The First Americans (Peopling Of The Americas)

[Mungoman]

"Even so the very earliest reliable dates are still much earlier than Australia. 20,000 years compared to 50 or more.
Genetics bear this out too."

Later...?

 

[Shadowsot]

"Even so the very earliest reliable dates are still much earlier than Australia. 20,000 years compared to 50 or more.
Genetics bear this out too."

Later...?

Yup wrote that when I was tired. My bad.

 

[Mungoman]

Yup wrote that when I was tired. My bad.

No worries Shadowsot - she'll be right.

 

[ramonmercado]

Where did these people come from?

The date that humans arrived in South America has been pushed back to at least 25,000 years ago, based on an unlikely source: bones from an extinct giant ground sloth that were crafted into pendants by ancient people.

Discovered in the Santa Elina rock shelter in central Brazil, three sloth osteoderms — bony deposits that form a kind of protective armor over the skin of animals such as armadillos — found near stone tools sported tiny holes that only humans could have made.

The finding is among the earliest evidence for humans in the Americas, according to a paper published Wednesday (July 12) in the journal

Researchers in Brazil found three giant ground sloth osteoderms that were polished and had holes in them. (Image credit: Thaís Pansani)
The Santa Elina rock shelter, located in the Mato Grosso state in central Brazil, has been studied by archaeologists since 1985. Previous research at the site noted the presence of more than 1,000 individual figures and signs drawn on the walls, hundreds of stone tool artifacts, and thousands of sloth osteoderms, with three of the osteoderms showing evidence of human-created drill holes.

The newly published study documents these sloth osteoderms in exquisite detail to show that it is extremely unlikely that the holes in the bones were made naturally, with the implication that these bones push back the date humans settled in Brazil to 25,000 to 27,000 years ago. These dates are significant because of the growing — but still controversial — evidence for very early human occupation in South America, such as a date of 22,000 years ago for the Toca da Tira Peia rock shelter in eastern Brazil.

Using a combination of microscopic and macroscopic visualization techniques, the team discovered that the osteoderms, and even their tiny holes, had been polished, and noted traces of stone tool incisions and scraping marks on the artifacts. Animal-made bite marks on all three osteoderms led them to exclude rodents as the creators of the holes.

"These observations show that these three osteoderms were modified by humans into artefacts, probably personal ornaments," the researchers wrote in their paper.

https://www.livescience.com/archaeo...00-years-ago-giant-sloth-bone-pendants-reveal

 

[Tunn11]

Where did these people come from?

The date that humans arrived in South America has been pushed back to at least 25,000 years ago, based on an unlikely source: bones from an extinct giant ground sloth that were crafted into pendants by ancient people.

Discovered in the Santa Elina rock shelter in central Brazil, three sloth osteoderms — bony deposits that form a kind of protective armor over the skin of animals such as armadillos — found near stone tools sported tiny holes that only humans could have made.

The finding is among the earliest evidence for humans in the Americas, according to a paper published Wednesday (July 12) in the journal

Researchers in Brazil found three giant ground sloth osteoderms that were polished and had holes in them. (Image credit: Thaís Pansani)
The Santa Elina rock shelter, located in the Mato Grosso state in central Brazil, has been studied by archaeologists since 1985. Previous research at the site noted the presence of more than 1,000 individual figures and signs drawn on the walls, hundreds of stone tool artifacts, and thousands of sloth osteoderms, with three of the osteoderms showing evidence of human-created drill holes.

The newly published study documents these sloth osteoderms in exquisite detail to show that it is extremely unlikely that the holes in the bones were made naturally, with the implication that these bones push back the date humans settled in Brazil to 25,000 to 27,000 years ago. These dates are significant because of the growing — but still controversial — evidence for very early human occupation in South America, such as a date of 22,000 years ago for the Toca da Tira Peia rock shelter in eastern Brazil.

Using a combination of microscopic and macroscopic visualization techniques, the team discovered that the osteoderms, and even their tiny holes, had been polished, and noted traces of stone tool incisions and scraping marks on the artifacts. Animal-made bite marks on all three osteoderms led them to exclude rodents as the creators of the holes.

"These observations show that these three osteoderms were modified by humans into artefacts, probably personal ornaments," the researchers wrote in their paper.

https://www.livescience.com/archaeo...00-years-ago-giant-sloth-bone-pendants-reveal

I'm not clear on this. Have they dated the sloth remains or are they basing this on the assumed date of sloth extinction? If the latter then it may be be evidence of the survivial of giant sloths.

Are they sure the osteoderms were worked when fresh or could fossil or sub fossil ones have been worked on?

Personally I think modern humans and perhaps not so modern ones arrived in South America much earlier than supposed and to North America later, so if this really does push things back another 27,000 years I'm not surprised and quite pleased.

 

[ramonmercado]

I'm not clear on this. Have they dated the sloth remains or are they basing this on the assumed date of sloth extinction? If the latter then it may be be evidence of the survivial of giant sloths.

it seems to relate to the geological layers.

The presence of human-modified sloth bones in association with stone tools from geological layers that date to 25,000 to 27,000 years ago is strong evidence that people arrived in South America far earlier than previously assumed.

 

[Tunn11]

it seems to relate to the geological layers.

The presence of human-modified sloth bones in association with stone tools from geological layers that date to 25,000 to 27,000 years ago is strong evidence that people arrived in South America far earlier than previously assumed.

Ah, missed that, I'll blame it on being old and feeble minded. It's getting harder now for the late arrival lot to maintain their position.

 

[Shadowsot]

Where did these people come from?

The date that humans arrived in South America has been pushed back to at least 25,000 years ago, based on an unlikely source: bones from an extinct giant ground sloth that were crafted into pendants by ancient people.

Discovered in the Santa Elina rock shelter in central Brazil, three sloth osteoderms — bony deposits that form a kind of protective armor over the skin of animals such as armadillos — found near stone tools sported tiny holes that only humans could have made.

The finding is among the earliest evidence for humans in the Americas, according to a paper published Wednesday (July 12) in the journal

Researchers in Brazil found three giant ground sloth osteoderms that were polished and had holes in them. (Image credit: Thaís Pansani)
The Santa Elina rock shelter, located in the Mato Grosso state in central Brazil, has been studied by archaeologists since 1985. Previous research at the site noted the presence of more than 1,000 individual figures and signs drawn on the walls, hundreds of stone tool artifacts, and thousands of sloth osteoderms, with three of the osteoderms showing evidence of human-created drill holes.

The newly published study documents these sloth osteoderms in exquisite detail to show that it is extremely unlikely that the holes in the bones were made naturally, with the implication that these bones push back the date humans settled in Brazil to 25,000 to 27,000 years ago. These dates are significant because of the growing — but still controversial — evidence for very early human occupation in South America, such as a date of 22,000 years ago for the Toca da Tira Peia rock shelter in eastern Brazil.

Using a combination of microscopic and macroscopic visualization techniques, the team discovered that the osteoderms, and even their tiny holes, had been polished, and noted traces of stone tool incisions and scraping marks on the artifacts. Animal-made bite marks on all three osteoderms led them to exclude rodents as the creators of the holes.

"These observations show that these three osteoderms were modified by humans into artefacts, probably personal ornaments," the researchers wrote in their paper.

https://www.livescience.com/archaeo...00-years-ago-giant-sloth-bone-pendants-reveal

Caution should always be observed, but this looks much more solid than some of the other claims recently. I'm excited.

 

[ramonmercado]

Camel tooth gives archaeologists hunch regarding early populations of Oregon.

Stone tools and the teeth of an extinct camel and bison discovered in central Oregon show that people were living in North America 18,250 years ago, new research finds.

Although this is not the earliest date for human occupation of the Americas that has been proposed, the finding, which is not yet published in a peer-reviewed study, appears to be thousands of years older than any other archaeological site in Oregon.

Archaeologists made the discovery at the site of Rimrock Draw, which includes a rock shelter that researchers have been excavating since 2011 under a partnership with the Bureau of Land Management. Initial investigations found stone tools from the Paleo-Indian period (15000 B.C. to 7000 B.C.), but the geology of the site suggested that there were sediment layers dating to even earlier.

Although they expected to find old bones and artifacts, the archaeologists were startled by a stone tool with dried bison blood, which was discovered under a layer of volcanic sediment from the eruption of Mount St. Helens 15,400 years ago. This meant that humans were butchering ice age game in the Pacific Northwest far earlier than assumed. The oldest directly-dated evidence of humans in the U.S. comes from Paisley Caves in Oregon, where researchers studied coprolites — preserved poop — to conclude they came from humans and were about 14,200 years old. ...

https://www.livescience.com/archaeo...e-pacific-northwest-more-than-18000-years-ago

 

[ramonmercado]

Footprints accepted by more archaeologists.

New research confirms that fossil human footprints in New Mexico are likely the oldest direct evidence of human presence in the Americas, a finding that upends what many archaeologists thought they knew about when our ancestors arrived in the New World.

The footprints were discovered at the edge of an ancient lakebed in White Sands National Park and date back to between 21,000 and 23,000 years ago, according to research published Thursday in the journal Science.

The estimated age of the footprints was first reported in Science in 2021, but some researchers raised concerns about the dates. Questions focused on whether seeds of aquatic plants used for the original dating may have absorbed ancient carbon from the lake—which could, in theory, throw off radiocarbon dating by thousands of years.

The new study presents two additional lines of evidence for the older date range. It uses two entirely different materials found at the site, ancient conifer pollen and quartz grains.

The reported age of the footprints challenges the once-conventional wisdom that humans didn't reach the Americas until a few thousand years before rising sea levels covered the Bering land bridge between Russia and Alaska, perhaps about 15,000 years ago.

"This is a subject that's always been controversial because it's so significant—it's about how we understand the last chapter of the peopling of the world," said Thomas Urban, an archaeological scientist at Cornell University, who was involved in the 2021 study but not the new one.

This Oct. 2023 photo made available by the National Park Service shows White Sands National Park Resource Program Manager, David Bustos at the White Sands National Park in New Mexico. Fossil human footprints discovered in White Sands, New Mexico likely date back to between 21,000 and 23,000 years ago, according to two lines of scientific evidence published Thursday, Oct. 5, 2023. Credit: NPS via AP

Thomas Stafford, an independent archaeological geologist in Albuquerque, New Mexico, who was not involved in the study, said he "was a bit skeptical before" but now is convinced.

"If three totally different methods converge around a single age range, that's really significant," he said.

The new study isolated about 75,000 grains of pure pollen from the same sedimentary layer that contained the footprints.

https://phys.org/news/2023-10-evidence-footprints-mexico-oldest-humans.html

 

[ramonmercado]

A re-migration northwards spread new languages.

Hunter-gatherers from Mexico migrated into California more than 5,000 years ago, potentially spreading distinctive languages from the south into the region nearly 1,000 years earlier than previously thought, a new genetic study details.

The finding challenges the idea that what are known as the Uto-Aztecan languages — which include the Aztec and Toltec language Nahuatl, as well as Hopi and Shoshoni — were spread northward by prehistoric migrants from Mexico along with maize farming technologies.

"The dating and the location of this genetic material coming into California is really important for understanding the Uto-Aztecan migration," study lead author Nathan Nakatsuka, a population geneticist and a postdoctoral fellow at the New York Genome Center, told Live Science.


"We haven't fully figured it out, but we did provide evidence for a substantial migration of people coming into California at this time," he said.

The research, published on Wednesday (Nov. 22) in the journal Nature, was carried out when Nakatsuka was a student at Harvard Medical School.

Nakatsuka and his colleagues studied ancient DNA extracted from the teeth and bones of 79 ancient people found at archaeological sites in central and southern California. These remains were dated to between 7,400 and 200 years ago.

They also extracted ancient DNA from the remains of 40 people from sites in the northwest and central north of Mexico, which were dated to between 2,900 and 500 years ago.

By comparing the ancient genomes, the researchers found evidence for increased migration from northern Mexico into southern and central California about 5,200 years ago.

https://www.livescience.com/archaeo...their-languages-with-them-ancient-dna-reveals

 

[ramonmercado]

The Big Foot Gauchos,

The first Europeans to visit the southernmost tip of South America marveled at the people they met there. They were so tall, one version of the story goes, that Ferdinand Magellan’s 16th century crew dubbed them “Patagones,” from the Spanish for “big foot.” The name came to describe Patagonia, the southern tip of South America as well.

Two hundred years after Magellan’s visit, a British sailor stranded in the region recorded a very different picture. The locals, probably Indigenous Tehuelche people, were no longer notable just for their size. They were now thundering across the Patagonian plains on horses, an animal that went extinct in the region thousands of years earlier. The reintroduction of the horse dramatically transformed Patagonian societies, and its impact there was more profound than perhaps anywhere else in South America.

Now, researchers say they’ve figured out when the horses got there. A study published today in Science Advances finds that after the animals were released by a failed Spanish colony in Buenos Aires, Argentina, 1000 kilometers to the north, Indigenous people in the region rapidly incorporated the newly introduced animal into their culture, expanding its range to the southernmost tip of South America within about a century.

https://www.science.org/content/article/patagonian-people-were-riding-horses-long-europeans-arrived

 

[ramonmercado]

Is this the tooth, the whole tooth and nothing but the tooth?

For more than 50 years, dental anthropologists have studied variation in the shape of human teeth to study the patterns of migration that people took as they populated the world. The last major continental migration event took place about 16,000 years ago, when humans first moved into North and South America. Where exactly did these people come from? How did they get there? Were there multiple waves of migration?

Leslea Hlusko, a researcher who is a member of the Dental Anthropology Group at the Centro Nacional de Investigación sobre la Evolución Humana (CENIEH), and who leads the European project Tied2Teeth, belongs to the international team that has published a paper in the American Journal of Biological Anthropology that attempts to answer these questions using new approaches to the study of human dental variation.

The CENIEH researcher, together with the lead author of the paper Richard Scott (University of Nevada) and the rest of the team, used a program that was designed for use in forensic analyses to identify the population ancestry of unidentified human victims (rASUDAS2) to predict the ancestry of 1,418 ancient individuals from six geographical regions across Asia and the Americas.

They discovered that Native American individuals have a similar degree of affinity to East Asia, and are classified as East Asians between 10% and 15% of the time. This result suggests that all Native Americans derive from one population that split from East Asian populations at the same time, a result that echoes previous studies based on other data. The population is thought to have lived in the region of Beringia for 5,000–10,000 years prior to the migration into the Americas, during the last ice age, and experienced intense environmental selection.

The research team also found that Native Americans have affinity with Arctic populations, but this similarity diminishes the further away the person lived from the Arctic. This pattern suggests that the Arctic population migrated into the area later, and that the similarity in the shape of teeth is the result of populations intermixing, which would decrease as the geographic distance increases.

https://phys.org/news/2023-12-america-native-population-asian-migration.html

 

[ramonmercado]

A venerable bead.

University of Wyoming archaeology Professor Todd Surovell and his team of collaborators have discovered a tube-shaped bead made of bone that is about 12,940 years old. The bead, found at the La Prele Mammoth site in Converse County, is the oldest known bead in the Americas.

Surovell's research is published in Scientific Reports; the paper is titled "Use of hare bone for the manufacture of a Clovis bead." Members of the research team included collaborators from UW, the Office of the Wyoming State Archaeologist, the University of Manchester, Weber State University and Chico State University.

The La Prele Mammoth site preserves the remains of a killed or scavenged sub-adult Columbian mammoth and an associated camp occupied during the time the animal was butchered.

To determine the origin of the bone bead, the team extracted collagen for zooarchaeology by mass spectrometry, also known as ZooMS, which allowed the group to gain insights about the chemical composition of the bone.

The researchers concluded that the bead was made from either a metapodial (the bones that link the phalanges of the digits to the more proximal bones of the limb) or a proximal phalanx (a bone found in the fingers and toes of humans and other vertebrates) of a hare.

This finding represents the first secure evidence for the use of hares during the Clovis period, which refers to a prehistoric era in North America, particularly prominent about 12,000 years ago. It's named after the Clovis archaeological site in New Mexico, where distinctive stone tools were discovered. ...

https://phys.org/news/2024-02-archaeologists-oldest-bead-americas.html

 

[maximus otter]

A venerable bead.

maximus otter

 

[ramonmercado]

Siberian origins of Indigenous North American Languages.

Johanna Nichols, a linguist at the University of California, Berkeley, has used her pioneering work in the field of language history to learn more about language development in North America. She has found that it can be traced back to two language groups that originated in Siberia. Her paper is published in the American Journal of Biological Anthropology.

Over the past several decades, scientists have learned more about the people who originally populated North America, and by extension, Central and South America. One characteristic of these people has remained largely a mystery: the evolution of the languages spoken by people living in what is now Canada, the U.S. and Mexico.

For this new study, Nichols used statistical techniques she developed to trace language lineage back to the earliest inhabitants of North America, going back 24,000 years.

Nichols' techniques involve the use of linguistic typology, a field that involves comparing languages and organizing them based on shared criteria. To learn more about early North American languages, she compiled lists of language characteristics and applied them to all known languages. She then scored each of the languages based on the revealed qualities. This allowed her to compare the languages as a way to find resemblances among them and spot patterns.

Nichols found that she could trace the languages spoken in early North America back to just two lineages, both of which originated in Siberia. They came, she notes, with the people who made their way across land bridges during Ice Age glaciation events. ...

https://phys.org/news/2024-04-languages-north-america-language-groups.html

 

[Mungoman]

Siberian origins of Indigenous North American Languages.

Johanna Nichols, a linguist at the University of California, Berkeley, has used her pioneering work in the field of language history to learn more about language development in North America. She has found that it can be traced back to two language groups that originated in Siberia. Her paper is published in the American Journal of Biological Anthropology.

Over the past several decades, scientists have learned more about the people who originally populated North America, and by extension, Central and South America. One characteristic of these people has remained largely a mystery: the evolution of the languages spoken by people living in what is now Canada, the U.S. and Mexico.

For this new study, Nichols used statistical techniques she developed to trace language lineage back to the earliest inhabitants of North America, going back 24,000 years.

Nichols' techniques involve the use of linguistic typology, a field that involves comparing languages and organizing them based on shared criteria. To learn more about early North American languages, she compiled lists of language characteristics and applied them to all known languages. She then scored each of the languages based on the revealed qualities. This allowed her to compare the languages as a way to find resemblances among them and spot patterns.

Nichols found that she could trace the languages spoken in early North America back to just two lineages, both of which originated in Siberia. They came, she notes, with the people who made their way across land bridges during Ice Age glaciation events. ...

https://phys.org/news/2024-04-languages-north-america-language-groups.html

I've always thought RaymonM, that our language indicates our historical trek (so to speak). This is confirmation.

Most excellent.

 

[Fabio Picasso]

Mesoamerican Evidence of Precolumbian Transoceanic Contacts

In this article we discuss the results of the re-examination of a terracotta head of supposed Roman origin found in a pre-Hispanic burial offering near Mexico City. A thermoluminescent age test performed in 1995 at the Forschungsstelle Archaometrie in Heidelberg, Germany, set the age limits of the artifact at 1780 ± 400 B.P., which is consistent with the Roman-origin hypothesis.
A review of the circumstances of this discovery did not demonstrate any sign of possible post-Columbian intrusion and permits the acceptance of the object as the first hard evidence from Mesoamerica to support pre-Hispanic transoceanic contacts between the Old and New Worlds.​

Source: Hristov, Romeo, and Santiago Genovés. “Mesoamerican Evidence of Precolumbian Transoceanic Contacts.” Ancient Mesoamerica, vol. 10, no. 2, 1999, pp. 207–13

 

[SimonBurchell]

Mesoamerican Evidence of Precolumbian Transoceanic Contacts

In this article we discuss the results of the re-examination of a terracotta head of supposed Roman origin found in a pre-Hispanic burial offering near Mexico City. A thermoluminescent age test performed in 1995 at the Forschungsstelle Archaometrie in Heidelberg, Germany, set the age limits of the artifact at 1780 ± 400 B.P., which is consistent with the Roman-origin hypothesis.
A review of the circumstances of this discovery did not demonstrate any sign of possible post-Columbian intrusion and permits the acceptance of the object as the first hard evidence from Mesoamerica to support pre-Hispanic transoceanic contacts between the Old and New Worlds.​

Source: Hristov, Romeo, and Santiago Genovés. “Mesoamerican Evidence of Precolumbian Transoceanic Contacts.” Ancient Mesoamerica, vol. 10, no. 2, 1999, pp. 207–13

I've long been curious about that one.

 

[Fabio Picasso]

Transpacific Contacts. In Prehistoric Man in the New World
Overview:
The Question of transpacific contacts in Precolumbian times, whether or not the civilizations of the Old World significantly influenced the origin and development of those in the New World, is one of the most challenging and important problems of American archeology. The question has obvious bearing on the American archeologist's primary target -the reconstruction as far as is possible of the history of the American Indian. Perhaps even more significant, however, are the implications that this question has on certain theoretical considerations of the culture process-of the factors involved in the growth of civilizations-of the over-all great burst in the cultural progress of mankind that has occurred during the last eight or ten millenniums.​

https://archive.org/details/PrehistoricManInTheNewWorldByJesseD.JenningsAndEdwardNorbeck

Source: Ekholm, Gordon, 1964 Transpacific Contacts. In Prehistoric Man in the New World, edited by Jesse Jenings and Edward Norbeck, pp. 489-510. Universityof Chicago Press, Chicago.​

 

[Fabio Picasso]

I've long been curious about that one.

There is a bibliography in Spanish that should be translated to make it more widely accessible to all researchers.

 

[Fabio Picasso]

The Problem of Transpacific Influences in Mesoamerica
Overview:

This article deals not with isolated traits but with archaeological complexes delimited in area and period, in the Old World as well as in the New. Into this chronological frame nonmaterial traits may eventually be fitted. Only those apparently interconnected transpacific movements which were first begun by the coastal peoples of China and later continued
by Indian and southeast Asiatic mariners will be considered. Metallurgy, for instance, although certainly of Old World origin (Heine-Geldern, 1954), will not be discussed because it came to the Maya and Mexicans indirectly by way of South America.

Source: Heine-Geldern, Robert. 1966 The Problem of Transpacific Influences in Mesoamerica. In Archaeological Frontiers and External Connections, edited by Gordon Ekholm and Gordon Willey, pp. 277-295. Handbook of Middle American Indian, vol. 4. University of Texas Press, Austin.​

 

[Fabio Picasso]

The Little "Roman" Head of Tecaxic-Calixtlahuaca, Mexico: Some Reflections
Overview:

Doubt that Christopher Columbus's sailors were not the first Old World inhabitants that made contact with American Indians is almost as old as the Spanish Admiral's discoveries.1 In the art and folklore of American's autochthonous towns there are several indications which make us think that some sporadic contacts occurred between civilizations on both sides of the Atlantic as early as the first millennium BC. Nevertheless, except for the discovery of the Northern Newfoundland Viking settlement in L'Anse aux Meadows (Ingstad, A., 1968), to date no other archaeological evidence has been found which could confirm any of the numerous hypotheses about the arrival of Phoenicians, Greeks, Romans, etc. to the American continent​

Source: Hristov, Romeo 1994 The Little "Roman" Head of Tecaxic-Calixtlahuaca, Mexico: Some Reflections. NEARA Journal XXVIII(3-4):68-69.

 

[Fabio Picasso]

The Transpacific Origin of Mesoamerican Civilization: A Preliminary Review of the Evidence and Its Theoretical Implication
Abstract:

Anthropologists generally assume that civilization developed independently in the eastern and western hemispheres. Review of the features that distinguish the Olmec culture of Mesoamerica from preceding village farming groups shows, however, that many are present in the earlier Shang civilization of China. If Olmec civilization originated from a transpacific stimulus, this has important implications both for reconstruction of New World cultural development and for formulation of a valid theory of the evolution of civilization.​

Source: Meggers, B. J. (1975). The Transpacific Origin of Mesoamerican Civilization: A Preliminary Review of the Evidence and Its Theoretical Implications. American Anthropologist, 77(1), 1–27.

 

[Fabio Picasso]

Pre-Columbian Old World Coins in America: An Examination of the Evidence [and Comments and Reply
Abstract:

Does the occasional find of a Roman, Greek, or Hebrew coin in America indicate ancient transoceanic contact? In this study, 40 reports of such coins are analyzed in order to determine whether any can support the diffusionist position. Discovery dates, minting periods, geographical distribution, and the absence of prehistoric context all suggest that the coins were lost very recently. For those who argue that coins found in fields and farmyards may have special significance, an examination of counterfeits reveals that frauds and their prototypes have similar distributions. The data indicate also that Roman coins are far from rare in the United States today and that they are lost frequently. A number of well-publiced claims are given careful scrutiny and in all cases found to be highly suspect if not downright fraudulent. It is concluded, therefore, that as of this writing no single report of a classical-period coin in America can be used as evidence of pre-Columbian trans-Atlantic contact.​

Source: Epstein, J. F., & Others (1980). Pre-Columbian Old World Coins in America: An Examination of the Evidence [and Comments and Reply]. Current Anthropology, 21(1), 1–20.

 

[Fabio Picasso]

Possible Norse Origin for two Northeastern United States Cat Populations.
Abstract:
The North American continent was discovered by Norsemen around the year 1,000 A.D. and permanent settlement was attempted (INGSTAD19 77, MOWAT1 965). These events are recorded in Icelandic sagas that date back to the twelfth century ~ O N S S O N1 953) and unequivocal archeological evidence exists in the form of the excavated settlement at L'Anse aux Meadows, Newfoundland (INGSTAD19 77). At latitudes south of L'Anse aux Meadows, the evidence for a Viking presence is, at best, tenuous and ambiguous. INGSTAD (1959) suggested two main points of Norse contact on the east coast of North America, one in Newfoundland (Vinland I) and the other in Rhode Island or Massachusetts (Vinland 11). The locale of Vinland I1 is based on descriptions of wild grapes and salmon fishing in Icelandic sagas. Ingstad assumed that the northern limit for wild grapes was the 44th parallel (central Maine) and took the southern limit for salmon to be 42" N (Plymouth, Mass.) However during the 1 Ith and 12th centuries, the climate of the North Atlantic region was considerably warmer than at present (DANSGAAReDt al. 1975).
The northern limit for wild grapes and the southern boundary for salmon fishing may both have been extended northward during this time. Spurious archeological claims for a Norse presence

Source: Adalsteinsson, S., & Blumenberg, B. (2010). Possible norse origin for two Northeastern United States cat populations. Zeitschrift Für Tierzüchtung Und Züchtungsbiologie, 100(1-5), 161–174.​

 

[Fabio Picasso]

Landscape into Legend: Tracking Lost Tribes and Crypto-Jews across New Mexican Terrain
Abstract:

The essay traces the “Lost Tribes of Israel” legend to the purported academic discovery of lost and hidden “crypto-Jews” in contemporary New Mexico. The essay explores perceptions and beliefs of Jewish diasporic survival and identity in folkloristic, religious, historical, and genomic contexts. Analysis exposes pseudo-ethnography and pseudoscience as the basis for New Mexican claims, influenced in part by habitual association of the regional landscape with lost, hidden, and/or “wandering” Jews.​

https://digitalcommons.wayne.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1002&context=jewishfolklore

Source: Neulander, Judith S. (2022) "Landscape into Legend: Tracking Lost Tribes and Crypto-Jews across New Mexican Terrain," Jewish Folklore and Ethnology: Vol. 1: Iss. 1, Article 7.

 

[Fabio Picasso]

Was There Hebrew Language in Ancient America?
Abstract:

In an interview with John L. Sorenson, linguist Brian Stubbs discusses the evidence he has used to establish that at least one language family in Mesoamerica is related to Semitic languages. Stubbs explains how his studies of Near Eastern languages, coupled with his studies of Uto-Aztecan, helped him find related word pairs in the two language families. The evidence for a link between Uto-Aztecan and Semitic languages, or even Egyptian or Arabic, is still tentative, although the evidence includes all the standard requirements of comparative or historical linguistic research: sound correspondences or consistent sound shifts, morphological correspondences, and a substantial lexicon consisting of as many as 1,000 words that exemplify those correspondences.

Source: Brian Stubbs and John L. Sorenson. Was There Hebrew Language in Ancient America? An Interview with Brian Stubbs, Journal of Book of Mormon Studies 9-2 (2000), 54–63, 83.​

 

[Fabio Picasso]

Diffusion and Independent Invention: A Critique of Logic
Overview:
There exists a large proportion of anthropological data which admits of no clear-cut methodology but is usually handled according to inference and common sense logic. While this method may be soundly rational, the possibility of an enormous subjective clement and fallacious logic is ever present and is demonstrated by the existence of the diffusion controversy.
This controversy is made possible not only by the personal bias of the investigator but also by a confusion of the principles upon which the solution is based. It is not my purpose to present a rule-of-thumb method for the settlement of the diffusion controversy but to inquire into its logical implications and discover whether these are not capable of formulation.

Source: Steward, Julian H. “Diffusion and Independent Invention: A Critique of Logic.” American Anthropologist, vol. 31, no. 3, 1929, pp. 491–95​

 

[Fabio Picasso]

America not discovered by Columbus.
Overview:

The Americas were settled by people migrating from Asia at the height of an Ice Age 15,000 years ago. There was no contact with Europeans until Vikings appeared briefly in the 10th century, and the voyages of Christopher Columbus from 1492. America's Indigenous peoples were the Paleo-Indians, who were initially hunter-gatherers. Post 1492, Spanish, Portuguese and later English, French and Dutch colonialists arrived, conquering and settling the discovered lands over three centuries, from the early 16th to the early 19th centuries

Rasmus Bjørn Anderson (January 12, 1846 – March 2, 1936) was an American author, professor, editor, businessman and diplomat.

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https://lccn.loc.gov/01026409

Source: Anderson, Rasmus Björn. America not discovered by Columbus, a historical sketch of the discovery of America by the Norsemen in the tenth century, Chicago, S. C. Griggs & company, 1874