Hunt's views on earliest Americans

I finished the Historical Atlas of Ancient America and picked up the next Native book on the stack:

Native Americans: The Life and Culture of the North American Indian

Coincidentally, I found they were written by the same person, Norman Bancroft Hunt.

This book is denser than the other--probably because it's covering more cultures over more years. I've read only the introduction, which covers the Paleo-Indians' arrival in the Americas. But it raises some interesting points.

This book was published in 1991, but it doesn't feel dated. Hunt's position is that the first Americans came 35,000-40,000 years ago via the Bering Strait. The dates are consistent with the latest thinking, but I think many experts would say people came by several routes, not just one.

On to Hunt's observations:

Hunt notes that "powerful ultra-conservative elements," led by a scientist named Ales Hrdlicka, claimed that Paleo-Indians arrived no earlier than 8,000 years ago. Possibly as recently as 4,000 years ago.

We now know this claim is ridiculously far off the mark. But I'm not sure I've ever heard the people making this claim lambasted as "ultra-conservative." It's an acknowledgment that many scientists have political and cultural biases. Specifically, biases against recognizing Native people as full-fledged humans with a deep past.

As an article notes:

East Asian Physical Traits Linked to 35,000-Year-Old Mutation

If the Paleo-Indians came over 35,000 or more years ago, they wouldn't have had the East Asian mutation. They wouldn't have looked like the Japanese Ainu or any other Asian people.

Later waves of migrants may have brought the characteristically Asian traits to America. But the very first Americans could've looked like anybody.

Other than a couple of paragraphs about buffalo jumps, Hunt doesn't make any claims about Paleo-Indians wiping out the continent's megafauna in a fit of savagery. In fact, he lays the blame squarely on climate change.

America was much more lush 12,000 years ago, he writes. Much of the continent was like the American South is now. This was fertile ground for giant mammals like mammoths and mastodons, which used their tusks to uproot the vegetation.

Then the climate dried up and the lush vegetation disappeared. America became like it is now--desert in the West, prairie in the Midwest, etc. Giant herbivores like mammoths couldn't cope with this, so they slowly died out. Their deaths triggered the deaths of the giant predators such as the saber-toothed cats. The effect cascaded through the food chain. Larger animals became extinct and were replaced by smaller ones.

This megafauna extinction happened worldwide. Mammoths presumably died in Europe and Asia for the same reasons they died in America. About the only factor that could've killed animals around the globe was climate change.

Moreover, humans had been present in the Americas for at least 23,000 years before the extinctions began, according to Hunt. By that time, the animals would've adapted to the human presence. The two groups--animals and humans--would've reached an equilibrium.

True, a final wave of arrivals after the last Ice Age could've upset the balance. But Shepard Krech and his ilk claim the animals didn't recognize the humans or the threat they posed. If humans had been present for millennia, I doubt the animals would've been surprised and overwhelmed by the newcomers.

Anyway, Native Americans looks to be another good read. I'll let you know if I learn anything interesting.

Paleo-Indians arrived before Clovis

Earliest Americans Arrived in Waves, DNA Study Finds

By Nicholas WadeNorth and South America were first populated by three waves of migrants from Siberia rather than just a single migration, say researchers who have studied the whole genomes of Native Americans in South America and Canada.

Some scientists assert that the Americas were peopled in one large migration from Siberia that happened about 15,000 years ago, but the new genetic research shows that this central episode was followed by at least two smaller migrations from Siberia, one by people who became the ancestors of today’s Eskimos and Aleutians and another by people speaking Na-Dene, whose descendants are confined to North America. The research was published online on Wednesday in the journal Nature.Native Americans migrated to the New World in three waves, Harvard-led DNA analysis shows

By Carolyn Y. JohnsonAn exhaustive study of DNA taken from dozens of Native American groups that span from Canada to the tip of South America is helping to settle a question that has long divided scientists: When people arrived in the Americas more than 15,000 years ago, the Harvard-led research shows, they came in successive waves, not all at once.

The analysis published Wednesday reveals that while one population of “First Americans” crossed a land bridge from Siberia during the last Ice Age, giving rise to most Native Americans, there were at least two subsequent migrations. These people mixed with the founding group later, leaving traces of their genes in the DNA of present-day populations in Alaska, Greenland, and Canada.A related report bolsters the evidence that the prevailing Clovis First theory is wrong:

Spearheads and DNA Point to a Second Founding Society in North America

By John Noble WilfordStone spearheads and human DNA found in Oregon caves, anthropologists say, have produced firmer evidence that these are the oldest directly dated remains of people in North America. They also show that at least two cultures with distinct technologies—not a single one, as had been supposed—shared the continent more than 13,000 years ago.

In other words, the Clovis people, long known for their graceful, fluted projectile points, were not alone in the New World. The occupants of Paisley Caves, on the east side of the Cascade Range, near the town of Paisley, left narrow-stemmed spear points shaped by different flaking techniques. These hunting implements are classified as the Western Stemmed Tradition, previously thought to be younger than the Clovis technology.Comment:  Non-scientists have used the Clovis First theory against Indians in a couple ways:

1) They claim the late arrival of the Paleo-Indians gives them less ownership of the land. Especially if they can prove Europeans were here at the same time (Kennewick Man) or predated the Clovis people (Solutrean hypothesis).

2) They claim Paleo-Indians killed North America's megafauna because the animals disappeared roughly when the Clovis people arrived. Thus, Indians don't deserve to be called environmentalists and stewards of the land.

Now science is demonstrating that the Clovis weren't the first or only people in North America. And these anti-Indian claims are crumbling to dust. Oops.

And this may be only the tip of the iceberg. How do we know tens or hundreds of people didn't migrate from Asia before this? They could've come by land or sea 25,000 or 50,000 years ago.

After all, people first crossed the ocean to Australia some 40,000-60,0000 years ago. Crossing the Bering Strait and traveling down the Pacific coast doesn't seem any more difficult.

Are the genetic and linguistic tests sophisticated enough to detect the minute presence of earlier migrations? I.e., people who arrived tens of thousands of years ago and left little or no physical evidence? I don't know, but until someone answers that question, I'd say the earliest migration date remains unknown.

For more on migration theories, see Clovis First Theory Disproved and Polynesians Visited Before Columbus?

Below:  "This sketch illustrates an initial migration into America along a coastal route, followed by two subsequent Asian migrations that mixed with the first migrants to give rise to a number of present-day North American populations." (Emiliano Bellini)

Extraterrestrial impact killed megafauna

New evidence that extraterrestrial impact killed off the mammoths

By Thomas H. Maugh IIMelted glass buried deep within the Earth at sites around the world confirms the theory that a comet or meteor struck the planet nearly 13,000 years ago, triggering the Younger Dryas Ice Age, killing off the mammoths and other megafauna in North America, and perhaps even causing the disappearance of the Clovis culture of early Native Americans. The cause of the Younger Dryas cooling period has been very controversial. Some researchers have proposed an extraterrestrial impact and have produced evidence of the event, but others claim that the results have not been replicated. The new findings, reported this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, appear to provide that needed replication.

The Younger Dryas event began about 12,900 years ago and lasted about 1,300 years. The period is named after the alpine-tundra wildflower, Dryas octopetala, which spread southward during the period. Average temperatures during the period dropped by as much as 20 degrees Fahrenheit in Europe, perhaps a little less in North America. The period marked the end of the mammoths, giant ground sloths and other large creatures that had earlier wandered North America. Artifacts from the Clovis culture, whose members are believed to be among the earliest settlers of this continent, disappeared from the archaeological record. Northern glaciers moved southward and forests turned into tundra. The period is linked to the onset of agriculture in the Middle East, perhaps because hunting and gathering could no longer provide adequate food supplies.Another report says the megafauna began dying during the last major ice age. Then the minor Younger Dryas Ice Age finished them off.

Humans Did Not Kill Off Mammoths; Comet, Climate Change Helped, Studies ShowAlthough human hunting played a part in the demise of the woolly mammoth about 10,000 years ago, homo sapiens were but bit players in a global drama involving climate change, comet impact and a multitude of other factors, scientists have found in separate studies.

Previous research had blamed their demise on tribal hunting. But new findings “pretty much dispel the idea of any one factor, any one event, as dooming the mammoths,” said Glen MacDonald, a researcher and geographer at the University of California in Los Angeles, to LiveScience.com.

In other words, hunting didn’t help, but it was not instrumental. The ancestors didn’t do it.

So what did? After thriving for 250,000 years, the huge mammals lingered on in dwarf form in the Arctic Ocean’s Wrangel Island until 3,700 years ago. Between 20,000 and 25,000 years ago, LiveScience said, the animals declined during the worst of the last major ice age, though they started to multiply in warmer interior Siberia.

Analyzing samples from more than 1,300 woolly mammoths as well as 450 pieces of wood, 600 archeological sites and upwards of 650 bog lands in Beringia—the former land bridge under the Bering Strait, thought to be the giant mammoths’ last habitat—a team led by MacDonald discovered a host of things working against them.

The beasts were felled by a combination of declining food supply and terrain that deteriorated into peatlands, all brought on by warming climate, said the study as quoted in USA Today. Grasses and willow, mammoths’ normal food, was replaced by poisonous birch to eat, and solid ground gave way to wetlands more difficult to tread upon, USA Today said.

“Pressure from hunting was also present, as contemporary Paleolithic sites are numerous in both Siberia and now in northwestern North America,” the study said. “Modeling studies show that given the environmental stresses at the time, even limited hunting by humans could have significantly contributed to woolly mammoth extinction.”I watched an episode of NOVA last year that covered this subject too.

Megabeasts' Sudden DeathScientists propose a radical new idea of what killed off mammoths and other large animals at the end of the Ice Age. Aired March 31, 2009 on PBS.

Program Description

Fifteen thousand years ago, North America was like the Serengeti on steroids, with mega-creatures roaming a continent teeming with incredible wildlife. But then, in a blip of geologic time, between 15 and 35 magnificent large types of animals went extinct. In this television exclusive, NOVA joins forces with prominent scientists to test a startling hypothesis that may finally explain these sudden and widespread extinctions—that a comet broke apart in the atmosphere and devastated North America 12,900 years ago.The program discusses the conventional wisdom. You know, that the Paleo-Indians were so brutal, bloodthirsty, and unconcerned with ecological balance that they slaughtered the animals to extinction. Here's the transcript on that point:JAMES KING: Man probably came to North America at that point as a super-predator with a naïve fauna that had no idea what they were facing. The super-predator had communication, it had weapons, it hunted in groups, it had coordination, it had all the things you would do if you and I were going out to try and hunt big animals.

NARRATOR: More recent history supports this theory. In Mauritius, the arrival of the Dutch doomed the dodo, and in New Zealand, the first settlers killed off the moa. But could this also have happened to these great animals all across North America?

JAMES KENNETT: The data just doesn't support this. It's inconceivable to me.

NARRATOR: Kennett says the idea that primitive humans killed off these powerful animals is absurd, and while it might happen in small island environments, it is impossible to imagine they could wreak such havoc on a continent as vast as North America.

JAMES KENNETT: They didn't have the technology that modern humans have. They didn't have helicopters and machine guns and satellite navigation and so forth. It's always puzzled me. How could they track down that last horse or that last mammoth or that last camel? It just perplexed me. It just didn't make sense.Comment:  It's not clear whether the comet or meteor did most of the killing or just completed the killing. What's clear is that humans played only a minor role. They probably did a "normal" amount of killing for their technology and population levels. They didn't kill everything in sight because they were murderous savages aka "super-predators."

This doesn't seem like rocket science to me. The earth experienced a series of ice ages followed by warming periods, which shocked the flora and fauna repeatedly. To top it off, a comet crashed into the earth and caused rapid, large-scale climate change. With all this disruption, you don't need humans to explain the megafauna extinction.

What about all those scientists who stuck to their super-predator theory--who refused to consider a climate-change alternative? How much of their thinking was influenced by the idea of (Paleo-)Indians as murderous savages? A lot, I suspect. It's something every schoolchild learns by rote: that Indians excel at killing.

For more on the subject, see Clovis First Theory Disproved and Ecosystem Disruption Killed Megafauna?

Clovis First theory disproved

I've discussed the origin of Indians in postings such as Clovis Site in Time Team America and Migration Theories in Time Team America These postings challenged the prevailing Clovis theory. Now this theory is crumbling to bits.

The First Americans:  Mounting Evidence Prompts Researchers to Reconsider the Peopling of the New World

Humans colonized the New World earlier than previously thought—a revelation that is forcing scientists to rethink long-standing ideas about these trailblazers

By Heather PringleFor decades scientists thought the first Americans were Asian big-game hunters who tracked mammoths and other large prey eastward across a now submerged landmass known as Beringia that joined northern Asia to Alaska. Arriving in the Americas some 13,000 years ago, these colonists were said to have journeyed rapidly overland along an ice-free corridor that stretched from the Yukon to southern Alberta, leaving behind their distinctive stone tools across what is now the contiguous U.S. Archaeologists called these hunters the Clovis people, after a site near Clovis, N.M., where many of their tools came to light.

Over the past decade or so this Clovis First model has come under sharp attack as a result of new discoveries. In southern Chile, at a site known as Monte Verde, archaeologist Thomas D. Dillehay, now at Vanderbilt University, and his colleagues found traces of early Americans who slept in hide-covered tents and dined on seafood and a wild variety of potato 14,600 years ago, long before the appearance of Clovis hunters. Intrigued by the findings, some scientists began looking for similar evidence in North America. They found it: in Paisley Five Mile Point Caves in Oregon, for example, a team uncovered 14,400-year-old human feces flecked with seeds from desert parsley and other plants—not the kinds of comestibles that advocates of the big-game hunters scenario expected to find on the menu. “What we are seeing,” says Dennis L. Jenkins, director of the Paisley Caves dig and an archaeologist at the Museum of Natural and Cultural History in Eugene, Ore., “is a broad-range foraging economy.”

Now, along Buttermilk Creek, Waters and his team have made one of the most important finds yet: a mother lode of stone tools dating back a stunning 15,500 years ago. In all, the team has excavated more than 19,000 pre-Clovis artifacts—from small blades bearing tiny wear marks from cutting bone to a polished chunk of hematite, an iron mineral commonly used in the Paleolithic world for making a red pigment. Publicly unveiled this past spring, the site has yielded more pre-Clovis tools than all other such sites combined, and Waters has spared no expense in dating each layer multiple times. The work has impressed many experts. “It is easily the best evidence for pre-Clovis in North America,” says Vance T. Holliday, an anthropologist and geoscientist at the University of Arizona.The result of this evidence:Whether the migrants cooled their heels in Beringia, however, or somewhere else in northeastern Asia, people eventually began striking off farther east and south. A warming trend began slowly shrinking North America’s ice sheets some 19,000 years ago, gradually creating two passable routes to the south and opening the possibility of multiple early migrations. According to several studies conducted over the past decade on the geographic distribution of genetic diversity in modern indigenous Americans, the earliest of these migrants started colonizing the New World between 18,000 and 15,000 years ago—a date that fits well with emerging archaeological evidence of pre-Clovis colonists. “At some point, these migrants surveyed the landscape and realized for the first time that smoke from all the other campfires was behind them, and ahead there was no smoke.” Adovasio reflects. “And at that moment, they were literally strangers in a strange land.”Comment:  These findings have several cultural and political consequences. For starters, they eliminate the right-wing hoopla over Kennewick Man--the claims that white men may have been here first.

Indeed, the findings add almost 50% to the time Indians have lived here as unchallenged masters of the land and its resources. Their ownership of the Americas is that much more unassailable.

Moreover, Paleo-Indians weren't responsible for the megafauna extinction that occurred around the same time as the Clovis cultures. The Paleo-Indians had already been here for several thousand years when the animals began dying off. All the talk of waves of brutal killers exterminating species left and right--didn't happen.

Conservatives have used the megafauna extinction to attack Indians. They weren't proto-environmentalists who revered and protected nature, these critics have claimed. The mass exterminations prove they were thoughtless brutes who killed indiscriminately--savages, basically.

Poor, bigoted conservatives: All their semi-racist insinuations are out the window. Nobody exterminated anything until white Christian Euro-Americans began slaughtering species from the buffalo to the passenger pigeon.

For more on ecological Indians, see Ecosystem Disruption Killed Megafauna? and The "Black Mat" Theory.



(Illustration by Tyler Jacobsen)

Ecosystem disruption killed megafauna?

Extinction of woolly mammoth and saber-toothed catA new analysis of the extinction of woolly mammoths and other large mammals more than 10,000 years ago suggests that they may have fallen victim to the same type of "trophic cascade" of ecosystem disruption that researchers say is being caused today by the global decline of predators such as wolves, cougars, and sharks.

In each case the cascading events were originally begun by human disruption of ecosystems, a newly released study concludes, but around 15,000 years ago the problem was not the loss of a key predator, but the addition of one human hunters with spears.

In a study published recently in the journal BioScience, scientists propose that this mass extinction was caused by newly-arrived humans tipping the balance of power and competing with major predators such as saber-toothed cats. An equilibrium that had survived for thousands of years was disrupted, possibly explaining the loss of two-thirds of North America's large mammals during this period.

"For decades, researchers have been debating the causes of this mass extinction, and the two theories with the most support are hunting pressures from the arrival of humans, and climate change," said William Ripple, a professor of forest ecosystems and society at Oregon State University, and an expert on the ecosystem alterations that researchers are increasingly finding when predators are added or removed.

"We believe humans indeed may have been a factor, but not as most current theory suggests, simply by hunting animals to extinction," Ripple said. "Rather, we think humans provided competition for other predators that still did the bulk of the killing. But we were the triggering mechanism that disrupted the ecosystem."Comment:  This theory sounds plausible to me. Whenever you introduce a foreign species to an ecosystem, it's likely to cause havoc.

Here's a hint of what might've happened in North America:

Mesopredator release hypothesisMesopredator release is a fairly new concept that is gaining approval, although it is still being debated and studied. The mesopredator release hypothesis states that if an apex predator is taken out of an ecosystem, the number of mesopredators (defined as medium-sized predators, such as raccoons, skunks, snakes, cats, and foxes) often increase in abundance when larger predators are eliminated. Mesopredator populations will surge and the predation of smaller, more vulnerable prey species will increase. As a result, the shared prey may suffer more from predation than when the apex predators (or top-predators) were controlling the mesopredators. This may lead to dramatic prey population decline, or even extinction, especially on islands.So human competition caused a decline in the saber-toothed cat and wolf populations. Mesopredator populations surged and starting wiping out the prey. The extinction of prey species caused the extinction of predator species. Only the extremely adaptable humans survived.

This is a potential death knell for the theory blaming the Paleo-Indians for slaughtering the megafauna. Even if the Paleo-Indians were present during the extinction era, even if they killed some animals, they may not have been responsible overall.

Scientists who have disparaged Paleo-Indians as killers have relied mainly on the coincidence: people arrived and megafauna died. Now we're learning that this correlation isn't enough to prove causation. Unless these scientists find large numbers of dead animals with spear points in them, they'll have trouble disproving the trophic cascade theory.

No doubt this isn't the final word on the subject. In fact, the number of theories is growing. The cause could be climate change, a comet or meteor strike, or something more subtle such as ecosystem disruption.

What we do know is that the theory blaming the Paleo-Indians is losing traction. I don't think I've seen new evidence supporting it in years. That's tough luck for the pundits who have used it to attack today's Indians as hypocrites.

For more on the subject, see:

Lucayans in Extreme Cave Diving
Megafauna died before Clovis Indians arrived
The "black mat" theory
Comet killed megafauna?

Lucayans in Extreme Cave Diving

Another episode of NOVA includes Natives:

Extreme Cave DivingPremiere Broadcast on PBS: Tuesday, February 9, 2010

"Extreme Cave Diving" follows a fearless team of scientists as they venture into blue holes—underwater caves that formed during the last ice age, when sea level was nearly 400 feet below what it is today. These caves, little-known treasures of the Bahamas, are one of Earth's least explored and perhaps most dangerous frontiers. The interdisciplinary team of biologists, climatologists, and anthropologists, led by renowned cave explorer Kenny Broad, discover intriguing evidence of the earliest human inhabitants of the islands, find animals seen nowhere else on Earth, and recover a remarkable record of the planet's climate. The stakes are high as the scientists swim hundreds of feet through narrow, dark passages that have trapped and killed divers in the past, but the scientific payoff is considerable.NOVA--Extreme Cave Diving00:26:12  It's clear that centuries ago, the barren islands of the Bahamas weren't so barren.

00:26:22  So what happened?

00:26:24  STEADMAN: The bones I've picked out so far, every one of them represents a species of bird that isn't on the island anymore.

00:26:30  Based on just this tiny sample, it looks like we're on our way to documenting a pretty drastic change.

00:26:39  NARRATOR: About a thousand years ago, most of these animals mysteriously disappeared.

00:26:45  A fossil trail extending back roughly 12,000 years suddenly goes cold.

00:26:53  What killed these animals off?

00:26:58  Land!

00:27:01  In 1492, when Christopher Columbus first made landfall in this hemisphere, it was in the Bahamas.

00:27:10  He encountered a people called the Lucayans.

00:27:16  The Lucayans descended from people that came from South America around 800 B.C.

00:27:22  and slowly migrated to the Bahamas.

00:27:28  At the time, Columbus wrote almost nothing about their rituals or traditions.

00:27:35  What little we know today suggests that they thought blue holes were sacred.

00:27:47  They believed caves were the birthplace of humankind and that when someone died, they should be put back inside.

00:28:06  In the early 1990s, in a blue hole called Sanctuary, on Andros Island, a diver found human remains that may have been related to the Lucayans' ritual burial.

00:28:20  Following up on that lead, the team will search for more remains, beginning at Sanctuary.

00:28:27  They'll try to determine if there's a link between the Lucayans and the animal die-off that occurred about a thousand years ago.Comment:  Chalk up another example of PBS's awareness of and attention to Native issues. Unfortunately, the attention in Extreme Cave Diving is largely negative.

The episode includes a recreated scene with the Europeans and Indians inspecting each other. No problem there.

Let's skip over the fact that the divers were desecrating what sounds like a sacred burial site. Perhaps the Lucayans don't have any descendants left, but if they did, were they consulted about this dive?

The scientists don't quite say it, but the theory they're exploring is that the Lucayans killed all the species native to the Bahamas. It's a small-scale version of the megafauna extinction theory. I.e., that Indians weren't the environmental stewards everyone thinks they are. That they ruthlessly killed everything in sight like stereotypical savages.

The results aren't in

And the findings from the dive?00:35:06  NARRATOR: By the end of the dive, the team has recovered pieces of three skulls.

00:35:15  But critical questions remain: Are they connected to the catastrophic die-off of animals here?

00:35:23  And could these skulls belong to the Lucayans, the same people Columbus wrote about?

00:35:32  Pateman identifies a deformity in the skulls that seems to confirm their identity.

00:35:40  PATEMAN: When they were children, the Lucayans bound the foreheads and the backs with boards and then wrapped them, and so that would create this, what you see here, this conical shape.

00:35:51  NARRATOR: It's a characteristic found only in cultures like that of the Lucayans.

00:35:57  And when the skulls are radio carbon-dated, there's an even bigger revelation.

00:36:06  The skulls found in the blue holes date from about 800 years ago.

00:36:11  By then, the Lucayans were already settling in the Bahamas and having an impact.

00:36:20  And the animal die-off that David Steadman identified started about a thousand years ago.

00:36:27  The dates are close enough that it's likely there's a link between the Lucayans and the deaths of the animals here.

00:36:37  We have great fossils from about 12,000 years ago up to about when the first people arrived.

00:36:45  So when people show up, along with non-native mammals that they bring--whether it's rats, cats, dogs, pigs, things like that--these island species are very poorly adapted to these new super predators.

00:37:01  On islands across the world, the most vulnerable species have been wiped out.

00:37:06  They're extinct.What this tells us

First, an 800-year-old skull doesn't tell us much about a 1,000-year-old die-off. The scientists shouldn't act as if they've proved anything.

Second, they offer an alternative explanation only at the end. Maybe the Indians didn't wantonly kill the native species, they acknowledge. Maybe they inadvertently killed the native species by bringing domesticated animals to the islands. They couldn't have known this would trigger an ecological disaster. Modern scientists have just begun documenting this phenomenon in recent decades.

Third, they don't consider any other alternatives. Here are a couple:

The die-off was just a coincidence. An epidemic or something caused a cascade of extinctions in the fragile environment before humans arrived.

Climate change independently caused the two events: the species die-off and the Indian migration to the islands. The Indian migration didn't cause the species die-off.

All in all, Extreme Cave Diving is a solid episode of NOVA. But it's a little lacking in scientific rigor.

For more on the subject, see The 2009 TV Season So Far and TV Shows Featuring Indians.

Below:  "The deep, oxygen-free zone of one of the caves preserved an 800-year-old human skull, shedding light on the Lucayan people who inhabited the Bahamas long before Columbus visited." (Jill Heinerth/National Geographic Television)

Megafauna died before Clovis Indians arrived

Scientists zero in on reason for mammoths' demise

The sediment beneath an Indiana lake is providing clues. One thing is clear: A meteor didn't kill off the mammoths, mastodons and other large plant-eaters, as previously theorized.

By John Johnson Jr.To track the population of large herbivores, scientists analyzed the pollen, charcoal and fungus in ancient sediments beneath Appleman Lake, a 35-foot-deep body of water left behind when the last ice age ended 20,000 years ago. The research focused on the amounts of the fungus Sporormiella present in the sediments, according to Jacquelyn Gill, a graduate student at the University of Wisconsin, Madison and a co-author of the paper appearing in today's issue of the journal Science.

Because the fungus is commonly found in the dung of large plant-eaters, its prevalence in the fossil record should be a direct measure of population density, Gill said. The research team found that the decline of the large mammals started about 14,800 years ago--and was virtually complete a thousand years later.What it means:According to Gill and the other researchers, from the University of Wyoming and Fordham University in New York, these dates eliminate several possible reasons for the mass extinction that were put forward previously.

The first is habitat loss due to a changing climate. Around this time, tree species such as black ash, elm and ironwood began spreading across the landscape of North America. According to Gill, the die-off of the big mammals predated this change. In fact, the loss of the big herbivores may have helped precipitate it. Without the large plant-eaters around to keep them in check, the tree species were free to colonize the countryside.

Another theory suggested that a comet or meteor impact that occurred about 12,900 years ago could have wiped out the big mammals in the same way that a similar but larger impact is believed to have killed off the dinosaurs. The new timeline shows the extinction event was already over when that impact took place, Gill said.

A third theory held that the animals were wiped out by a so-called "blitzkrieg" of hunting by Clovis culture humans. The Clovis culture is distinguished by the fluted spear points used by hunters to bring down large animals. But according to Gill, the die-off was already underway before the Clovis hunters arrived. "This was already happening before humans adopted the Clovis tool kit," Gill said.Comment:  The researchers say what didn't kill the megafauna, but not what did.

The precise timeline doesn't necessarily rule out any of the theories. A previous era of climate change or comet or meteor strikes could've wiped out the megafauna. Even a previous wave of Paleo-Indian immigrants could've done the job.

I'm still betting on some variation of climate change. Several Ice Ages occurred over the previous millennia, so this was an epoch of cataclysmic climate shifts. Each cooling and warming period must've been a huge shock to ecosystems.

For more on the subject, see Dennis Prager and The Ecological Indian.

Below:  "Researchers found that the decline of large mammals started about 14,800 years ago--and was virtually complete a thousand years later." (Ethan Miller, Getty Images/September 30, 2009)

The "black mat" theory

The most interesting thing in the Clovis episode of Time Team America was the discussion of the "black mat" theory. This theory offers an alternative to the common belief that Paleo-Indians exterminated the Pleistocene megafauna in a long orgy of killing.

Some excerpts from K. Kris Hirst's article on the subject give the basics:

Clovis, Black Mats, and Extra-Terrestrials

By K. Kris HirstA black mat is a thin layer of organic material, sometimes described as "peaty."

None of the black mats investigated at these Clovis sites contained any Clovis nor any evidence of any of the Pleistocene fauna, although beneath it, and occasionally immediately beneath it, can be found Clovis mammoth kills.

In 2007 at the American Geophysical Union meetings, a session was given explaining the black mat as having followed the explosive destruction of a comet which was postulated to have broken into pieces over the Laurentide ice shield.

A formal paper, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in September of that year, described a thin sedimentary deposit immediately beneath the black mat, which contained high concentrations of magnetic grains with iridium, magnetic microspherules, glass-like carbon containing nanodiamonds, and fullerenes with extra-terrestrial helium. Firestone et al. argue that the stuff underneath the black mat represents the detritus of an explosive low-density object--a comet--which destablized the Laurentide Ice Sheet. Widespread fires ensued, followed by an accelerated melting of the ice sheet and then a cooling period (the YD), brought on perhaps by persistent cloudiness. This combination, they claim, led to the megafaunal extinctions and the end of the Clovis big game adaptation.

Most recently, in fact late last week, C. Vance Haynes reported in PNAS that he had increased the database of Clovis sites with black mats to 70.

The evidence seems to be very strong. In a (geological) instant, the extinction of horses, camels, mammoths, mastodons, dire wolves, American lions, and tapirs occurred. At the same time, Clovis patterns of big game hunting ends, and clear evidence of a surge in spring discharge at former Clovis sites occurs.More on the subject:

The black-mat boundary (BMB)Surely, everyone has heard of the KTB (the Cretaceous-Tertiary Boundary), when, 65-million years ago, the dinosaurs and other life forms supposedly succumbed to the effects of an extraterrestrial impact. The KTB is marked geologically by layer of iridium.

A much weaker version of the KTB may have occurred about 13,000 years ago centered in North America. The geological markers in this case are carbonaceous "black mats," which cap many sites occupied by the Clovis people and may have ended their culture. We will call this event the BMB (Black Mat Boundary). The KTB and BMB parallels are interesting.

What the black mats represent isn't entirely clear. Although some or all of them might have been caused by algae blooms, other evidence suggests that the carbon enrichment came from extensive biomass burning in very hot fires such as might be ignited by both the thermal pulse and burning ejecta of a cometary strike.

The BMB is also associated with high levels of iridium, nickel, chromium, and magnetic microspheres. These inclusions strengthen the comet theory.Comment:  The Time Team episode laid out the evidence pretty clearly. Clovis points and animal bones below the black mats, nothing above them. Magnetic spherules created by intense heat and a vacuum. (Fires or volcanoes could generate the heat, but only an atmospheric event could create a vacuum.) High concentrations of iridium found only in meteors. Bits of bedrock from Canada apparently blasted into the air and blown to South Carolina.

Sounds pretty conclusive to me. I'm having a hard time imagining how the Paleo-Indians' excessive hunting could've triggered all these geological phenomena. And a hard time believing the megafauna extinctions and geological phenomena happened simultaneously but were just an amazing coincidence.

Some skepticism

12,900 Years Ago:  North American Comet Impact Theory DisprovedNew data disproves the recent theory that a large comet exploded over North America 12,900 years ago, causing a shock wave that travelled across North America at hundreds of kilometres per hour and triggering continent-wide wildfires.

Dr Sandy Harrison from the University of Bristol and colleagues tested the theory by examining charcoal and pollen records to assess how fire regimes in North America changed between 15 and 10,000 years ago, a time of large and rapid climate changes.

Their results provide no evidence for continental-scale fires.Did Hirst or the Time Team say anything about "continent-wide wildfires" above? No.

Fires seem to be required only for one theory of what caused the black mats. Since no one is sure what caused them, the lack of fires disproves only one explanation for one part of the comet theory. It doesn't disprove the whole theory.

Recall that the animals presumably died because of extensive changes to the climate, which would've disrupted the food cycle by killing the vegetation. If enough dust was thrown into the air, it would've triggered a "little Ice Age" or "nuclear winter." Fires are not required to explain the massive die-off.

According to Hirst, Haynes isn't sure of his own theory:Haynes is not ready to completely support the cometary origin of this calamity. He points out that microspherules, nanodiamonds and fullerenes are all part of cosmic dust that falls on planet earth all the time.A natural "rain" of cosmic dust doesn't explain why all the particles are concentrated in one layer. Nor does it explain the iridium or the Canadian bedrock. I'd say Haynes should stick to his guns.

Conclusion

It's still common to hear people blame Paleo-Indians for the megafauna extinction. Shepard H. Krech devoted a whole chapter to the subject in his book The Ecological Indian.

Notably, Krech didn't seriously consider any other theories. Nor do his fellow Indian haters. They're convinced they've proved Indians really are murderous savages at heart.

Has there ever been a case of a pre-contact indigenous tribe's exterminating a species? Not that I know of. If there is one, it's so obscure that I haven't heard of it.

Yet we're supposed to believe that it happened once in history: when the Paleo-Indians first arrived in the Americas. Out of thousands of indigenous tribes around the world, these people were the only ones stupid and savage enough to eliminate their primary food sources. And this just happened to occur at the same time something created a strange "black mat" at sites across the continent.

I'm sure there are tons of evidence for and against the comet theory--much more than I can find in a quick Google search. But let's get real here. Scientists have found a geological layer with extraterrestial indicators at 70 of 97 Clovis sites. And critics don't think it's relevant?! They can say they're not convinced, but if they won't even consider the comet theory--as Krech didn't--they must be anti-Indian ideologues.

For more on Indians' regard for nature, see Ecological Indian Talk.

Comet killed megafauna?

Diamonds show comet struck North America, scientists say

The impact caused an ice age that killed some mammal species and many humans 12,900 years ago, researchers report. They say the discovery of tiny heat-formed diamonds is proof of the catastrophe.According to the theory--which has its critics--as the comet broke apart, it rained fire over the entire continent, igniting the plains and the forests and creating choking clouds of smoke.

Heat from the explosions and the massive fires melted substantial portions of the Laurentide glacier in Canada, sending waves of water down the Mississippi and into the Gulf of Mexico. That triggered changes in Atlantic Ocean currents, which ushered in a 1,300-year ice age known as the Younger Dryas.

Battered by fire and ice, as many as 35 species of mammals, including American camels, the short-faced bear, the giant beaver, the dire wolf and the American lion, either immediately vanished or were so depleted in number that humans hunted them to extinction.

The humans, a Paleo-Indian grouping known as the Clovis culture for the distinctive spear points they employed, suffered a major population drop, disappearing in many areas for hundreds of years.Comment:  This is another nail in the coffin of the non-Native scientists who have claimed that Paleo-Indians killed the Pleistocene megafauna. Several strong alternatives now exist to their theory. Yet these scientists never considered or even imagined any of the alternatives. They asserted their beliefs dogmatically as if they couldn't be wrong.

We can imagine what they were thinking. They wanted to prove that the Paleo-Indians were savage killers...that they didn't live in harmony with nature...that they were more unthinking and inhuman than modern people. This would discredit today's Indians as stewards of the land and keepers of age-old wisdom. It would open them up to charges that they don't deserve the land they're on--that Westerners should be free to use it because the Paleo-Indians misused it.

Nice try, you ideologues masquerading as scientists. Unfortunately, you lose again. Better luck next time with your attempts to smear Indians.

For more on the subject, see Dennis Prager and The Ecological Indian and Kennewick Man, Captain Picard, and Political Correctness.

Response to Medved's column

Here's a response I posted to Michael Medved's column First Americans, First Ecologists? You can find it amid the comments of the anti-Indian conservatives who agree with Medved:Medved's article is a pathetic rehash of tired old news and one-sided speculation masquerading as science.

Everyone in Indian country knows about Iron Eyes Cody and the phony Chief Seattle speech. No one has touted them since the 1970s.

Controlled burns are a valid ecological tool, as our Forest Service is beginning to understand.

The buffalo runs sound dramatic, but they had nothing to do with the near-extinction of the species.

Critics have lambasted Shepard Krech's book The Ecological Indian. See Dennis Prager and The Ecological Indian for one example.

Scientists have developed several "megafauna extinction" theories more plausible than Paul Martin's.

Relying on prejudiced white priests to document "devilish" Indian cultures is flatly ridiculous.

"Local" extinction isn't the same as extinction. Only non-Indians have eradicated entire species permanently.

Etc.Comment:  My response is only the tip of the iceberg. One could write a book on each of the points Medved raises.

Like Krech, Medved has taken a few inflammatory cases out of context and pretended they're the whole of the subject. He's ignored the wealth of evidence about what Indians practice and believe.

In my Prager posting, I go into the arguments in more detail. That's a good place to start if you want more discussion.

Medved seems to making a mini-career of Indian-bashing. Recall that he claimed Indians didn't experience genocide here:

Medved:  Reject the lie of white "genocide" against Natives

That column made him the September 2007 Stereotype of the Month loser. This column may earn him a similar award in June.

For more on the subject, see Ecological Indian Talk.