12. Adovasio and Pedler, Strangers in a New Land, 284; see also J. M. Adovasio and Jake Page, The First Americans: In Pursuit of Archaeology’s Greatest Mystery (Modern Library, 2003), 272.
13. Adovasio and Pedler, Strangers in a New Land, 284.
14. A. C. Goodyear, “Evidence of Pre-Clovis Sites in the Eastern United States,” 110.
15. Wm Jack Hranicky, Bipoints Before Clovis: Trans-Oceanic Migrations and Settlement of Prehistoric Americas (Universal Publishers, 2012), 50.
16. Ibid, 283. And see also Adovasio and Page, The First Americans, 272.
17. Adovasio and Page, The First Americans, 272.
18. This list, from Wikipedia, gives some idea of the number of claimed sites, but, as its failure to include the Cerutti Mastodon Site indicates, it is by no means complete: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Pre-Clovis_archaeological_sites_in_the_Americas. Probably the most useful source is Adovasio and Pedler, Strangers in a New Land, which devotes many chapters to the more credible pre-Clovis sites. But see also http://scienceviews.com/indian/pre_clovis_sites.html and https://www.thoughtco.com/pre-clovis-sites-americas-173079.
19. For a fascinating and extensive discussion of Hueyatlaco, a site that we will consider further, see Christopher Hardaker, The First American: The Suppressed Story of the People Who Discovered the New World (New Page Books, 2007).
20. Adovasio and Pedler, Strangers in a New Land.
21. Ibid. For Pedra Furada, see also N. Guidon and G. Delibrias, “Carbon-14 Dates Point to Man in the Americas 32,000 Years Ago,” Nature 321 (June 19, 1986), 769, and Marvin W. Rowe and Karen L. Steelman, “Comment on ‘Some Evidence of a Date of First Humans to Arrive in Brazil,’ Journal of Archaeological Science 30 (2003), 1349.
22. Adovasio and Pedler, Strangers in a New Land. Compare, for example, the Topper Assemblage going back 50,000 years or more (p. 279ff.), with the relative sophistication of the Miller Lanceolate projectile point and bone tools found at Meadowcroft (dated between about 17,000 years ago and 13,000 years ago) (pp. 211–212), or with the chert “El Jobo” projectile points from Monte Verde (dated to around 14,500 years ago) (p. 225), or with the Cactus Hill points, dated roughly 18,000 years ago (p. 235).
23. In 2011, there were over 100 uncontacted tribes worldwide. See, for example, Joanna Eede, “Uncontacted Tribes: The Last Free People on Earth,” National Geographic Blog: Changing Planet (April 1, 2011), https://blog.nationalgeographic.org/2011/04/01/uncontacted-tribes-the-last-free-people-on-earth/.
24. For example, Stuart J. Fiedel, “The Anzick Genome Proves Clovis Is First, After All,” Quaternary International 44 (2017), 4–9.
25. As King reminds us with regard to Topper, “Prior to 1998, no units were taken deeper than the Clovis age level since the project director thought it was the oldest possible occupation. However, the 1997 reporting on the discoveries at Monte Verde in South America and discoveries at Cactus Hill, Virginia, in 1998 prompted Goodyear and his research team to excavate below what was known to be Clovis-age sediments.” (“MA Thesis Title: The Distribution of Paleoindian Debitage from the Pleistocene Terrace at the Topper Site: An Evaluation of a Possible Pre-Clovis Occupation (38Al23),” 15.) If you don’t look, you won’t find!
PART III
7: SIBERIA
1. Pengfei Qin and Mark Stoneking, “Denisovan Ancestry in East Eurasian and Native American Populations,” Molecular Biology and Evolution 32, no. 10 (2015), 2671.
2. Ibid., 2669, Figure 4.
3. A. Briney, “Geography of Siberia,” ThoughtCo. (last updated March 17, 2017), https://www.thoughtco.com/geography-of-siberia-1435483.
4. Reconstructions of global sea level over the past 470 ka suggest it was possible to walk from Asia to Alaska via the Bering land bridge from approximately 370 to 337 ka, 283 to 240 ka, 189 to 130 ka, and 75 to 11 ka. See for example Mark Siddall et al., “Sea Level Fluctuations During the Last Glacial Cycle,” Nature 423 (June 19, 2003), 855, Figure 2.
5. Qiaomei Fu et al., “Genome Sequence of a 45,000-Year-Old Modern Human from Western Siberia,” Nature 514 (October 23, 2014), 445ff; and Vladimir V. Pitulko et al., “Early Human Presence in the Arctic: Evidence from 45,000-Year-Old Mammoth Remains,” Science 351, no. 6270 (January 15, 2016), 260ff.
6. M. Raghavan et al., “Upper Paleolithic Siberian Genome Reveals Dual Ancestry of Native Americans,” Nature 505 (January 2, 2014), “The Y chromosome of MA-1 [an ancient 24kya Siberian individual] is … near the root of most Native American lineages. Similarly, we find autosomal evidence that MA-1 is … genetically closely related to modern-day Native Americans” (p. 87). See also M. Rasmussen et al., “The Genome of a Late Pleistocene Human from a Clovis Burial Site in Western Montana,” Nature 506 (February 13, 2014), “Gene flow from the Siberian Upper Paleolithic Mal’ta population into Native American ancestors is also shared by the Anzick-1 [ancient American/Montanan] individual and thus happened before 12,600 years BP. … Our data are compatible with the hypothesis that Anzick-1 belonged to a population directly ancestral to many contemporary Native Americans” (p. 225).
7. There have been a few theories, generally regarded by the academic establishment as “zany,” “lunatic,” or worse, that have attempted to argue that prehistoric settlement also occurred from Europe by boat across the Atlantic Ocean. Among these, the most credible is the so-called Solutrean theory of Clovis origins put forward by Dennis J. Stanford, curator of archaeology and director of the Paleoindian Program at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History, and his fellow researcher and coauthor Bruce A. Bradley, associate professor in archaeology and director of the Experimental Archaeology program at the University of Exeter. See Dennis J. Stanford and Bruce A. Bradley, Across Atlantic Ice: The Origin of America’s Clovis Culture (University of California Press, 2012).
To cut a very long story very short indeed, Stanford and Bradley strongly resist what they call “the preconceived notion of geneticists and archaeologists that the Americas must have been settled by Asians” (p. 246). Their argument, instead, is that “Clovis predecessors were immigrants from southwestern Europe” and that this wave of immigration took place during the last glacial maximum (p. 247), in other words, somewhere around 22,000 years ago. Their claim is based on the—admittedly stunningly close—morphological resemblances between bifacial projectile points made by the “Solutrean” culture of Upper Paleolithic western Europe between roughly 22,000 and 17,000 years ago, and almost identical bifacial projectile points made with an almost identical technique by North America’s “Clovis” culture over a period of less than 1,000 years beginning roughly 13,400 years ago.
The gap of several thousand years between the end of the Solutreans and the beginning of Clovis is one among many reasons why the majority of archaeologists reject Stanford and Bradley’s unusually daring theory, while more recent genetic research claims to have refuted it completely. See Morten Rasmussen et al., “The Genome of a Late Pleistocene Human from a Clovis Burial Site in Western Montana,” 228. See also Jennifer A. Raff and Deborah Bolnick, “Genetic Roots of the First Americans,” Nature 506 (February 13, 2014), 162. Indeed Raff and Bolnick of the University of Texas have such confidence in this new research that they conclude: “Unless proponents offer evidence of direct European ancestry in other securely dated ancient American genomes, the Solutrean hypothesis can no longer be treated as a credible alternative for Clovis (or Native American) origins. It is time to move on to more interesting questions.”
8. See part 2 of America Before.
9. A major multidisciplinary study published in 2016 in Nature pointed out that the supposed “ice-free” corridor would have been completely uninhabitable until 12,600 years ago (Mikkel W. Pedersen et al., “Postglacial Viability and Colonization in North America’s Ice-Free Corridor,” Nature 537 no. 7618 (2016), 45). The authors demonstrate this by means of ancient DNA from the bottom of glacial lakes. This suggests that the “first” Americans did not arrive by land, but by sea. This is supported
by a study undertaken by a team from the University of California, who reconstructed family trees for bison that lived in the “ice free” corridor and demonstrated that it wasn’t habitable until 13,000 years ago (Peter. D. Heintzman et al., “Bison Phylogeography Constrains Dispersal and Viability of the Ice Free Corridor in Western Canada,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 113, no. 29 (2016), 8057–8063). Though these studies do not rule out the possibility that the “first” Americans reached the Americas via the Bering land bridge and ice-free corridor as Clovis proponents contend, they do enhance the likelihood that early Americans favored sea over land crossings.
10. Kris Hirst, “The Beringian Standstill Hypothesis: An Overview,” August 14, 2017, https://www.thoughtco.com/beringian-standstill-hypothesis-first-americans-172859.
11. S. L. Bonatto and F. M. Salzano, “A Single and Early Migration for the Peopling of the Americas Supported by Mitochondrial DNA Sequence Data,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 94, no. 5 (1997), 1866–1871. The authors suggest, on the basis of mitochondrial DNA results, that the collapse of the ice-free corridor between ~14,000 and ~20,000 years ago isolated the people south of the ice sheets, who gave rise to the Amerind, from those still in Beringia; the latter originated the Na-Dene, Eskimo, and probably the Siberian Chukchi.
12. L. Wade, “On the Trail of Ancient Mariners,” Science 357, no. 6351 (2017), 542–545.
13. C. Clarkson et al., “Human Occupation of Northern Australia by 65,000 Years Ago,” Nature 547, no. 7663 (2017), 306.
14. Heather Pringle, “From Vilified to Vindicated: The Story of Jacques Cinq-Mars,” Hakai Magazine, March 7, 2017, https://www.hakaimagazine.com/features/vilified-vindicated-story-jacques-cinq-mars/?xid=PS_smithsonian and at http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/jacques-cinq-mars-bluefish-caves-scientific-progress-180962410/#A1zGtDKtgySyduU6.99.
15. “Found: Dragon and Griffin Megaliths ‘Dating Back 12,000 Years to End of Ice Age, or Earlier,’” Siberian Times, May 8, 2017, http://siberiantimes.com/other/others/features/found-dragon-and-griffin-megaliths-dating-back-12000-years-to-end-of-ice-age-or-earlier/.
16. Location here: https://mapcarta.com/25567370/Map.
17. “Found: Dragon and Griffin Megaliths ‘Dating Back 12,000 Years to End of Ice Age, or Earlier.’”
18. Ibid.
19. Ibid.
20. Confirmed by emails between my research assistant Holly Lasko and Maxim Kozlikin, May 4–7, 2018. Excerpt from email of May 4—HL to MK:
To what extent can we say that we’ve gained a good archaeological understanding of the Altai during the Palaeolithic? Or, in other words, approximately how much of the Altai region remains to be excavated? From what I can see, our understanding is limited to approximately 15 main sites out of a possible very many more.
Thank you so much for your time.
May 5: Dear Holly, To be brief, then indeed, the key multi-layered well-studied sites are about 20. In total, more than 100 objects are known.
Yours sincerely, Maxim.
May 7: Thanks so much Maxim! By “objects” do you mean Palaeolithic artifacts?
May 7: Dear Holly, I meant the number of Paleolithic sites.
8: HALL OF RECORDS
1. Christy G. Turner et al., Animal Teeth and Human Tools: A Taphonomic Odyssey in Ice Age Siberia (Cambridge University Press, 2013), 79.
2. Denisova Cave, Useful Information, http://www.showcaves.com/english/ru/caves/Denisova.html.
3. David Reich et al., “Genetic History of an Archaic Hominin Group from Denisova Cave in Siberia,” Nature 468 (December 23–30, 2010), 1053.
4. Turner et al., Animal Teeth and Human Tools, 79.
5. N. Zwyns, “Altai: Paleolithic” in Encyclopedia of Global Archaeology: “Based on the Eurasian system of division, three main periods can be recognized during the Paleolithic of the Altai: the Lower, Middle, and Upper Paleolithic. The Lower Paleolithic corresponds to the first human occupation of the Altai that would start c. 800 ka. The Middle Paleolithic would start sometime at the end of the Middle Pleistocene and last until c. 50 ka. The Upper Paleolithic covers a time range from c. 50 ka to the end of the Pleistocene” (p. 150). Note that while this is the commonly discerned time frame among Altai archaeologists, the time frame for the Paleolithic era varies by region and academic discipline.
6. Turner et al., Animal Teeth and Human Tools, 79.
7. A. Gibbons, “Who Were the Denisovans?” Science 333 (August 26, 2011). Svante Pääbo comments, “The one place where we are sure all three human forms have lived at one time or another is here in Denisova Cave.” In 2010, a Neanderthal toe bone was discovered in Denisova Cave. The results of its morphological analysis are documented in M. B. Mednikova, “A Proximal Pedal Phalanx of a Paleolithic Hominin from Denisova Cave, Altai,” Archaeology, Ethnology and Anthropology of Eurasia 39, no. 1 (2011). Radiocarbon dating of the organic material found above the toe revealed that the Neanderthal roamed the cave at least 50,000 years ago. In S. Brown et al., “Identification of a New Hominin Bone from Denisova Cave, Siberia, Using Collagen Fingerprinting and Mitochondrial DNA Analysis,” Scientific Reports 6, no. 25339 (March 29, 2016), a sample taken from layer 12 from the East Gallery of the cave was found through mtDNA analysis to be from a >50,000-year-old Neanderthal. Then, in 2017, researchers successfully sequenced soil samples from the Cave for DNA; Neanderthal DNA was detected in layer 15 from the Main Gallery, and layer 14 from the East Gallery at a depth deeper than any fossilized remains or artifacts have been found (V. Slon et al., “Neanderthal and Denisovan DNA from Pleistocene Sediments,” Science 356, no. 6338 [May 12, 2017]: 605–608). Frequent occupations of Denisova Cave by Neanderthals are supported by the Mousterian artifacts, generally associated with Neanderthals, that have been excavated there. The editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica, in “Denisova Cave,” https://www.britannica.com/place/Denisova-Cave (last updated February 8, 2018), state that there is “evidence of 13 separate occupations occurring between 125,000 and 30,000 years ago … supported by the presence of artifacts from the Acheulean, Mousterian, and Levalloisian stone-flaking industries,” all of which are associated with Neanderthals.
8. The first conclusive evidence that anatomically modern humans interbred with Neanderthals was established in 2010 by R. E. Green et al., “A Draft Sequence of the Neanderthal Genome,” Science 328, no. 5979 (May 7, 2010), 710–722. The investigators conclude, on the basis of remains from Croatia, that “between 1 and 4% of the genomes of people in Eurasia are derived from Neandertals” (p. 721). Then, an investigation by K. Prüfer et al., “The Complete Genome Sequence of a Neanderthal from the Altai Mountains,” Nature 505 (January 2, 2014), concluded that “the proportion of Neanderthal-derived DNA in people outside Africa is 1.5–2.1%” (p. 45). All these results are consistent with Q. Fu et al.’s findings in “An Early Modern Human from Romania with a Recent Neanderthal Ancestor,” Nature 524 (August 13, 2015), 216–219, in which the 37,000–42,000-year-old was confirmed as having 6–9 percent of its genome derived from Neanderthals (p. 216). The most recent and accurate investigation on modern human and Neanderthal interbreeding was, however, led by K. Prüfer, “A High-Coverage Neanderthal Genome from Vindija Cave in Croatia,” Science 358 (November 3, 2017), 655–658. In this study, non-African populations outside Oceania are found to carry between 1.8 and 2.6 percent Neanderthal DNA, East Asians are found to carry 2.3–2.6 percent Neanderthal DNA, and Western Eurasians carry 1.8–2.4 percent. The amount of Neanderthal DNA carried by current modern humans can therefore be estimated as being in the realm of 0–4 percent.
9. Reich et al., “Genetic History of an Archaic Hominin Group from Denisova Cave in Siberia,” 1053.
10. Ibid., 1054–1060.
11. Ibid., 1053.
12. Ibid., 1053–1054, 1059.
13. Information provided by Irina Salnikova. For further details on what the excavators call “the art collection,” see A. P. Derevianko, M. V. Shunkov, and P. V. Volkov, “A Palaeolithi
c Bracelet from Denisova Cave,” Archaeology, Ethnology and Anthropology of Eurasia 43, no. 2 (June 2008), 15.
14. Some of the raw materials came from as much as 200 kilometers away. Ibid., 17.
15. Ibid., 14. Holocene levels are designated 0–8.
16. “First Glimpse Inside the Siberian Cave That Holds the Key to Man’s Origins,” Siberian Times, July 28, 2015, http://siberiantimes.com/science/casestudy/features/f0135-first-glimpse-inside-the-siberian-cave-that-holds-the-key-to-mans-origins/. See photo captioned “The wall, showing all the 22 layers of Denisova cave,” and compare with Santha Faiia’s photo taken in September 2017.
17. Derevianko, Shunkov, and Volkov, “A Palaeolithic Bracelet from Denisova Cave,” 14.
18. Ibid., 16.
19. Ibid.
20. The historical explanation for this is unsurprisingly rooted in early-twentieth-century interpretations of human origins. See, for example, Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, “La Chapelle-aux-Saints,” http://humanorigins.si.edu/evidence/human-fossils/fossils/la-chapelle-aux-saints (accessed March 12, 2018), “The original reconstruction of the ‘Old Man of La Chapelle’ by scientist Pierre Marcellin Boule led to the reason why popular culture stereotyped Neanderthals as dim-witted brutes for so many years. In 1911, Boule reconstructed this skeleton with a severely curved spine indicative of a stooped, slouching stance with bent knees, forward flexed hips, and the head jutted forward. He thought the low vaulted cranium and the large brow ridge, somewhat reminiscent of that seen in large apes such as gorillas, indicated a generally primitive early human and a lack of intelligence.”
The Neanderthal discovery took place within the Victorian epoch in which the Western white man sought to excuse his domination and colonization of the world by means of cultural and racial hegemony, namely “scientific racism” (also termed “eugenics”). It is unsurprising that Neanderthals, a species considered more primitive than the most “primitive” early-twentieth-century humans, were instantly assumed to be intellectually and creatively incapable and totally unable to enjoy abilities reserved for “civilised” white modern humans.
America Before Page 54
