Clovis Killer Discovery

[wodin]

American history tends to polarize into pre-Columbian an post-Columbian, even though there is credible evidence that Columbus was a relative late comer.

But there is a hypothesis that the Cherokee people of the eastern US were descendants of western Europeans, and were the precursors of the Clovis culture. One of the reasons for this is that there has been Clovis like tools found in Europe. They think that during the ice age, these nomadic people followed the terminus of the glaciations while hunting seals, and so crossed over to the eastern US/Canada.

[DixieGal]

Originally Posted by wodin

American history tends to polarize into pre-Columbian an post-Columbian, even though there is credible evidence that Columbus was a relative late comer.

But there is a hypothesis that the Cherokee people of the eastern US were descendants of western Europeans, and were the precursors of the Clovis culture. One of the reasons for this is that there has been Clovis like tools found in Europe. They think that during the ice age, these nomadic people followed the terminus of the glaciations while hunting seals, and so crossed over to the eastern US/Canada.

That is interesting. Like millions of us, I have some diluted Cherokee in me from back to the 5th generation grandmother. It was a huge scandal when my 5 times grandfather ran off with her! It caused a split in my family, which left us unknown to the rest of our Scottish clan until I did our geneology back in the 90's.

Everybody came from somewhere. Maybe they will do a gene study someday, like they did on the Libyans to prove that they are the descendants of the Phoenicians. It would be cool to find out that the Cherokee were descended from, for example, Celts.

[SameOldStory]

I don't know if it's true, and I read this a very long time ago so I can't give a reference, but I believe that escaped slaves and the Scottish were easily accepted into Cherokee society.


The whole migration into North America has always confused me. Most migrations have resulted from some type of "pressure", such as drought, invaders, or the loss of a ready food supply. That a small population of nomads could, essentially, wipe out the local supply of seals and therefore have to travel north into colder and harsher lands seems rather odd to me. That they did migrate is obvious. But just why they did it I have a hard time understanding.


A secondary problem would be a requirement for inbreeding over a long period of time. Even a few hundred individuals would provide too small a gene pool for a healthy population. A few thousand individuals would, likewise, be a very small population from which all of the "natives" of North America could spring from.

Many societies in the past have culled "different" newborns. Those with birth defects would die before the day was out. But still, inbreeding would taint a large portion of the population.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by SameOldStory

The whole migration into North America has always confused me. Most migrations have resulted from some type of "pressure", such as drought, invaders, or the loss of a ready food supply. That a small population of nomads could, essentially, wipe out the local supply of seals and therefore have to travel north into colder and harsher lands seems rather odd to me. That they did migrate is obvious. But just why they did it I have a hard time understanding.

Would it necessarily have been seen as "migrating", do you think? During the last ice age, there was a land bridge between present-day Siberia and Alaska. To nomadic peoples such as occupied the region, wouldn't it all have seemed to be just one area? That's how it seems to me, anyway.

[kennyc]

I think the question was more why would people be living/traveling/migrating in that region in any case? At least that's my thought as well.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by kennyc

I think the question was more why would people be living/traveling/migrating in that region in any case? At least that's my thought as well.

Why do the Eskimos live in the Arctic? I'd guess that these primitive people did so for much the same reason - they hunted seals, whales, etc.

[kennyc]

Well sure, we are a people that do what is easy, it was probably easy to make a living off of seals and maybe that is all there is at the root of the migration, but I don't know that I've ever seen that as a root cause....maybe...

[ardeegee]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Would it necessarily have been seen as "migrating", do you think? During the last ice age, there was a land bridge between present-day Siberia and Alaska. To nomadic peoples such as occupied the region, wouldn't it all have seemed to be just one area? That's how it seems to me, anyway.

The term "land bridge" is misleading, seeming to imply a narrow passage between the two continents. But it was actually thousands of miles wide-- North America and Asia were for all practical porpoises (and seals) a single continent.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Settlement_of_the_Americas

Asking why people would migrate for Asia to America is no more meaningful than asking why people would migrate from any point x in Asia to any point y in Asia.

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by ardeegee

The term "land bridge" is misleading, seeming to imply a narrow passage between the two continents. But it was actually thousands of miles wide-- North America and Asia were for all practical porpoises (and seals) a single continent.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Settlement_of_the_Americas

Asking why people would migrate for Asia to America is no more meaningful than asking why people would migrate from any point x in Asia to any point y in Asia.

Maybe you don't think it has meaning, but I do and I'm sure others do as well, particularly depending on the conditions at the time.

There is a lot of unknowns about the populating of the Americas. It is all very interesting actually.

[ardeegee]

Originally Posted by kennyc

Maybe you don't think it has meaning, but I do and I'm sure others do as well, particularly depending on the conditions at the time.

My point is, the difference between crossing the wide expanse of land of the Bering land bridge and crossing the wide expanse of land of Asia, or the wide expanse of land of North America is only significant in retrospect. The migrants who became the paleoindians never stopped to think "wow, thousands of years from now these thousands of miles of land, which look exactly like the thousands of miles of land behind us and the thousands of miles of land behind us, will be under the ocean."

The light brown on the image (cropped from the Wikipedia entry) represents dry land-- a strip over 2,000 miles wide from north to south. I highly doubt that the reasons people migrated from E to F was different from reasons to migrate from A to B, or C to D, or G to H. They didn't know that, thousands of years later, that land would be under water.

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by ardeegee

My point is, the difference between crossing the ...

And my point is that it has some controversy around it as to when and how and why it happened. And it's irrelevant if it was a narrow or wide "land-bridge"

And in the light of this thread topic, whether the Covis people came from this migration or somewhere else.

[ardeegee]

And my point is that it has some controversy around it as to when and how and why it happened.

"Some controversy" is putting it mildly-- there are as many hypotheses as there are researchers, placing the original North American colonizers all over the map, plus several mutually contradictory genetic studies. Claims of "pre-Clovis" sites have been cropping up for decades, always to be widely disputed by other researchers. There is one site here in my home state of South Carolina. So far, nobody has come up with an uncontested, undisputed pre-Clovis site-- it'll be years yet before the jury is in on the latest claims.

Originally Posted by kennyc

And it's irrelevant if it was a narrow or wide "land-bridge"

I can't agree with that. You can't tell me that migration across, say, Panama from North America to South America is not different from migration across a passage thousands of miles wide.

[Xenophon]

One such site is fewer than 50 miles from my home -- the Meadowcroft Rockshelter. If the Meadowcroft folks are correct, the history of humanity in the Americas goes back waaaaay before the Clovis era. However, there remains some controversy about dating of various levels and artifacts -- the clovis-first folks are quite unhappy with the Meadowcroft dates.

That seems rather odd to me, because the excavation, fieldwork, record-keeping, and testing done at/for the Meadowcroft site are supposedly some of the finest for any archaeological site anywhere. (That's according to friends of mine who are professionals -- I wouldn't be able to tell the difference between OK & great.)

Xenophon

[kennyc]

The wikipedia entry lists several possible pre-clovis sites including Meadowcroft..

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clovis_culture

[SameOldStory]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Would it necessarily have been seen as "migrating", do you think? During the last ice age, there was a land bridge between present-day Siberia and Alaska. To nomadic peoples such as occupied the region, wouldn't it all have seemed to be just one area? That's how it seems to me, anyway.

My use of the word migration was referring to the movement of a people. Not a movement to anyplace in particular.


Whatever the height and width of it, it was "land" that bridged the two continents, as opposed to an icy covering of the sea. So you are quite right Harry.


But I still have to wonder, Why?

Originally Posted by HarryT

Why do the Eskimos live in the Arctic? I'd guess that these primitive people did so for much the same reason - they hunted seals, whales, etc.

That's pretty much my point. Even living in a hostile environment that you know can seem better than moving into an area that may (or may not, of course) be worse.

The movement of these peoples was from a warmer area with, one would presume, a greater abundance of plant and animal life. Seal chasing may be plausible. But I have a hard time believing that this would go on for hundreds of generations. Remember these were very short lived people. And even the Inuit of old did very little traveling (aside from hunting) in the middle of the long northern winters.


One comment about that time period. As best as I can recall, the ocean levels were considerably lower then. If they followed what was the coast at that time, then most of their remains are covered by water. Evidence of that happening has already been discovered in Europe.