First Americans

The First Peopling of America

In how many waves, and when and how did they come?

Things are changing fast in the studies of Early Man, and many once-firm conclusions are being dismantled by new archaeological evidence.

A very interesting body of different discoveries from all over the whole of North and South America, are questioning the generally-believed single first immigration from Siberia, only 40 thousand years ago, which now looks as though it may have been at least three incursions, including much earlier ones by very different routes.

Quite apart from the above archaeology, there has always been seeming contradictions in the cultures of various tribes and civilisations that have left their proof in both the constructions still standing, and the peoples still existing to this day.

It has always seemed to me that the most primitive economic system that has existed until recently on the plains of the Mid West, in what is now the USA, the hunter/gatherers, contrasts markedly with the much more advanced peoples very much further south, in Central and South America.

For, the former were much closer to the supposed original point of entry - across the now Baring Strait, presumably when it had been turned into a land-bridge, with the decline in sea-level, caused by the build-up on land of the fast-advancing, vast glaciers of the Ice Age.

And, to raise even more questions, remains found in Brazil of an ancient woman or girl, were validly dated as the oldest ever found in the Americas, and she looked nothing like either the Plains people up north, or even the supposed Siberians or Mongolians who were considered to be the ancestors of all first Americans.Indeed, she looked more like the first peoples of Australia.

Then, even more recently found, some very old remains were revealed to have features more like modern Europeans. And, some were reconstructed to look more like the Ainu from northern Japan.

Finally a well-preserved, but very ancient body was found, and investigations proved that his entire diet had been of fish, which inferred a possible close-to-the-sea route of access, while along the south coast of Alaska animal remains proved conclusively that they must have lived upon land, next to, but not covered by the Ice Sheet that was dominating the rest of the Land.

And, of course, the ancient land revealed by the locking up of water in the Ice Sheet, will by now be inaccessible, due to the demise of that Ice Age, and the returning of the water to underneath the Pacific Ocean, so cannot be investigated for necessary evidence.

Now, why would anyone brave the rigors of the ancient far north to reach America?

The best argument seems to be the herds of Caribou, which occur, today, not only in Alaska and Canada, but across Eurasia from Scandinavia to Siberia.

And, Man soon learned to follow them in their essential vast migrations to new pastures. With a way of getting to such resources in America Humans could have followed them, using them for food, clothing and even transportation, as they do today.

Some time ago I put up a paper entitled "Did the Eskimos Discover America", reasoning that they could have conquered living in the Arctic of Eurasia, and merely followed the edge of the ice, during the Ice Age, occasionally on their sea-skin boats, to America.

And, this contribution has proved very popular. So, though that is clearly not the full story, it had merit.

From what I can make out from the excellent NOVA Documentary (on YouTube), there now seem to be several waves of early immigrants at very different times, stretching back much further than the now replaced single incursion.

Excuse me, I think you have it the wrong way round!

Göbekli Tepe

According to the editorial in a recent New Scientist (3014), it seems that I am what it calls a "secularist", and one who invalidly imposes an economic imperative onto the evolution of mankind.

Whereas in the opinion of this editor the discoveries at Göbekli Tepe, along with more recent Mayan findings, "prove" that what we call civilisation was a direct result of changes in religion. In that very short piece absolutely zero reasons are provided as to why all the achievements of the Neolithic revolution - from Farming, Animal Husbandry, Pottery, Weaving, Writing and all the rest, could have come solely from some religious imperative. What rubbish!

Nobody can doubt that ancient hunter/gatherers would have had some sort of religion, and that such beliefs would have given them confidence when shared with others, certainly aiding their survival. But to make such a cerebral change the reason for the emergence of civilisation is actually laughable. In those days there were almost as many languages as there were tribes, so social belief systems across significant populations (religions) could not develop. And to say that such beliefs were the causes and mainsprings of civilisation, and the above-detailed revolution, is to say the least, amazingly ignorant of real processes of qualitative development. Something else was needed to make larger social groupings viable, in order for such things to develop.

Primarily you have to be able to explain why human beings could economically remain in one place, and not only survive, but actually prosper. The density of population possible with hunter/gatherers was very low indeed, for there simply wasn't enough food in any single place for a collection of peoples to settle. Exceptions to this norm did exist, but they were both rare and temporary. 

Lascaux

In the south of France following the last Ice Age, herds of animals moved north through a narrow valley to summer pastures and returned the same way in autumn. Here it was possible for hunter/gatherers to exploit this bounty and remain in one place and flourish. The cave paintings at Lascaux demonstrate this - an always-travelling group could never have achieved such a wealth of images in one place, they wouldn't have been anywhere long enough to develop such rituals.

But such things are not only exceptional cases, they never lead to the larger populations required for civilisation. When we address the development of mankind in general, we simply cannot establish such revolutionary changes, as are embodied in a universal concept like civilisation, upon such rare exceptions.

The gains had to be long-lasting, and in the modern parlance, sustainable. 

So, the only general explanation for static villages, and ultimately cities and civilisation, was agriculture. The most important settlements were always near rivers, allowing possible irrigation (or flooding), replenishing the fertility of the land. 

May I roundly condemn such an editorial in a supposedly scientific magazine as positively reactionary?! To say that religion lead to these developments is, at best, confusing cause and effect. This so-called "secularist" prefers his own, more accurate self-description - a scientist.

I have written about Göbekli Tepe before, as it is certainly a very important site in these matters. The piece appears in Special Issue 24 of Shape Journal and offers a critique of the philosophy and method of contemporary archaeologists who seem to have rejected an economic imperative for social development (see V. Gordon Childe) in exchange for a more idealistic, cultural cause.

Ecce Habilis

Ecce Habilis by Jim Schofield

New Special Issue: The Holist Revolution

 

This collection of papers might be the most siginifcant contribution in the work towards a holist approach to all the sciences. It advances what Hegel set as his primary goal, which was to develop a ‘Logic of Change’ to take over where Formal Logic had always failed - during interludes of significant qualitative change.

Even 200 years ago Hegel had identified crises in many disciplines where the prior assumptions and principles on which they were based, had run out of steam, and were beginning to come apart at the seams. He, in particular, recognised the appearance of what he termed Dichotomous Pairs - which were principles that though effective in certain areas, were in fact, mutually contradictory, and could therefore never be unified into a single principle covering both. Indeed, though crises may be considered to be typically of short duration, Hegel realised that such situations could persist for very long periods. Man learned to switch between the Dichotomous Pairs to use whichever principle worked in a given situation.

Hegel argued that by such methods, real understanding had been brought to a halt, and that any solution gained by such switching was merely pragmatic and needed to be transcended. He insisted they should be addressed with a view to revealing, criticising and ultimately replacing the assumptions on which they were based, resolving the impasse to a new level. This was Dialectical Reasoning, and the transcending to a new level was termed an Emergence.

The papers in this issue attempt to outline these methods in eight different disciplines, occasionally being profound enough to demolish the older methods of analysis and attempted understanding, for a more comprehensive approach that covers not only periods of stability, but crucially, the transforming interludes that we term Emergences.


Read issue

Early Navigation of the Seas

The Coastal Seas as Ancient Highways to the Land

Several established and increasing by numerous pieces of evidence seem to indicate that sea-going craft (at least ideal for coastal journeys) were a surprisingly early invention of Mankind. For, hunter-gatherers, constantly on the move to find food, would be certain to regularly encounter rivers across their migratory path, and though searches would have been undertaken for places where they could be forded, the possibility of crossing water immediately via easily constructed 'boats' would have saved a great deal of time and risks. Indeed the Channel Islands, off California, have revealed fossil human bones from a very long time ago indeed, and these could have only been reached by boats of some sort. 

Although much later historically, there is the fact that Orkney included a very advanced early human settlement, involving an integrated group of stone-built houses, in an area devoid of trees. The inference was that such a settlement was not only close to their main source of food, the sea, but also directly upon the "main highways" of that time linking many well spread settlements accessible by boat. The land was certainly not endowed with any rich source of game, and was totally unable to support any real agriculture.

Finally, the problem of exactly how America was initially populated with the first wave of human beings to actually get there, both from Asia and perhaps even Europe, would be much more simply explained by, if the peoples concerned were competent with boats, and feeding themselves almost exclusively from the sea. Read more on this here

Now the clinchers for archaeologists will always be the finding of such ancient vessels. But, surely the earliest boats, without metal tools, would have to have been made with materials such as skins and branches, or birch-bark and resin, with perhaps a wooden frame of some sort. Such vessels would never survive so many thousands years as such, but the skills in making them would be maintained by groups where they were constantly needed. The beauty and functional superiority of the North American birch-bark canoe is a masterpiece of excellent handling, lightweight and easy to repair. Such consummate boat building would require a long period of development to arrive at such a masterpiece.

Since the melting of the ice sheet at the end of the last Ice Age, we know that most coastal areas, just where these derelict boats would be, were vastly and permanently inundated by the rising seas. Current underwater archaeology is severely limited by both poor visibility, the difficulty of disposing of spoil, and the kit necessary for people to effectively work under the sea. Without doubt there must be some vital traces under the sea bed, and near river mouths, preserving evidence of our maritime past, preserved deep in the sediments. 

Bronze Age Colony in Ireland

If you are not already fans of the oft-repeated TV series Time Team, may I introduce you to a recent re-airing on More4, first broadcast early in 2009, but well worth seeing again. The greatest contribution of this programme is in the always "laid-bare" trajectory of their ideas and hypotheses as they develop about the current site, and the way they home in from the tiniest fragments of pottery or flint, and a few bumps and depressions in the land to, slowly but surely, via a series of trenches into chosen ground, open a door onto our past.

This episode was at Knockdhu on the County Antrim coast of Northern Ireland, where Time Team carried out the very first excavation of this enormous promontory site overlooking the sea.

Watch Time Team 09 Knockdhu Antrim Ireland in Travel & Culture  |  View More Free Videos Online at Veoh.com


It transpired that it was once a bustling village in the Bronze Age, and the puzzling thing was the presence of defences landward. Also there didn't seem to be much actually on the promontory for the village to have been situated there. It seemed to be a cold and windy, yet misty and infertile mound. So, why were they there? By chance they found what could only be interpreted as a flint mine nearby - but surely such a resource would not require a defended village? Although what they managed to achieve in three days was remarkable, I am convinced that a great deal more than they had time to reveal was also in evidence there. For it was only on the third and last day of their investigations that the thick mist lifted, and they could see, both the surrounding sea and the relatively close-by Scottish coast.

To me, this wasn't an Irish village, but a Scottish one.

Why? Well apart from the inexplicable landward defences, the large and imposing gateway was clearly approached by a path from the coast below.

But why would there be a Scottish outpost here on the coast of Ireland?

The answer seemed to be flint.

Flints from the mine close to this site have been discovered in abundance in Kintyre (in Scotland). Also,   small quantities of some other non-flint stone tools were found at Knockdhu that had definitely come from across the sea - both Scotland and England (the Lake District). Knockdhu was a "goldmine" for the main tool-making substance of the time, flint, which was very scarce over in Kintyre. A significant maritime trade had grown up - but effectively all one way. The Scots had established an outpost to ensure the continued passage of large quantities of flint back to Scotland, and the defended village was to assure that supply continued without any interference from the Irish.

Now, in the past week I had already written a few papers on the importance of sea travel for Early Man, and the very same arguments were voiced in this TV programme about coastal sea travel. As soon as the confusing features of Knockdhu were confirmed, they were immediately solved if the settlement were of foreigners, who were taking the local flint, and had to protect their sea-access to and from Scotland.

The unusual thing about Time Team is that you get involved along with them in their deliberations: you dream up your own two-pennyworth, add to their speculations. It is a fine programme in this respect. If you are interested in such things, it is well worth a watch!