7 ms·

Humans May Have Reached North America by More Than One Route

72 points by curtis 8y ago

shams93 8y ago
The land theory was popular because it’s easier to prove a lot ice age coast line is deep under water and it’s hard to find the easy evidence but the cultural and linguistic evidence are there
- curtis 8y ago
  Not may people appreciate that at the peak of the last ice age, "sea level" was 400 feet lower than it is today. It's likely that there's a whole bunch of archaeological sites that we can't easily get to right now, even if we could find them.
  - Bucephalus355 8y ago
    Yes, it’s very likely most of the human pathway out of Africa to Australia would have gone over these kinds of routes. For instance, Indonesia would have been connected to Australia more or less and so one could cross over land from Southeast Asia to Australia.
    - brailsafe 8y ago
      As an aside, Indonesia was also home to a now extinct species of human called homoaflorensis.
    - jcranmer 8y ago
      Not quite. There are some oceanic trench faults in between Indonesian islands, so there was no full land connection. At the last glacial maximum (and sea-level minimum), the big islands of Sumatra, Java, and Borneo would have been portions of a massive Southeast Asia peninsula. In addition, New Guinea would have been attached to Australia. The other Indonesian islands, such as Sulawesi and Timor, would still have been islands. The gaps between the islands would be somewhat smaller, perhaps about 25mi (even between Timor and Australia), which is close enough that you can sail between them without ever losing sight of land.
  - guessthejuice 8y ago
    People don't realize that just 8000 years ago, you could walk from britain to continental europe as it was connected by land to europe. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doggerland https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doggerland It's amazing how in a short period of time ( in geological terms though it seems like a lot of time for us ), how much of the earth changed. Another interesting tidbit, we had a little ice age not too long ago which ended in the mid 1800s. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Ice_Age https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Ice_Age https://www.eh-resources.org/timeline-middle-ages/ https://www.eh-resources.org/timeline-middle-ages/
  - ryanmclovin 8y ago
    Is there any nice visualisation of that anywhere?
    - dugmartin 8y ago
      http://www.donsmaps.com/images30/britainshorelineiceageimg269sm.jpg http://www.donsmaps.com/images30/britainshorelineiceageimg26...
  - tribune 8y ago
    Thinking about this always dismays me. Given humans' proclivity for living near the coast, it seems likely than many (even most?) interesting sites from this period are gone.
mozumder 8y ago
Wouldn't people be able to traverse the continent in a few months? Why are they giving estimated ranges that span thousands of years?
- garmaine 8y ago
  Why would they?
  - mongol 8y ago
    Tourism?
  - vortico 8y ago
    Chasing migrating buffaloe?
    - dredmorbius 8y ago
      Game (and other biota) tend to distribute latitudinally, along uniform climate zones, far more than longitudinally, across them. Bison have a daily range of about 2 mi. (3.2 km). This would give a seasonal range (over 90 days) of only 200 miles (320km) or so , and likely far less.
- simonh 8y ago
  I’m just guessing, but community and social support networks are vital for survival and to retain access to potential mates. You don’t deliberately distance yourself from that without a really good reason. Also the nice you have built experience with the terrain, shelter, food, water and material resources of a region why give all that up? Even nomadic cultures have a range and set of routes and locations they know and visit. Suddenly changing climactic zone is also probably difficult as the different climate, flora and fauna might require very different sets of skills.
- egjerlow 8y ago
  Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond has its fair share of critics, but one thing I feel it does well is introduce to the general populace the ways of thinking around questions like this. In the case of migration, one of the factors that slowed it down so much is the lack of properly 'domestic' peoples that actually had a population surplus. If you're a hunter-gatherer tribe that has reached an equilibrium between children born and people dying, and your hunting grounds provide the resources you need to sustain that equilibrium, there is little reason to go looking elsewhere (migrate).
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
protomyth 8y ago
“My professional opinion is that if we actually want to test which of these hypotheses is true, we need more data—and it should be combining archaeological, climatic, and genetic—and it needs to be systematic,” she said. “At the moment we are forced to cobble together puzzle pieces from disparate sources and there isn’t congruity between methods used at various sites, so it’s hard to say what is really comparable and what isn’t.” Good luck getting the genetic data. A lot of tribes in the US have been taken advantage of by universities to get grant money with no real benefit for the tribe. Some tribes have even gone so far to restrict research data. One reason I use tarsnap is that the encrypted locally data complies with the local tribal resolutions on data sharing.
- nathancahill 8y ago
  Was curious, googling came up with this resolution: http://www.ncai.org/resources/resolutions/supporting-the-havasupai-indian-tribe-in-their-claim-against-the-arizona-board-of-regents-regarding-the-unauthorized-use-of-blood-samples-and-research http://www.ncai.org/resources/resolutions/supporting-the-hav... Curious how tarsnap relates to this?
  - protomyth 8y ago
    Tarsnap is encrypted locally and they don't see the unencrypted data. Dropbox can see the actual files, so it would violate our local law if we put any research or demographic data on a Dropbox share.
teh_klev 8y ago
Link to original article and not Gizmodo's reheat: http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/4/8/eaat5473 http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/4/8/eaat5473

72 points by curtis 8y ago

The land theory was popular because it’s easier to prove a lot ice age coast line is deep under water and it’s hard to find the easy evidence but the cultural and linguistic evidence are there

curtis 8y ago
Not may people appreciate that at the peak of the last ice age, "sea level" was 400 feet lower than it is today. It's likely that there's a whole bunch of archaeological sites that we can't easily get to right now, even if we could find them.
- Bucephalus355 8y ago
  Yes, it’s very likely most of the human pathway out of Africa to Australia would have gone over these kinds of routes. For instance, Indonesia would have been connected to Australia more or less and so one could cross over land from Southeast Asia to Australia.
  - brailsafe 8y ago
    As an aside, Indonesia was also home to a now extinct species of human called homoaflorensis.
  - jcranmer 8y ago
    Not quite. There are some oceanic trench faults in between Indonesian islands, so there was no full land connection. At the last glacial maximum (and sea-level minimum), the big islands of Sumatra, Java, and Borneo would have been portions of a massive Southeast Asia peninsula. In addition, New Guinea would have been attached to Australia. The other Indonesian islands, such as Sulawesi and Timor, would still have been islands. The gaps between the islands would be somewhat smaller, perhaps about 25mi (even between Timor and Australia), which is close enough that you can sail between them without ever losing sight of land.
- guessthejuice 8y ago
  People don't realize that just 8000 years ago, you could walk from britain to continental europe as it was connected by land to europe. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doggerland https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doggerland It's amazing how in a short period of time ( in geological terms though it seems like a lot of time for us ), how much of the earth changed. Another interesting tidbit, we had a little ice age not too long ago which ended in the mid 1800s. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Ice_Age https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Ice_Age https://www.eh-resources.org/timeline-middle-ages/ https://www.eh-resources.org/timeline-middle-ages/
- ryanmclovin 8y ago
  Is there any nice visualisation of that anywhere?
  - dugmartin 8y ago
    http://www.donsmaps.com/images30/britainshorelineiceageimg269sm.jpg http://www.donsmaps.com/images30/britainshorelineiceageimg26...
- tribune 8y ago
  Thinking about this always dismays me. Given humans' proclivity for living near the coast, it seems likely than many (even most?) interesting sites from this period are gone.

mozumder 8y ago

Wouldn't people be able to traverse the continent in a few months? Why are they giving estimated ranges that span thousands of years?

garmaine 8y ago
Why would they?
- mongol 8y ago
  Tourism?
- vortico 8y ago
  Chasing migrating buffaloe?
  - dredmorbius 8y ago
    Game (and other biota) tend to distribute latitudinally, along uniform climate zones, far more than longitudinally, across them. Bison have a daily range of about 2 mi. (3.2 km). This would give a seasonal range (over 90 days) of only 200 miles (320km) or so , and likely far less.
simonh 8y ago
I’m just guessing, but community and social support networks are vital for survival and to retain access to potential mates. You don’t deliberately distance yourself from that without a really good reason. Also the nice you have built experience with the terrain, shelter, food, water and material resources of a region why give all that up? Even nomadic cultures have a range and set of routes and locations they know and visit. Suddenly changing climactic zone is also probably difficult as the different climate, flora and fauna might require very different sets of skills.
egjerlow 8y ago
Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond has its fair share of critics, but one thing I feel it does well is introduce to the general populace the ways of thinking around questions like this. In the case of migration, one of the factors that slowed it down so much is the lack of properly 'domestic' peoples that actually had a population surplus. If you're a hunter-gatherer tribe that has reached an equilibrium between children born and people dying, and your hunting grounds provide the resources you need to sustain that equilibrium, there is little reason to go looking elsewhere (migrate).

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

protomyth 8y ago

“My professional opinion is that if we actually want to test which of these hypotheses is true, we need more data—and it should be combining archaeological, climatic, and genetic—and it needs to be systematic,” she said. “At the moment we are forced to cobble together puzzle pieces from disparate sources and there isn’t congruity between methods used at various sites, so it’s hard to say what is really comparable and what isn’t.” Good luck getting the genetic data. A lot of tribes in the US have been taken advantage of by universities to get grant money with no real benefit for the tribe. Some tribes have even gone so far to restrict research data. One reason I use tarsnap is that the encrypted locally data complies with the local tribal resolutions on data sharing.

nathancahill 8y ago
Was curious, googling came up with this resolution: http://www.ncai.org/resources/resolutions/supporting-the-havasupai-indian-tribe-in-their-claim-against-the-arizona-board-of-regents-regarding-the-unauthorized-use-of-blood-samples-and-research http://www.ncai.org/resources/resolutions/supporting-the-hav... Curious how tarsnap relates to this?
- protomyth 8y ago
  Tarsnap is encrypted locally and they don't see the unencrypted data. Dropbox can see the actual files, so it would violate our local law if we put any research or demographic data on a Dropbox share.

teh_klev 8y ago

Link to original article and not Gizmodo's reheat: http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/4/8/eaat5473 http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/4/8/eaat5473