Solutrean hypothesis
In this hypothesis, peoples associated with the Solutrean culture migrated from Ice Age Europe to North America, bringing their methods of making stone tools with them and providing the basis for later Clovis technology found throughout North America. The hypothesis rests upon particular similarities in Solutrean and Clovis technology that have no known counterparts in Eastern Asia, Siberia or Beringia, areas from which or through which early Americans are known to have migrated.
Also, when archaeologist Dennis Stanford of the Smithsonian Institution places American spearheads, called Clovis points, side-by-side with Siberian points, he sees a divergence of many characteristics.
Instead, Stanford said today, Clovis points match up much closer with Solutrean style tools, which researchers date to about 19,000 years ago. This suggests that the American people making Clovis points made Solutrean points before that.
There’s just one problem with this hypothesis—Solutrean toolmakers lived in France and Spain. Scientists know of no land-ice bridge that spanned that entire gap.
Stanford has an idea for how humans crossed the Atlantic, though—boats. Art from that era indicates that Solutrean populations in northern Spain were hunting marine animals, such as seals, walrus, and tuna.
11 comments:
Where did I overlook how either article promoted "right-wing agenda that denies indigenous rights"?
I've always suspected myself that Native presence in what one reader calls NovaMundia goes back much further than what anyone thinks now, and is more complicted than people think (settlers coming from both sides perhaps). But to me this has, or should have, zero impact on any indiginous rights issues.
Writerfella here --
dMarks, look and document the 'Kennewick Man' arguments AND the 'Solutrean' theories, and you cannot fail to see that BOTH are YOUNGER than the Native American Graves and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA). If such 'scientific' theorization gains any level of political regard, Native rights quickly will become eroded and even more undermined, because Caucasians will become 'The First Americans' and then all bets are off. Sort of like claiming that Black slavers were the real reason that Americans had a commodity and thus are innocent because all they did was attend the market...
All Best
Russ Bates
'writerfella'
Writerfella here --
POSTSCRIPTUM -- And it is writerfella who coined the term 'NovaMundia.' Shortly, it will gain at least a modicum of acknowledgment when writerfella's latest new SF stories are published in RED SKIN Magazine...
All Best
Russ Bates
'writerfella'
"Native rights quickly will become eroded and even more undermined, because Caucasians will become 'The First Americans' and then all bets are off"
It should not make one bit of difference for Native rights. Perhaps that is one reason I am a little more open-minded about these theories: I strongly believe that they really should make no difference in modern matters.
However, being open-minded also means that I accept the possibility that the earlier Americans went to Europe and imposed the Clovis technology on Europeans, rather than the other way around. Or I accept the possibility that it is all coincidental.
My open-mindedness stops at the idea that space aliens imposed the technology on earlier Americans and Europeans at the same time. Sorry, Indiana Jones.
By the way, "NovaMundia" is a decidedly Eurocentric term. The place was nova/new to the Europeans, but quite old to its inhabitants.
The right-wing agenda wasn't specified in either of the articles. Nor did I say it was. But this agenda surrounds the Kennewick Man controversy and the subsequent attempts to prove white men were here first.
It would be interesting to know Dennis Stanford's political leanings, funding sources, and affiliations. He's fighting pretty hard for a theory that, so far, he has no solid evidence for. One has to wonder why.
I'm guessing that few liberal scientists have tried to prove the first Americans were Caucasians. And that most proponents of the Solutrean hypothesis have a conservative/libertarian bent. Anyone care to wager?
P.S. The magazine is called Redskin, not Red Skin. See Educating Russ About Redskin for more information.
Writerfella here --
Eurocentric if only because it is derived from Latinate Anglicism, or English, which we all just happen to speak. writerfella sat with Carl Sagan at a BosCon oh so long ago and discussed writing but then had to listen to the man expounding on the perception that human thought springs from little more than random chains of preordained chemical reactions and electrical stimuli. writerfella stopped him to ask, "But Dr. Sagan, if what you're saying strictly was true, how could we be having this conversation?" writerfella got no answer...
All Best
Russ Bates
'writerfella'
For more on the subject, see Dissing My Solutrean Postings.
I agree with dmarks that Native presence in America probably goes back much farther than the Clovis dates and culture. I personally suspect that the Clovis tool culture was developed in America, independently of any outside influence, by descendants of the earliest Americans from Asia, but I suppose it’s also possible that a few paleo-Europeans made it to America in the distant past.
I learned in a public, online discussion that Rob is right about the Solutrean hypothesis being connected with political and racial overtones about Kennewick Man. It was at an international message board where a racial supremacist argued that Kennewick proved that white Europeans were the first Americans who were wiped out by later arrivals from Asia, who became the American Indians that Europeans encountered after Columbus. Therefore, the European conquest of America was “payback” for pre-Columbian slaughters of white Europeans by Indians, and all Native rights are invalid. He cited the X haplogroup as “proof” of his wildly imaginative (and blatantly racist) statements.
I countered with the fact that Kennewick was dated to around 9000 years ago, more recent even than the 13,000 years ago for Clovis, so he was hardly a forerunner. Plus, the Solutrean period ended 6000 years before Clovis. I cited genetic studies of the X haplogroup that indicate it originated in the Near East. Subsequent mutations show that one branch moved northwest into Europe where it became a very small percentage of the population far removed from France and Spain where the Solutrean culture flourished. The mutations also indicate that another branch moved eastward into central and then northern Asia, eventually ending up in North America. The presence of the X haplogroup today near the Great Lakes has more to do with ancestral adaptations to the environment of North America than any supposed migration from Europe.
I don’t know Dennis Stanford’s politics, but suspect that his hypothesis is related to archeologists’ resentment of NAGPRA and an attempt to circumvent it.
White people are only 6,000 years old! So Rob is wrong, and the white nationalists on Stormfront are wrong! I guess the racists on both sides have overlooked that little detail. Solutreans were from Eurasia not Whitelandia.
Yes, the racists are trying, as usual, to subvert things. As for Dennis Stanford, I suspect politics is far from being his thing. He's a noted researcher and archaeologist and is Director of the Paleoindian/Paleoecology Program at the National Museum of Natural History at the Smithsonian Institution.
Clovis dating actually predates the corridors that opened up allowing migrations along the Pacific coast and inland diagonally south to the U.S. The Clovis points appear to be a modification of the Solutrian points that existed in France and Spain 18,000 to 23,000 BCE. Also, while the Solutrians may be the first to ever reach America's shores, their DNA includes genes, as do all the peoples of this planet, that trace back to Africa where mankind originated. Not sure how there logically be white supremacy when their original genes were traceable back to peoples of color in Africa.
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