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I wonder, did humans cross the Bering Strait much earlier whether by boat or foot? Or did they travel by boat to the west coast from Pacific islands? Actually,

I wonder, did humans cross the Bering Strait much earlier whether by boat or foot? Or did they travel by boat to the west coast from Pacific islands? Actually, question for those who know: what is the earliest evidence of human occupation of the various islands in the Pacific?

downWidOutaFite 3y ago
It wasn't from Pacific islands, they're not close enough to America. The closest polynesian island is Easter Island and it's 2,000 miles away and was only reached 1,000 years ago.
- bhickey 3y ago
  Well, it might've been from the Pacific. There's genetic evidence for Polynesian individuals in S. Amer prior to the settlement of Easter Island. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32641827/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32641827/
  - AlotOfReading 3y ago
    Polynesians were among the greatest navigators in world history and didn't reach the eastern Pacific until many thousands of years later. It's like pointing to Alex Honnold to argue that ancient people climbed cliffs instead of walking around. Yeah, it's physically possible but there's a hell of a lot of skill, knowledge, and technology that goes into supporting those physical feats. Besides, Polynesians are genetically distant from the oldest DNA we've recovered in the Americas, which universally points to a northeastern Asian origin for early Americans.
    - bhickey 3y ago
      I was responding to the GP who incorrectly stated that there wasn't Polynesian gene flow to the Americas prior to 1000 years ago. The evidence of early admixture events is quite strong. No one thinks the Americas were initially peopled across the Pacific — please do pardon my imprecision!
btilly 3y ago
The Polynesian migration got under way about 3000 years ago. However humans have been using boats for longer. That's how Australia was settled about 40,000 years ago. I am still cautious about this discovery. The number of archeological sites exploded starting 13,000 years ago, and it coincided with a major set of extinctions. That extinction might not be us, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Younger_Dryas_impact_hypothesis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Younger_Dryas_impact_hypothesi.... But human arrival in places like Australia is generally associated with major extinctions. So we should expect the same in North America. Early human remains in America have to explain both why they did not leave more remains and why they did not come with a major mass extinction. One possibility is that we were not the only hominids, and 13,000 years ago was not the only time that there was a land bridge across the Bering Strait. What we are is the only primates known to easily cooperate in groups bigger than Dunbar's Number (150 for us). That gives us an outsized impact. If, for instance, the Denisovans had made it to the New World, they could leave convincingly human footprints while having a far lighter ecological impact than we would have.

downWidOutaFite 3y ago

It wasn't from Pacific islands, they're not close enough to America. The closest polynesian island is Easter Island and it's 2,000 miles away and was only reached 1,000 years ago.

bhickey 3y ago
Well, it might've been from the Pacific. There's genetic evidence for Polynesian individuals in S. Amer prior to the settlement of Easter Island. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32641827/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32641827/
- AlotOfReading 3y ago
  Polynesians were among the greatest navigators in world history and didn't reach the eastern Pacific until many thousands of years later. It's like pointing to Alex Honnold to argue that ancient people climbed cliffs instead of walking around. Yeah, it's physically possible but there's a hell of a lot of skill, knowledge, and technology that goes into supporting those physical feats. Besides, Polynesians are genetically distant from the oldest DNA we've recovered in the Americas, which universally points to a northeastern Asian origin for early Americans.
  - bhickey 3y ago
    I was responding to the GP who incorrectly stated that there wasn't Polynesian gene flow to the Americas prior to 1000 years ago. The evidence of early admixture events is quite strong. No one thinks the Americas were initially peopled across the Pacific — please do pardon my imprecision!

btilly 3y ago

The Polynesian migration got under way about 3000 years ago. However humans have been using boats for longer. That's how Australia was settled about 40,000 years ago. I am still cautious about this discovery. The number of archeological sites exploded starting 13,000 years ago, and it coincided with a major set of extinctions. That extinction might not be us, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Younger_Dryas_impact_hypothesis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Younger_Dryas_impact_hypothesi.... But human arrival in places like Australia is generally associated with major extinctions. So we should expect the same in North America. Early human remains in America have to explain both why they did not leave more remains and why they did not come with a major mass extinction. One possibility is that we were not the only hominids, and 13,000 years ago was not the only time that there was a land bridge across the Bering Strait. What we are is the only primates known to easily cooperate in groups bigger than Dunbar's Number (150 for us). That gives us an outsized impact. If, for instance, the Denisovans had made it to the New World, they could leave convincingly human footprints while having a far lighter ecological impact than we would have.