Academic orthodox dogma on the peopling of the Americas is attached quite stubbornly to the ‘clovis-first, land bridge migration’ theory. I call it dogma because it’s something like “Recent Out of Africa” or “Anthropogenic Global Warming” that you’re not allowed to argue with lest ye be shunned. Since I’ve long since lost all respect for Orthodox Academians, I’m not particularly bothered by the prospect, but more professional paleoanthropologists are. Their paycheck comes from academia, and being shunned would cost them their grants, making it impossible to do field research, and cost them prestige, etc, etc.
While you’ve probably all familiar with the Orthodox theory, I’m going to summarize it so I can discuss it (and pad out the word count). I mean, it’s what I was told in school. During the last glacial maximum, the sea levels were lower by some 400 feet, since all that water was locked away in the glaciers. This meant that Alaska and Siberia shared a land border. The hypothesis is that the Siberians rushed across this land bridge and flooded all of the Americas in one big habitation event. The first obstacle is the very glaciers that caused the land bridge. They’re kind of in the way. Good news, they were starting to melt, and about 15,000 years ago a gap opened up between the major ice sheets creating an “Ice-Free Corridor” from mid-Alaska down towards the great plains.
This ties up neatly with “Clovis-First”. What exactly is that? Well, near the town of Clovis, New Mexico, they found some really old stone tools of a distinct style that became indicative of what is currently called “Clovis Culture” or “Clovis Complex” or just plain “Clovis” that were dated to some 13,000 years ago. So that’s that, it’s all nice and neat and tied up with a bow. These Clovis people were the Siberians who rushed in to fill the Americas up when the Ice-Free Corridor opened.
Provided there were no Pre-Clovis human traces.
Well, there’s the snag. For decades, since everyone “knew” Clovis came first, digs would often stop when they found Clovis points. Why keep digging when you knew you weren’t going to find anything? Then some nutcases did. And they found Pre-Clovis stone tools. Well, that could just be broken rock, the Orthodox Academians would argue. Or your dating was wrong, or the site compromised. Then we get evidence like The White Sands Footprints where we get undeniable human tracks in strata bracketed by carbon datable materials that put the time of their creation into a band between 20,000 and 23,000 years ago. That is smack dab in the middle of the last glacial maximum, when there was no land path from Asia that wasn’t full of glacial ice.
Obviously, this means Clovis-first is bunk, since we don’t see Clovis points prior to around 13,000 years ago. But I still hear it from people who should know better.
I wanted to go into a discussion of how unappealing the Ice-Free Corridor would have looked to nomadic big-game hunters when it first opened. You’ve got a thousand mile stretch of barren glacial moraine boxed in by ice on two sides, devoid of plants, and thus short on animals. But we’re expected to believe that these Siberians looked at this gravel path and went “I betcha there’s a whole mess of good land on the other end of that” and took their whole tribes on a thousand mile death march through this passage to find it. But sites like White Sands make the whole debate moot. Humans were simply here longer than that.
The whole thing that prompted me to start pontificating on this article was a book about the history of fishing. The author was going around a bunch of paleoanthropological regions discussing the earliest known evidence of fishing and fisheries. He talked about evidence linking the fishermen of paleolithic Hokkaido to those of the Pacific Northwest. But when talking about the peopling of the Americas, he stuck fervently to the land bridge migration hypothesis. The problem is, even within the context of the evidence presented, it made no sense. We have fishermen, highly accustomed to utilizing marine resources; with technological and genetic similarities to each other; on the wrong side of the glacial ice sheet from the Ice-Free Corridor. Yet he could not bring himself to say “These people followed the edge of the sea ice, subsisting on fish and marine mammals”. It is the obvious and most likely conclusion.
The Orthodox Dogma was that ingrained that he could not bring himself to trust his own lying eyes, lest he be shunned.
To give the dogma it’s due, some people did come through the Ice-Free Corridor. We found their stone tools along its route. But these were not people speedrunning the settlement of the Americas. They were just one of multiple waves of people that came via different routes to the New World. But we can’t say that. If we admit that people followed the edge of the ice across the pacific, that might give some merit to the oft-shunned Solutrean Hypothesis. I mean, living off marine resources along the edge of the ice can’t possibly have introduced filthy Europeans before those scoundrels Erikson and Columbus afflicted the noble savages with whitey. And if there were more than one migration wave, that might imply that new arrivals displaced old. That the Indians were not always on the land they were on in more recent centuries.
We know the Indians moved around, but we can’t say it. The Orthodoxy forbids it.
Tell me – why does the oral history of the tribes not speak of the Mississippians? Or of the devastating plagues that ripped through their populations shortly after contact with the Spaniards? Why must we take the unverified claims on human remains from a people whose ancestors likely didn’t reside there when that body was buried? Why is our inquiry stifled to protect a persistent perfidy?
It’s one thing to have a mistaken theory. That’s part of science. But to cling to it in defiance of all evidence to the contrary, that becomes a lie.
Orthodoxy must have $$ tied to it.
The mechanic said I needed to change the Clovis Points in my ornithopter.
But enough about -insert any other issue here-.
“Tell me – why does the oral history of the tribes not speak of the Mississippians? Or of the devastating plagues that ripped through their populations shortly after contact with the Spaniards?”
They ‘all’ died. That also assists your larger point, methinks. The Euros took girls taken for ‘wives,’ folk useful (and agreeable) enough for Euros to have ’round the new terrain, and a few more, I’m sure. Those illiterate folk I’m sure had their own stories to tell, fucking any bit of ‘possible accuracy’ in the tales.
The non-plains folk down in central /South America had a bunch of architecture and I tend to lean towards ‘more civilized’ in culture, in innovation and despite /cuz their sacrifices, etc. Nearby, subjugated tribes certainly had tons of stories to tell (and all the hot girls to compel a bit of cooperation in kind).
History is written by the winners, yeah? Oral history is written by the last status-rich person who spoke.
The Orthodoxy has been trying to disprove the existence of the lizard people from the center of the earth since the Dark Ages.
Mostly to keep Hillary safe.
Thank you for furthering my point, extra-dimensionally.
*flicks nares twice*
If ancient Pacific Islanders could not just sail to Easter Island as well as the Hawaiian Islands, let alone find the silly things in the first place, why would they get that far and then stop?
I like the theory that they made it all the way to what is now South America. I hope that the theory gets more positive evidence. We’ll see, I guess.
People constantly underestimate ancient man.
I don’t
Earl Butz and I share a similar outlook, at this point in my life
Mr., Butz described as wanting only three things. The things were listed, in order, in obscene, derogatory and scatological terms.
Contemplating the origin of indigenous habitation would infiltrate into my nap time.
Lower sea levels mean more islands that are easier to see from further away.
If anything navigating was a bit easier to do with the tools of the day.
Good point.
Also, evidence would not only be fragile organics, but under water.
Along the Aleutians, perhaps. Out in the central Pacific Basin? A hard no. Atolls would have more land above sea level but the area between atolls would not change.
Consider Hawaii, except for Maui County, you get to 1000 feet of depth in about a mile and less than 5 miles to get to 1000 fathoms (6000 feet).
So… rest of the career criminal‘s life in prison for attempted murder seems minimally fair to me. Will it happen?
Love the stock photo of obviously not-Brooklyn. 🙄
suspensio per collum.
Gesundheit!
That sort of badthink isn’t approved in NYC comrade. In the new Utopia, we sympathize with this poor unfortunate firebug.
Sadly, it’s not just NYC.
I think the orthodoxy regarding Clovis man has been ebbing for some time. Partly from new evidence, partly because as Max Planck supposedly said, science advances one death at a time.
You are correct about the coastal route hypothesis (much of the evidence for which has been drowned for thousands of years, similar to what must have occurred in the Mediterranean). Seafood resources in the Pac NW is some of the richest on earth. It enable the Tlingit and other tribes of that area to develop sedentary cultures. Today the mantra is follow the money. In those days it was follow the food.
I’ve been reading about pre-clovis evidence since the 90s.
What shocks me is how stubbornly the old idea stuck around. Probably the weaker half of the even more stubborn land bridge single migration theory.
I’ve definitely seen pushback on the Clovis-was-first theory, even from those who would otherwise hold on to their dogma.
Here’s a video by an amateur anthropologist talking about White Sands. It’s clear he doesn’t want to go against orthodoxy, but he openly admits there’s a serious problem with the evidence suggesting otherwise. His first hypothesis to bridge the gap between genetics and much earlier physical evidence?
“We could just be wrong about the genetic evidence.”
https://youtu.be/9fUAV4DcyD4?si=1iZ3KIxmgOHlZcFc
If you’re at all interested in ancient anthropology, this dude is pretty good.
There’s a clear political motivation behind the dogma of Anthropogenic Global Warming, but I don’t understand the motivation behind the various tenets of anthropological/archaeological dogma you’ve mentioned. Wouldn’t every archaeologist love to be the one who finds the evidence of something “new,” i.e. older than has ever been found before? Or for each theory treated as holy scripture is there one Great and Powerful
OzArchaeologist who mere mortals dare not contradict?I can’t say why the groupthink sets in, but I’ve seen the reluctance to challenge the orthodoxy on topics of paleo-whateverology, but I’ve observed it in multiple topics. It’s not associated with a named person, but always an idea that cannot be challenged.
Other fields: A good example is J Harlan Bretz and his proposal that the scablands of eastern Washington state and Oregon had been scoured to bedrock by recurring colossal floods precipitated by ice dam failures of an enormous glacial lake. The orthodoxy made his professional life a living hell. He was finally vindicated when he was in his 90’s.
Guessing it has something to do relative positions on the current iteration of the victim stack.
There’s also a lot of law that sits firmly atop the Indians being the first inhabitants.
Hence why they get to call dibs on any remains or artifacts that a particular tribe clearly has no link to.
My guess is it has a lot to do with the peer review process, wherein one’s “peers” have built their careers on the old orthodoxy.
And you’re still stuck knowing you have to tell your “professors” what they want to hear. 😒
related
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kon-Tiki_expedition
***
The Kon-Tiki expedition was a 1947 journey by raft across the Pacific Ocean from South America to the Polynesian islands, led by Norwegian explorer and ethnographer Thor Heyerdahl.
…
The trip began on April 28, 1947. Heyerdahl and five companions sailed the raft for 101 days over 6,900 km (4,300 miles) across the Pacific Ocean before smashing into a reef at Raroia in the Tuamotus on August 7, 1947.
…
Heyerdahl’s full hypothesis that a white race reached Polynesia before the Polynesian people is overwhelmingly rejected by research, even before the expedition. Heyerdahl also did not believe in the western origins of Polynesians, who he believed were too primitive to sail against the wind and currents.[1][3] Archaeological, linguistic, cultural, and genetic evidence supports a western origin for Polynesians, from Island Southeast Asia, using sophisticated multihull sailing technologies and navigation techniques during the Austronesian expansion.
***
The linguistic diversity of the Americas implies multiple waves of migration; unlike Polynesia whose languages are all in the same family.
Crap Wiki article. The article writer was so busy talking about how Heyerdahl’s theories were “overwhelmingly rejected” that he forgot to mention any of the people who overwhelmingly rejected it.
Also the center paragraph about the main theories he supported were totally jumbled.
I see Heyerdahl’s experiment in reverse: it proves there could have been a separate migration from Polynesia to South America in the distant past. That would explain why the languages of South America have so little in common with the languages of North America.
***
About 600 indigenous languages are known from South America, Central America, and the Antilles (see List of indigenous languages of South America), although the actual number of languages that existed in the past may have been substantially higher.
***
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indigenous_languages_of_South_America#Languages_by_geographic_region
***
The indigenous languages of the Americas are not all related to each other; instead, they are classified into a hundred or so language families and isolates, as well as several extinct languages that are unclassified due to the lack of information on them.
***
Behold, another hypothesis that goes against the dogma:
***
Amerind is a widely rejected higher-level language family proposed by Joseph Greenberg in 1960 and elaborated by his student Merritt Ruhlen.[1][2][3][4] Greenberg proposed that all of the indigenous languages of the Americas belong to one of three language families, the previously established Eskimo–Aleut and Na–Dene, and with everything else—otherwise classified by specialists as belonging to dozens of independent families—as Amerind.
***
Yes, then there’s Population Y – South American people who share a genetic marker with Australiasians and South Asians.
That was Q’s grandfather. The man got around.
Thanks, UCS. I’ve been thinking a lot about this topic recently, mostly because I know the land acknowledgements read incessantly before work meetings are bullshit. The natives in the area I grew up in are Mohawks displaced after the American Revolution. They showed up after the French and the English. The idea that they are “indigenous” to the area is absurd.
Also absurd is the idea that natives lived in peace and harmony with each other and with nature. They were absolutely barbaric to each other and rapacious to their environment. This is how humans have behaved for most of our history.
Also absurd is the idea that humans arrived here only once, and recently. The history of humans since that time of one of perpetual displacement, as it was before.
Humans have been migrating to the Americas in waves for many millennia. We don’t know for how long yet because a) archaeology is relatively new, b) there are lots of places we haven’t looked, and c) glaciers and jungles are pretty efficient at destroying evidence.
We also know that humans, and pre-humans, migrated out of Africa in many waves. We are explorers. I suspect that humans arrived in the Americas only a few thousand years after leaving Africa. Maybe even sooner.
This is probably one of my least controvertial theories on human pre-history. At least in terms of supporting evidence.
And yes land acknowledgements are bullshit. Anyone who requires them should just be adjudicated mentally defective and instituionalized in an asylum.
Please be my next governor.
*cringe*
I am good at keeping my mouth shut but holy crap that would be a difficult situation for me.
It’s worse than that. Some of them go on to also acknowledge the Trans-Atlantic slave trade, ignoring: a) Africans captured and sold the slaves to the British, b) the British Empire abolished slavery before Canada was a country, and c) natives kept other natives as slaves.
Do you work for the government or a professional sports league? I’ve never heard of that junk in other situations.
Rhy there is no way your current bosses will ever do a land acknowledgement.
(((lol)))
Exactly
The whole woke/DEI phenomenon has been refreshingly minimal here.
There is of course a DEI wing of HR that popped up since around 2020 but it’s entirely optional except the required annual half-hour or so trainings have been infected with more of that nonsense but you just have to pick the obviously desired answers to pass.
Taxes filed. This has to be the latest date that I have filed since I started during electronic filings a couple of decades ago.
My interest-free loan to the government was less than $150. They stole a lot more from me that I’ll never see.
413 refund from the feds; 380 still owed to the state. That’s the closest it has ever been.
I got a message this morning that a former employee who left in January of 2025 – and who had since moved from Ohio to California – was needing her W-2. Pro tip: Changing your address for your financial accounts is good and we appreciate it…but it has no effect on the address shown for you in the payroll system. 🙄
April 12 is the earliest I have completed mine in years. It is usually April 15 or whatever the actual deadline turns out to be.
Owe almost 2K and I am counting myself lucky because until April 12 I did not know that the SSA gives you nine months of courtesy disability on a “work trial” basis after you report that you’re working. I was expecting to have to pay all of it back because I have been working full-time since last June.
In the meantime my bank keeps bugging me to talk about “higher yield” options which is nice of them I guess but TBH I thought I was gonna have to make a huge withdrawal lol.
Although knowing about the rules, I forgot to pay taxes for a few years when I was in Korea. I didn’t make enough money to be worth checking too much into, plus my youth and no financial interests other than a checking account, and I eventually did catch myself and take care of it.
An ex-pat bartender friend told me the US is serious about it, not enough to audit you unless shit’s real fishy, but it’s a hassle once you pass a certain Big $$ line.
I owed a couple thousand less to the state than last year.
No extra to the feds.
Evil rich guy.
Second half of property tax is coming up next month.
By the end of June I should be in the black again.
Geocentric universe, four humors, phlogiston, spontaneous generation…
It took centuries to discredit these ideas.
It also took centuries for correct ideas to catch on: germ theory, evolution, continental drift…
Fun to think about: As long as we don’t nuke or AI-depopulate ourselves out of existence, humans in 100 years will look at us with the same outright mockery and disdain that we currently have for the fucked up medicinal techniques and meds in the late 19th century.
(Actually, far more if the current exponential acceleration of tech continues.)
So we still have a chance to completely discredit Marxism?
These discussions always remind me of the Wabanaki in Maine insisting the the “Red Paint People” remains were really just their ancestors, they just decided to totally abandon their sophisticated deep-sea swordfish fishing culture in a blink of an eye and pivoted to an utterly different way of life, because “reasons”.
They promptly “buried” (read: destroyed) the remains when they won their lawsuit.
It’s sad you won’t acknowledge their way of knowing.
Same
With Kennewick man.
OT… I just tried the Forums and I’m getting “Error establishing a database connection”. Any of TPTB have any knowledge? I have a burning* question that doesn’t fit in the format here.
*i.e. trivial
Yeah, we wouldn’t want you polluting this discussion with something trivial.
It’s a fine line between what is trivial and throwaway and what is trivial but I desire answers that won’t go away in a few hours.
We know the Indians moved around, but we can’t say it. The Orthodoxy forbids it.
Nor can we say that the current Indians have zero claim to any and all historical artifacts. Kennewick Man is a fucking disgrace and everyone involved should hang for their role in destroying such antiquities.
The whole Indian relations are just bullshit at this point. Local city renamed Custer park to the savages that murdered him and his fellow American soldiers. The self hate in this country is unreal.
And not an anglicized name but this current year bullshit of having unpronounceable words as “more true” to the original.
They did the same at the Little Bighorn battlefield. It now includes monuments to the Sioux and Cheyenne. And that pisses off the Crows (whose rez surrounds the NP) because they were the 7th Cavalry’s Scouts for the battle.
The Whitman Mission is more about the Indians are victims and just about ignores the massacre that occurred there. It’s all about celebrating the murderers and their savage culture.
There is a half-hearted attempt to rename Cayuga Street to Gayogo̱hónǫʼ Street here.
No word yet on what they want to do with Seneca, Tioga, et al.
Preach on!
It’s on par with destroying the Sphinx or similar in Afghanistan and other Islamic countries.
Recently I visited Canyon de Chelly NM for the first time below the rim. I was hesitant to do the canyon tour because you must have a Navajo guide. I did not want to listen to the “we have been here forever” drivel and posturing. I got lucky with an older guide who at the first stop told us that the Anasazi were in the canyon from the 700’s to around 1250 and had constructed every remain we would see. He said that the Navajo were late commers and arrived in the 1400’s shortly before the Spanish appeared around 1540. He included the pro tip if a petrograph or pictograph had a horse it was Navajo otherwise they were most likely Anasazi.
It was an enjoyable tour; I do recommend it outside the summer months. In the summer the canyon will bake you.
That’s pretty cool.
He also let us in that while 50-60 families still farm and raise livestock in the three canyons- in season- nobody lives full time in there. As he put it, “In the canyons there is no electricity, no running water, parts of the year flood wall to wall but a short drive away you can have AC, heating, cable and the internet.” Indeed, we saw several families driving their 4WDs into or out of the area while we were in there. The canyon complex debouches right into Chinle, AZ near the high school and Burger King.
The area is pretty dang spectacular.
Bonus factoid: Most of the Navajo Rez goes on daylight savings time- unlike the rest of Arizona.
Happy morning Glibs and Glibettes!
☀️🕶️👒
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W66yhfMb4d0
🎶🎶
Good morning, Sean, Ted’S., and homey!
Morning, GT.
Did you get a good night’s sleep and breakfast?
No.
I’m feeling sick.
🤢
Oh no! 😧 Do you feel well enough to try to work remotely?
I am, and it is still a remote day, so I’m just going to see if it gets better.
By the way, thanks for the fascinating post! Can you recommend any articles or books on the subject in addition to the White Sands link you included?
Not too many off the top of my head. admittedly at the moment, my head’s not in the best place.
The Solutrean Hypothesis was detailed pretty well in Across Atlantic Ice The audiobook version may be difficult to follow in terms of descriptions of the shape of stone tools. I hope any print version has illustrations.
There are others, but my brain is not pulling their names or locations to the fore.
One of the biggest hurdles is separating the crackpots from the serious evidence. The moment you go “I’m going to look at what people outside the narrative are saying” you get some people who have real info, and some people who are just off their rockers. I was reminded of this just by scrolling the audible archeology section.
Thank you! B&N has a Nook edition, so with any luck my little e-reader would show the illustrations. (I may also check the local library, though I haven’t yet sussed out how to manage their e-books in Linux without Adobe Digital Editions.)
How
Scrambled
We don’t know who was first, but we do know it wasn’t Brochettaward.
suh’ fam
whats goody
Hi-diddley-ho Glibbros and Glibbabes!
Good morning, NA! ::secretly plots how to give him a wedgie::
You would like Glibbroads better?
Either one is fine. It was the Flanders-esque greeting that provoked the desire for revenge.
Hens love roosters, geese love ganders, everyone
elsewho counts loves Ned Flanders!Pre-links good morning to all.
Lol. I wonder if the accusation of Katie Perry sexually assaulting Ruby Rose will make the Sugarverse.
Should probably include the accusation:
“20 years ago”
Oh, brother. 🙄
I don’t know who Ruby Rose is but I would think a normal person would want to stay away from the crazy.
She was lesbian CW-Batwoman.