Another Theory of How The Americas Were Started

[BIAD]

We just get used to the land-bridge theory and then another idea appears to suggest
Fred Flintstone followed the white stuff -but from the east to the west.

Archaeologists stunned by theory that ancient Europeans arrived in Americas

Hotly contended, the hypothesis proposes that Europeans made the
arduous sea journey thousands of years ago before anyone else.

'The most widely accepted theory goes that the peopling of the Americas began during
the Paleolithic period when hunter-gatherers entered North America from Siberia.

Proponents of this argument say they travelled across the Bering Sea which was at that
time a land bridge, its waters having receded because of the Ice Age. These people came
into what is today known as Alaska and, over thousands of years, spread down and
throughout the entirety of the Americas.

There is, however, another altogether more controversial theory that places the people who
reached the Americas not from Siberia but from Europe. The Solutrean hypothesis insists
that these ancient people travelled along pack ice in the Atlantic Ocean on primitive boats,
and claims to have the evidence to prove it.

According to the hypothesis, 21,000 years ago, a group of people from the Solutré region of
France, a group known for their unique toolmaking technique.

Bruce Bradley and Dennis Stanford, the modern-day proponents of the hypothesis, say once
these European people made it to North America, their toolmaking method made its way
around the continent and provided the basis for the spread of Clovis toolmaking technology,
found all around the continent.

This is the premise in which the hypothesis is surrounded: that Clovis and Solutrean technologies
are strikingly similar and potential evidence that the former came from the latter. Originally
proposed in the 1970s, it didn't become really popular until the 2010s, when Stanford of the
Smithsonian Institute and Bradley of the University of Exeter came across it.

Solutrean culture comes from present-day France, Spain, and Portugal, and has been dated
to between 17,000 and 21,000 years ago. Their tools and Clovis tools found in the likes of
New Mexico share common features. Their pointed tops are thin and bifacial, and both use
the "outrepassé", or overshot flaking technique. This particular technique reduces the thickness
of a biface without reducing its width.

Supporters further point to the presence of a specific type of DNA — haplogroup X2 — shared
by those in Europe and those in North America, though this line of argument has been contended
with some experts pointing to the fact that it was part of the gene pool of a single Native American
founding population not from Europe.



Other arguments dismiss the hypothesis, including from one scientist who has described it is
"scientifically implausible". Jennifer Raff, a geneticist, writing for The Guardian in 2018, said it
"suggests a European origin for the peoples who made the Clovis tools, the first recognised
stone tool tradition in the Americas"...'

Archived Express Article:

[NightskyeB4Dawn]

We just get used to the land-bridge theory and then another idea appears to suggest
Fred Flintstone followed the white stuff -but from the east to the west.

In other words, they are guessing. They don't "know", any more than I do.

I come up with logical conclusions when I find new information. In other words, I guess.

[Ninurta]

"Jennifer Raff, a geneticist" should stick to genetics. Archaeology and history are not her forte. Clovis was, emphatically, NOT the first tool-making tradition in the Americas, despite what uninformed folks are telling her.

Ther was a time when science's best-guess was the "Clovis First" hypothesis. Those days are long gone, and only die-hard, hide-bound academicians still hold to it. Clovis technology first appeared in the Americas roughly 13,000 years ago. That was fine and dandy when that was the oldest discovered technology, and it fit well with the fact that an ice-free corridor first opened in the Canadian glacial shield around 14,000 years ago, opening a walk-way from Alaska and Beringia into the North American interior.

But then older sites in the Americas started being found, proving people to have been here long before they could get here under that hypothesis.

Cactus Hill in Virginia is between 17,000 and 19,000 years old, at least 4000 years older than people could have walked to through the glacial corridor in Canada. Likewise for the Meadowcroft Rock Shelter in Pennsylvania.

The Saltville, Virginia site, where people butchered a mastodon, is at least 14,500 years old, 500 years before it was possible for people to be here under the Clovis First hypothesis, even if they walked a bee-line straight here from the Canadian glacial shield.

There is an image of a Columbian Mammoth etched on a bone found in Florida. It was, at first, declared a hoax because it couldn't possibly exist under the old theory. Then testing proved it's age, and that left old-school archaeologists scratching their heads, pondering the impossible.

a couple of 36,000 year old sites in Texas push the timeline back even further. Monte Verde, in Chile, has been dated to 37,000 years ago. The recently discovered human footprints, following the footprints of a giant ground sloth in either Nevada or Utah - I forget which just at the moment - are 23,000 years old... 10,000 years before the possible under the Clovis-First hypothesis.

Several years ago, a Solutrean point was dredged from the continental shelf off the coast of Virginia, in company with mammoth bones. The site is underwater, and so cannot be excavated, so an association between the point and the mammoth bones cannot be proven, but it is suggestive. Other Solutrean-appearing points have been found on dry land in Virginia, Maryland, and along the Eastern Seaboard of the US. Now, it could be that the technology was developed independently here, but that still does not explain the fact that people were here long before it was possible for people to be here under the old hypothesis. Clovis points were not the first to appear here, and that has been well proven. Whether the makers of the older points were Solutreans, or someone else does not affect the fact that those points ARE older than Clovis.

I cannot say that the European Solutreans were the first to colonize in the Americas. As a matter of fact, it looks like the Solutreans are not even old enough to account for the oldest sites discovered here so far. I cannot say for sure that the mental gymnastics necessary for academicians to account for European DNA haplotypes to be present in the East Coast of North America - but necessarily - under their theories - coming from Siberia rather than Europe - are incorrect. I cannot say for certain that the Australian Aboriginal DNA found in South America Indians was not left there by Aborigines swimming across the Pacific and dodging sharks to get here.

What I CAN say for sure, however, is that the archaeological evidence indicates there were people here long before Clovis was a thing at all.

.