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The First Americans (Peopling Of The Americas)

There is contradictory evidence both ways. DNA analysis shows all Native Americans, from Pacific to Atlantic, from the Arctic to Tierra del Fuego, all originated in Siberia. There are a few markers that have been found in scattered populations from elsewhere (celtic on the Atlantic coast of North America, polynesian on the Pacific coast of North and South.) These are more likely from a marooned sailor than an established route.

The coastal tribes of the southern California and northern Mexico area had ocean going canoes nearly identical to Polynesian design. And this design appears to have developed spontaneously with no record of earlier simpler designs. Suggesting a group of Polynesian seafarers ended up in the region suddenly. Marooned with no chance of return, they just assimilated into the local culture, lending their knowledge of ocean travel and their genes to the local populace.
One of the mysteries unsolved is lingochronology. The Native American languages are so diverse they appear to have no common root. A common root language would not evolved into different groups in so short a time frame. They are not different as French and Italian, or English and German. They are different as English and Japanese. Totally different syntax and sentence structure. This supports the multiple migration hypothesis, but does not support all came from Siberia.

Another unexplained phenomenom is a small village site in New Mexico. The old fire rings were built on bedrock with a high iron content. The iron in the rock aligned with magnetic field when heated and pointed to the north when the fires were last built. The minerals all point to where the magnetic north pole was 30,000 - 35,000 years ago.
 
There is contradictory evidence both ways. DNA analysis shows all Native Americans, from Pacific to Atlantic, from the Arctic to Tierra del Fuego, all originated in Siberia. There are a few markers that have been found in scattered populations from elsewhere (celtic on the Atlantic coast of North America, polynesian on the Pacific coast of North and South.) These are more likely from a marooned sailor than an established route.

The coastal tribes of the southern California and northern Mexico area had ocean going canoes nearly identical to Polynesian design. And this design appears to have developed spontaneously with no record of earlier simpler designs. Suggesting a group of Polynesian seafarers ended up in the region suddenly. Marooned with no chance of return, they just assimilated into the local culture, lending their knowledge of ocean travel and their genes to the local populace.
One of the mysteries unsolved is lingochronology. The Native American languages are so diverse they appear to have no common root. A common root language would not evolved into different groups in so short a time frame. They are not different as French and Italian, or English and German. They are different as English and Japanese. Totally different syntax and sentence structure. This supports the multiple migration hypothesis, but does not support all came from Siberia.

Another unexplained phenomenom is a small village site in New Mexico. The old fire rings were built on bedrock with a high iron content. The iron in the rock aligned with magnetic field when heated and pointed to the north when the fires were last built. The minerals all point to where the magnetic north pole was 30,000 - 35,000 years ago.


What is that sound?

Ahh, no need to worry - it's empiricists running for cover...
 
https://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/28/...s-on-humans-arrival-in-the-americas.html?_r=0

SERRA DA CAPIVARA NATIONAL PARK, Brazil — Niede Guidon still remembers her astonishment when she glimpsed the paintings.

Preserved amid the bromeliad-encrusted plateaus that tower over the thorn forests of northeast Brazil, the ancient rock art depicts fierce battles among tribesmen, orgiastic scenes of prehistoric revelry and hunters pursuing their game, spears in hand.

“These were stunning compositions, people and animals together, not just figures alone,” said Dr. Guidon, 81, remembering what first lured her and other archaeologists in the 1970s to this remote site where jaguars still prowl.

Hidden in the rock shelters where prehistoric humans once lived, the paintings number in the thousands. Some are thought to be more than 9,000 years old and perhaps even far more ancient. Painted in red ocher, they rank among the most revealing testaments anywhere in the Americas to what life was like millenniums before the European conquest began a mere five centuries ago.
 
https://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/28/...s-on-humans-arrival-in-the-americas.html?_r=0

SERRA DA CAPIVARA NATIONAL PARK, Brazil — Niede Guidon still remembers her astonishment when she glimpsed the paintings.

Preserved amid the bromeliad-encrusted plateaus that tower over the thorn forests of northeast Brazil, the ancient rock art depicts fierce battles among tribesmen, orgiastic scenes of prehistoric revelry and hunters pursuing their game, spears in hand.

“These were stunning compositions, people and animals together, not just figures alone,” said Dr. Guidon, 81, remembering what first lured her and other archaeologists in the 1970s to this remote site where jaguars still prowl.

Hidden in the rock shelters where prehistoric humans once lived, the paintings number in the thousands. Some are thought to be more than 9,000 years old and perhaps even far more ancient. Painted in red ocher, they rank among the most revealing testaments anywhere in the Americas to what life was like millenniums before the European conquest began a mere five centuries ago.


Bradshaw [Gwion Gwion] paintings N_F - very old, in fact until only recently this art from the North was not accepted by the Old Ones as belonging to Aboriginals.

With Gwion Gwion art, there are broad composite paintings of battles, similar to those of north-east Brazil.

bradshaw-rock-art2.jpg w=450&h=337.jpg
f4a9927c42797e47dd22c157ccd706bd.jpg
 
Bradshaw [Gwion Gwion] paintings N_F - very old, in fact until only recently this art from the North was not accepted by the Old Ones as belonging to Aboriginals.

With Gwion Gwion art, there are broad composite paintings of battles, similar to those of north-east Brazil.

View attachment 4297 View attachment 4298


the old Ones being elders? So what do they think of the people that preceded them? I'd put a lot of stock in their thoughts due to their ability to maintain their stories.
 
The one wearing white trousers and a dark jacket.

He does look as if he's turned up for a picnic of cucumber sandwiches and Earl Grey at a manor house. Maybe a game of croquet or cricket, too.
 
He does look as if he's turned up for a picnic of cucumber sandwiches and Earl Grey at a manor house. Maybe a game of croquet or cricket, too.
I was thinking more of a sailor wearing canvas trousers with a wool or canvas/linen jacket.
 
the old Ones being elders? So what do they think of the people that preceded them? I'd put a lot of stock in their thoughts due to their ability to maintain their stories.

No N_F, the Old Ones are those of The Dreaming [Tjukirpit]- Elders are either Elders, or Men or Women of high repute, and the majority of these are held in very high regard.

Their oral history, it was explained to me, is faultless because what they learn from their Uncles and Aunties is repeated before their Elders, and any abbreviation or mistake is held against the Uncles and Aunties, rather than the children going through the Law, so the child is taught and then repeats it word perfect before they can go on any further.

I don't know if it is still done this way, but that is the way it used to be done 50 years ago.
 
Is that a European to the left in that painting?

There's some strange things in Gwion Gwion Paintings sometimes, and this is one of 'em - I have no explanation for that one, except that he's got a handfull of boomerangs.

There are Wandjinas, rain beings, that seem to be clothed, but I don't know much about them except that they're from a more modern time.


85ba181b176a033cd7d17de3858e4fad.jpg
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Another thing, you notice that the ones chasing have their spears pointing to the ground - that shows warlike intent, so you can tell in a scenario similar to this, who's attacking who.

Spear heads pointing at you isn't a sign of aggression - reversed or pointing down is.
 
It wasn't just Greece: Archaeologists find early democratic societies in the Americas
By Lizzie WadeMar. 15, 2017 , 9:00 AM

The candidate for political office stood in a plaza, naked, bracing himself against the punches and kicks. The crowd roared, pulsing around him like a beating heart. People for whom he had risked his life in war after war hurled blows and insults from all directions. The candidate breathed deeply. Trained as a warrior, he knew he had to stay calm to reach the next phase of his candidacy.

This ordeal, documented by a Spanish priest in the 1500s, was merely the beginning of the long process of joining the government of the Mesoamerican city of Tlaxcallan, built around 1250 C.E. in the hills surrounding the modern city of Tlaxcala, Mexico. After this trial ended, the candidate would enter the temple on the edge of the plaza and stay for up to 2 years, while priests drilled him in Tlaxcallan's moral and legal code. He would be starved, beaten with spiked whips when he fell asleep, and required to cut himself in bloodletting rituals. But when he walked out of the temple, he would be more than a warrior: He would be a member of Tlaxcallan's senate, one of the 100 or so men who made the city's most important military and economic decisions.

"I'd like to see modern politicians do all that, just to prove they can govern," says archaeologist Lane Fargher, standing in the shadow of one of Tlaxcallan's recently restored elevated plazas. Fargher has led surveys and excavations here since 2007, studying the urban plan and material culture of a type of society many archaeologists once believed they'd never find in Mesoamerica: a republic. "Twenty or 25 years ago, no one would have accepted it was organized this way," says Fargher, who works at the research institute Cinvestav in Mérida, Mexico. ...

http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017...ists-find-early-democratic-societies-americas

I wonder if they had an Electoral College?
 
An ancient village believed to be one of the oldest human settlements ever found in North America has been discovered during an excavation on a remote island in British Columbia.

The village, which is estimated to be 14,000 years old, has been found on a rocky spit on Triquet Island, about 500 kilometres northwest of Victoria, Canada.

It is estimated the village is older than Egypt’s pyramids.

Scientists said the artefacts being unearthed, which include tools for lighting fires, fish hooks and spears dating back to the Ice Age, are painting a picture of how civilisation began in North America, CTV Vancouver Island News reports. ...

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/w...-oldest-settlment-north-america-a7673726.html

Vid at link.
 
10,000 years of genetic continuity in northwest North America, study reveals
Date:
April 4, 2017
Source:
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Summary:
A study of the DNA in ancient skeletal remains adds to the evidence that indigenous groups living today in southern Alaska and the western coast of British Columbia are descendants of the first humans to make their home in northwest North America more than 10,000 years ago. ...

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/04/170404160034.htm
 
Evidence of humans in California - 130,000 years ago!

Humans Lived in North America 130,000 Years Ago, Study Claims
Prehistoric humans — perhaps Neanderthals or another lost species — occupied what is now California some 130,000 years ago, a team of scientists reported on Wednesday.

The bold and fiercely disputed claim, published in the journal Nature, is based on a study of mastodon bones discovered near San Diego. If the scientists are right, they would significantly alter our understanding of how humans spread around the planet.

The earliest widely accepted evidence of people in the Americas is less than 15,000 years old. Genetic studies strongly support the idea that those people were the ancestors of living Native Americans, arriving in North America from Asia.

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/26/...rth-america-california-nature-study.html?_r=0
 
Over 20,000 years ago in Brazil.

People hunted giant sloths in the center of South America around 23,120 years ago, researchers say — a find that adds to evidence that humans reached South America well before Clovis hunters roamed North America roughly 13,000 years ago.

Evidence of people’s presence at Santa Elina rock shelter, located in a forested part of eastern Brazil, so long ago raises questions about how people first entered South America. Early settlers may have floated down the Pacific Coast in canoes before heading 2,000 kilometers east to the remote rock shelter, or they might have taken an inland route from North America, archaeologist Denis Vialou of the National Museum of Natural History in Paris and his colleagues report in the August Antiquity. Other South American sites reportedly occupied by Stone Age humans lie much closer to the coast than Santa Elina does.

Excavations at Santa Elina from 1984 to 2004 revealed three sediment layers containing numerous stone artifacts and bones of giant sloths called Glossotherium. Sloth remains included small, bony plates from the skin that humans made into ornaments of some kind by adding notches and holes. Sediment layers also contained remains of hearths. ...

https://www.sciencenews.org/blog/science-ticker/stone-age-people-brazil-20000-years-ago
 
Backer and backer we go...

B.C. university student helps unearth 14,000 year-old village

A university student has helped unearthed North America's oldest settlement, while excavating on a remote B.C. island.

Alisha Gauvreau, a PhD student with the University of Victoria's anthropology department, helped uncover a village that dates back roughly 14,000 years – which would make the settlement older than Egypt's pyramids.

Source: http://www.ctvnews.ca/sci-tech/b-c-...lps-unearth-14-000-year-old-village-1.3358711


 
Doubt if this will be the end of the debate. Even one of the authors writes: “These are only the second-oldest human remains in the New World where we have this full nuclear genomic analysis, so this is really kind of new territory,” explains coauthor Ben Potter, an archaeologist at the University of Alaska Fairbanks.

"At the end of the last ice age, about 11,500 years ago, ancient people buried two infants at a residential campsite called Upward Sun River (USR) in what is currently central Alaska. Now, the whole genome sequence of one of the infants—a six-week-old named Xach’itee’aanenh T’eede Gaay, or Sunrise Child-girl by local Native Americans and USR1 by researchers—has revealed that she was part of a distinct and previously unknown group descended from the same founding population as all other Native Americans. The findings were published today (January 3) in Nature.

“USR1 really provides the most definitive evidence for all Native American populations in North and South America deriving from a single population,” says University of Florida geneticist Connie Mulligan, who did not participate in the study. “In other words, there was only one wave of migration over to the New World to settle both continents until much more recent times. It’s the final data in support of a single migration.”

Researchers usually agree that humans arrived in the Americas through Beringia—the area encompassing parts of present-day East Asia and North America, connected by what was the Bering Land Bridge. But the scientists must rely on inferences from both archaeological and genomic data to figure out how and when this migration occurred.

“These are only the second-oldest human remains in the New World where we have this full nuclear genomic analysis, so this is really kind of new territory,” explains coauthor Ben Potter, an archaeologist at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. “With archaeology, we have bits of detritus left behind. We get clues that we [use] to build inferential arguments in a forensic sort of way. Just the fact that we have these human remains opens up amazing windows” into these people’s lives, he adds. ..."

https://www.the-scientist.com/?arti...5222472&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter/
 
The site seems to be remarkably well preserved.

Archaeologists have uncovered a Native American burial site dating back 7,000 years off the coast of Florida.

The site was found by an amateur diver in 2016 who was looking for shark teeth but stumbled on an ancient jawbone.

In a picture sent from the diver, archaeologist Ryan Duggins noticed a worn down molar tooth attached to the jawbone. This suggested it belonged to a prehistoric person.

Florida state officials called the find an "unprecedented discovery".

Mr Duggins and his team began investigating the site from the "Archaic Period" located 900ft (275m) from shore.

The burial grounds are expected to cover about 32,000 sq feet (3,000 sq metres) off the coast of Manasota Key.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-43248791
 
This new LiveScience item:

https://www.livescience.com/63292-first-americans-route.html

... provides some good illustrative graphics showing the correlation between archaeological sites (known to date) and the two major routes proposed as humans' entry points into the continent (the 'coastal' / 'inland' paths).

I expect the debate will continue / mutate as time goes on, but this is a good overview of where things stand for now.
 
That does explain why they were there when Columbus arrived.
 
A bit skeptical of the above report based on the evidences. These proposed human migrations are ~ 100,000 years earlier than that of current archaeologic data concerning 1st migrations from Asia to the America's. The excepted migrations have already been pushed back from the Clovis finding of 13 thousands years age to earlier migrations of (20 to 30) thousand years ago.
The evidence for these much earlier migrations is dicey. But who knows what can turn as science advances?
 
The site seems to be remarkably well preserved.

Archaeologists have uncovered a Native American burial site dating back 7,000 years off the coast of Florida.

The site was found by an amateur diver in 2016 who was looking for shark teeth but stumbled on an ancient jawbone.

In a picture sent from the diver, archaeologist Ryan Duggins noticed a worn down molar tooth attached to the jawbone. This suggested it belonged to a prehistoric person.

Florida state officials called the find an "unprecedented discovery".

Mr Duggins and his team began investigating the site from the "Archaic Period" located 900ft (275m) from shore.

The burial grounds are expected to cover about 32,000 sq feet (3,000 sq metres) off the coast of Manasota Key.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-43248791

The remarkable state of preservation has been put down to the remains and grave goods being interred in Peat, in a freshwater pond. That alone is rather intriguing as this was due practice on the north west areas of Europe, Ireland and Britain.

The other is the knowledge that only 7,000 years ago, the Sea level was 9 metres lower than present. I have been under the misguided impression that the sea levels rose gradually from 12,000 or so years ago, and that 5,000 BCE, the sea levels were close to the present sea levels.

I learn new things everyday.
 
Discovery of Ancient Spearpoints in Texas Has Some Archaeologists Questioning the History of Early Americas

Archaeologists have discovered two previously unknown forms of spearpoint technology at a site in Texas. The triangular blades appear to be older than the projectile points produced by the Paleoamerican Clovis culture, an observation that’s complicating our understanding of how the Americas were colonized—and by whom.

rqrnxmtmxqtkjefmkfwe.jpg


Clovis-style spear points began to appear around 13,000 to 12,700 years ago, and they were produced by Paleoamerican hunter-gatherers known as the Clovis people. Made from stones, these leaf-shaped (lanceolate) points featured a shallow concave base and a fluted, or flaked, base that allowed them to be placed on the end of a spear.

uk3fx54l6qytfijpcrbx.png


New research published today in Science Advances describes the discovery of two new spearpoint technologies at the Buttermilk Creek Complex of the Debra L. Friedkin archaeology site in Bell County, Texas, which date to between 13,500 and 15,000 years ago. Because these spearpoints pre-date Clovis culture, they may have inspired the development of subsequent projectile point styles, including those made by the Clovis people, said Michael Waters, the lead author of the new study and an archaeologist at Texas A&M University. Either that, he said, or the previously unknown spearpoints were brought to North America during a separate migration into the continent.

But not everyone is convinced by this latest research. The experts we spoke to said it marked an important discovery, but the conclusions reached by the researchers were a bit of a stretch.

https://gizmodo.com/discovery-of-ancient-spearpoints-in-texas-has-some-arch-1829970738

maximus otter
 
This is pretty interesting:

The Extremely Fast Peopling of the Americas
Two genetic studies show how the first Native Americans spread through their new continent with incredible speed.

Tens of thousands of years ago, two gigantic ice sheets smothered the northernmost parts of what has since been named North America. [...]

Genetic studies, based on ancient remains, had already suggested that once the first American Indians got south of the ice, 14,600 to 17,500 years ago, they split into two main branches. One stayed north, giving rise to the Algonquian-speaking peoples of Canada. The other headed south, giving rise to the widespread Clovis culture, and to Central and South Americans. That’s a very rough outline, but a new study from J. Víctor Moreno-Mayar and his colleagues fleshes it out. They showed that whatever happened south of the ice, it happened fast.

The two studies also differ on a particularly puzzling and controversial result. Back in 2015, the leaders of both Posth’s and Moreno-Mayar’s teams found that today’s Indigenous Amazonians share small hints of ancestry with people from Australia and Papua New Guinea—places on the other side of the Pacific. In their new study, Moreno-Mayar’s team found that same tantalizing smidgen of Australasian ancestry in the 10,400-year-old remains from Lagoa Santa in Brazil, but in none of the other remains they tested. “Every explanation that we can come up with for that is less plausible than the last,” says Moreno-Mayar.
If people with Australasian ancestry somehow entered the Americas before the early American Indians, how did they get into Brazil without leaving any trace in North America, either genetically or archaeologically? If they entered after the first American Indians did, how did they get from Alaska to Brazil seemingly without interacting with anyone else? If they sailed across the entire Pacific, after hypothetically inventing seafaring technology millennia before the Polynesians, how did they cross the Andes and traverse the Amazon?

It would appear that human history remains too complex for simple answers.

https://www.theatlantic.com/science...d-after-people-first-arrived-americas/575335/
 
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