Solutrean & Clovis again

[Mikey Brass]

Bruce Bradley and Dennis Stanford, 2004, 'The North Atlantic ice-edge corridor: a possible Palaeolithic route to the New World', _World Archaeology_ 36(4): 459-478.

Abstract: The early peopling of the New World has been a topic of intense research since the early twentieth century. We contend that the exclusive focus of research on a Beringian entry point has not been productive. Evidence has accumulated over the past two decades indicating that the earliest origin of people in North America may have been from south-western Europe during the last glacial maximum. In this summary we outline a theory of a Solutrean origin for Clovis culture and briefly present the archaeological data supporting this assertion.

[Jacques Cinq-Mars]

Mikey,

Many thanks for passing this on. Thanks also for having uploaded, “elsewhere”, this and the two other very interesting papers from the recent issue of World Archaeology. It is nice to see the “Solutrean Solution” has finally made surface and is now fair game. It will be interesting to see what the “informed” reactions will be. Hopefully, a few will appear in the Forum!

Jacques

[Robert Henvell]

   It is difficult to explain why people would embark on a 5000km trek along a dangerous ice bridge to a continent that they did not know existed.In the Beringia region migrants could see mountains in the distance.

[Jacques Cinq-Mars]

   It is difficult to explain why people would embark on a 5000km trek along a dangerous ice bridge to a continent that they did not know existed.In the Beringia region migrants could see mountains in the distance.

Yes, and as you must realize, this is only one of many "difficult" things Bradley and Stanford will have to live with.

Jacques Cinq-Mars

[Robert Henvell]

   bce dates calibrated

 One of the earliest [ca 11600 bce] Clovis tool assemblages was excavated at the Big Pine Tree Quarry,South Carolina.The first migrants to America could have treked southward from Beringia along the western seaboard of North America:traversed northern Alaska and the Yukon before accessing the American interior via a route east of the Rocky Mountains: and/or they could have made the perilous journey from the Atlantic east coast.

 Surface geology surveys by A Duk-Rodkin and A Dyke [2002] established that there was no corridor between the Cordilleran and Laurentide ice sheets from 23000-11000 bce.
Intermittent deluges from glacial lakes north of Edmonton, Alberta,Canada.would have inhibited human movement in that region for a millennium after the Younger Dryas.Analysis of animal bones indicated that no fauna died in southern Alberta from 20000-9600 bce,[M Rutter,2004].Lacustrine sedimentary and associated studies revealed that there was minimal flora in Alberta pre-8000 bce [b Beisla,1998].Modern bison in Alberta are descendants of a southern group.which migrated north [BBc news,2004].Artifacts recovered from the Athabaska drainage system [B Reeves] and Charlie Lake cave
[J Driver,1996] suggest that post 8500 bce,the interior of western Canada was populated from the south.Clovis tool makers did not use this route between 23000-8500 bce.

 It is not pssible to definitely ascertain ,whether there was an ice free zone along the west coast of British Columbia during the last glacial maximum [LGM],because the palaeo-shorelines are submerged.B warner [1982] reported that the lower slopes of Queen Charlotte Island were ice free during that era.Deglaciation in Alaska commenced circa 15000 bce.
Glacial "calving" in the Alaska Gulf would have posed a danger to small craft pre-12000 bce.

 Over the past three decades archaeologists have excavated numerous sites,which infer a coastal migration post 12000bce.
No Clovis artifacts were retrieved along the western seaboard of North America and eastern Siberia,which predate 11600 bce.The southern California Milling Stone tradition And the Pebble Stone industry,that extends from the SW coast of Oregan to Alaska,are not deemed to be adapations of the refined inland Palaeoindian Clovis implements,[T Jones,2002].Mtdna studies of native North Americans along the Pacific seaboard revealed high levels of haplogroup A in
the western shoreline populations and minimal evidence of gene flow into the interior valleys,[ibid].There is no evidence to support the migration of Clovis tool makers from Siberia to North America from 13000-11600 bce.

 It is difficult to rationalize,why people would trek along the ice
or attempt a hazardous 5000 km sea journey proximal to ice flows to reach a land that they had no knowledge about,
from the Atlantic east coast.The mountains of Alaska are visible from Asia's NE extremity.The exceptionally high tides along the coast of Labrador during the LGM would have been a formidable danger to primative water craft.The westward passage across the Atlantic region would have been extremely high risk.

 Collation of the above indicates that the Clovis tool tradition was an insitu development in the southern USA in the first half of the twelth millennium bce.The presence of mammoth bones,which were modified by humans [ca 28000 bce],in the Yukons Crow River basin [J Cinq Mars,2001] and the discovery
of a coeval,
bear's cranial fragment near Edmonton [P Matheus,2004] lends credence to the premise that people treked southward through Alberta prior to the last glacial maximum and/or accessed the southern regions via the western coastal route.

[Rokcet Scientist]

   It is difficult to explain why people would embark on a 5000km trek along a dangerous ice bridge to a continent that they did not know existed.In the Beringia region migrants could see mountains in the distance.

I don't think they went on a "5000km trek along a dangerous ice bridge to a continent that they did not know existed" as if it was a conscious decision of a people to go to a far land. That's an almost biblical scene. Certainly worthy of a Hollywood B-movie. The Solutreans couldn't afford the luxury of such romantic fantasies. In their daily struggle to stay alive they were totally preoccupied with ONE thing only: food !

I submit the Solutreans hunted seals and penguins. Excellent high-caloric prey. And like all good hunters, they followed their food. And lived on the sea ice shelf exactly like the Inuit do/did: their entire lives. For generations. Centuries even. And then, one day, on one of those thousands of daily hunting trips, by pure accident, they landed in America.

America was a land of plenty, a 'paradise', to the Solutreans: it still had the megafauna that the Solutreans' forebears on the European mainland had so effectively made scarce – not much later leading to extinction*. This scarcity had been the very reason for the Solutreans to start hunting seals and penguins a couple centuries before! They had to.

Neccessity is the mother of invention.
Everything else is either evolution and/or pure coincidence.
(One and the same of course)


* BTW, this megafauna extinction may be the first incidence in hominid history of an environmental disaster caused by human pressure...

BTW2: since then, penguins have also become extinct, in the northern hemisphere. Seems likely that human pressure was a major 'contributor' to that process too.