American Colonization
There has been an ongoing debate among anthropologists regarding when exactly man first arrived in the Americas. The old school of thought is that there was no human habitation of the Americas earlier than the Clovis New Mexico finds, dated to about 11,500 years ago. There have been a smattering of earlier finds, but old-school anthropologists and archaeologist have stubbornly clung to their guns and ridiculed any find that challenged their belief.
A new find in Mexico however is a little difficult to explain away. It seems Dr. Federico Solorzano has found the brow ridge portion of a homo-erectus skull. This poses an interesting conundrum, since according to conventional thinking, homo-erectus went extinct between 100,000 and 200,000 years ago!
There have been long-standing questions about the validity of the Clovis-first line of thinking. For example, a question left unanswered by those espousing the Clovis-first contention is how man become so ubiquitous throughout North and South America in such a short amount of time.
The normal contention is that a land bridge between Asia and the Americas opened up with the recession of sea level 15,000-22,000 years ago, that allowed man to migrate to this continent. What has however been over-looked is that there has been a connection between the continents on a fairly regulary basis. Namely, the polar ice cap. The modern Inuit people have inhabited that area quite successfully for a very long time. If they can successfully negotiate the polar ice cap, why then could the paleo-indians not also do so? If they were living during an ice age, they would have been accustomed to the harsh weather and possessed the necessary survival techniques for such an environment. Further, the Bering land bridge has also been available at other, earlier times in the past.
The thing that is most unique about these finds in Mexico is that it pushes the earliest habitation date back by not thousands of years, but tens of thousands of years.
Should this find pan-out it presents a rather vexing problem for the Clovis-first line of thinking.
Other resources:
A new find in Mexico however is a little difficult to explain away. It seems Dr. Federico Solorzano has found the brow ridge portion of a homo-erectus skull. This poses an interesting conundrum, since according to conventional thinking, homo-erectus went extinct between 100,000 and 200,000 years ago!
There have been long-standing questions about the validity of the Clovis-first line of thinking. For example, a question left unanswered by those espousing the Clovis-first contention is how man become so ubiquitous throughout North and South America in such a short amount of time.
The normal contention is that a land bridge between Asia and the Americas opened up with the recession of sea level 15,000-22,000 years ago, that allowed man to migrate to this continent. What has however been over-looked is that there has been a connection between the continents on a fairly regulary basis. Namely, the polar ice cap. The modern Inuit people have inhabited that area quite successfully for a very long time. If they can successfully negotiate the polar ice cap, why then could the paleo-indians not also do so? If they were living during an ice age, they would have been accustomed to the harsh weather and possessed the necessary survival techniques for such an environment. Further, the Bering land bridge has also been available at other, earlier times in the past.
The thing that is most unique about these finds in Mexico is that it pushes the earliest habitation date back by not thousands of years, but tens of thousands of years.
Should this find pan-out it presents a rather vexing problem for the Clovis-first line of thinking.
Other resources:
- The Topper Site, North Carolina
- The Topper Site, North Carolina
- Day's Knob, Ohio
- Quebrada Tacahuay, Peru
- Big Eddy, Missouri
- Monte Verde, Chile
- Meadowcroft, Pennsylvania
- Cactus Hill, Virginia
- A General Discussion
- A General Discussion
- Another General Discussion
This is a topic that I find fascinating be fore-warned you are likely to see more posts of this type.
Labels: Science
posted by G-Man at 12:06 PM
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