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The era of humanity's initial diaspora is truly fascinating. I'm particularly awed by just how quickly humans managed to colonize the Americas. By any account,

by cc439 10y ago

The era of humanity's initial diaspora is truly fascinating. I'm particularly awed by just how quickly humans managed to colonize the Americas. By any account, humanity progressed from the just a few thousand people gaining their first footholds in the Americas to conquering the entirety of both continents with an established population numbering in the tens of millions in just ~10,000 or so years. The pace of expansion and growth is truly amazing considering how challenges posed by geography and nature. It's not that it's impossible for humans to branch off and establish new groups in previously unexplored regions, it's that establishing sustainable communities on virgin territory isn't a one-time affair. Think about how many failed attempts were made by the groups who conquered the vast deserts, mountain ranges, and rivers between their place of origin and their new homes. To successfully conquer two continents in such a short span of time is just insane in my mind whenever I stop and think about it. It's also funny to see how confused the efforts of archaeologists can be on this topic. This article cites the previous date of "earliest human presence" in North America as 14,000 BP while there has been well known evidence* available for years that humanity had spread as far south as Chile by that time. Obviously this discovery now makes the Monte Verde evidence far less controversial but the disconnect between the Canadian and Chilean researchers shows just how regional and siloed the study of the early America's can be. *Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monte_Verde https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monte_Verde

jcranmer 10y ago
> It's also funny to see how confused the efforts of archaeologists can be on this topic. This article cites the previous date of "earliest human presence" in North America as 14,000 BP while there has been well known evidence* available for years that humanity had spread as far south as Chile by that time. Obviously this discovery now makes the Monte Verde evidence far less controversial but the disconnect between the Canadian and Chilean researchers shows just how regional and siloed the study of the early America's can be. The date of 14000 BP would assume that the earliest migrations were essentially the Clovis culture, which is a theory that is generally considered thoroughly discredited by the archeological community and has been for several years. However, to the public, the Clovis-First, single-wave migration hypothesis is probably what they learned in school, and so every press release of a scientific find that further discredits this theory gets touted as "Earth-shattering evidence that everything we knew was wrong!"--despite the fact that this is far from the first evidence of the fact and even that the scientific community is largely unsurprised at this point.

by cc439 10y ago

jcranmer 10y ago

> It's also funny to see how confused the efforts of archaeologists can be on this topic. This article cites the previous date of "earliest human presence" in North America as 14,000 BP while there has been well known evidence* available for years that humanity had spread as far south as Chile by that time. Obviously this discovery now makes the Monte Verde evidence far less controversial but the disconnect between the Canadian and Chilean researchers shows just how regional and siloed the study of the early America's can be. The date of 14000 BP would assume that the earliest migrations were essentially the Clovis culture, which is a theory that is generally considered thoroughly discredited by the archeological community and has been for several years. However, to the public, the Clovis-First, single-wave migration hypothesis is probably what they learned in school, and so every press release of a scientific find that further discredits this theory gets touted as "Earth-shattering evidence that everything we knew was wrong!"--despite the fact that this is far from the first evidence of the fact and even that the scientific community is largely unsurprised at this point.