Allendale County, he thinks he has found human-made artifacts associated with materials tested to a breathtaking 50,000 years ago — no spear points, but possibly manufacturing scraps. Several archaeologists were not persuaded the artifacts were human-made.
In a field where breakthroughs are made from diligent gathering and documenting of evidence over decades, such meetings provide a forum for scientists to compare notes and argue. Sometimes, minds start to change.
At the last Clovis-related conference six years ago, Dennis Stanford of the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History advanced what at the time was almost heresy. Soon, he and a colleague will publish a book about their theory that Clovis point technology is derived from that of the Solutrean culture in what is now Spain. Following seals as the climate warmed, people moved north, hopscotching by boat through the Arctic and down into what is now the U.S. Southeast. They spread westward, not the other way around.
Euro-centric prejudice? No. Stanford does not believe Clovis people were first in the Americas. By the time they arrived in the West, they probably ran into other groups, whose people came in other ways, such as over the Bering land bridge. Or maybe by boat along the coasts of Asia and Canada. (That might explain why Clovis sites, plentiful in the East, are rare in the Northwest and Canada — one is near East Wenatchee.)
A couple of serious catches with Stanford's theory — the 4,000-year gap between Solutrean culture's disappearance and Clovis' appearance. And where are the boats?
Stanford believes the evidence to resolve both questions is underwater. The prehistoric Atlantic coastline was possibly hundreds of miles farther east. People made it across the sea to Australia 50,000 years ago. Others traveled over water 30,000 years ago to retrieve pieces of obsidian from Kozushima Island, 95 miles south of Tokyo. How did early people do it?
In opening the conference, the University of Texas' Michael Collins suggested that the notion early people could not have built seaworthy vessels is akin to "primal racism."
Hoo, boy. That's an allegation that will be resolved only by a lot more groping in the dark — and possibly underwater.
I was watchingThe Crusades as I am again tonight.
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Soon, he and a colleague will publish a book about their theory that Clovis point technology is derived from that of the Solutrean culture in what is now Spain... Euro-centric prejudice? No. Stanford does not believe Clovis people were first in the Americas... Stanford believes the evidence to resolve both questions is underwater. The prehistoric Atlantic coastline was possibly hundreds of miles farther east.Now we're gettin' somewhere! :')
Some progress, yes.
Seriously, yes the show was interesting, but I found it more interesting that heresy is not being preached by the media, in that the pure, environmentally sensitive native Americans might have really been partly vile, waste-mongering, Europeans!
I agree. The genetic evidence for the now-famous haplotype X as an indicator of an archaic human population is, IMO, very spotty, and much more sampling is needed before conclusions can be drawn. Sunday night's program was extremely vague about the genetic evidence. Since I've never encountered a peer-reviewed paper with genetic evidence for direct populating of North America from Europe in the Neolithic, I don't know what it might be; and given the current state of technology I'm not sure it's possible.
As for the Euros-got-here-first thesis, it is strange for the PC crowd to come anywhere near this, especially as genetic history theories get waved around by all sorts of racist nutcases. But then November is a sweeps month so maybe this is their idea of attracting the hoi polloi.
But I did like the show. In particular I had no idea neolithic women were so good looking, and so thoughtful of us viewers that she'd leave her head uncovered half the time on an ice pack in the middle of an ice age, for us to appreciate her stylish tresses. ;)
Yes and also, he believes that the RIAA/MPAA should have the right to hack/destroy any privatingly owned computer without question.
John McCain is a true lunatic.
RE: Stone Age Columbus, I was thinking, this is all very well and good, but in fact Columbus changed the world and changed history. The Stone Agers were brave and adventuresome, like Eric the Red, but after their adventures, the world was ths same. They did not change the world, and they did not change history. The next historic event of equal magnitude was the American revolution.
Yes, he is.
Has he ever explained himself?
Personally, I suspect that there were several pre-Siberian migrations to the Americas including migrations from people related to modern Europeans, modern Southeast Asians (possibly Ainu), and perhaps even modern Australian Aborigones. Perhaps their populations remained small or maybe they didn't, but either way, it looks like the Siberian migration replaced them just as surely as Europeans replaced the descendants of those migrants millennia later. Whether through warfare of disease or whatever, the politically uncomfortable conclusion may be that just as the American Indians were wiped out by Europeans (with some mixing), their ancestors had wiped out a previous population of Europeans and/or other Asians. And that makes a racial sin or "we were here first" argument a lot harder to make.
My own mtDNA is closest related to North American Native Americans, Aleuts, and Siberians. No surprise, great grandma was Chippewa. But definitely evidence in favor that some ancestors came across the Bering Strait.
bttt
This stuff just fascinates me no end, especially the possibility of ancient coastal seafaring that was pretty sophisticated.
Any time I get the chance to "throw conventional wisdom under the bus" I'm in for the whole load.
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