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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.
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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.
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...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.