America Before

by Graham Hancock

  37. Becerra-Valdivia et al., “Reassessing the Chronology of the Archaeological Site of Anzick.”

  38. Ibid., 2.

  39. Ibid., 1.

  40. D. S. Miller, V. D. Holliday, and J. Bright, “Clovis Across the Continent,” in Paleoamerican Odyssey, ed. Kelly E. Graf, Caroline V. Ketron, and Michael R. Waters (Texas A&M University, 2014), 207–220.

  41. Rasmussen et al., “The Genome of a Late Pleistocene Human,” 226.

  42. Ibid.

  43. Ibid.

  44. Ibid., 225; Raff and Bolnick, “Genetic Roots of the First Americans,” 162.

  45. Pontus Skoglund et al., “Genetic Evidence for Two Founding Populations of the Americas,” Nature 525 (September 3, 2015), 104. Emphasis added.

  46. Ibid.

  47. Ibid., 104–105.

  48. “A DNA Search for the First Americans Links Amazon Groups to Indigenous Australians,” Smithsonian Magazine, July 21, 2015, http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/dna-search-first-americans-links-amazon-indigenous-australians-180955976/.

  49. Ibid.

  50. Pontus Skoglund and David Reich, “A Genomic View of the Peopling of the Americas,” Current Opinion in Genetics and Development 41 (December 2016), 31.

  51. Cited in Stephanie Dutchen, “Genetic Studies Link Indigenous Peoples in the Amazon and Australasia,” July 21, 2015, https://phys.org/news/2015-07-genetic-link-indigenous-peoples-amazon.html.

  52. Skoglund et al., “Genetic Evidence for Two Founding Populations of the Americas,” 107. See also David Reich, Who We Are and How We Got Here (Oxford University Press, 2018), 154, where a tentative “Date uncertain” age for the arrival of “Population Y” in the Americas is put at “20,000 years ago.”

  53. Skoglund and Reich, “A Genomic View of the Peopling of the Americas,” 31.

  54. Skoglund et al., “Genetic Evidence for Two Founding Populations of the Americas,” 107.

  55. Ibid.

  56. Skoglund and Reich, “A Genomic View of the Peopling of the Americas,” 31.

  10: A SIGNAL FROM THE DREAMTIME?

  1. Pontus Skoglund et al., “Genetic Evidence for Two Founding Populations of the Americas,” Nature 525 (September 3, 2015).

  2. Maanasa Raghavan et al., “Genomic Evidence for the Pleistocene and Recent Population History of Native Americans,” Science 349 (August 21, 2015).

  3. Ibid., aab3884-1.

  4. Ibid, aab3884-8; see also “Genomic Evidence for the Pleistocene and Recent Population History of Native Americans,” Research Article Summary, Science 349 (August 21, 2015), 841.

  5. Raghavan et al., “Genomic Evidence for the Pleistocene and Recent Population History of Native Americans,” aab3884-8.

  6. Ibid., aab3884-7.

  7. The challenge posed to scholars of the “deliberate voyaging” school is the unconvincing argument that ancient hominins were “accidentally” transported across the sea by natural events like storms and tsunamis. See, for instance, comment from archaeologist Matthew Sprigs in R. Bednarik, “The Maritime Dispersals of Pleistocene Humans,” p. 55: “Given Bednarik’s ongoing search to find out how sea barriers cannot be crossed, one wonders on what basis he can be so certain that colonization cannot have been accidental, by being caught up in strong currents.”

  Among a mass of evidence is a paper by T. F. Strasser et al., “Dating Palaeolithic Sites in Southwestern Crete, Greece,” Journal of Quaternary Science 26, no. 5 (2011), 553–560. Crete has been separated from mainland Greece since the Miocene 6–5 million years ago, so the presence of Pleistocene-age artifacts there proves conclusively that early hominins made sea crossings (unless one is willing to argue that ancient hominins were “accidentally” transported the approximate 500 miles there from mainland Greece or 600 miles there from mainland Turkey via islands).

  The recent analysis of rock art in Asphendou Cave, Crete, fashioning a species of deer, Candiacervus, that has been extinct on the island for at least 11,000 years, indicates that hominins conclusively reached Crete at least 11,000 years ago: if they could create art then why could they not create boats? See T. F. Strasser et al., (2018). “Palaeolithic Cave Art from Crete, Greece,” Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports 18 (2018), 100–108, esp. p. 103, “if Candiacervus, then they date earlier than the end of the Palaeolithic at least 11 thousand years ago,” and p. 107, “The last occurrence of the Cretan dwarf deer Candiacervus sometime after 21,500 years ago provides a terminus ante quem for the earliest layer of the Asphendou Cave rock carvings and confirms them as the oldest figural art found in Greece.”

  Also see T. Ingicco et al., “Earliest Known Hominin Activity in the Philippines by 709 Thousand Years Ago,” Nature 557, no. 7704 (2018), 233. This paper “pushes back the proven period of colonisation of the Philippines by hundreds of thousands of years, and furthermore suggests that early overseas dispersal in Island South East Asia by premodern hominins took place several times during the Early and Middle Pleistocene stages.”

  8. For evidence of Denisovan contribution to the genes of present-day Oceanians, see D. Reich et al., “Genetic History of an Archaic Hominin Group from Denisova Cave in Siberia,” Nature 468 (2010), 1053–1060, and D. Reich et al., “Denisova Admixture and the First Modern Human Dispersals into Southeast Asia and Oceania,” American Journal of Human Genetics 89 (2011), 516–528.

  For a reasonable explanation of this genetic signal see Alan Cooper and Chris Stringer, “Did the Denisovans Cross Wallace’s Line?” Science 342 (2013), 321, esp. p. 332: “The source of the Denisovan gene flow appears to have been east of Wallace’s Line, with a lack of Denisovan DNA in mainland populations explained by Wallace’s Line limiting the reverse dispersal of introgressed populations.”

  For evidence of lesser Denisovan contribution to the genes of present-day East Asians, see K. Prüfer et al., “The Complete Genome Sequence of a Neanderthal from the Altai Mountains,” Nature 505 (2014), 43–49; P. Skoglund and M. Jakobsson, “Archaic Human Ancestry in East Asia,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 108 (2011), 18301–18306; S. R. Browning et al., “Analysis of Human Sequence Data Reveals Two Pulses of Archaic Denisovan Admixture,” Cell 173, no. 1 (2018), 53–61.

  Also see Robert G. Bednarik, “The Beginnings of Maritime Travel,” Advances in Anthropology (January 2014), 209: “The maritime history of humanity commenced not a few thousand years ago, as traditional nautical archaeology has tended to assume, but more than a hundred times as long ago … Archaeological data from Wallacea (Indonesia) have shown that the history of seafaring began in the late part of the Early Pleistocene, at least 900 ka (900,000 years) ago. To understand better the technological magnitude of these very early maritime accomplishments, expeditions are currently engaged in a series of replicative experiments.”

  9. Bednarik, “The Beginnings of Maritime Travel,” 210–211. Also see results of the experiment made in R. G. Bednarik, “An Experiment in Pleistocene Seafaring,” International Journal of Nautical Archaeology 27, no. 2 (1998), 148: “The [800km] voyage from Timor or Roti to Australia was made by a marine people whose accumulated knowledge derived from a history of seafaring spanning at least 700,000, and quite probably a million, years.”

  For Homo erectus’ colonization of Flores, also see Paul Y. Sondaar, “Middle Pleistocene Faunal Turnover and Colonization of Flores (Indonesia) by Homo erectus,” Comptes Rendus de l’Academie des Sciences 319 (1994), 1255: “Several stone artefacts have been found in a uvial sandstone layer belonging to the Ola Bula Formation, near Mata Menge in the Ngada District, West Central Flores, Indonesia … indicating an age of slightly less than 0.73 Ma BP. is relatively old age suggests that the artefacts are the work of Homo erectus.” Also see Ingicco et al., “Earliest Known Hominin Activity in the Philippines by 709 thousand Years Ago,” 233.

  10. The two papers that established the consensus of 3,500 years ago for the Polynesian expansion are I. D. Goodwin, S. A. Browning, and A. J. Anderson, “Climate Windows for Polynesian Voyaging to New Zealand and
Easter Island,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 111, no. 41 (2014), 14716–14721, and D. A. Johns, G. J. Irwin, and Y. K. Sung, “An Early Sophisticated East Polynesian Voyaging Canoe Discovered on New Zealand’s Coast,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 111, no. 41 (2014), 14728–4733.

  11. Having said that, mainstream academia has begun to change its tune. Quoted in a Science news article from April 24, 2018, is “initial skeptic” of prehistoric human seafaring abilities John Cherry of Brown University: “The orthodoxy until pretty recently was that you don’t have seafarers until the early Bronze Age. … Now we are talking about seafaring Neandertals. It’s a pretty stunning change.” Quoted in the same article is Curtis Runnels of Boston University, co-leader of the 2008 and 2009 Crete excavations: “We severely miscalculated. … The seas were more permeable than we thought” (A. Lawler, “Neanderthals, Stone Age People May Have Voyaged the Mediterranean,” Science [April 24, 2018], doi:10.1126/science.aat9795).

  12. Raghavan et al., “Genomic Evidence for the Pleistocene and Recent Population History of Native Americans,” aab3884–7.

  13. Ibid. Emphasis added.

  14. Ibid., 841.

  15. Ibid., 841, aab3884–7.

  16. Ibid.

  17. Email exchange with Professor Eske Willerslev, March 2, 2018.

  18. Ibid.

  19. Ibid.

  20. But for an opposing interpretation, see Skoglund et al., “Genetic Evidence for Two Founding Populations of the Americas,” 104: “The coefficients for which non-American populations contribute the most to the signals separate Native Americans into a cline with two Amazonian groups (Surui and Karitiana) on one extreme and Mesoamericans on the other. … Among the outgroups, the most similar coefficients to Amazonian groups are found in Australasian populations: the Onge from the Andaman Islands in the Bay of Bengal (a so-called ‘Negrito’ group), New Guineans, Papuans and indigenous Australians.” (Emphasis added.)

  21. Ibid.

  22. The Denisovan signal across Native American populations is presently estimated to be between 0.13 and 0.17 percent, not so much on the basis of genomic surveys but of more estimations: “As it was previously estimated that the Denisovan-related ancestry in … [Native American] populations is 3.8 percent to 4.8 percent of that in Oceania … combining this information with our new estimate of approximately 3.5 percent Denisovan ancestry in New Guinea and Australia leads to estimates of Denisovan ancestry in … [Native American] populations of 0.13 percent–0.17 percent.” See Pengfei Qin and Mark Stoneking, “Denisovan Ancestry in East Eurasian and Native American Populations,” Molecular Biology and Evolution 32, no. 10 (2015), 2671.

  23. Raghavan et al., “Genomic Evidence for the Pleistocene and Recent Population History of Native Americans,” aab3884–7.

  24. Skoglund et al., “Genetic Evidence for Two Founding Populations of the Americas,” 106.

  25. See Skoglund and Reich, “A Genomic View of the Peopling of the Americas,” 31, as well as P. Skoglund et al., “Genetic Evidence for Two Founding Populations of the Americas,” Nature 525 (2015), 106.

  26. Email exchange with Professor Eske Willerslev, March 2, 2018.

  27. Ibid.

  28. Ibid.

  29. The dating of Gobekli Tepe, and its implications, is discussed in Graham Hancock, Magicians of the Gods: The Forgotten Wisdom of Earth’s Lost Civilization (2015), chapter 1.

  30. Ian Sample, “Neanderthals—not modern humans—were first artists on Earth, experts claim,” Guardian, February 22, 2018, https://www.theguardian.com/science/2018/feb/22/neanderthals-not-humans-were-first-artists-on-earth-experts-claim. The two studies that conclusively posit Neanderthals as artists are D. L. Hoffmann et al., “Symbolic Use of Marine Shells and Mineral Pigments by Iberian Neandertals 115,000 Years Ago,” Science Advances 4, no. 2 (2018), eaar5255, and D. L. Hoffmann et al., “U-Th Dating of Carbonate Crusts Reveals Neandertal Origin of Iberian Cave Art,” Science 359, no. 6378 (2018), 912–915.

  31. See J. Victor Moreno-Mayar et al., “Early Human Dispersals Within the Americas, Science (First Release, without page numbers), November 8, 2018. See also Cosimo Poth et al., “Reconstructing the Deep Population History of Central and South America,” Cell 175 (November 15, 2018), 1–13. And see summary in Lizzie Wade, “Ancient DNA Confirms Native Americans’ Deep Roots in North and South America,” Science (November 8, 2018).

  32. Moreno-Mayar et al., “Early Human Dispersals Within the Americas.”

  33. Cited in Wade, “Ancient DNA Confirms Native Americans’ Deep Roots in North and South America.”

  PART IV

  11: GHOST CITIES OF THE AMAZON

  1. H. C. Heaton (ed.), The Discovery of the Amazon According to the Account of Friar Gaspar de Carvajal and Other Documents (American Geographical Society, 1934), 169.

  2. Ibid., 172.

  3. Ibid., 198: “There was one settlement that stretched for five leagues without any intervening space from house to house, which was a marvellous thing to behold.” Commenting on this observation, Professor David Wilkinson of UCLA notes that the exact length of a “league” was “not a fully agreed-upon or stabilized physical distance, but was probably not less than 2.5 English statute miles nor more than 4.” See David Wilkinson, “Amazonian Civilization?” Comparative Civilizations Review 74, no. 74 (Spring 2016), 96. At the minimum measure, therefore, 5 leagues equals 12.5 miles (20.1 kilometers), while at the maximum measure, 5 leagues equals 20 miles (32.2 kilometers). It seems safe, therefore, to summarize the extent of this settlement as “more than 20 kilometers.”

  4. Ibid, 198, where the “territory of the great overlord Machiparo,” all inhabited, with “a wealth of natural resources,” is said to extend for 80 leagues. See also p. 188 for a second cultivated area of similar extent. And see p. 217: “This land is as good, as fertile, and as normal in appearance as our Spain. … Already the Indians were beginning to burn over their fields. It is a temperate land, where much wheat may be harvested and all kinds of fruit trees may be grown; besides this, it is suitable for the breeding of all sorts of livestock.” See note above on the length of a league.

  5. For example, see ibid., 190: “This Machiparo has his headquarters near the river upon a small hill and holds sway over many settlements and very large ones which together contribute for fighting purposes fifty thousand men of the age of from thirty years up to seventy.” See also pp. 194–195, 197–199, 204, 213, and 218–219.

  6. See note 3 above on the length of a “league.”

  7. Heaton, The Discovery of the Amazon According to the Account of Friar Gaspar de Carvajal and Other Documents, 198.

  8. Ibid., 200.

  9. Including: “meats, partridges, turkeys, and fish of many sorts;” “turtles and parrots in abundance;” “turtles … manatees and other fish, and roasted partridges and cats and monkeys;” “turtles in pens and pools of water, and a great deal of meat and fish and biscuit … in such great abundance that there was enough to feed an expeditionary force of one thousand men for one year;” “pineapples and [avocados] and plums and custard apples and many other kinds of fruit;” “a very great quantity of very good biscuit which the Indians make out of maize and yucca, and much fruit of all kinds,” and fish drying “to be transported into the interior to be sold;” “turtles … turkeys and parrots … bread and … very good wine resembling beer;” a tapir; “snails and crabs; yams and maize.” Ibid., 175, 180, 182, 192, 200, 203, 207, 210, 211, 230, 231, 232.

  10. Ibid., 201.

  11. Ibid.

  12. Ibid., 202.

  13. Ibid.

  14. J. T. Medina, The Discovery of the Amazon According to the Account of Friar Gaspar de Carvajal and Other Documents, vol. 17 (American Geographical Society, 1934), 8.

  15. Ibid., 9.

  16. See, for example, Spanish historian Francisco Lòpez de Gomara, quoted in Medina, The Discovery of the Amazon According to the Account of Friar Gaspar de Carvajal and Other Documents, 25–26, who in 1552 de
scribed Carvajal’s journal as being “full of lies.” However, Carvajal actually visited the Amazon, whereas Gomara did not. Furthermore, Gomara was evidently more criticized by his sixteenth-century contemporaries for distorting historical truth than Carvajal was; on November 17, 1553, Prince Phillip of Spain imposed a penalty of 200,000 maravedis on anyone who would reprint Gomara’s historically inaccurate work.

  17. Heaton, The Discovery of the Amazon According to the Account of Friar Gaspar de Carvajal and Other Documents, 214: “Our Lord was pleased to give strength and courage to our companions, who killed seven or eight (for these we actually saw) of the Amazons, whereupon the Indians lost heart.” Carvajal clearly distinguishes between the “women warriors” or “the Amazons” and “the Indians” here.

  18. Ibid., 214.

  19. Ibid., 212–214, 220–221.

  20. Ibid., 221.

  21. By 1541 the fierce Amazonian women warriors had made an especially significant appearance in literary culture and were becoming embedded in the European imagination. For example, they featured heavily in “Las sergas de Esplandan,” a sequel to the Amadis of Gaul cycle, which was first published in 1510 and widely circulated. For a good documentation of European imagination of the Amazons, see E. Pink, “The Amazons of the Americas: Between Myth and Reality,” available here via Newcastle University: https://www.societies.ncl.ac.uk/pgfnewcastle/files/2015/03/Pink-The-Amazons-of-the-Americans.pdf.

  22. Heaton, The Discovery of the Amazon According to the Account of Friar Gaspar de Carvajal and Other Documents. Most agree that the Amazon got its name from the women of the Tupya tribe against whom Orellana battled, as they reminded him of the female Amazon warriors of Greek legend. This is evident in Carvajal’s account, for he explains, “In the years which followed Orellana’s expedition the name Marañón … was abandoned, and the river began to more generally be known as the River of the Amazons.” At times, also, it was referred to under the name of its discoverer. An instance of this may be seen in the articles of agreement drawn up by order of the king, under the date of August 11, 1552, empowering Gerónimo de Aguayo “to go to the provinces of the Aruacas and of the Amazons,” who are located, as this document reads, “[in a region stretching away] from the mouth of the Orellana River, called by another name The Amazons” (162–163). (Emphasis added.) Supporting this are words of the fiercest critic of Carvajal, López de Gómara, who is quoted by Medina in his introduction to Carvajal’s account as saying, “Among the extravagant statements which he made was his claim that there were Amazons along this river with whom he and his companions had fought. … Because of this imposture, already many write and say ‘River of the Amazons,’ and there have gathered together so many parties to go there” (26).