Climate windows for Pre-Clovis immigration

[AWSX]

Some here might be interested in this recent paper showing climate windows in the north Pacific that could have allowed Pre-Clovis entry to the Americas. Available here: http://www.climatechange.umaine.edu/classes/INT500/Sarnthein2006.pdf

[Robert Henvell]

Mega thanks for the PDF.My prior attempts to obtain a copy did not meet with success.
Bob

[Daryl Habel]

Some here might be interested in this recent paper showing climate windows in the north Pacific that could have allowed Pre-Clovis entry to the Americas. Available here: http://www.climatechange.umaine.edu/classes/INT500/Sarnthein2006.pdf

I'd read of this elsewhere but lacked access, also, so thanks from me too.  I'll just note that the climate windows that "promoted pre-Clovis immigration" (part of the title) described in this paper (Sarnthein et al. 2006) were three "short-term [Pacific] warmings.... coeval with early to late stages of cold Heinrich event 1 in the North Atlantic" (abstract), 18.0-14.7 ka (14C?), the Last Glacial Maximum, anyway you look at it.  Since it's been established that, after about 24 ka, the inland 'ice-free-corridor' likely was blocked by glacial ice or uninhabitable conditions during this time, what this paper is essentially 'promoting' is "pre-Clovis immigration" via the Pacific coastal route, i.e. "...The most likely immigration route of these pre-Clovis people led along the southern coast of the then dry Bering shelf, the Aleutian island arc, and the shoreline of British Columbia..." (Sarnthein et al. 2006:141).

Dar

[AWSX]

Thanks guys, but I can't take credit for digging it up on my own, the link was posted on another board.

I agree that the paper does support a coastal migration from Asia but it only covers the period back to 20k cal BP and the first window is shown at about 19,100. Yet the list of 9 Pre-Clovis sites in Table 1 only has 1 site on the Pacific coast, 2 in central North America with the remaining 6 located in eastern  North or South America. The oldest date of 23,500 for Meadowcroft precedes the time frame of this study.  The authors also conviently omitted the more controversial dates of 33k BP at Monte Verde and even older dates at Pendejo.

It is useful to show that there were climatic windows allowing humans to traverse Beringia at LGM but I hope someone can extend the same methodology back further.

[john]

Discovered this forum and it is great.  Let me say first off that I'm not a professional, although I started at about age 5 and had as my mentor the late Raymond Alf - who you probably don't know - but who nonetheless taught me how to think. And I've tried to keep current over the years.  Preface aside.   Now to human movement.  Kudus stay in kudu territory.  Titanotheres stayed in Titanothere territory.  Oreodonts stayed in Oreodont territory.  Parnasssians stayed in Parnassian territory.  And way back when, collecting the imprints of jellyfish in the Bass Formation of the Grand Canyon in the late fifties, jellyfish stayed in jellyfish terrirtory.  What strikes me - even before "modern" man - is that humans keep on showing up where they are not expected to be.  OK, so why?  Humans - as far back as you want to go - seem to have something coded into them which drives them into unknown environments, by choice, rather than following the seasonal cycle of, for example,  reindeer or mammoths or marmots.  Possible reason the Neanderthals went extinct is they wouldn't change their seasonal cycle.   Of course humans folllowed the animal, and later, the vegetable cycles, but always seemed to reserve the option to change  their grounds, unlike herbivores, carnivores, plants, and coleocanths.  And then they recorded the experience in various forms of painting and carving and sculpture, which somehow lead to spoken and written language and lately the dread computer.   So fast forward to the GREAT PRE CLOVIS DEBATE.  In my absolutely unscientific opinion, it is logical that there were many, many waves of human occupation of North America, from land and sea, and from both the East and West coasts, and as we learn more, the early horizon (reference Monte Verde etc.) will continue to go back.  Again in my opinion, humans were sea-wise as well as land-wise from very early on.  We didn't accidentally "raft"  from continent to continent nor did we have to walk to every destination.  We had bigger fish to fry (how did people end up in Australia?), and early seagoing peoples by definition would not leave a trace of wood/bone/skin boats, due to the temporary nature of their craft and the subsequent rise in sea levels.  Where we DO see them is after landfall, with the physical evidence of adaption to a new environment, i.e., similarities but not a stone cold sequence of Solutrean points to the Clovis.  Furthermore, why should N/S America be different from the rest of the globe, which recognizes the fact that we have had hundreds of thousands of years of overlapping peoples and cultures, rather than a singular people or culture?  It seems I have more questions than answers.  Anyway, if this is innapropriate just disappear this post.  But I'm curious to know your various opinions.