Revisiting the Peopling of the Americas

I thought this was funny, The Smithsonian Online doing a gigantic article on a site that is, after all, merely dated 1,000 years before Clovis.  I mean - really? 

When Did Humans Come to the Americas?

Recent scientific findings date their arrival earlier than ever thought, sparking hot debate among archaeologists

By Guy Gugliotta

Illustration by Andy Martin

Smithsonian magazine, February 2013

Any artifacts that scholars said came before Clovis, or competing theories that cast doubt on the Clovis-first idea, were ridiculed by the archaeological establishment, discredited as bad science or ignored.

Take South America. In the late 1970s, the U.S. archaeologist Tom D. Dillehay and his Chilean colleagues began excavating what appeared to be an ancient settlement on a creek bank at Monte Verde, in southern Chile. Radiocarbon readings on organic material collected from the ruins of a large tent-like structure showed that the site was 14,800 years old, predating Clovis finds by more than 1,000 years. The 50-foot-long main structure, made of wood with a hide roof, was divided into what appeared to be individual spaces, each with a separate hearth. Outside was a second, wishbone-shaped structure that apparently contained medicinal plants. Mastodons were butchered nearby.

The excavators found cordage, stone choppers and augers and wooden planks preserved in the bog, along with plant remains, edible seeds and traces of wild potatoes. Significantly, though, the researchers found no Clovis points. That posed a challenge: either Clovis hunters went to South America without their trademark weapons (highly unlikely) or people settled in South America even before the Clovis people arrived.

There must have been “people somewhere in the Americas 15,000 or 16,000 years ago, or perhaps as long as 18,000 years ago,” said Dillehay, now at Vanderbilt University.

Of the researchers working sites that seemed to precede Clovis people, Dillehay was singled out for special criticism. He was all but ostracized by Clovis advocates for years. When he was invited to meetings, speakers stood up to denounce Monte Verde. “It’s not fun when people write to your dean and try to get you fired,” he recalled. “And then your grad students try to get jobs and they can’t get jobs.”

Interesting Genetic Study out of China

A Relative from the Tianyuan Cave: Humans Living 40,000 Years Ago Likely Related to Many Present-Day Asians and Native Americans

Jan. 21, 2013 — Ancient DNA has revealed that humans living some 40,000 years ago in the area near Beijing were likely related to many present-day Asians and Native Americans.

An international team of researchers including Svante Pääbo and Qiaomei Fu of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, sequenced nuclear and mitochondrial DNA that had been extracted from the leg of an early modern human from Tianyuan Cave near Beijing, China. Analyses of this individual's DNA showed that the Tianyuan human shared a common origin with the ancestors of many present-day Asians and Native Americans. In addition, the researchers found that the proportion of Neanderthal and Denisovan-DNA in this early modern human is not higher than in people living in this region nowadays.

Humans with morphology similar to present-day humans appear in the fossil record across Eurasia between 40,000 and 50,000 years ago. The genetic relationships between these early modern humans and present-day human populations had not yet been established. Qiaomei Fu, Matthias Meyer and colleagues of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, extracted nuclear and mitochondrial DNA from a 40,000 year old leg bone found in 2003 at the Tianyuan Cave site located outside Beijing. For their study the researchers were using new techniques that can identify ancient genetic material from an archaeological find even when large quantities of DNA from soil bacteria are present.

The researchers then reconstructed a genetic profile of the leg's owner. "This individual lived during an important evolutionary transition when early modern humans, who shared certain features with earlier forms such as Neanderthals, were replacing Neanderthals and Denisovans, who later became extinct," says Svante Pääbo of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, who led the study.

The genetic profile reveals that this early modern human was related to the ancestors of many present-day Asians and Native Americans but had already diverged genetically from the ancestors of present-day Europeans. In addition, the Tianyuan individual did not carry a larger proportion of Neanderthal or Denisovan DNA than present-day people in the region. "More analyses of additional early modern humans across Eurasia will further refine our understanding of when and how modern humans spread across Europe and Asia," says Svante Pääbo.

Parts of the work were carried out in a new laboratory jointly run by the Max Planck Society and the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing.

The Peopling of America: Let's Take Another Look

Reported at BBC Online

24 March 2011 Last updated at 18:58 ET
Stone tools 'demand new American story'
By Paul Rincon and Jonathan Amos, Science reporters, BBC News

The long-held theory of how humans first populated the Americas may have been well and truly broken.

Photo by Michael Walters, Texas A & M

Archaeologists have unearthed thousands of stone tools that predate the technology widely assumed to have been carried by the first settlers.

The discoveries in Texas are seen as compelling evidence that the so-called Clovis culture does not represent America's original immigrants.

Details of the 15,500-year-old finds are reported in Science magazine.

A number of digs across the Americas in recent decades had already hinted that the "Clovis first" model was in serious trouble.

But the huge collection of well-dated tools excavated from a creek bed 60km (40 miles) northwest of Austin mean the theory is now dead, argue the Science authors.

"This is almost like a baseball bat to the side of the head of the archaeological community to wake up and say, 'hey, there are pre-Clovis people here, that we have to stop quibbling and we need to develop a new model for peopling of the Americas'," Michael Waters, a Texas A&M University anthropologist, told reporters.

For 80 years, it has been argued that the Clovis culture was the first to sweep into the New World.

These people were defined by their highly efficient stone-tool technology. Their arrow heads and spear points were formidable hunting weapons and were used to bring down the massive beasts of the Ice Age, such as mammoth, mastodon and bison.

Clovis first?

The hunter gatherers associated with this technology were thought to have crossed from Siberia into Alaska via a land bridge that became exposed when sea levels dropped. Evidence indicates this occurred as far back as about 13,500 years.

But an increasing number of archaeologists have argued there was likely to have been an earlier occupation based on the stone tools that began turning up at dig sites with claimed dates of more than 15,000 years.

Dr Waters and colleagues say this position is now undeniable in the light of the new artefacts to emerge from the Debra L Friedkin excavation.

These objects comprise 15,528 items in total - a variety of chert blades, bladelets, chisels, and abundant flakes produced when making or repairing stone tools.

The collection was found directly below sediment containing classic Clovis implements. The dating - which relied on a technique known as optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) that can tell how long minerals have been buried - is robust, says the team. And, they add, the observed sequence is also reliable; the sediments have not been mixed up after the tools were dropped.

"The sediments were very rigid in the fact that they were clay, which worked to our advantage," explained Lee Nordt from Baylor University. "If you go to many other sites, they are loamy or sandy in texture, and they are mixed very rapidly by burrowing from animals or maybe from plant roots, etc."

Getting around

The newly discovered tools are small, and the researchers propose that they were designed for a mobile toolkit - something that could be easily packed up and moved to a new location. Although clearly different from Clovis tools, they share some similarities and the researchers suggest Clovis technology may even have been derived from the capabilities displayed in the earlier objects.

"The Debra L Friedkin site demonstrates that people were in the Americas at least 2,500 years before Clovis," said Dr Waters.

"The discovery provides ample time for Clovis to develop. People could experiment with stone and invent the weapons and tools that would potentially become recognizable as Clovis. In other words, [these tools represent] the type of assemblage from which Clovis could emerge."

But anthropologist Tom Dillehay, who was not involved with the latest study, commented: "The 'Clovis first' paradigm died years ago. There are many other accepted pre-Clovis candidates throughout the Americas now."

Professor Dillehay, from Vanderbilt University in Tennessee, told BBC News: "If you look at the prose of this paper, it bothers me a little bit because it's as if they are reconstituting the Clovis-Pre-Clovis debate and saying, 'Here's the site that kills it'."

He commended the researchers on their well-presented data and "tight discussion". But he said that the OSL technique was less reliable than radiocarbon dating, which has been applied to other early American sites.

And assigning the artefacts to Clovis and pre-Clovis technologies was not straightforward because the site lacked the projectile points required to reliably distinguish between the two. Clovis projectile points are unmistakeable.

In addition, said the Vanderbilt anthropology professor, the tools come from a floodplain deposit that is just 6-7cm thick. This, he said, was "potentially problematic" because of the possibility that artefacts were transported around by water.

Professor Gary Haynes, from the University of Nevada in Reno, US, praised the "good work" by the research team.

But he said it was plausible that natural processes could have caused some stone tools to migrate downwards in the clay - giving the impression of a pre-Clovis layer.

Ancient Navigators: California islands give up evidence of early seafaring

From a press release at EurekAlert.org by the University of Oregon

Oregon, Smithsonian-led team uncovers numerous artifacts at late Pleistocene sites on the Channel Islands
Public release date: 3-Mar-2011

Evidence for a diversified sea-based economy among North American inhabitants dating from 12,200 to 11,400 years ago is emerging from three sites on California's Channel Islands.

Reporting in the March 4 issue of Science, a 15-member team led by University of Oregon and Smithsonian Institution scholars describes the discovery of scores of stemmed projectile points and crescents dating to that time period. The artifacts are associated with the remains of shellfish, seals, geese, cormorants and fish.

Funded primarily by grants from the National Science Foundation, the team also found thousands of artifacts made from chert, a flint-like rock used to make projectile points and other stone tools.

Some of the intact projectiles are so delicate that their only practical use would have been for hunting on the water, said Jon Erlandson, professor of anthropology and director of the Museum of Natural and Cultural History at the University of Oregon. He has been conducting research on the islands for more than 30 years.

"This is among the earliest evidence of seafaring and maritime adaptations in the Americas, and another extension of the diversity of Paleoindian economies," Erlandson said. "The points we are finding are extraordinary, the workmanship amazing. They are ultra thin, serrated and have incredible barbs on them. It's a very sophisticated chipped-stone technology." He also noted that the stemmed points are much different than the iconic fluted points left throughout North America by Clovis and Folsom peoples who hunted big game on land.

The artifacts were recovered from three sites that date to the end of the Pleistocene epoch on Santa Rosa and San Miguel islands, which in those days were connected as one island off the California coast. Sea levels then were 50 to 60 meters (about 160-200 feet) below modern levels. Rising seas have since flooded the shorelines and coastal lowlands where early populations would have spent most of their time.

Erlandson and his colleagues have focused their search on upland features such as springs, caves, and chert outcrops that would have drawn early maritime peoples into the interior. Rising seas also may have submerged evidence of even older human habitation of the islands.

The newly released study focuses on the artifacts and animal remains recovered, but the implications for understanding the peopling of the Americas may run deeper.

The technologies involved suggest that these early islanders were not members of the land-based Clovis culture, Erlandson said. No fluted points have been found on the islands. Instead, the points and crescents are similar to artifacts found in the Great Basin and Columbia Plateau areas, including pre-Clovis levels at Paisley Caves in eastern Oregon that are being studied by another UO archaeologist, Dennis Jenkins.

Last year, Charlotte Beck and Tom Jones, archaeologists at New York's Hamilton College who study sites in the Great Basin, argued that stemmed and Clovis point technologies were separate, with the stemmed points originating from Pacific Coast populations and not, as conventional wisdom holds, from the Clovis people who moved westward from the Great Plains. Erlandson and colleagues noted that the Channel Island points are also broadly similar to stemmed points found early sites around the Pacific Rim, from Japan to South America.

Six years ago, Erlandson proposed that Late Pleistocene sea-going people may have followed a "kelp highway" stretching from Japan to Kamchatka, along the south coast of Beringia and Alaska, then southward down the Northwest Coast to California. Kelp forests are rich in seals, sea otters, fish, seabirds, and shellfish such as abalones and sea urchins.

"The technology and seafaring implications of what we've found on the Channel Islands are magnificent," said study co-author Torben C. Rick, curator of North American Archaeology at the Smithsonian Institution. "Some of the paleo-ecological and subsistence implications are also very important. These sites indicate very early and distinct coastal and island subsistence strategies, including harvest of red abalones and other shellfish and fish dependent on kelp forests, but also the exploitation of larger pinnipeds and waterfowl, including an extinct flightless duck.

"This combination of unique hunting technologies found with marine mammal and migratory waterfowl bones provides a very different picture of the Channel Islands than what we know today, and indicates very early and diverse maritime life ways and foraging practices," Rick said. "What is so interesting is that not only do the data we have document some of the earliest marine mammal and bird exploitation in North America, but they show that very early on New World coastal peoples were hunting such animals and birds with sophisticated technologies that appear to have been refined for life in coastal and aquatic habitats."

The stemmed points found on the Channel Islands range from tiny to large, probably indicating that they were used for hunting a variety of animals.

"We think the crescents were used as transverse projectile points, probably for hunting birds. Their broad stone tips, when attached to a dart shaft provided a stone age shotgun-approach to hunting birds in flight," Erlandson said. "These are very distinctive artifacts, hundreds of which have been found on the Channel Islands over the years, but rarely in a stratified context, he added. Often considered to be between 8,000 and 10,000 years old in California, "we now have crescents between 11,000 and 12,000 years old, some of them associated with thousands of bird bones."

The next challenge, Erlandson and Rick noted, is to find even older archaeological sites on the Channel Islands, which might prove that a coastal migration contributed to the initial peopling of the Americas, now thought to have occurred two to three millennia earlier.


Fascinating! Some serious consideration is evidently being given to this "kelp highway" leading to the peopling of at least part(s) of America by seafarers from as far away as Japan. I know similar theories have been suggested off and on for several years but appear not to have garnered much overall support. I'm sure I've posted about the "out of Japan" hypotheses before -- but don't remember when or what I may have filed it under -- you might try a site search under "peopling of America" or perhaps under "Jomon"!  I seem to recall posting some parts of an article that discuss Jomon art/artifacts and compared them with those of some New World cultures. 

Wikipedia has a fairly intelligent summary of some of the "coastal migration" hypotheses and work thereon that has been done over the years, and includes a summary of some of Erlandson's work on the Channel Islands.
Panamerican Dreams has a brief discussion in layperson's terms of the competing migration/peopling of Americas theories.

Could these teeth turn "out of Africa" theory upside down?

We live in exciting times, archaeologically, that's for damn sure.  Thank Goddess for the internet - where news like this can now be instantaly published and read by anyone who has an interest.  Here is a new twist on what we thought we thought we knew :)

Ancient teeth raise new questions about the origins of modern man
2 Feb 2011
Binghamton University

BINGHAMTON, NY – Eight small teeth found in a cave near Rosh Haain, central Israel, are raising big questions about the earliest existence of humans and where we may have originated, says Binghamton University anthropologist Rolf Quam. Part of a team of international researchers led by Dr. Israel Hershovitz of Tel Aviv University, Qaum and his colleagues have been examining the dental discovery and recently published their joint findings in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology.

Excavated at Qesem cave, a pre-historic site that was uncovered in 2000, the size and shape of the teeth are very similar to those of modern man, Homo sapiens, which have been found at other sites is Israel, such as Oafzeh and Skhul - but they're a lot older than any previously discovered remains.

"The Qesem teeth come from a time period between 200,000 - 400,000 years ago when human remains from the Middle East are very scarce," Quam said. "We have numerous remains of Neandertals and Homo sapiens from more recent times, that is around 60,00 - 150,000 years ago, but fossils from earlier time periods are rare. So these teeth are providing us with some new information about who the earlier occupants of this region were as well as their potential evolutionary relationships with the later fossils from this same region."

Rest of article.

Ancient Teeth Found in Israel. Credit: Rolf Quam.

It struck me just now, looking at this photograph of some of the teeth the article speaks to, that they rather resemble man's early attempts to make dice...

Revisting DNA in Polynesia Leads to Surprising Discoveries

I keep thinking about the new knowledge we will have about the movement of people and languages and cultures 25 years from now, as our scientific tools -- and our applications of those tools to existing archaeological evidence -- are re-applied to that existing evidence (as long as it does not mysteriously disappear), and new forensic techniques utilizing knowledge of multiple cross-specialities that we can't even imagine in 2011 -- come to be and are also applied to that existing evidence.  And that doesn't even begin to address what new evidence in archaeolgy, linguistics, paleo-botany, etc. etc. may come to light utilizing 21st century techniques of uncovering and analyzing ancient settlements, mathematical applications of computer algorithms to deciphering unknown languages and written symbols, etc. etc.  Oh - and advances in DNA analysis, too!  LOL!  I'll be a little old bitchy lady with a cane (and knows how to use it), still spry 25 years from now.  I don't intend to croak until I'm at least 100, and I envision a whole brave new world in 2051 and after, for my nieces and nephews and their descendants.  Yep, it won't seem at all strange then, to acknowledge that ancestors of Native Americans (from east and west) roamed Canada, the USA, Central America and South America from 50,000 BCE and maybe even before then. 

From Science Daily
Genetic Study Uncovers New Path to Polynesia
ScienceDaily (Feb. 3, 2011) — Surprising new evidence which overturns current theories of how humans colonised the Pacific has been discovered by scientists at the University of Leeds, UK


Map of Polynesia. Not from article.

The islands of Polynesia were first inhabited around 3,000 years ago, but where these people came from has long been a hot topic of debate amongst scientists. The most commonly accepted view, based on archaeological and linguistic evidence as well as genetic studies, is that Pacific islanders were the latter part of a migration south and eastwards from Taiwan which began around 4,000 years ago.

But the Leeds research -- published February 3 in The American Journal of Human Genetics -- has found that the link to Taiwan does not stand up to scrutiny. In fact, the DNA of current Polynesians can be traced back to migrants from the Asian mainland who had already settled in islands close to New Guinea some 6-8,000 years ago.

The type of DNA extracted and analysed in this kind of study is that stored in the cell's mitochondria. Mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) is passed down the maternal line, providing a record of inheritance which goes back thousands of years. The scientists look for genetic signatures which enable them to classify the DNA into different lineages and then use a 'molecular clock' to date when these lineages moved into different parts of the world.

Lead researcher, Professor Martin Richards, explains: "Most previous studies looked at a small piece of mtDNA, but for this research we studied 157 complete mitochondrial genomes in addition to smaller samples from over 4,750 people from across Southeast Asia and Polynesia. We also reworked our dating techniques to significantly reduce the margin of error. This means we can be confident that the Polynesian population -- at least on the female side -- came from people who arrived in the Bismarck Archipelago of Papua New Guinea thousands of years before the supposed migration from Taiwan took place."

Nevertheless, most linguists maintain that the Polynesian languages are part of the Austronesian language family which originates in Taiwan. And most archaeologists see evidence for a Southeast Asian influence on the appearance of the Lapita culture in the Bismarck Archipelago around 3,500 years ago. Characterised by distinctive dentate stamped ceramics and obsidian tools, Lapita is also a marker for the earliest settlers of Polynesia.

Professor Richards and co-researcher Dr Pedro Soares (now at the University of Porto), argue that the linguistic and cultural connections are due to smaller migratory movements from Taiwan that did not leave any substantial genetic impact on the pre-existing population.

"Although our results throw out the likelihood of any maternal ancestry in Taiwan for the Polynesians, they don't preclude the possibility of a Taiwanese linguistic or cultural influence on the Bismarck Archipelago at that time," explains Professor Richards. "In fact, some minor mitochondrial lineages back up this idea. It seems likely there was a 'voyaging corridor' between the islands of Southeast Asia and the Bismarck Archipelago carrying maritime traders who brought their language and artefacts and perhaps helped to create the impetus for the migration into the Pacific.

"Our study of the mtDNA evidence shows the interactions between the islands of Southeast Asia and the Pacific was far more complex than previous accounts tended to suggest and it paves the way for new theories of the spread of Austronesian languages."

The study, which involved researchers from the UK, Taiwan and Australia, was mainly funded by the British Academy, the Bradshaw Foundation and the European Union.

See full article for citations.

Ancient Woman Suggests Diverse Migration

Article at yahoo news:

Mark Stevenson, Associated Press Writer – Fri Jul 23, 5:25 pm ET
MEXICO CITY – A scientific reconstruction of one of the oldest sets of human remains found in the Americas appears to support theories that the first people who came to the hemisphere migrated from a broader area than once thought, researchers say.

Mexico's National Institute of Anthropology and History on Thursday released photos of the reconstructed image of a woman who probably lived on Mexico's Caribbean coast 10,000 to 12,000 years ago. She peeks out of the picture as a short, spry-looking woman with slightly graying hair.

Anthropologists had long believed humans migrated to the Americas in a relatively short period from a limited area in northeast Asia across a temporary land corridor that opened across the Bering Strait during an ice age.

But government archaeologist Alejandro Terrazas says the picture has now become more complicated, because the reconstruction more resembles people from southeastern Asian areas like Indonesia.

"History isn't that simple," Terrazas said. "This indicates that the Americas were populated by several migratory movements, not just one or two waves from northern Asia across the Bering Strait."

Some outside experts caution that the evidence is not conclusive.

Ripan Malhi, assistant professor of anthropology at the University of Illinois, said that "using facial reconstructions to assign ancestry to an individual is not as strong as using ancient DNA to assess the ancestry of the individual, because the environment can influence the traits of the face."

"All of the current genetic evidence points to Northeast Asia as the main source for Native Americans," Malhi said.

However, there have been few opportunities to use DNA or other methods to identify the origins of the first inhabitants because only a handful of skeletons from 10,000 years ago have survived.

The female is known as "La Mujer de las Palmas," or "The Woman of the Palms," after the sinkhole cave near the Caribbean resort of Tulum where her remains were found by divers and recovered in 2002.

Because rising water levels flooded the cave where she died or was laid to rest, her skeleton was about 90 percent intact. Archaeologists and physical anthropologists calculated she was between 44 and 50 years old when she died, was about 5 feet (1.52 meters) tall and weighed about 128 pounds (58 kilograms).

Experts also measured skull features and calculated the muscle and other tissue layers that once covered her face, which served as a guide for experts in paleo-anthropological modeling at the Atelier Daynes in France to complete a model of the woman.

The model shows a stocky woman and clad in a simple knee-length woven tunic. She had a broad face, prominent cheeks, thin lips, and little trace of the epicanthic eye-folds that characterize many modern Asian populations.

"Her body structure, skin and eyes are similar to the population of Southeast Asia," the institute said in a statement.

Susan Gillespie, an associate professor of anthropology at the University of Florida, noted that while the Bering land bridge theory still has a lot of support, "the situation is messier than the straightforward scenario ... of big-game hunters chasing woolly mammoths over the exposed `Bering bridge' to Alaska."

"Recently there has been more serious inquiry into the various origins of migrants, modes of transportation, and dates of when they got here," Gillespie said in an e-mail message. "Dates for peopling of the Americas have been pushed way back, and with the finding of very early skeletal remains, the genetic/skeletal linkages to peoples of northeast Asia has become more cloudy."

But Gillespie cautioned against comparing a reconstructed face from 10,000 years ago to modern populations in places like Indonesia, which have also probably changed over 10 millennia.

"You have to find skeletons of the same time period in Asia, or use genetic reconstructions, to make a strong connection, and cannot rely on modern populations," she wrote. "Do we have any empirical data on what Southeast Asian women looked like ... 10,000 years ago?"

The Peopling of the Americas: Skull Studies Say Done in Two Migrations

What I want to know is - how did these scientists determine that both waves of settlers arrived here THE SAME WAY?  Also not mentioned in the article, how long was it between the waves, and what happened to the earlier settlers?  Did they all die out?  Were they subsumed into the later wave of migrants?  Does any of this research answer the questions raised by other evidence of settlers via one or more Pacific Ocean routes or from an Atlantic Ocean ice-age sea route?

An AFP report at Yahoo News
Skulls show New World was settled twice: study
Mon Jun 14, 6:51 pm ET
WASHINGTON (AFP) – Two distinct groups from Asia settled in the New World and not one single migration as suggested by previous genetic studies, experts said Monday after comparing the skulls of early Americans.

Paleoanthropologists from Brazil, Chile and Germany compared the skulls of several dozen Paleoamericans, dating back to the early days of migration 11,000 years ago, with the more recent remains of more than 300 Amerindians.

"We found that the differences between Early and Late Native American groups match the predictions of a two-migration scenario far better than they do those of any other hypothesis," they said.

"In other words, these differences are so large that it is highly improbable that the earliest inhabitants of the New World were the direct ancestors of recent Native American populations."

Their landmark research found differences in the cranial morphology that could only be explained by the fact that the last common ancestor of the Early and Late Native American groups came from outside the continent.

The experts agreed the differences were best explained by a scenario in which a first wave of settlers came across the Bering Strait from Northeast Asia followed by a second group from East Asia much later via the same route.

"We conclude that the morphological diversity documented through time in the New World is best accounted for by a model postulating two waves of human expansion into the continent originating in East Asia and entering through Beringia," they said.

"This disparity between our results and those of most genetic studies points to a large gap in our understanding of the peopling of the New World."


GEE! Ya think so? Duh - OF COURSE IT DOES. Glad to finally read a scientist admitting it in print to the general public!

Bones, Oh Those Bones

We are, I believe, literally at the threshhold of learning much more about our true past as humans than we ever dreamed was possible before, with the new tools we have for dating archaeological layers and analysing "human" remains.  Whether they are human remains to be seen and, I sincerely hope, will be contested and discussed for the next hundred years or however long it takes until we realize that "man" has been "man" all along.  But hey, that's just my take on the subject.

I found this article interesting because it introduces an element of mystery into the "human" settlement of the area we today call The Netherlands.  Physical remains that may date back some 370,000 years.  Say what?

Neanderthal may not be the oldest Dutchman
Published on : 26 March 2010 - 4:48pm | By Henk-Sjoerd Oosterhoff

People may well have been roaming the land we now call the Netherlands for far longer than was assumed until recently. There is evidence to suggest that the country was home to the forebears of the Neanderthals. Amateur archaeologist Pieter Stoel found materials used by the oldest inhabitants in the central town of Woerden. These artefacts were shown to be at least 370,000 years old, which takes us back to long before the time of the Neanderthals.

Pushing Back the Record of Human Habitation

Two articles on discoveries in different parts of the world - boom boom - new knowledge is exploding!

Czech archaeologists find oldest settlement in Arbil, north Iraq
ČTK | 8 March 2010
Plzen, West Bohemia, March 5 (CTK) - An expedition of Czech archaeologists has found remains of an about 150,000-year-old prehistoric settlement in Arbil, north Iraq, which has been the so far oldest uncovered in this part of northern Mesopotamia, team head Karel Novacek told reporters Friday.

Ancient secrets uncovered
DAMIEN BROWN
March 10, 2010 06:18am

A STUNNING archaeological discovery at Brighton [Tasamania] could change scientific understanding of human occupation.

The discovery of artefacts that could be among the oldest in the world has prompted the State Government to consider adding a multi-million-dollar bridge to its Brighton bypass plans.

In a new development set to rock the scientific world, the artefacts found in the path of the proposed bypass could be twice as old as previously thought.

The discovery of the remains, that preliminary estimates show could be at least 40,000 years old, would give the scientific world a unique glimpse of a previously unknown period of human occupation this far south on the planet.

Another article on the Tasmania discovery.

Oldest American artefact unearthed

Oregon caves yield evidence of continent's first inhabitants. Published online 5 November 2009 Nature doi:10.1038/news.2009.1058 Rex Dalton This article is interesting for a couple of reasons, including that it totally ignores all archaeological evidence of human occupation produced from the eastern part of the United States that may date back as far as 50,000 years ago! I found the comments much more interesting than the article. People who have kept up with this never-ending debate may recognize some of the names of the posters: "The only other American archaeological site older than Clovis is at Monte Verde in Chile"? WHAT??? Topper. Meadowcroft. Cactus Hill. With all due respect, does EVERY site have to have a score or two American archeologists arrive to vet every single pre-Clovis site? THE CLOVIS BARRIER IS BROKEN. Why do the panicked Clovis get to be the arbiters of every site? They are clinging to an antiquated paradigm. Isn't it about time that we can read an article about an early site without having to fluff up the article with ten paragraphs dictated by the people that won't give up their defeated concept? Nature only embarrasses itself by allowing these people to dominate the discussion. Please, editors: Can't we just have an article that simply states – like in Europe or Africa or Asia – that a site is the oldest, without dragging in outdated and refuted concepts? I don't see any flat-earth people being referenced anywhere in your magazine. Why do these folks get special editorial air space? Could it be that they are grandfathered in and the magazine doesn't know how to get rid of them? And the writer should have at the very least mentioned some of those OTHER "pre-Clovis" (please let's get rid of that term!) sites as having very strong evidence to pre-date Clovis. If Clovis is going to be mentioned, then submitting that Monte Verde is the only other "pre-Clovis site in the Americas" is not only misleading, but all but an outright in error – not to mention misleading (intentionally so? and if so, WHY???). This PRO-Clovis attitude just oozes out of this article in almost every paragraph, and is completely embarrassing for your magazine. Please, if the Clovis clingers insist on hanging on to that concept, the magazine doesn't. 06 Nov, 2009 Posted by: Stephen Garcia I could not agree more with Stephen Garcia's comment. The Clovis first notion is old news! Isn't about time that scientists such as Dr. Tom Dillehay received their just dues. Dr. Dillehay has been advocating a human presence in the Americas for a number of years now. Dr. Dillehay has found what he believes are human artifacts extending back as long ago as 32,000 BP. This also calls into question (and I hope puts to rest) the idea that early humans had much to do with animal extictions here in the Americas. Please see http//www.bcclimate.com 06 Nov, 2009 Posted by: Rodney Chilton It would have been interesting to read about how it was determined that the object is a scraping tool. Was it studied closely for wear patterns? Does it compare to other bone tools found in other sites? I'm sure the researchers did all that but it is not communicated in the article. The object's definition as a "tool" is an accepted conclusion by the author. 06 Nov, 2009 Posted by: Bruce Terrell Garcia and Chilton echo the comment you chose to pass on. NATURE's/Dalton's pro-Clovis stance is so thoroughly outdate and probably due to simple laziness or even feckless attitude toward the very important question of who were the First Americans? Next time, get somebody with at least a freshman's level education on the matter.NATURE can do better. 06 Nov, 2009 Posted by: Chris Hardaker While I agree with Chris Hardacker whole heartedly in his postion, I think that Nature's stance on some topics is fat too conservative. this in fact is the attitude shared by most Scientific journals. I even will go so far as to say such conservatism borders on dogma that perhaps even rivals religious dogma. I have found this to be the case in another topic area, and that is comet bombardments of our planet since the Last Ice Age. 07 Nov, 2009 Posted by: Rodney Chilton

Who Came First? Indians or Europeans?

DNA analysis and discoveries continue. Twenty years from now we'll probably be (discreetly) laughing at a lot of the interpretations from the findings of these studies. But for now, they provide much drama and are opening up fields that should be examined because, if nothing else, they will ultimately prove that we all sprang from the same source, and skin color and country of origin are nonsense in the greater scheme of things. That being said - I have some objections to the tone of this article - but hey, go for it Indians! Who came first, Indians or Europeans? K V Ramana / DNA Sunday, October 4, 2009 2:12 IST Hyderabad: We often talk and worry about brain drain, where the brightest Indians move out of the sub-continent, generally to the West, seeking better opportunities. However, it may turn out that this is hardly a new trend. Geneticists at the Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology in Hyderabad released a study last week which suggested that the Indian population has its origin in migrants from Africa who arrived here 45,000 to 65,000 years ago. The next stage of the study, they say, will explore whether Europe got populated by migrating Indians. This will go against the belief that in ancient times, humans moving from Europe populated India. Earlier studies published in 2005 have established that the mega droughts in East Africa had forced the population there to migrate to greener pastures some 75,000 years ago. The migrant Africans are believed to have taken the southern coastal route to reach India. The currently prevailing view is that the original inhabitants of Africa followed a northern route of migration via Middle East, Europe, south-east Asia, Australia and then to India. In addition to these findings, CCMB's recent research has shown that today's sub-continental population originated from two groups of ancestors: Ancestral North Indian (ANI) and Ancestral South Indian (ASI). While the ASI entered from the south, the ANI entered India from the northern region. "We are now going to answer several key questions going forward," says Dr Lalji Singh, former director of the CCMB and a senior scientist on genetic research."We are always told that people from different parts of the planet migrated into India. But we were never told that people from India, too, had wandered out. The ANI have similarity to Europeans and to Iranians. When you look at the origin of the Indian population, the Onges in the Andaman Islands are dated to about 65,000 years ago, and the European population is dated to 40,000 years ago. So the question of Europeans coming to India does not arise. The ANI must have given rise to the European population. We would now like to confirm this," he says. Though the scientists now seem to have enough evidence to prove that the Europeans have their origins in India, there are a couple of questions that need to be answered first. There is a possibility that the Europeans had a common ancestor like the ANI. If this is disproved, then it will add strength to the argument that Indians populated Europe. Implications for medical research According to Singh, some genetic disorders can be treated in a better manner if "what we'll be working on in the next three years gives all the desired results." Indeed, more information about the nature of the Indian genome would aid bio-technology research to streamline treatment for genetic disorders that are more prevalent among than Indians in other populations. There are two types of genetic disorders. The recessive diseases are those that do not show up in a person though one of the two genes (from the father and mother) has some defect. But a dominant disease shows up if either of the two genes have any defect. So, the recessive disease remains hidden. "The genetic studies of smaller groups, tribes and castes in the country will give us a clear idea on the hidden (recessive) diseases. Similarly, we can look for better treatment for the yet-to-be born child," he said. "India was neglected all these years. Scientists in western countries normally study Europe, America and Russia and for them that is the whole world. Any theory they make is based on the findings in these geographies. From our studies they have now realised their blunder. India is a melting pot and I am sure many countries and continents were populated by India. It (our study) is going to rewrite both science and history," Singh said. Copyright permission mandatory to republish this article. For reprint rights click here All rights reserved.

DNA Study in India: Founded by Two Distinct Peoples

Talk about politically explosive! Oh my! You can just see what's coming - and the argument about the "Aryan" invasion of India will continue with new vigor... Article from newkerala.com Indian ancestry revealed in massive study London, Sep 25 : The largest ever DNA survey of Indian heritage has revealed that the population of India was founded on just two ancient groups that are as genetically distinct from each other as they are from other Asians. The findings of the study, conducted by a group of top international geneticists, have strong implications for health and medicine, and reveal important new information on caste in India. The study shows that most Indian populations are genetic admixtures of two ancient but genetically divergent groups, which each contributed around 40-60 percent of the DNA to most present-day Indians, Nature magazine reported Wednesday. One ancestral lineage - genetically similar to Middle Eastern, Central Asian and European populations - was higher in upper-caste individuals and speakers of Indo-European languages such as Hindi, the researchers found. The other lineage was not close to any group outside the Indian subcontinent, and was most common in people indigenous to the Andaman islands, says the study conducted by a team led by David Reich of the Broad Institute in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and Lalji Singh of the Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology in Hyderabad, India. Nature said that although India makes up around one-sixth of the world's population, it has been "sorely under-represented" in genome-wide studies of human genetic variation. The Indian Genome Variation database, launched in 2003 to fill the gap, has so far studied only 420 DNA-letter differences, called single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs), in 75 genes. In sharp contrast, the study reported by Nature has probed more than 560,000 SNPs across the genomes of 132 Indian individuals from 25 diverse ethnic and tribal groups dotted all over India. The researchers also found that Indian populations were much more highly subdivided than European populations. But whereas European ancestry is mostly carved up by geography, Indian segregation was driven largely by caste. "There are populations that have lived in the same town and same village for thousands of years without exchanging genes," said Reich. The authors of the study said the new genetic evidence refutes the claim that the Indian caste structure was a modern invention of British colonialism. "This idea that caste is thousands of years old is a big deal," said Nicole Boivin, an Oxford University archaeologist. "To say that endogamy (the practice of marrying within a caste, community or tribe) goes back so far, and that genetics shows it, is going to be controversial to many anthropologists." The study also suggests that Indian populations, although currently huge in number, were founded by relatively small bands of individuals - a finding that has clinical implications. "There will be a lot of recessive diseases in India that will be different in each population and that can be searched for and mapped genetically," Reich said. "That will be important for health in India."

Latest on DNA Research and Human Migration

Detailed world map showing directions and times of major migration of modern humans. New research shows they spread out of Africa 20,000 years later than previously thought at around 55-60,000 years ago. © Trends in Ecology Well, frankly, I don't buy this. Too many gaps in populations, for one thing. And a 20,000 year spread between this research and prior recent research - all supposedly the latest? I think we need to refine our DNA analysis a WHOLE LOT MORE before we go re-writing history. Hell, I'm still not sure I BUY the postulated "truth" that genetic diversity is greatest at the source and thins down (gets less diverse) as it spreads out. Totally counter-intuitive! Wouldn't diversity grow greater as it spreads from the source and comes into contact and interbreeds with others of its kind? Well, what do I know about DNA? Nada! So let the experts continue their studies, and I'll continue to watch and see what develops. Here's the story: Humans spread out of Africa later September 4, 2009 Scientists, including the Natural History Museum’s origins expert Professor Chris Stringer, re-examined how scientists get dates for key events in human evolutionary history. They did this by finding new ways to analyse the data obtained from mitochondrial (mtDNA). Mitochondria are the tiny structures in each human cell that produce the cell’s power. They contain their own DNA and this is inherited through the mother. ‘We tried alternative ways to date recent episodes in human evolution, such as our split from Neanderthals, and we found these events occurred more recently in time,’ says Prof Stringer. The new analysis revealed modern humans separated from Neanderthals around 300-400,000 years ago rather than previous estimates of 500-600,000 years. The research suggested that modern humans migrated out of Africa between 55-60,000 years ago rather than the previous dates of 70-80,000 years. They also got more recent dates for other crucial events such as the age of our African ancestral mother, known as mitochondrial Eve, from who all recent humans (Homo sapiens) descended. She was found to have lived around 110-130,000 years ago, rather than previous estimates of 150,000-200,000 years ago. ‘The new dates are consistent with the most recent fossil and archaeological data for Neanderthal evolution, our exit from Africa and our arrival in Asia, Australia, Europe and the Americas,’ says Prof Stringer. ‘And they also cast doubt on ideas of an early exit from Africa towards China and Australia.’ More information: Chris Stringer, Phillip Endicott, Simon Y.W. Ho, and Mait Metspalu's Evaluating the Mitochondrial Timescale of Human Evolution paper is published in the journal Trends in Ecology and Evolution. Source: American Museum of Natural History (news : web)

Native Americans Descended From a Single Ancestral Group, DNA Study Confirms

This is interesting. Native Americans Descended From a Single Ancestral Group, DNA Study Confirms April 28, 2009 For two decades, researchers have been using a growing volume of genetic data to debate whether ancestors of Native Americans emigrated to the New World in one wave or successive waves, or from one ancestral Asian population or a number of different populations. Now, after painstakingly comparing DNA samples from people in dozens of modern-day Native American and Eurasian groups, an international team of scientists thinks it can put the matter to rest: Virtually without exception the new evidence supports the single ancestral population theory. “Our work provides strong evidence that, in general [in general? What does THAT mean?], Native Americans are more closely related to each other than to any other existing Asian populations, except those that live at the very edge of the Bering Strait,” said Kari Britt Schroeder, a lecturer at the University of California, Davis, and the first author on the paper describing the study. “While earlier studies have already supported this conclusion, what’s different about our work is that it provides the first solid data that simply cannot be reconciled with multiple ancestral populations,” said Schroeder, who was a Ph.D. student in anthropology at the university when she did the research. The study is published in the May issue of the journal Molecular Biology and Evolution. Rest of article.

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Are the authors of this DNA study saying that the archaeologists who support much older evidence of human occupation in North and South America are full of baloney? There is a lot of archaeological evidence pointing to MUCH older origins for humans in North and South America than a Bering Strait crossing supports. Who's right? The archaeologists? Was man here as far back as 50,000 years ago, 30,000 years ago or 14,000 years ago? Archaeologists claim evidence of human occupation for each of these dates - and dates in-between. For sake of argument, are all of the artifacts identified as Clovis, a particular style of artifact and date-range well-established and generally accepted in the archaeological community as correct, WRONG by 3,000 or more years? Or are the DNA scientists correct, pointing to a single population cross Bering Strait 11,000-10,000 years ago as being the ONLY ancestors of ALL Indian populations in North, Central and South America? Did absolutely everyone who arrived on the shores of North, Central and South America before those who crossed the Bering Strait die out, leaving absolutely no trace of their DNA in today's Indian populations? How else can the archaeological evidence be explained? Are ALL of the archaeologists and ALL of their accumulated evidence wrong? If archaeological evidence supports the existence of settlers in North and South America that predate DNA evidence for the ancestors of the current Native Americans, then aren't the descendants of those earlier deceased original settlers the REAL heirs to claims for rights to North, Central and South American real estate, etc. etc.? And would not the claims of the heirs of those earlier settlers trump the claims asserted by present Native American tribes claiming sovereignty and property rights, etc. etc. in North, Central and South America? If DNA evidence conclusively establishes that today's Native Americans became the dominant aborginal culture - rather like Europeans became the dominate culture during much later migrations to the New World, how can today's Indian tribes, aboriginals, First Nations, whatever they label themselves, claim special privilege when the DNA evidence shows, against the archaeological evidence, that when they arrived they MUST have wiped out all earlier settlers? Under common law, which the United States follows, wouldn't those inheritance rights pass to the ancestors of the first settlers who arrived on those shores? And just who were those first settlers? Some say they were Europeans (on the east coast); on the west coast, some say they were possibly of the Jomon culture, from Japan. Given the current state of archaeological evidence, and if this latest study of DNA evidence is correct, today's Native Americans have no right to say they were here first. It's clear they were not here first. What remains to be determined is just who was here first. Will it end up that Japan - or France - or Spain - files a claim to large chunks of the United States? Well, you can see what a can of worms this might open up. So, DNA people, before stating with such certainty that this is exactly what happened and there are no other probable explanations, my suggestion is that you take a look at the archaeological evidence compiled to date, and then wait for more sophisticated techniques of genetic analysis to be developed and view your evidence against those techniques and the entirety of the rest of the existing evidence, before you says this is the absolute truth and this is what happened.

Tongan Rock Carvings Discovered

Ancient Tongan rock carvings may offer clues to voyagers Sat, 31 Jan 2009 10:06a.m. Discovery of over 50 ancient rock engravings in Tonga, may shed some light on the pre-Polynesian Lapita peoples who voyaged across the Pacific. The petroglyphs, including stylised images of people and animals, were found emerging from beach sand at the northern end of Foa island, late last year, the Matangi Tonga newspaper reported. Artist Shane Egan called in archaeologist Professor David Burley, from the Simon Fraser University in Canada, to investigate and document the site. "The site on Foa Island is an amazing piece of artwork, with over 50 engraved images. Having an average height of 20 to 30cm (some much larger) there are very nicely stylised images of men and women, turtles, dogs, a bird, a lizard, as well as footprints and some weird exotic combinations," said Egan. He thought the images were close in form to some found in ancient Hawaii and dated to between 1200 and 1500AD. If similar dating was found for the latest carvings, it would raise a question about direct long distance voyages between Tonga and Hawaii in that era. The Foa rock engravings are on two large slabs of fixed beach-rock that were apparently exposed by erosion. The rock engravings were first sighted by visiting friends Richard Whelan and Janelle Johnston from Melbourne. Tonga's previously reported rock art has been limited to simple geometric engravings, though there is also a single engraved outline of a foot on a stone at a royal tomb. Petroglyphs have been found throughout eastern Polynesia, especially in the Marquesas, Tahiti and Hawaii. NZPA

Ainu (Japan) in Peru 1,000 Years Ago

Interesting - from New Kerala.com DNA links found between ancient Peruvians and Japanese Lima (Peru), Jan 11 : A new study has revealed genetic links between people who inhabited northern Peru more than 1,000 years ago and the Japanese. Japanese physical anthropologist Ken-ichi Shinoda performed DNA tests on the remains of human bodies found in the East Tomb and West Tomb in the Bosque de Pomas Historical Sanctuary in Peru, which are part of the Sican Culture Archaeological Project, funded by Japan's government. The director of the Sican National Museum, Carlos Elera, told the El Comercio newspaper that Shinoda found that people who lived more than 1,000 years ago in what today is the Lambayeque region, about 800 kilometers north of Lima, had genetic links to the contemporaneous populations of Ecuador, Colombia, Siberia, Taiwan and to the Ainu people of northern Japan. The studies will be continued on descendents of the Mochica culture, from the same region, who are currently working on the Sican Project and with people who live in the vicinity of the Bosque de Pomac Historical Sanctuary. According to Peruvian archaeologist Luis Chero, "Currently, the DNA results have great value because they can be understood to show that there were people who arrived in these zones from Asia and who then converted these zones into the great culture of the New World." The results of the studies will be presented at an exhibit on the Sican culture that will be set up for a year at the Tokyo Museum of Science and Nature. Also to be displayed at that exhibit will be gold, silver and copper jewelry found in the tombs of the ancient Sican rulers and priests. --- ANI

When Did People Arrive in the Americas?

From The Archaeology Channel: ICE AGE DISCOVERIES: NEW EVIDENCE Location: Virginia Length: 30 min. (Windows Media Player 56k 300k 700k) (Real Player 56k 300k 700k) Click on your speed to play Recent excavations at a number of sites, including Cactus Hill located along the Nottoway River in southwest Virginia, have provided new evidence and raised new questions about when people ventured into the Americas. For many years, archaeologists thought that people arrived approximately 11,500 years ago. However, stone artifacts, charcoal, and soil, plant and animal remains suggest human habitation at Cactus Hill at least 18,000 years ago, when much of the continent was under ice.

Who Came First?

Latest geological evidence supports theory that Europeans arrived first in North America. First Humans To Settle Americas Came From Europe, Not From Asia Over Bering Strait Land-ice Bridge, New Research Suggests ScienceDaily (July 17, 2008) — Research by a Valparaiso University geography professor and his students on the creation of Kankakee Sand Islands of Northwest Indiana is lending support to evidence that the first humans to settle the Americas came from Europe, a discovery that overturns decades of classroom lessons that nomadic tribes from Asia crossed a Bering Strait land-ice bridge. Valparaiso is a member of the Council on Undergraduate Research. Dr. Ron Janke began studying the origins of the Kankakee Sand Islands – a series of hundreds of small, moon-shaped dunes that stretch from the southern tips of Lake and Porter counties in Northwest Indiana into northeastern Illinois – about 12 years ago. Over the past few years, approximately a dozen Valparaiso undergraduates have worked with Dr. Janke to create the first detailed maps of the Kankakee Sand Islands, study their composition and survey wildlife and plants inhabiting the islands. Based upon the long-held belief that most of the upper Midwest was covered by a vast ice sheet up until about 10,000 years ago, Dr. Janke said he and other scientists surmised the Kankakee Sand Islands were created by sand in meltwater from the receding glacier. That belief was challenged, however, when he and his students discovered a year and a half ago that the islands were composed of sand that had come from Lake Michigan – something that should have been impossible with the Valparaiso Moraine standing between the lake and the Kankakee Sand Islands. “That created a lot of problems with what we had previously believed about ice covering this entire area,” Dr. Janke said. “How could it get over the Valparaiso Moraine and be deposited there?” Figuring out that puzzle required taking core samples from some of the remaining islands and the development of a new test by one of Dr. Janke’s colleagues to determine when sunlight last shone on the sand. The answer that came back – the Kankakee Sand Islands were born between 14,500 and 15,000 years ago from Lake Michigan sand – was startling. “We thought the area was completely covered by ice at that time,” Dr. Janke said. “That was a really earth-shattering result for us.” Yet it also supports research showing that North American Clovis points – a particular type of arrowhead that represents the oldest manmade object on the continent –identically match arrowheads found in Europe and made by humans at approximately the same time. And just within the last year, new research has provided strong evidence that a large meteorite struck the ice sheet covering North American and melted much of the ice shortly before the formation of the Kankakee Sand Islands. “Our research at Valparaiso supports this other recent research because it indicates there wasn’t a massive ice sheet covering North America that would have allowed tribes to cross over from Asia via a Bering Strait land-ice bridge,” Dr. Janke said. Dr. Janke’s research on the formation of the Kankakee Sand Islands is continuing this summer, with a focus on determining whether the islands closest to Lake Michigan are younger than the southernmost islands. At one time, approximately 1,200 of the islands stretched out in a series of curved bands north and and south of the Kankakee River that are separated by a few miles and mirror the southern tip of Lake Michigan. Though many were destroyed by human settlement, about 700 still exist today. Dr. Janke and his students also have been active in the Woodland Savanna Land Conservancy, an organization working to protect the Kankakee Sand Islands. Scott Osthus, a recent graduate who worked with Dr. Janke to map the Kankakee Sand Islands and support their preservation, enjoyed being involved in the research effort. “During my four years at Valparaiso, I saw how interesting and significant the Kankakee Sand Islands landscape is,” Osthus said. “I want to see this area preserved because it is so historically significant.” Landowners have donated a handful of islands to the trust for preservation, and Dr. Janke is hopeful that others will follow their lead and perhaps eventually build enough support for some of the islands to be incorporated into Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore or their own state park. “The Kankakee Sand Islands are archaeologically significant, with numerous Native American artifacts and burial grounds still present in the surviving islands, and they provide crucial habitat for native wildlife and plant species,” Dr. Janke said. “I’m hopefully the sand islands can be protected so we can continue to learn about and appreciate them.”

Did Humans Colonize the World by Boat?

Well, this is what I call a "duh" article. Of course they did. There are parts of the world that could not have ever been colonized otherwise. DUH! But I present it here, for what it's worth, as it ties into the ongoing controversy among archaeologists, etc. about how mankind spread where and when. From Discover Magazine Online Research suggests our ancestors traveled the oceans 70,000 years ago.by Heather Pringle May 20, 2008 Jon Erlandson shakes out what appears to be a miniature evergreen from a clear ziplock bag and holds it out for me to examine. As one of the world’s leading authorities on ancient seafaring, he has devoted much of his career to hunting down hard evidence of ancient human migrations, searching for something most archaeologists long thought a figment: Ice Age mariners. On this drizzly late-fall afternoon in a lab at the University of Oregon in Eugene, the 53-year-old Erlandson looks as pleased as the father of a newborn—and perhaps just as anxious —as he shows me one of his latest prize finds. The little “tree” in my hand is a dart head fashioned from creamy-brown chert and bristling with tiny barbs designed to lodge in the flesh of marine prey. Erlandson recently collected dozens of these little stemmed points from San Miguel Island, a scrap of land 27 miles off the coast of California. Radiocarbon dating of marine shells and burned twigs at the site shows that humans first landed on San Miguel at least 12,000 years ago, and the dart head in my hand holds clues to the ancestry of those seafarers. Archaeologists have recovered similar items scattered along the rim of the North Pacific, and some have even been found in coastal Peru and Chile. The oldest appeared 15,600 years ago in coastal Japan. To Erlandson, these miniature trees look like a trail left by mariners who voyaged along the stormy northern coasts of the Pacific Ocean from Japan to the Americas during the last Ice Age. “We haven’t published the evidence for this hypothesis yet, and I’m kind of nervous about it,” he says. “But we are getting very close.” Until recently most researchers would have dismissed such talk of Ice Age mariners and coastal migrations. Nobody, after all, has ever unearthed an Ice Age boat or happened upon a single clear depiction of an Ice Age dugout or canoe. Nor have archaeologists found many coastal campsites dating back more than 15,000 years. So most scientists believed that Homo sapiens evolved as terrestrial hunters and gatherers and stubbornly remained so, trekking out of their African homeland by foot and spreading around the world by now-vanished land bridges. Only when the Ice Age ended 12,000 to 13,000 years ago and mammoths and other large prey vanished, archaeologists theorized, did humans systematically take up seashore living—eating shellfish, devising fishing gear, and venturing offshore in small boats. But that picture, Erlandson and others say, is badly flawed, due to something researchers once rarely considered: the changes in sea level over time. Some 20,000 years ago, for example, ice sheets locked up much of the world’s water, lowering the oceans and laying bare vast coastal plains—attractive hunting grounds and harbors for maritime people. Today these plains lie beneath almost 400 feet of water, out of reach of all but a handful of underwater archaeologists. “So this shines a spotlight on a huge area of ignorance: what people were doing when sea level was lower than at present,” says Geoff Bailey, a coastal archaeologist at the University of York in England. “And that is especially problematic, given that sea level was low for most of prehistory.” Rest of article.