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When Were the Americas Populated?
evil agent passes along an article in Scientific American reporting that new radiocarbon dating techniques have cast doubt on the accepted story of how the Americas were populated. In the traditional view, "[M]igrants out of northeast Asia slipped into the Americas bearing finely shaped stone projectiles, so-called 'Clovis points,' after the town in New Mexico where they were first uncovered. This Clovis culture rapidly spread throughout the empty continents and by 1,000 years after their arrival had reached the southernmost tip of what is now South America, making them the original ancestors of indigenous Americans." The new dating of Clovis sites suggests that "Clovis" was not a people, but rather a technology. That is, a new and more efficient method of making arrowheads for hunting spread rapidly through a pre-existing population in both North and South America, over at most 350 years.
Parent poster posts post with link to goatse...
I can recommend http://www.amazon.com/Guns-Germs-Steel-Fates-Socie ties/dp/0393317552 :
His main answer has to do with food production: North America had hardly any good domesticable crops, so the most populous and advanced North American civilization (in the Mississipi valley) could only emerge after the slow spread of Mexican corn and beans across the deserts north of the Aztec homeland, which gave them very little time to 'prepare' for the European invasion.
That is true, but if you look at the date of 'colonization' by Austronesian people of these pacific islands, you will notice
- Sailing large distances is difficult. It took them until 3000/2000 BC to get their island-hopping act together and start colonizing these islands. By this date America was well populated
- Sailing large distances takes time. While it took a couple centuries up to one millenium to fill America, it took about 4000 years to colonize all islands from Indonesia to Easter Island / Hawaii
Combined: this proves that sailing between continents is quite possible but also very difficult, and cannot explain the people living in America around 10,000 BC.There is a PBS Nova show on this topic which discusses several alternative theories to the Clovis first one. America's Stone Age Explorers http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/stoneage/ It was recently airing (again) so you may be able to catch it again.
In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice, in practice there is.
On PBS there was an episode of Nova all about this. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/stoneage/
http://www.popularculturegaming.com -- my blog about the culture of videogame players
In the archaeological world Clovis population theories have been dead or dying for at least 5 years. Isotopic dating of human dwellings in the Americas throughout the 90s as well as single parent DNA research have been available for years that show human populations were present and separated from Asian populations thousands of years before the glacial corridor was a possibility. This doesn't even mention that Clovis technology likely didn't even come from Asia.
The only thing that Clovis had going for it is that the theory neatly solved several issues. Since archaeology at that time was not as sophisticated with its techniques and the lack of a good selection of sites, the people digging stuff up just noticed that after about 13,000 years ago they stopped finding these spear points when they found a large mammal skeleton. Also, within a short period after this tool showed up, the large mammal population of the Americas seemed to have died out. In addition, climatologists at the time came out with a breakthrough theory that massive glaciation had lowered sea levels significantly allowing for the Bering Straight land bridge. This convergence of new information seemed like the perfect way to integrate the known information at the time. Unfortunately, except for the coincidence, they didn't have a shred of evidence it actually happened that way.
So, like so much "news", this is just an old hat. Carry on.
The thing I find odd is that most of the advanced civilizations were in Mexico and S. America, rather than from the North.
That's just because the ones in the North aren't so famous...Hundreds of thousands of years? Modern humans showed up about 50,000 years ago, and ancient homo sapiens only branched away from other hominids about 150K years ago.
Perhaps you are correct in a few areas of technology and civilization, but it was a relatively few technologies that allowed the Europeans to be more productive and more potent in battle than the native peoples of the Americas at that time. But remember, the 16th century was a very different time than either the 17th or 18th centuries. European technology was not really that advanced, compared to what it would become through the enlightenment. Yes, firearms were available, but were not very efficient in battle for more than one or two shots at close range. Certainly effective as a weapon of terror, but it was probably the European horse which was a better weapon of war. And if we are going to talk about the horse as a type of technology, which given the centuries of selective breeding it is, then I would add that much of what Europeans came to eat and what allowed European population to grow in the coming centuries where actually the literal fruit of technology from the Americas: the fruits, vegetables and grain products that had been selectively bred for generations. Potatoes, tomatoes, corn, etc all allowed Europeans to diversify their food supply in ways that changed the world. Yes, it went the other way too, but to say that the Americas had nothing to offer is to ignore the importance of this contribution to the whole of humanity.
You can also look at the evidence against the Book of Mormon here.
In particular, you may want to read the commentary on how the Jaredites allegedly came to the Americas, according to the BoM, here.
Then there's a nice comparison of current LDS doctrine vs. what the Book of Mormon teaches here. Hint: LDS doctrine these days (or, in fact, ever) bears very little resemblance to the "Fullness of the Gospel" as given in the Book of Mormon.
N.B.: I'm an ex-Mormon, in large part because of contradictions I uncovered in LDS scripture and history. In fact, I came to realize that Mormonism was a hoax while following along in Sunday School; we were studying the book of Jacob, verse 2:24, which states that the practice of polygamy cannot be justified by the Biblical examples of David and Solomon, which were "abominable". However, I had recently read in the Doctrine and Covenants (132:38-39) that they were fully justified in their practice, except for those "wives and concubines which were not given to them". I flipped to that section in my scriptures to verify what I'd recalled, and I went numb on the spot, able only to repeat to myself, "It's all a hoax! I've been deceived all along!" Before that, I was a believing Mormon, living what I thought to be the Gospel as best I could, going to the Temple, etc. Other than taking up drinking coffee, I haven't really changed that much, either. But I'm a lot more tolerant of other people's choices in life than I ever was before.
I've considered the Book of Mormon, and even believed that Joseph Smith was a prophet, seer and revelator, as were his successors. I now know that it is worth a pile of fetid dingoes' kidneys.
-Mike
I'm sorry; I don't know what I was thinking!
Genetic analysis of native americans has quite diminished the likelihood of this position. Especially when compared to another putative Lost Tribe of Isreal, the Lemba.
As the article says, this has led to at least one exocommunication of a geneticist who was (at the time) a member of the Church of LDS.
Just a little guy, y'know?
Yes, though the percentage of dead through disease is hard to estimate, 95% might be high. It doesn't matter, there was a plan being developed for the survivors. Since elsewhere in the discussion there are those who deny there was a genocide, here's the legal definition of genocide, as adopted by the UN:
In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:* (a) Killing members of the group;
* (b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
* (c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
* (d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
* (e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.
Now if one knows much about indigenous-settler relations in N.A., then you know that: wars and disease took care of (a), alcohol and linguistic-cultural suppression took care of (b), forced migration and enclosure and ecodisaster took care of (c), it's coming to light that the mid-20C saw forced sterilizations in many parts of the continent(d), and the residential schools (e) are currently costing taxpayers a fortune in Canada due to massive restitution. The deliberate destruction of hundreds of languages can be laid at the feet of the residential schools, as well as a sorry history of rape, murder, and destroyed families for generations. The last ones closed in Canada in the '70's (not 500 years ago as some of the ideologues are stating in other threads).
Damn those pesky terrorists