5 ms·

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

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.
- doodlebugging 3y ago
  I agree. They could've used inflated sealskins for pontoons for a large raft and we would not know it today unless we happened to find one stuck in an anaerobic mudflat. There is so much to learn that I think it is too early in the game to discount anything.
doodlebugging 3y ago
I think the main difference in our respective opinions is one of time scale. You seem to stick with the paper in your focus on long time periods representing several hundred generations and the things that could limit or prevent human arrival or presence at the location during the time period proposed. I am focusing on things that could plausibly happen to a nomadic group within a single human lifespan. It doesn't matter where on the time line one would place the nomadic group, these achievements are possible and the dating of these footprints using three complementary methods which all yield similar dates strongly suggest that people did in fact make it to New Mexico by that early date. We will never know how they arrived unless we can find new sites to confirm a likely path of travel. They may have followed the coastline south in boats stopping wherever they found shelter and food. They may have used sleds or travois to move their worldly possessions cross-country over any terrain whether ice-covered, tundra, forested, or open plain. We know that they were adaptable and they were closely in tune with their environments, with a deep understanding of seasons, wildlife, plants, and weather. They had to be just to be able to make the trip to Beringia or to eastern Asia. Their knowledge had to be encyclopedic and like most knowledge in ancient cultures was almost entirely passed generation to generation orally. There are still cultures who pass these traditions orally, keeping alive the old knowledge and skills. [0] We know nothing about the normal divisions of labor within a group but we do know from direct evidence that people did in fact make the trip overcoming all of the challenges they found along the way. Where they went after leaving those tracks is anyone's guess and is up for future discovery, just like the path they took to get there. I read the paper that you linked. I appreciate the link. I agree with your final sentence: >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. Though you and I reach different conclusions we can agree that a lot more research and discovery is needed to understand how these people arrived in present-day New Mexico that long ago. I found on reading it that the paper did not discount the possibility that people followed the coast south or that they traveled overland for the entire journey into the interior of the North American continent during the time period when these tracks were probably made, LGM. In fact in the sections where they addressed this question they hold open the possibility that humans could have taken advantage of seasonal variations in sea currents, glacial meltwater flows, local warming of land routes, etc to make the trip. Their data does not have a high enough resolution to answer the question of whether anyone attempted the journey successfully or unsuccessfully. Their resolution is on the scale of millenia whereas one would need seasonal data for insight into the answer. I guarantee that the humans that left those footprints had a detailed knowledge of seasonal variations in local conditions and they took full advantage of that in order to secure their survival. I look forward to reading more about efforts to nail down when and how early humans made the journey into North America and to find out how they fared on arrival. I'm a geoscientist but I have always loved archaeology. [0] https://hakaimagazine.com/features/with-old-traditions-and-new-tech-young-inuit-chart-their-changing-landscape/ https://hakaimagazine.com/features/with-old-traditions-and-n...

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.
doodlebugging 3y ago
I agree. They could've used inflated sealskins for pontoons for a large raft and we would not know it today unless we happened to find one stuck in an anaerobic mudflat. There is so much to learn that I think it is too early in the game to discount anything.

doodlebugging 3y ago

I think the main difference in our respective opinions is one of time scale. You seem to stick with the paper in your focus on long time periods representing several hundred generations and the things that could limit or prevent human arrival or presence at the location during the time period proposed. I am focusing on things that could plausibly happen to a nomadic group within a single human lifespan. It doesn't matter where on the time line one would place the nomadic group, these achievements are possible and the dating of these footprints using three complementary methods which all yield similar dates strongly suggest that people did in fact make it to New Mexico by that early date. We will never know how they arrived unless we can find new sites to confirm a likely path of travel. They may have followed the coastline south in boats stopping wherever they found shelter and food. They may have used sleds or travois to move their worldly possessions cross-country over any terrain whether ice-covered, tundra, forested, or open plain. We know that they were adaptable and they were closely in tune with their environments, with a deep understanding of seasons, wildlife, plants, and weather. They had to be just to be able to make the trip to Beringia or to eastern Asia. Their knowledge had to be encyclopedic and like most knowledge in ancient cultures was almost entirely passed generation to generation orally. There are still cultures who pass these traditions orally, keeping alive the old knowledge and skills. [0] We know nothing about the normal divisions of labor within a group but we do know from direct evidence that people did in fact make the trip overcoming all of the challenges they found along the way. Where they went after leaving those tracks is anyone's guess and is up for future discovery, just like the path they took to get there. I read the paper that you linked. I appreciate the link. I agree with your final sentence: >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. Though you and I reach different conclusions we can agree that a lot more research and discovery is needed to understand how these people arrived in present-day New Mexico that long ago. I found on reading it that the paper did not discount the possibility that people followed the coast south or that they traveled overland for the entire journey into the interior of the North American continent during the time period when these tracks were probably made, LGM. In fact in the sections where they addressed this question they hold open the possibility that humans could have taken advantage of seasonal variations in sea currents, glacial meltwater flows, local warming of land routes, etc to make the trip. Their data does not have a high enough resolution to answer the question of whether anyone attempted the journey successfully or unsuccessfully. Their resolution is on the scale of millenia whereas one would need seasonal data for insight into the answer. I guarantee that the humans that left those footprints had a detailed knowledge of seasonal variations in local conditions and they took full advantage of that in order to secure their survival. I look forward to reading more about efforts to nail down when and how early humans made the journey into North America and to find out how they fared on arrival. I'm a geoscientist but I have always loved archaeology. [0] https://hakaimagazine.com/features/with-old-traditions-and-new-tech-young-inuit-chart-their-changing-landscape/ https://hakaimagazine.com/features/with-old-traditions-and-n...