1st Americans May Have Been European (http://www.livescience.com/history/060219_first_americans.html)
By Bjorn Carey
19 February 2006

ST. LOUIS—The first humans to spread across North America may have been seal hunters from France and Spain.

This runs counter to the long-held belief that the first human entry into the Americas was a crossing of a land-ice bridge that spanned the Bering Strait about 13,500 years ago.

The new thinking was outlined here Sunday at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

The tools don’t match

Recent studies have suggested that the glaciers that helped form the bridge connecting Siberia and Alaska began receding around 17,000 to 13,000 years ago, leaving very little chance that people walked from one continent to the other.

Also, when archaeologist Dennis Stanford of the Smithsonian Institution places American spearheads, called Clovis points, side-by-side with Siberian points, he sees a divergence of many characteristics.

Instead, Stanford said today, Clovis points match up much closer with Solutrean style tools, which researchers date to about 19,000 years ago. This suggests that the American people making Clovis points made Solutrean points before that.

There’s just one problem with this hypothesis—Solutrean toolmakers lived in France and Spain. Scientists know of no land-ice bridge that spanned that entire gap.

The lost hunting party

Stanford has an idea for how humans crossed the Atlantic, though—boats. Art from that era indicates that Solutrean populations in northern Spain were hunting marine animals, such as seals, walrus, and tuna.

They may have even made their way into the floating ice chunks that unite immense harp seal populations in Canada and Europe each year. Four million seals, Stanford said, would look like a pretty good meal to hungry European hunters, who might have ventured into the ice flows much the same way that the Inuit in Alaska and Greenland do today.

Inuit use large, open hunting boats constructed from animal skins for longer trips or big hunts. These boats, called umiaq, can hold a dozen adults, as well as several children, dead seals or walruses, and even dog-sled teams. Inuit have been building these boats for thousands of years, and Stanford believes that Solutrean people may have used a similar design.

It’s possible that some groups of these hunters ventured out as far as Iceland, where they may have gotten caught up in the prevailing currents and were carried to North America.

“You get three boats loaded up like this and you would have a viable population,” Stanford said. “You could actually get a whole bunch of people washing up on Nova Scotia.”

Some scientists believe that the Solutrean peoples were responsible for much of the cave art in Europe. Opponents of Stanford’s work ask why, then, would these people stop producing art once they made it to North America?

“I don’t know,” Stanford said. “But you’re looking at a long distance inland, 100 miles or so, before they would get to caves to do art in.”

Instead, Stanford said today, Clovis points match up much closer with Solutrean style tools, which researchers date to about 19,000 years ago. This suggests that the American people making Clovis points made Solutrean points before that.

There’s just one problem with this hypothesis—Solutrean toolmakers lived in France and Spain. Scientists know of no land-ice bridge that spanned that entire gap.


This concept has been around for many decades , maybe even a century or more. Nice to see that science is finally getting around to and acknowledging old facts :rolleyes:

Oh lord, does that mean that those ancient honkies were ocean going seafarers , 15 thousand years before archaeologists had suspected .
Oh shades of Otzi .

( I wonder if these dim witted academics could even grasp the possibility that ancient people from Spain and France crossed westward at the Mid-Atlantic ? Nah, that's expecting too much.)

Small wonder, Schopenhauer had so much contempt for academics !

It amazes me that they have previously insisted on the walking/landbridge model. Stripping the people of any potential boat building skills in the process. I can't imagine boats as being beyond their grasp. Any group living near water for more than a couple generations would employ boats, IMO.

It amazes me that they have previously insisted on the walking/landbridge model. Stripping the people of any potential boat building skills in the process. I can't imagine boats as being beyond their grasp. Any group living near water for more than a couple generations would employ boats, IMO.

Yeah , boats are real hard to conceptualize . I am sure they couldn't watch a log float down river and advance an idea from that :rolleyes: Let alone a natural raft of logs .
Who knows, the first cloth weavers might have been sailmakers ?

You have to remember that they are academics, they don't grasp anything outside a textbook.
Pedantry stifles the mind !

These high academics are the same people who said,

Man will never fly a heavier than air craft ( proved mathematically at harvard )
Man will never fly faster than sound , it is impossible.
Man will never go into space, escape velocity is faster than any explosive, even nitroglycerin.
Man will never be able to travel in space, solar radiation will kill him.
( thank god the Russians didn't have faith in that, they put laika into space and she did fine, till the air ran out , didn't die from radiation ).

Beat me to it, New Order! Great article!

The Bering Land Bridge theory came to a ridiculous denoument when the climatologists got to it. Simply put, the weather and conditions in N. America during the era the alleged crossing took place was worse than in Asia.

So according to the theory that is taught as fact in most textbooks today, the ancestors of the N. American Indians took the world's most difficult hike to end up more miserable then when they started out. Right-o, higher ed!

So according to the theory that is taught as fact in most textbooks today, the ancestors of the N. American Indians took the world's most difficult hike to end up more miserable then when they started out. Right-o, higher ed!

Ever look at a topographical map of Alaska and Western Canada, not exactly an easy hike. It would be better argued that any travels to North America were by coasters, using rafts or canoes to move along the coast from encampment to encampment.

I am glad that academics won't read this site. They'd probably steal the idea for a book or thesis.

My daughter tells me it is now commonly accepted that the first people in America were "Ukraineans". I think she read this on Salon, a thoroughly kosher site, as I remember.

Some scientists believe that the Solutrean peoples were responsible for much of the cave art in Europe. Opponents of Stanford’s work ask why, then, would these people stop producing art once they made it to North America?

“I don’t know,” Stanford said. “But you’re looking at a long distance inland, 100 miles or so, before they would get to caves to do art in.”Also the cave art is related to hunting land animals; the people who made this art weren't hunting marine animals or using boats. And due to water level changes any caves the coastal people might have used are now underwater.

Ever look at a topographical map of Alaska and Western Canada, not exactly an easy hike. It would be better argued that any travels to North America were by coasters, using rafts or canoes to move along the coast from encampment to encampment.

I am glad that academics won't read this site. They'd probably steal the idea for a book or thesis.Actually you're not coming up with any new ideas; the "coastal migration" theory has been picking up steam in academia for the past couple of decades. It makes a lot of sense but due to changes in sea levels most of the good evidence to support it ended up underwater.

I saw a show on this topic on the Discovery channel about a week ago.

To Franzjoseph, the theory that Europeans came to America first does not mean that Asians did not walk across from Siberia a few thousand years later. Or if they did not walk, they drifted across on icebergs, or boats.

The fact that the overall climate may have been slightly worse in Alaska at that time does not mean that isolated groups or tribes would not have ventured across from Siberia. They may have come across on hunting trips, or they may have preferred a place with less people (and therefore better hunting opportunities and resources).

You have to look at the time frames... people had probably been living in eastern Siberia for centuries or millenia. To suggest that over all that time, all those generations, people would not have made a single crossing of the Bering Strait because the weather was slightly colder in Alaska... doesn't add up.

The really telling factor in this is the genetic studies. American Injun tribes have been found to have significant traces of DNA markers from European ancestors, although most of their DNA is consistent with Asian ancestry.

The discovery channel show mentioned that some tribes were supposed to be about 25% European.



Beat me to it, New Order! Great article!

The Bering Land Bridge theory came to a ridiculous denoument when the climatologists got to it. Simply put, the weather and conditions in N. America during the era the alleged crossing took place was worse than in Asia.

So according to the theory that is taught as fact in most textbooks today, the ancestors of the N. American Indians took the world's most difficult hike to end up more miserable then when they started out. Right-o, higher ed!

To Franzjoseph, the theory that Europeans came to America first does not mean that Asians did not walk across from Siberia a few thousand years later. Or if they did not walk, they drifted across on icebergs, or boats.

I vote for boats. I just always thought the Hike Over Beringia was a lot of bullshit.

Seriously, There's no real doubt that Asians got to the Americas in the old days, but artifacts and graves overwhelmingly show they went to places you need to float to.

There's a really obscure resource on this that I recommend, because (tho obscure) it is easy to find. A researcher named Henriette Mertz gathered tons of evidence about Asian penetration into N and Central America and had it published by the skin of its teeth in 1953. Title is Pale Ink.

There it sat till the 70s, when astronauts from space and all that started. Somebody re-titled it and published it in cheap paperback as Gods from the Far East: How the Chinese Discovered America.

Mertz's notes are terrific. It includes fascinating accounts in Chinese literature from thousands of years ago describing their Far East (us).

Thanks to the Screwy Seventies, anyone who is really curious can get a copy at any used paperback shop for a buck or two. There was a time when you could buy stuff like this by the pound. That don't mean it was all garbage; Mertz' book is worth it.