Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Fossil footprints reveal humans in North America earlier than previously thought

usgs.gov

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 83 posts

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

#51

Post by irrational »

AlotOfReading wrote: post #39
irrational wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 resourc…

What is the reasoning for thinking they came from the top? You’ve said they had already reached Australia via boat. Couldn’t they have reached some other part of the Americas by boat, maybe South America via Africa or Easter island?

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

#52

Post by irrational »

ajross wrote: post #47
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?

> I assume they built boats There was a land bridge due to lower sea levels during the last glaciation. HOW people from Asia populated the Americas is not really the question.

But now they are saying that people were here before the land bridge was usable or existed, right? So, maybe they came some way other than the land bridge. Or, earlier peoples came via some other route (hence the current footprints) and then a later migration came via the land bridge.

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

#53

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

ajross wrote: post #47
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?

> I assume they built boats There was a land bridge due to lower sea levels during the last glaciation. HOW people from Asia populated the Americas is not really the question.

Actually, that absolutely is the question.

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

#54

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

ajross wrote: post #48
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.

Uh... who? I mean, yes, it's true that almost all native americans (the exceptions being the Inuit and their relatives who are more recent immigrants) are descendants of a single wave of population motion out of asia about 12kya that coincides closely with the Clovis culture. But hints that there were people here before that have been around for a long time, starting with the Monte Verde work in Chile a few decades b…

Just to clarify: you're saying that genetic analysis appears to rule out current natives being (at least partially) descended from a pre-clovis population?

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

#55

Post by miniwark »

irrational wrote: post #51
AlotOfReading wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 resourc…

What is the reasoning for thinking they came from the top? You’ve said they had already reached Australia via boat. Couldn’t they have reached some other part of the Americas by boat, maybe South America via Africa or Easter island?

Mainly because both Americas where inhabited way before the pacific islands. For example Easter Island is estimated to have been inhabited around 300 to 1200 CE. This is also confirmed by genetics, with an origin of the Amerindians located around central Siberia.

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_history_of_Indigenous_...

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

#56

Post by ajross »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #54
ajross wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Uh... who? I mean, yes, it's true that almost all native americans (the exceptions being the Inuit and their relatives who are more recent immigrants) are descendants of a single wave of population motion out of asia about 12kya that coincides closely with the Clovis culture. But hints that there were people here before that have been around for a long time, starting with the Monte Verde work in Chile a few decades b…

Just to clarify: you're saying that genetic analysis appears to rule out current natives being (at least partially) descended from a pre-clovis population?

I'm not an expert. But yes, that's my understanding. The pre-clovis americans seem to have died out and not integrated.

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

#57

Post by AlotOfReading »

irrational wrote: post #51
AlotOfReading wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 resourc…

What is the reasoning for thinking they came from the top? You’ve said they had already reached Australia via boat. Couldn’t they have reached some other part of the Americas by boat, maybe South America via Africa or Easter island?

We've definitively established that Clovis populations and all modern Native Americans are genetically related to Beringian populations out of Eurasia. It's reasonable to suspect pre-clovis populations probably came from much the same area, especially given that suggested pre-clovis lithics so closely resemble clovis traditions.

Additionally, the farthest east that we've found evidence of Australasian populations is the Solomon islands, some 7,000+ mi from South America. There's no evidence of habitation on the intervening islands until Austronesian peoples show up much later. As for Africa, we simply have no evidence for it whatsoever.

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

#58

Post by satronaut »

tejtm wrote: post #44
satronaut wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

And possibly more raw intelligence as we have mainly been selecting for "smarter than grass" since beginning this experiment in agriculture 10k - 20k years ago.

I've heard that humans are evolving to become more dumb. The idea is that it's easier for an idiot to survive and procreate than it was in the past

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

#59

Post by twobitshifter »

AlotOfReading wrote: post #57
irrational wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is the reasoning for thinking they came from the top? You’ve said they had already reached Australia via boat. Couldn’t they have reached some other part of the Americas by boat, maybe South America via Africa or Easter island?

We've definitively established that Clovis populations and all modern Native Americans are genetically related to Beringian populations out of Eurasia. It's reasonable to suspect pre-clovis populations probably came from much the same area, especially given that suggested pre-clovis lithics so closely resemble clovis traditions. Additionally, the farthest east that we've found evidence of Australasian populations is…

There actually is some evidence. I remembered this article but I’m no expert. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/dna-search-fir...
Post reply on HN