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The Chumash people, who lived both on the mainland and on Santa Rosa island, had a myth, if I remember correctly, that their people had come from somewhere else
by ravenstine 4y ago
The Chumash people, who lived both on the mainland and on Santa Rosa island, had a myth, if I remember correctly, that their people had come from somewhere else across a rainbow bridge. Of course I don't believe that there was a literal rainbow bridge, but I interpret it as a cultural subconsciousness of having originally come across the ocean. Their seafaring practices and boat construction were actually fairly advanced in contrast to other tribes on the west coast. If the Polynesians traveled as far through the Pacific as they did, it doesn't seem farfetched that humans could have reached the Americas without crossing the Bearing Strait. Just my hypothesis.
- AlotOfReading 4y agoThe chumash are genetically very close to other American Indian peoples, who are collectively related to historic groups that populated Northeast Asia. Both land and sea voyages from Asia to the Americas are reasonable mainstream hypotheses given current evidence, but they're both commonly called "crossing the Bering strait". A transpacific voyage from somewhere like southeast Asia may have been theoretically possible, but there's no actual evidence that the first settlers of the Americas came that way and quite a lot of evidence that they didn't.
- truculent 4y agoThere’s genetic evidence that Polynesians reached South America, FWIW, so not just theoretically possible. https://www.cbc.ca/news/science/polynesians-south-americans-1.5643074 https://www.cbc.ca/news/science/polynesians-south-americans-...
- AlotOfReading 4y agoThe Polynesians were also some the greatest navigators in human history, with thousands of years of cultural heritage centered around long distance maritime exploration. They're not exactly a good point of comparison for "what was realistically achievable for humans tens of thousands of years ago" in the same way Olympic athletes aren't.
- truculent 4y agoYes, absolutely - I think I misunderstood your comment and where the uncertainty was applied.
- irrational 4y agoHow could there be evidence that they didn’t?
- AlotOfReading 4y agoBecause of parsimony, evidence for one theory is also evidence against another. We have a patchy record of debitage and ancient DNA stretching from Siberia across Beringia and down into continental North America. We can actually directly map the broad spread of humans out of Africa and around the world with things like the serial founder effect, and it points to a migration around the Pacific rim contributing most of indigenous ancestry. None of this completely rules out alternative hypotheses (and indeed you can't), but it's evidence against them and suggests that they're either unlikely or insignificant.
- upsidesinclude 4y ago>but there's no actual evidence ... Yes, believe the point being that evidence remains undiscovered and underwater...