9 ms·

Most archaeologists think the first Americans arrived by boat

50 points by Thevet 9y ago

mc32 9y ago
They would have been the first _proto Canadians_ to arrive in the lower 48, arrived by boat since if they were not native to here they could not very well be (proto) Americans (of the lower 48) --their descendants yes, but the people who landed here were by the nature of things, not from the lower 48. Or they could simply have claimed, most archeologists believe the first ancient people to arrive in the lower 48, arrived by boat.
- mcbits 9y ago
  I can't parse what you're saying. Are you splitting hairs over the word "American"? Context matters, and the context is obvious here.
  - mc32 9y ago
    Well, you wouldn't say the first Italians (or the first Frenchmen and Frenchwomen, or the first Koreans) arrived from (some place) in xxxx BCE.
    - tomjakubowski 9y ago
      "Americans" can also mean "people living in the Americas".
      - mc32 9y ago
        True, but if you read the article it is referring to the first people to arrive south of the 49th parallel. People were already inhabiting what is now Canada. The context is they theoretically traveled along the littoral in boats vs some inland pathway on foot.
        Turing_Machine 9y ago
        If you're going to get that picky about it, they would have arrived in Alaska first. Not Canada.
        tomjakubowski 9y ago
        I read the article, thanks. There is mention of Clovis culture in what is now the United States, but it clearly uses "Americans" in the broader sense. For example, here, where Monte Verde is a site in modern day Chile: Early Americans apparently knew how to take full advantage of its abundant resources. At Monte Verde, once 90 kilometers from the coast, archaeologist Tom Dillehay of Vanderbilt University in Nashville found nine species of edible and medicinal seaweed dated to about 14,000 years ago.
    - mcbits 9y ago
      I probably would when talking about the first people in those specific places. Or the first Europeans in Europe, Africans in Africa, Asians in Asia, Americans in the Americas, etc. "American" also describes the citizens of that one state with the word "America" in the name, which sometimes leads to ambiguity, but not here.
whatnotests 9y ago
So they invented boats that can travel across the ocean, but after more than ten thousand years they never invented the wheel? And we have consensus on this?
- faizshah 9y ago
  They're talking about coastal migration over centuries. Also there's excavations of boats that are dated earlier than estimates for the wheel so I'm not sure what your point is.
  - eesmith 9y ago
    To add some concrete details: "Circumstantial evidence, such as the early settlement of Australia over 40,000 years ago, findings in Crete dated 130,000 years ago,[4] and findings in Flores dated to 900,000 years ago,[5] suggest that boats have been used since prehistoric times. ... The oldest recovered boat in the world is the Pesse canoe, a dugout made from the hollowed tree trunk of a Pinus sylvestris and constructed somewhere between 8200 and 7600 BC" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boat https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boat "The invention of the wheel falls into the late Neolithic, ... 4500–3300 BCE: Chalcolithic, invention of the potter's wheel; earliest wooden wheels (disks with a hole for the axle); earliest wheeled vehicles, domestication of the horse" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wheel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wheel
    - jaclaz 9y ago
      Well, just like the wheeled toys (i.e. wheel "invented" but not used for transportation/vehicles) the dugout from a trunk is a sign that sort of canoes existed. Inventing a canoe or a raft is of course much easier than inventing the wheel, you just go on the shore of a river or at the seaside and you will find trunks or wooden pieces floating. From that to have a boat capable of crossing an ocean there is a long way. Also, the numbers would be important. I would presume that leaving from a shore in search of another one (and knowing nothing on where that could be) would have been an extremely dangerous attempt, most probably taken by a handful of young males (hunters/gatherers, etc.) in the hypothesis that society was a male dominated one, possibly in very small/basic boats. Then they would need to go back home, and then return bringing with them their spouses and presumably children. Think of a future archaelogist in - say - 5,000 years time (after humanity and civilization collapsed) finding ONLY a hut with a few (perfectly conserved) surf tables and windsurfs. From that finding to believe that windsurfs could be used for cross-sea or cross-ocean migrations there is somehow a large gap.
tzs 9y ago
I've long thought that arrival of the earliest people by boat made a lot more sense than coming over the land bridge from Asia. There was a study published in Nature last year [1] that concluded that it took hundreds of years after the ice sheets receded and the route become passable before plants became established, and then later animals, to make it possible to survive off the land during such a trip. We know that the Clovis culture was established before then, so if they or earlier people came by the land route then they must have brought their supplies with them. That was before the invention of the wheel, so if they brought all their supplies with them for the journey it wasn't on wagons or carts. They only animals they might have had to help carry things were dogs, because no other animals were domesticated at that point. So we're looking at carrying everything they need for the trip on their own backs or on crude sleds, possibly with the aid of dogs (and if they are bringing dogs, they have to bring all the food for the dogs, too). This just seems to me to be too farfetched. Now compare to coming by boats. With boats it is easy to bring plenty of cargo. Whatever food they bring with them can be supplemented with fish and other seafood they can catch on the way. Maybe they can even live entirely off seafood. [1] I haven't seen the study itself freely online, but here's an article that goes into detail about it: http://www.history.com/news/new-study-refutes-theory-of-how-humans-populated-north-america http://www.history.com/news/new-study-refutes-theory-of-how-...
- ajross 9y ago
  To be fair: the theory is that the boats were coastal, hugging the edge of beringia. It's still basically the same crossing, and made possible by the same root cause (lower sea levels made the connection a single coastline and not open ocean). The technology is different, and maybe the time frame, but the basic structure of the theory is still the same.
  - contravariant 9y ago
    Main difference seems to be that boats would actually allow them to carry supplies with them.
    - pacaro 9y ago
vram22 9y ago
Loosely related topic: the tales of the ancient Polynesians finding and settling on many island groups in the Pacific, based on navigation skills they developed over time, involving the sun, the stars, the wind, the waves, ocean currents, bird flying patterns, etc. National Geographic magazine had an article or a series on it several years ago, and IIRC, they sent a team out to the Pacific area to research this stuff some, and to interview such living Polynesian navigators. I had read the article/series. The Morris West book "The Navigator" is also interesting in this connection (though there is only a bit of discussion of the navigation topic in the book, it is not the main focus), and the book is a good read apart from that, both entertaining and for topics like human dynamics when on a voyage as well as when stranded on an island for a long period. Update: Added link to his Wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morris_West https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morris_West
- vram22 9y ago
  Checked and found a few more links about ancient Polynesian navigation methods: http://www2.hawaii.edu/~adamson/vol43a1.html http://www2.hawaii.edu/~adamson/vol43a1.html https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polynesian_navigation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polynesian_navigation
  - contingencies 9y ago
    A lot of material available is too heavily weighted towards Hawaii for obvious reasons (US / research funding), but in fact the range of vessels and navigation techniques in the region is large and the best / most detailed information on a surviving navigation tradition emerged from Micronesia (as documented in The Navigator mentioned by the parent). Recently me and one other guy created the featured page https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wa_(watercraft) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wa_(watercraft) which is the traditional watercraft of that area. Much of the information came from http://www.jps.auckland.ac.nz/ http://www.jps.auckland.ac.nz/. I tried to visit the Spanish National Library in Madrid to search for other early sources but the uncultured swine wouldn't let me in without a tertiary institution affiliation!
    - 9y ago
dboreham 9y ago
The really interesting question is : why did "experts" ever think the opposite?
- JulianMorrison 9y ago
  Ocean crossings in boats without GPS are hard.
- curtis 9y ago
  > The really interesting question is : why did "experts" ever think the opposite? No evidence. In all fairness, such evidence would be hard to find because at the time sea-level was 400 feet lower than it is today. It is likely that the best archaeological sites are now underwater. The article of course mentions this. In fact, the article mentions one location in British Columbia (Quadra island) where post-glacial rebound was so great that near-sea-level sites during the last ice-age are still above sea-level today. But that investigation is relatively recent.
  - ktRolster 9y ago
    In theory, that could be a good thing, as the sites could be better preserved, not trammeled on by later generations of humans. Although in practice, actually finding them is hard. Note there are sites like this in Europe, too.
- contingencies 9y ago
  One could suggest that the US has a nationalist creation myth that is not well served by admission of being late to the party. It could also be suggested that it is slightly charged in terms of the conservative US Christian belief. While these would be no doubt controversial, like most unpopular perspectives they are not without some hint of reality.

50 points by Thevet 9y ago

mc32 9y ago

They would have been the first _proto Canadians_ to arrive in the lower 48, arrived by boat since if they were not native to here they could not very well be (proto) Americans (of the lower 48) --their descendants yes, but the people who landed here were by the nature of things, not from the lower 48. Or they could simply have claimed, most archeologists believe the first ancient people to arrive in the lower 48, arrived by boat.

mcbits 9y ago
I can't parse what you're saying. Are you splitting hairs over the word "American"? Context matters, and the context is obvious here.
- mc32 9y ago
  Well, you wouldn't say the first Italians (or the first Frenchmen and Frenchwomen, or the first Koreans) arrived from (some place) in xxxx BCE.
  - tomjakubowski 9y ago
    "Americans" can also mean "people living in the Americas".
    - mc32 9y ago
      True, but if you read the article it is referring to the first people to arrive south of the 49th parallel. People were already inhabiting what is now Canada. The context is they theoretically traveled along the littoral in boats vs some inland pathway on foot.
      - Turing_Machine 9y ago
        If you're going to get that picky about it, they would have arrived in Alaska first. Not Canada.
      - tomjakubowski 9y ago
        I read the article, thanks. There is mention of Clovis culture in what is now the United States, but it clearly uses "Americans" in the broader sense. For example, here, where Monte Verde is a site in modern day Chile: Early Americans apparently knew how to take full advantage of its abundant resources. At Monte Verde, once 90 kilometers from the coast, archaeologist Tom Dillehay of Vanderbilt University in Nashville found nine species of edible and medicinal seaweed dated to about 14,000 years ago.
  - mcbits 9y ago
    I probably would when talking about the first people in those specific places. Or the first Europeans in Europe, Africans in Africa, Asians in Asia, Americans in the Americas, etc. "American" also describes the citizens of that one state with the word "America" in the name, which sometimes leads to ambiguity, but not here.

whatnotests 9y ago

So they invented boats that can travel across the ocean, but after more than ten thousand years they never invented the wheel? And we have consensus on this?

faizshah 9y ago
They're talking about coastal migration over centuries. Also there's excavations of boats that are dated earlier than estimates for the wheel so I'm not sure what your point is.
- eesmith 9y ago
  To add some concrete details: "Circumstantial evidence, such as the early settlement of Australia over 40,000 years ago, findings in Crete dated 130,000 years ago,[4] and findings in Flores dated to 900,000 years ago,[5] suggest that boats have been used since prehistoric times. ... The oldest recovered boat in the world is the Pesse canoe, a dugout made from the hollowed tree trunk of a Pinus sylvestris and constructed somewhere between 8200 and 7600 BC" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boat https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boat "The invention of the wheel falls into the late Neolithic, ... 4500–3300 BCE: Chalcolithic, invention of the potter's wheel; earliest wooden wheels (disks with a hole for the axle); earliest wheeled vehicles, domestication of the horse" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wheel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wheel
  - jaclaz 9y ago
    Well, just like the wheeled toys (i.e. wheel "invented" but not used for transportation/vehicles) the dugout from a trunk is a sign that sort of canoes existed. Inventing a canoe or a raft is of course much easier than inventing the wheel, you just go on the shore of a river or at the seaside and you will find trunks or wooden pieces floating. From that to have a boat capable of crossing an ocean there is a long way. Also, the numbers would be important. I would presume that leaving from a shore in search of another one (and knowing nothing on where that could be) would have been an extremely dangerous attempt, most probably taken by a handful of young males (hunters/gatherers, etc.) in the hypothesis that society was a male dominated one, possibly in very small/basic boats. Then they would need to go back home, and then return bringing with them their spouses and presumably children. Think of a future archaelogist in - say - 5,000 years time (after humanity and civilization collapsed) finding ONLY a hut with a few (perfectly conserved) surf tables and windsurfs. From that finding to believe that windsurfs could be used for cross-sea or cross-ocean migrations there is somehow a large gap.

tzs 9y ago

I've long thought that arrival of the earliest people by boat made a lot more sense than coming over the land bridge from Asia. There was a study published in Nature last year [1] that concluded that it took hundreds of years after the ice sheets receded and the route become passable before plants became established, and then later animals, to make it possible to survive off the land during such a trip. We know that the Clovis culture was established before then, so if they or earlier people came by the land route then they must have brought their supplies with them. That was before the invention of the wheel, so if they brought all their supplies with them for the journey it wasn't on wagons or carts. They only animals they might have had to help carry things were dogs, because no other animals were domesticated at that point. So we're looking at carrying everything they need for the trip on their own backs or on crude sleds, possibly with the aid of dogs (and if they are bringing dogs, they have to bring all the food for the dogs, too). This just seems to me to be too farfetched. Now compare to coming by boats. With boats it is easy to bring plenty of cargo. Whatever food they bring with them can be supplemented with fish and other seafood they can catch on the way. Maybe they can even live entirely off seafood. [1] I haven't seen the study itself freely online, but here's an article that goes into detail about it: http://www.history.com/news/new-study-refutes-theory-of-how-humans-populated-north-america http://www.history.com/news/new-study-refutes-theory-of-how-...

ajross 9y ago
To be fair: the theory is that the boats were coastal, hugging the edge of beringia. It's still basically the same crossing, and made possible by the same root cause (lower sea levels made the connection a single coastline and not open ocean). The technology is different, and maybe the time frame, but the basic structure of the theory is still the same.
- contravariant 9y ago
  Main difference seems to be that boats would actually allow them to carry supplies with them.
  - pacaro 9y ago

vram22 9y ago

Loosely related topic: the tales of the ancient Polynesians finding and settling on many island groups in the Pacific, based on navigation skills they developed over time, involving the sun, the stars, the wind, the waves, ocean currents, bird flying patterns, etc. National Geographic magazine had an article or a series on it several years ago, and IIRC, they sent a team out to the Pacific area to research this stuff some, and to interview such living Polynesian navigators. I had read the article/series. The Morris West book "The Navigator" is also interesting in this connection (though there is only a bit of discussion of the navigation topic in the book, it is not the main focus), and the book is a good read apart from that, both entertaining and for topics like human dynamics when on a voyage as well as when stranded on an island for a long period. Update: Added link to his Wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morris_West https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morris_West

vram22 9y ago
Checked and found a few more links about ancient Polynesian navigation methods: http://www2.hawaii.edu/~adamson/vol43a1.html http://www2.hawaii.edu/~adamson/vol43a1.html https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polynesian_navigation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polynesian_navigation
- contingencies 9y ago
  A lot of material available is too heavily weighted towards Hawaii for obvious reasons (US / research funding), but in fact the range of vessels and navigation techniques in the region is large and the best / most detailed information on a surviving navigation tradition emerged from Micronesia (as documented in The Navigator mentioned by the parent). Recently me and one other guy created the featured page https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wa_(watercraft) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wa_(watercraft) which is the traditional watercraft of that area. Much of the information came from http://www.jps.auckland.ac.nz/ http://www.jps.auckland.ac.nz/. I tried to visit the Spanish National Library in Madrid to search for other early sources but the uncultured swine wouldn't let me in without a tertiary institution affiliation!
  - 9y ago

dboreham 9y ago

The really interesting question is : why did "experts" ever think the opposite?

JulianMorrison 9y ago
Ocean crossings in boats without GPS are hard.
curtis 9y ago
> The really interesting question is : why did "experts" ever think the opposite? No evidence. In all fairness, such evidence would be hard to find because at the time sea-level was 400 feet lower than it is today. It is likely that the best archaeological sites are now underwater. The article of course mentions this. In fact, the article mentions one location in British Columbia (Quadra island) where post-glacial rebound was so great that near-sea-level sites during the last ice-age are still above sea-level today. But that investigation is relatively recent.
- ktRolster 9y ago
  In theory, that could be a good thing, as the sites could be better preserved, not trammeled on by later generations of humans. Although in practice, actually finding them is hard. Note there are sites like this in Europe, too.
contingencies 9y ago
One could suggest that the US has a nationalist creation myth that is not well served by admission of being late to the party. It could also be suggested that it is slightly charged in terms of the conservative US Christian belief. While these would be no doubt controversial, like most unpopular perspectives they are not without some hint of reality.