3 ms·

You couldn't get from beringia to New Mexico during the last glacial maximum because of all glaciers in the way. The dates given for the LGM are (very roughly)

You couldn't get from beringia to New Mexico during the last glacial maximum because of all glaciers in the way. The dates given for the LGM are (very roughly) when Beringia was accessible from Siberia. Pinning down when humans were able to access the rest of the continent is tricky, but current estimates for that are sometime between 20-18kya at the earliest based on genetics. Dates based on material culture evidence are even later than that, which presents done obvious problems with the dating on these footprints. There are also pretty hard constraints on the other side for humans even arriving in that part of Siberia, since the immediate ancestor sites with sequencing at Yana and Mal'ta are from 32kya and 25kya respectively.

doodlebugging 3y ago
If those early people had boats or other means of floating along the coasts they easily could've found their way to present-day New Mexico during the time period in question with or without glaciers in North America. A single family or individual who managed to hug the coast to a point south of the glaciers could easily walk the width of the United States in under a year averaging only 10 miles per day. There is plenty of time for a nomadic person or group following game animals or just walking over the hill to see what they can see to cover the entire United States on foot in a short lifetime. If they have rafts, boats, or any other way of navigating waterways without drowning it is even easier. These people were not stupid and they likely were as curious as we are today. They didn't have the cool technologies that we have today or in the last 200 years but they had a deep knowledge of their environments and could read the landscapes, the skies, the animals, and the plants and understand a lot more than most of today could. The real question needs to be about how far back we can go and say conclusively that humans built boats, hollowed logs, etc. and used those constructed contraptions to travel over water.
- kylebenzle 3y ago
  What a great comment! I love needing to remind myself of this, that a person can walk across the US in about a 1, but over 2 years would be relatively leisurely.
  - doodlebugging 3y ago
    Thanks! I think most people have not hitchhiked cross-country or spent a full day walking. Too many of us have never been motivated by hunger or thirst to see what was over the next hill. We just do a quick search for a 7-11 on our smart phone. In contrast, these ancient people would understand how to use acquired knowledge and local resources to insure their survival, to deal with unfamiliar animals or plants, and to safely navigate unfamiliar terrain. This would be second nature to them.
- AlotOfReading 3y ago
  It's not nearly as easy as you think [0]. I'm not going to cite the whole library of work on this topic because that comes across a bit rude, but there's been a lot of ink spilled here and I'm summarizing heavily for brevity's sake. Humans had likely already invented boats, given that they reached Japan and Australia tens of thousands of years previously. The North Pacific was just a deeply unfriendly place during the LGM. There were few resources, frigid weather (Beringia itself was practically temperate in comparison!), and they'd have to fight a strong Alaska current all the way down the coast. It's pretty clear at this point that the coastal route happened eventually, but we need a lot more data to put together a sensible theory that can reconcile these outliers. [0] https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2208738120 https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2208738120
  - tzs 3y ago
    Looking at it from the other direction, humans reached North America before the wheel, and before domestication of any animals except possibly dogs. Traveling a great distance by land would then mean either carrying your stuff or dragging it possibly on a sled maybe with dogs to help. I'm not sure boats are old enough, but rafts definitely are. Humans also had rope well before then, and string even longer. A boat or raft train down the coast seems feasible, and would let you let you bring a lot more of your stuff. Fishing is also old enough, which might make picking traveling by water a more attractive choice than going by land. Going to some far away unknown place by land runs the risk of having to cross mountains or deserts along the way where food may be scarce. (And that's another advantage of a water route--no mountains).
    - AlotOfReading 3y ago
      Much of the Alaskan and Canadian coast was glaciated during the period in question. You should trust me that doing a raft train along the live edge of sea ice is a very quick way to die.
      - doodlebugging 3y ago
        According to the paper sea ice was a seasonal consideration during the LGM. There was open ocean during the summers. If these people were fishermen they would have all the skills and motivation to follow the fish wherever they led. Since the circulation in the area of interest is cyclonic, or counterclockwise, a boatload of people would naturally be carried to the central Oregon coast if they launched from Beringia off present-day Kodiak Island. The whole journey, assuming as I tend to do that systems operate today in the same fashion that they operated back then, (uniformitarianism) has those people making landfall about 90-120 days later riding the ocean currents. That sounds reasonable. The thing that I most wish would change in archaeology is the dumbing down of people who lived a long time ago. The very truth of their survival in situations where few of us modern people would thrive or survive tells modern people everything they should know about our common ancestors. They were ignorant only of the things that we all take for granted today - paved roads, wristwatches, computers, air conditioning, automobiles and engine power, etc. They were masters of their environments who learned by doing things with their hands and by listening to the oral histories of their heroes and internalizing that knowledge so that they could thrive if confronted with similar challenges in their own lives. The fact that sections of the trails they took to get into North America have been erased since they made their epic journey is entirely due to everyday processes like erosion, inundation, etc. When we find a new site with outlier dates we should consider that we are constrained by the sparse sampling in the data driving our determinations of climate conditions during that period. We don't have high enough resolution to define seasonal variations so we can't say with confidence that it didn't happen during a summer's journey to a group of people who just followed the roving food supply wherever that led and laid in enough supplies to last them thru the winter that they knew was coming.
- decremental 3y ago
  [dead]
lumost 3y ago
Something that has never sit right with me. Why do we not have clear evidence of past major civilizations in the main habitation zones of modern North America? Shouldn’t we see ancient cities in New England, the PNW, Bay Area, and southeastern US? What made South America, and the southwestern zone of North America special in this regard?
- rawgabbit 3y ago
  AFAIK The native peoples of the Americas did not have iron technology. The Incan and Aztec empires were able to feed their peoples despite being limited to stone and wood and obsidian. I believe the forests of North America could not be farmed without iron axes and saws.
  - AlotOfReading 3y ago
    They did, and the people of the PNW specifically worked drift iron. The wiki page on precolumbian metallurgy is worth reading through, because the true extent of metalworking was fairly widespread [0]. In most cases, stone was preferred to metals because it was abundant, sharper, and cheaper, much as we use iron extensively today despite Aluminum and Titanium alloys being better in many respects. The areas that did work metal heavily (e.g. west Mexico, the triple alliance, Ecuador) typically used it for ceremonial objects and small domestic tools like needles. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metallurgy_in_pre-Columbian_America https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metallurgy_in_pre-Columbian_Am...
- AlotOfReading 3y ago
  Cities has a particular connotation of dense, urban areas and it's not necessarily the only way high population density can exist on a landscape. California is a good example here, with some of the highest precolumbian population densities in what's now the US. Most of those people lived in Central Valley in large villages often exceeding 2,000-5000 people. However, there was very little high level political organization compared to say, Central Mexico and their primary food sources fall outside typical definitions of agriculture (though they were definitely intensive and involved lots of complicated plant management). Within the Bay area, populations were centered around exploiting marine resources. Hundreds of large shell middens dozens of feet high littered the precolonial coast, most of which are now destroyed. Even pleasanton, far inland, harvested marine resources because it was a swamp filled with fish. The PNW still has extant remains of massive precolonial villages, like Ozette [0]. The Southeast/Midwest was another case where we have massive villages, in some cases supporting 10s of thousands of people. Etc. We don't see these today because we quite literally built on top of them. I used to live near a suburban neighborhood built atop an old Hohokam village where thousands of cremations had been recovered. None of the residents I met knew that the "hill" in the middle was the bulldozed remains of the Pueblo. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ozette_Indian_Village_Archeological_Site https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ozette_Indian_Village_Archeolo...

doodlebugging 3y ago

If those early people had boats or other means of floating along the coasts they easily could've found their way to present-day New Mexico during the time period in question with or without glaciers in North America. A single family or individual who managed to hug the coast to a point south of the glaciers could easily walk the width of the United States in under a year averaging only 10 miles per day. There is plenty of time for a nomadic person or group following game animals or just walking over the hill to see what they can see to cover the entire United States on foot in a short lifetime. If they have rafts, boats, or any other way of navigating waterways without drowning it is even easier. These people were not stupid and they likely were as curious as we are today. They didn't have the cool technologies that we have today or in the last 200 years but they had a deep knowledge of their environments and could read the landscapes, the skies, the animals, and the plants and understand a lot more than most of today could. The real question needs to be about how far back we can go and say conclusively that humans built boats, hollowed logs, etc. and used those constructed contraptions to travel over water.

kylebenzle 3y ago
What a great comment! I love needing to remind myself of this, that a person can walk across the US in about a 1, but over 2 years would be relatively leisurely.
- doodlebugging 3y ago
  Thanks! I think most people have not hitchhiked cross-country or spent a full day walking. Too many of us have never been motivated by hunger or thirst to see what was over the next hill. We just do a quick search for a 7-11 on our smart phone. In contrast, these ancient people would understand how to use acquired knowledge and local resources to insure their survival, to deal with unfamiliar animals or plants, and to safely navigate unfamiliar terrain. This would be second nature to them.
AlotOfReading 3y ago
It's not nearly as easy as you think [0]. I'm not going to cite the whole library of work on this topic because that comes across a bit rude, but there's been a lot of ink spilled here and I'm summarizing heavily for brevity's sake. Humans had likely already invented boats, given that they reached Japan and Australia tens of thousands of years previously. The North Pacific was just a deeply unfriendly place during the LGM. There were few resources, frigid weather (Beringia itself was practically temperate in comparison!), and they'd have to fight a strong Alaska current all the way down the coast. It's pretty clear at this point that the coastal route happened eventually, but we need a lot more data to put together a sensible theory that can reconcile these outliers. [0] https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2208738120 https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2208738120
- tzs 3y ago
  Looking at it from the other direction, humans reached North America before the wheel, and before domestication of any animals except possibly dogs. Traveling a great distance by land would then mean either carrying your stuff or dragging it possibly on a sled maybe with dogs to help. I'm not sure boats are old enough, but rafts definitely are. Humans also had rope well before then, and string even longer. A boat or raft train down the coast seems feasible, and would let you let you bring a lot more of your stuff. Fishing is also old enough, which might make picking traveling by water a more attractive choice than going by land. Going to some far away unknown place by land runs the risk of having to cross mountains or deserts along the way where food may be scarce. (And that's another advantage of a water route--no mountains).
  - AlotOfReading 3y ago
    Much of the Alaskan and Canadian coast was glaciated during the period in question. You should trust me that doing a raft train along the live edge of sea ice is a very quick way to die.
    - doodlebugging 3y ago
      According to the paper sea ice was a seasonal consideration during the LGM. There was open ocean during the summers. If these people were fishermen they would have all the skills and motivation to follow the fish wherever they led. Since the circulation in the area of interest is cyclonic, or counterclockwise, a boatload of people would naturally be carried to the central Oregon coast if they launched from Beringia off present-day Kodiak Island. The whole journey, assuming as I tend to do that systems operate today in the same fashion that they operated back then, (uniformitarianism) has those people making landfall about 90-120 days later riding the ocean currents. That sounds reasonable. The thing that I most wish would change in archaeology is the dumbing down of people who lived a long time ago. The very truth of their survival in situations where few of us modern people would thrive or survive tells modern people everything they should know about our common ancestors. They were ignorant only of the things that we all take for granted today - paved roads, wristwatches, computers, air conditioning, automobiles and engine power, etc. They were masters of their environments who learned by doing things with their hands and by listening to the oral histories of their heroes and internalizing that knowledge so that they could thrive if confronted with similar challenges in their own lives. The fact that sections of the trails they took to get into North America have been erased since they made their epic journey is entirely due to everyday processes like erosion, inundation, etc. When we find a new site with outlier dates we should consider that we are constrained by the sparse sampling in the data driving our determinations of climate conditions during that period. We don't have high enough resolution to define seasonal variations so we can't say with confidence that it didn't happen during a summer's journey to a group of people who just followed the roving food supply wherever that led and laid in enough supplies to last them thru the winter that they knew was coming.
decremental 3y ago
[dead]

lumost 3y ago

Something that has never sit right with me. Why do we not have clear evidence of past major civilizations in the main habitation zones of modern North America? Shouldn’t we see ancient cities in New England, the PNW, Bay Area, and southeastern US? What made South America, and the southwestern zone of North America special in this regard?

rawgabbit 3y ago
AFAIK The native peoples of the Americas did not have iron technology. The Incan and Aztec empires were able to feed their peoples despite being limited to stone and wood and obsidian. I believe the forests of North America could not be farmed without iron axes and saws.
- AlotOfReading 3y ago
  They did, and the people of the PNW specifically worked drift iron. The wiki page on precolumbian metallurgy is worth reading through, because the true extent of metalworking was fairly widespread [0]. In most cases, stone was preferred to metals because it was abundant, sharper, and cheaper, much as we use iron extensively today despite Aluminum and Titanium alloys being better in many respects. The areas that did work metal heavily (e.g. west Mexico, the triple alliance, Ecuador) typically used it for ceremonial objects and small domestic tools like needles. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metallurgy_in_pre-Columbian_America https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metallurgy_in_pre-Columbian_Am...
AlotOfReading 3y ago
Cities has a particular connotation of dense, urban areas and it's not necessarily the only way high population density can exist on a landscape. California is a good example here, with some of the highest precolumbian population densities in what's now the US. Most of those people lived in Central Valley in large villages often exceeding 2,000-5000 people. However, there was very little high level political organization compared to say, Central Mexico and their primary food sources fall outside typical definitions of agriculture (though they were definitely intensive and involved lots of complicated plant management). Within the Bay area, populations were centered around exploiting marine resources. Hundreds of large shell middens dozens of feet high littered the precolonial coast, most of which are now destroyed. Even pleasanton, far inland, harvested marine resources because it was a swamp filled with fish. The PNW still has extant remains of massive precolonial villages, like Ozette [0]. The Southeast/Midwest was another case where we have massive villages, in some cases supporting 10s of thousands of people. Etc. We don't see these today because we quite literally built on top of them. I used to live near a suburban neighborhood built atop an old Hohokam village where thousands of cremations had been recovered. None of the residents I met knew that the "hill" in the middle was the bulldozed remains of the Pueblo. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ozette_Indian_Village_Archeological_Site https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ozette_Indian_Village_Archeolo...