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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

#61

Post by c54 »

ArchStanton wrote: post #25
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.

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 you referring to the ethnic cleansings performed by the US government in the 19th century?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_Walk_of_the_Navajo

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

#62

Post by [deleted] »

_3u10 wrote: post #33
PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

[deleted]

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

#63

Post by Kostchei »

mistrial9 wrote: post #43
haroldp wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I first joined facebook in 2009, but have been on the internet since 1991. You might counter that facebook only started in 2004, and didn't get much traction until 2006. But I was invited before that and simply didn't care to join, preferring to occupy other parts of the `net. Likewise, Clovis artifacts all date from after the peak of the last ice age, when glaciers were melting, land routes were opening, and sea lev…

you were using what network protocol stack in 1991 ? Banyan "vines" or token-ring ?

direct dial to BBS, at least that was the "internet" for me at that stage. The disparate nodes of bulletin boards wasn't what I would call an internet. And it was very cliquish.

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

#64

Post by _moof »

beenBoutIT wrote: post #45
imbnwa wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

As of 1995 more than 50% of people who identified as Indigenous preferred the term "American Indian".[0] It's interesting how people outside of a group can erase that group's identity just by taking away the name that they use to define themselves. Any politically correct American has to say "Native American" or use the even more generic term "Indigenous People" while the majority of the people being referred to unde…

I don't get where this "has to" business is coming from. If they want to be called Indians or American Indians, then I'll call them that. There's no need to get wound up.

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

#65

Post by irrational »

miniwark wrote: post #55
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?

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_...

Someone else posted this farther down, but you might not see it. Apparently there is some proof that they also have ancestry from Australia.

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/dna-search-fir...

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

#66

Post by rad_gruchalski »

230149dsad232jj wrote: post #16
pomian wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cool. You get to see the image and even save it, before the pay wall appears. And an image is truly worth a 1000 words.

I guess since you are unwilling to pay for NY Times journalism, the image is worth 1000 * 0. Which is fine, I just thought your choice of wording was amusing.

Oh, I am willing to pay. What I’m not willing to do is to pay $10 here, $10 there, $10 over there and maybe another $10 somewhere else.

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

#67

Post by _moof »

ArchStanton wrote: post #25
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.

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…

I still don't understand why the question of originality or whatever is anything but a red herring. Europeans came and nearly wiped out the existing peoples and destroyed their cultures. Are we really going to split hairs and say that's a fine and dandy thing to have done? Because if so you'll have to follow it up with an argument for why that same logic does not apply to a hypothetical future invader of the United States, and good luck with that.

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

#68

Post by [deleted] »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #31
quercusa wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

[deleted]

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

#69

Post by Causality1 »

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?

Correct. The evidence isn't exactly overflowing but what little there is indicates the Clovis migration was not a peaceful one and existing populations either met a violent end or were forced to move to areas where their populations couldn't be sustained and slowly died out.

The parallels to the European genocide of Native Americans has significant consequences to two groups of people. The first is the white supremacists/edgelords who think an invasion from thousands of years ago means the actions of colonial Europeans as well as ongoing social justice issues with native Americans/reservations are somehow justified or deserved. The second is the far larger but far less dangerous group of people who think native Americans are somehow inherently morally superior and/or that European colonialism is responsible for all the world's problems. To them it's an article of faith that aboriginal peoples do not and cannot commit large-scale atrocities.

These two groups can make discussing and teaching American pre-history very difficult.

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

#70

Post by AlotOfReading »

twobitshifter wrote: post #59
AlotOfReading wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

The authors' speculation that this was due to both populations originating in east Asia eventually turned out to be true once further work was done on sequencing Tianyuan man [1]. It's not indicative of Pleistocene trans-pacific contacts.

[1] https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2017.09.030

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