Posted on 02/20/2006 12:01:38 AM PST by minus_273
The Indians said they were red-haired.
"The Paiutes and the long-legged redheads did not get along well. The Indians accused the Si-Te-Cah of being cannibals, and waged war against them. The Si-Te-Cah fought back. After a long struggle, a coalition of tribes trapped the remaining Si-Te-Cah in what is now called Lovelock Cave. When they refused to come out, the Indians piled brush before the cave mouth and set it aflame. The Si-Te-Cah were annihilated."
If you're taking one of the archaeological theories of "real" floods as the explanation of the various "great flood legends," including Noah's flood, then your likely thinking of the flooding of the Black Sea, with the most likely "original" version being best described in the legend of Gilgamesh.
That theory is probably best encapsulated and popularized in the work done by National Geographic and Bob Ballard. They have documented rather convincing evidence of a catastrophic flood that created what we now call the Black Sea from a previously fertile low lying area east of of Turkey with a small lake in it's center. This would have occurred following the end of the last ice age, with the actual flood taking place about 7,000 years ago. That ties this in to your "10,000 years too early" comment, so I feel pretty safe that this is what you're referencing.
But it is still only a theory that such a flood occurred, albeit one backed up with pretty good scientific evidence. It is a much less well substantiated theory that this flood was of such magnitude as to cause multiple such legends, in fact worldwide legends. The National Geographic site states that "(a)lmost every culture on Earth includes an ancient flood story. Details vary, but the basic plot is the same: Deluge kills all but a lucky few." So their presumption is that a local flood in the area of Central Asia was devestating enough to cause legeds on the other side of the planet? Even in the Americas, which the rest of the world supposedly didn't have interaction with following this theorized event until the middle of this last mellenia? Dubious, at best. It is even more tenuous to conclude that even such a legendary flood must be the origin of the story of Noah. You can make that argument, but it requires the effort to make the case. You can't simply state it as a "fact" with a dismissive comment like:
"10,000 years to(o) early, and not in the same area."
Of course, that assumes that your comments is based on the scientific or "rational" explanation of history. You could also be going the other way, working not from scientific theory but from Biblical timelines, such as this one, placing The Flood at roughly 2,657 BC. If this is where you're coming from then there's no point in arguing as the conclusion is not subject to argument.
Now, there are other theories (much less well researched or substantiated) of events at the 15,000 to 10,000 BCE (17,000 to 12,000 years ago) that might also be the source of a flood "legend," or might, in fact, be taken as evidence of the Biblical flood by those so inclined. Many of these theories are related to the well documented events of "Glacial Lake Outburst Flows" (GLOF) where large lakes are formed from glacial melt that is held back by an ice dam, which eventually bursts, causing huge and devestating flash floods. These happen today and are well documented. Prehistoric mega floods are also well documented, parrticularly across North America from very large lakes and dams. A few scientiests theorize that there might have been truly huge ice dams holding back massive seas created by the retreating glaciers, perhaps covering much of the entire arctic, resting on top of an ice basin forming the "bottom" of the ice sea. Such ice dams bursting could cause a sea level rise of tens if not hundreds of meters in a matter of days, whether temporarily as in the Atlantic basin with a relatively small "sea," or permanently world wide presuming a massive sea behind the postulated dam (the two ends of the curve for what would be theoretically possible). And these theories would clearly tie in with the time lines of this proposed migration theory as well as many interpretations of biblical timelines for The Flood (ignoring the 17th century Archbiship of Armagh's version of the ages of man).
More importantly, stepping away from the specific link to any flood, the ice ages did trap enough water to lower sea level by several hundred meters, whenever they occured, meaning there were huge land areas that are now below sea level that would have been available for easy navigation between Europe and North America even with the crude skin or bark boats that we know nomadic hunters in Europe had and used at the time, whichever timeline you choose to place them on, as all other players in populating North America "first" must also be somewhere similar on the timeline, proportionally equal to them, be it 17,000 years ago or 2,000. The logic of where they are relative to each other holds regardless of when you date the events that relate one group to the other.
The Discovery Channel had a "docudrama" program on this very subject last night. It was long on Drama and short on Docu.
Well, I have a hard time relying on legends from 15,000 years ago, especially since the people telling the legend weren't even here 15,000 years ago.
As for accusing each other of being cannibals, in fact Native Americans did practice cannibalism of their enemies for ritual purposes, hearts and livers mostly.
As I understand it, there was no cannibalism between tribes that were in the same linguistic group, it was done against people in another linguistic group, Algonquin against Iroquoian against Siouxian, but I am not certain of that.
Christy Turner thinks differently
ANTHROPOLOGIST CHRISTY TURNER, shown at an Anasazi dwelling in New Mexico's Chaco Canyon, dishes the notion of peaceful southwest American Indians with his thesis that a cult of cannibalism introduced from Mexico terrorized the Anasazi and eventually destroyed their civilization. LOS ANGELES TIMES PHOTO
Yup. Saw that. It was based partly on the work of Dennis Sanford (Who you saw in the documentary) and wrote the article linked below:
The people (Indians) who were telling these stories told them in historical times and were recorded, not 15,000 years ago. It's possible that the Si-Te-Cah were there closer to historical times and were finally wiped-out as the Indians described. Mummies with red-hair lend credence to the story.
Luzia, The second oldest human skeleton ever discovered in the Americas (Brazil)
We seem to always think in terms of East to West or West to East...
Consider the other Scandinavians...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Saami_Family_1900.jpg
No, just the Tigris-Euphrates floodplain.
This is quite politically incorrect therefore inadmissable.
I suspect that people came from just about everywhere to America. Maybe some came acoss that land bridge. It is looking more and more likely that people came to the west coast in boats, too. European origin seems prety certain for some contribution.
Barry Fell pretty much convinced me that there was even some commerce across the Atlantic in the millenium BC.
The entire earth that the folks who wrote about it knew about.
This migration was in the interglacial ages.
Also, for the really "open minded" - explain this: Horses and the Camelids all evolved in North America; Camels in Asia have been domesticated for at least 10,000 years, Horses for at least the last 7500. Mongolian horses are roughly 15,000 years behind in evolution to modern horses, but exist at the same time. Statues of tall white men, with blond hair, have been found in northern Peru, that were mistakenly dated at 2500 years old, but are really closer to 8000 years old, they were found with animal statues dismissed as stylized llamas but on closer inspection appear to be camels.
Now draw your migration maps, and something becomes very clear.
OTOH: read "The Last Giant Of Beringia"
Lots of the early colonial descriptions of the natives referred to some groups with light hair and even occasional blue eyes. Such groups were described especially in Florida though the mid Atlanti region produced such descriptions also. Read the early, pre disappearance, descriptions of the Mandans.
"Could have been the result of the Great Flood from the days of Noah."
Or thats when the last Ice age ended.
Looks like an Ainu to me.
See the article linked in post #56.
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