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Fossil footprints reveal humans in North America earlier than previously thought

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Re: Fossil footprints reveal humans in North America earlier than previously thought

#31

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

quercusa wrote: post #26
Causality1 wrote: post #19

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.

e.g., with regard to Kennewick Man: "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...

This is actually a different claim that one in the comment you're replying to.

Being "the first humans to migrate to the Americans" is quite different from "we didn't migrate from anywhere at all, we've been here forever".

I've never understood human cultures that use oral histories. The oral history of the US from 6 months ago is completely unreliable. Who could possibly put much stock in an oral history of several thousand years ago, and why?

Re: Fossil footprints reveal humans in North America earlier than previously thought

#32

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

jandrewrogers wrote: post #28
AlotOfReading wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

From what my archaeologist friends in North America tell me, the interest group is modern native Americans. They are the direct descendants of the Clovis culture. 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 cul…

> Clovis-Americans have certain unique rights based on legal theories that their ancestors were the first human occupants of the land

Please point to these rights and legal theories. Do you just mean NAGPRA?

As far as I know, whatever legal rights any native American people have in the Americas at this point in time are based purely on them being here when Europeans arrived near the start of the 16th century.

Whether they had been the occupants for 400 years or 40,000 years wouldn't make any difference to the treaties that were signed (and generally abrogated).

Re: Fossil footprints reveal humans in North America earlier than previously thought

#33

Post by _3u10 »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #30
ArchStanton wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> It isn't like the Sioux or the Navajo have been in their current location all that long. It's all so tiresome. 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?

They are likely alluding to the trail of tears.

Re: Fossil footprints reveal humans in North America earlier than previously thought

#34

Post by imbnwa »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #32
jandrewrogers wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From what my archaeologist friends in North America tell me, the interest group is modern native Americans. They are the direct descendants of the Clovis culture. 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 cul…

> Clovis-Americans have certain unique rights based on legal theories that their ancestors were the first human occupants of the land Please point to these rights and legal theories. Do you just mean NAGPRA? As far as I know, whatever legal rights any native American people have in the Americas at this point in time are based purely on them being here when Europeans arrived near the start of the 16th century. Whether…

This whole digression seems like a weird snipe at "identity politics" when in this particular case, its pretty clear cut.

Re: Fossil footprints reveal humans in North America earlier than previously thought

#35

Post by UncleEntity »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #30
ArchStanton wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> It isn't like the Sioux or the Navajo have been in their current location all that long. It's all so tiresome. 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?

The introduction of horses by the Europeans significantly changed their cultures.

Re: Fossil footprints reveal humans in North America earlier than previously thought

#36

Post by AlotOfReading »

jandrewrogers wrote: post #28
AlotOfReading wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

From what my archaeologist friends in North America tell me, the interest group is modern native Americans. They are the direct descendants of the Clovis culture. 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 cul…

I'm a (formerly working) archeologist. Native American land claims are horrifically complicated and way beyond my knowledge, but I'm not aware of anything that's legally based on the scientific consensus about the earliest inhabitants of a specific area. Instead, the term you'll commonly find used is "aboriginal title", which basically just means "we've been here a long time". It's as deliberately vague as it seems and isn't affected by pre-Clovis at all.

NAGPRA has run into complex issues with ownership being unclear when we've found ancient remains, but that doesn't mean people are rejecting the concept of pre-Clovis. It's a separate set of issues entirely.

I'll mention that many indigenous belief systems do incorporate aspects of "we've always lived here" when that's clearly not what the archaeology says. Most such people accept both sides as belonging to separate things in my experience. It's not all that different from Christians who believe Exodus happened for example. The scientific consensus isn't really relevant to that belief and that's fine.

Re: Fossil footprints reveal humans in North America earlier than previously thought

#38

Post by tzs »

AlotOfReading wrote: post #24
irrational wrote: post #20

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…

One point in favor of a water route is you can carry a lot more stuff that way. Most of the migrations into the Americas were before animals other than perhaps dogs were domesticated and before the wheel was invented.

So anything you wanted to bring with you on a land route had to be carried by humans, dogs, or pulled on sleds by humans or dogs.

On a water route you could tow another boat or raft behind full of your stuff. (Rope was invented long before any migration to the Americas).

Re: Fossil footprints reveal humans in North America earlier than previously thought

#39

Post by AlotOfReading »

irrational wrote: post #29
AlotOfReading wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Coastal foraging? Why can't they just fish? There are lots of fish in those northern reaches today, I assume there would have been even more back then. And fish doesn't necessarily have to be cooked, so no requirement to stop to make fires.

Note that the phrase "coastal foraging" typically implies fishing and the exploitation of other littoral/marine resources.

Anyway, the current understanding of the paleoclimate is that entire region between approximately Valdez and Vancouver Island was entirely covered by glaciers out to the edge of continental shelf until ~18kya. Lesnek et al has some good diagrams [1]. Living exclusively off deep-sea marine resources in an iceberge minefield without fire for over a thousand miles in one of the coldest, most dangerous oceans in the world without landing suggests an unprecedented level of both nautical technology and experience. Where did that come from? We have no good answers right now.

[1] https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.aar5040

Re: Fossil footprints reveal humans in North America earlier than previously thought

#40

Post by satronaut »

irrational wrote: post #20
AlotOfReading wrote: post #9

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?

tbh they were probably way more advanced than we give, or want to give, them credit for
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