21–30 of 83 posts
Expect this to get messy. There are powerful interest groups whose self-identity relies on Clovis culture and its descendants being the first peoples of the Americas.
My dad used to make this argument: of all the millions of footprints that humans made, after arriving in North America, what is the likelihood that we found the very first of those footprints? The point is, whatever evidence we find, it's unreasonable to think that evidence we've found is the first evidence that existed, so we have to assume the real arrival was a bit before that. When we had evidence of humans arriv…
My dad used to make this argument: of all the millions of footprints that humans made, after arriving in North America, what is the likelihood that we found the very first of those footprints? The point is, whatever evidence we find, it's unreasonable to think that evidence we've found is the first evidence that existed, so we have to assume the real arrival was a bit before that. When we had evidence of humans arriv…
This is similar to the German Tank Problem - given you have found N numbered tanks, how many total tanks are there? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_tank_problem
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is actually how archeologists estimate their ranges for human habitation in an area, just with math instead of guesses. This paper isn't about that (try timing papers like [1] instead), it's about the actual radioisotope boundary dates for an actual site. Part of the problem these LGM dates keep running into is that it's not obvious how people got here in the first place. After about 48kya, the ice free corridor…
I assume they built boats. It isn't exactly surprising after 20k years that we can't find any proof of these boats, but how else would then have come across? Fly?
It's not that either is impossible or even improbable, it's just that it forces us to revisit everything again to try and work out the routes if these (and other similarly early dates that have been proposed in the last couple years) hold up under review.
Expect this to get messy. There are powerful interest groups whose self-identity relies on Clovis culture and its descendants being the first peoples of the Americas.
Generally, I'd say that any group of Native Americans (or folks who profit from them either emotionally or financially) wants to be thought of as the 'first' people who ever lived on that piece of land. Perhaps they popped up from the earth like the skeletons in Jason and the Argonauts.
There's a legitimacy angle here that's become super important in the last decade or so. Then there's the argument about 'nobody lived here when my people moved in' that's allowed for some people, not for others.
It isn't like the Sioux or the Navajo have been in their current location all that long. It's all so tiresome.
Expect this to get messy. There are powerful interest groups whose self-identity relies on Clovis culture and its descendants being the first peoples of the Americas.
"From our oral histories, we know that our people have been part of this land since the beginning of time," a leader of the Umatilla tribe wrote in a statement at the time. "We do not believe that our people migrated here from another continent, as the scientists do."
https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2016/05/05/476631934...
Expect this to get messy. There are powerful interest groups whose self-identity relies on Clovis culture and its descendants being the first peoples of the Americas.
Who are these interest groups? My understanding is that pre-Clovis is completely established beyond any semblance of reasonable doubt, so they're 30+ years behind the times.
Clovis-Americans have certain unique rights based on legal theories that their ancestors were the first human occupants of the land, which would be weakened or voided if substantial scientific evidence established that they simply replaced a prior human culture. Due to a perverse set of incentives, native American interest groups use these unique rights to actively interfere with archaeological research that might undermine their claims to being the first occupants of the land. While it has not stopped pre-Clovis research, it has greatly impeded it.
While the scientific evidence strongly suggests a pre-Clovis people, the legal theories and legislation that presume this is not the case are still active. These are evaluated on a case by case basis currently.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I assume they built boats. It isn't exactly surprising after 20k years that we can't find any proof of these boats, but how else would then have come across? Fly?
We know that humans had boats by that point due to their presence in Australia and the current dominance of the coastal migration hypothesis. The problem is that our current understanding of the climate is that the coast was too ice-locked by glaciers for coastal foraging. If there's something this old, either they were doing some very impressive and unexpectedly long distance nautical journeys, or there are gaps in…
Expect this to get messy. There are powerful interest groups whose self-identity relies on Clovis culture and its descendants being the first peoples of the Americas.
That's a good point. Generally, I'd say that any group of Native Americans (or folks who profit from them either emotionally or financially) wants to be thought of as the 'first' people who ever lived on that piece of land. Perhaps they popped up from the earth like the skeletons in Jason and the Argonauts. There's a legitimacy angle here that's become super important in the last decade or so. Then there's the argume…
Are there particular reasons that you use the Sioux or the Navajo in this? Is this a general claim that "no populations stay in a particular location for more than X years", or something more specific?