Tracking the First Americans
First Americans
Tracking the First Americans
New finds, theories, and genetic discoveries are revolutionizing our understanding of the first Americans.
The first face of the first Americans belongs to an unlucky teenage girl who fell to her death in a Yucatn cave some 12,000 to 13,000 years ago. Her bad luck is sciences good fortune. The story of her discovery begins in 2007, when a team of Mexican divers led by Alberto Nava made a startling find: an immense submerged cavern they named Hoyo Negro, the black hole. At the bottom of the abyss their lights revealed a bed of prehistoric bones, including at least one nearly complete human skeleton.
Nava reported the discovery to Mexicos National Institute of Anthropology and History, which brought together an international team of archaeologists and other researchers to investigate the cave and its contents. The skeletonaffectionately dubbed Naia, after the water nymphs of Greek mythologyturned out to be one of the oldest ever found in the Americas, and the earliest one intact enough to provide a foundation for a facial reconstruction. Geneticists were even able to extract a sample of DNA.
Together these remnants may help explain an enduring mystery about the peopling of the Americas: If Native Americans are descendants of Asian trailblazers who migrated into the Americas toward the end of the last ice age, why dont they look like their ancient ancestors?
By all appearances, the earliest Americans were a rough bunch. If you look at the skeletal remains of Paleo-Americans, more than half the men have injuries caused by violence, and four out of ten have skull fractures. The wounds dont appear to have been the result of hunting mishaps, and they dont bear telltale signs of warfare, like blows suffered while fleeing an attacker. Instead it appears that these men fought among themselvesoften and violently.
The women dont have these kinds of injuries, but theyre much smaller than the men, with signs of malnourishment and domestic abuse.
To archaeologist Jim Chatters, co-leader of the Hoyo Negro research team, these are all indications that the earliest Americans were what he calls Northern Hemisphere wild-type populations: bold and aggressive, with hypermasculine males and diminutive, subordinate females. And this, he thinks, is why the earliest Americans facial features look so different from those of later Native Americans. These were risk-taking pioneers, and the toughest men were taking the spoils and winning fights over women. As a result, their robust traits and features were being selected over the softer and more domestic ones evident in later, more settled populations.
Chatterss wild-type hypothesis is speculative, but his teams findings at Hoyo Negro are not. Naia has the facial features typical of the earliest Americans as well as the genetic signatures common to modern Native Americans. This signals that the two groups dont look different because the earliest populations were replaced by later groups migrating from Asia, as some anthropologists have asserted. Instead they look different because the first Americans changed after they got here.
Chatterss research is just one interesting development in a field of study that has been exploding in fresh directions over the past two decades. New archaeological finds, novel hypotheses, and a trove of genetic data have shed fresh light on who the first Americans were and on how they might have come to the Western Hemisphere. But for all the forward motion, whats clearest is that the story of the first Americans is still very much a mystery.
For most of the 20th century it was assumed that the mystery had been more or less solved. In 1908 a cowboy in Folsom, New Mexico, found the remains of an extinct subspecies of giant bison that had roamed the area more than 10,000 years ago. Later, museum researchers discovered spearpoints among the bonesclear evidence that people had been present in North America much earlier than previously believed. Not long after, spearpoints dating to 13,000 years ago were found near Clovis, New Mexico, and what became known as Clovis points were subsequently found at dozens of sites across North America where ancient hunters had killed game.
Given that Asia and North America were connected by a broad landmass called Beringia during the last ice age and that the first Americans appeared to be mobile big-game hunters, it was easy to conclude that theyd followed mammoths and other prey out of Asia, across Beringia, and then south through an open corridor between two massive Canadian ice sheets. And given that there was no convincing evidence for human occupation predating the Clovis hunters, a new orthodoxy developed: They had been the first Americans. Case closed.
That all changed in 1997 when a team of high-profile archaeologists visited a site in southern Chile called Monte Verde. There Tom Dillehay of Vanderbilt University claimed to have discovered evidence of human occupation dating to more than 14,000 years agoa thousand years before the Clovis hunters appeared in North America. Like all pre-Clovis claims, this one was controversial, and Dillehay was even accused of planting artifacts and fabricating data. But after reviewing the evidence, the expert team concluded it was solid, and the story of the peopling of the Americas was thrown wide open.
How did people get all the way to Chile before the ice sheets in Canada retreated enough to allow an overland passage? Did they come during an earlier period of the Ice Age, when this inland corridor was ice free? Or did they come down the Pacific coast by boat, the same way humans got to Australia some 50,000 years ago? Suddenly the field was awash in new questions and invigorated by a fresh quest for answers.
In the 18 years since the Monte Verde bombshell dropped, none of these questions have been resolved. But the original questionWas Clovis first?has been answered repeatedly, with several sites in North America making their own claims to pre-Clovis occupation. Some of these places have been known and studied for years and have gained fresh credibility in the wake of Monte Verdes acceptance, but there have been new finds as well. One location in particular, the Debra L. Friedkin site in central Texas, might even be the earliest place of demonstrable human habitation in the Western Hemisphere.
In 2011 archaeologist Michael Waters of Texas A&M University announced that he and his team had unearthed evidence of extensive human occupation dating to as early as 15,500 years agosome 2,500 years before the first Clovis hunters arrived. The Friedkin site lies in a small valley in the hill country about an hour north of Austin, where a tiny perennial stream now called Buttermilk Creek, along with some shade trees and a seam of chert, a type of rock useful for toolmaking, made the area an attractive place for people to live for thousands of years.
There was something unique about this valley, Waters says. It was long thought that the earliest Americans were primarily big-game hunters, following mammoths and mastodons across the continent, but this valley was an ideal place for hunter-gatherers. People here would have eaten nuts and roots, crawdads and turtles, and they would have hunted animals such as deer and turkeys and squirrels. In other words, people probably werent here on their way to somewhere else; they were here to live.
But if Waters is right that people were settled here, in the middle of the continent, as early as 15,500 years ago, when did the first arrivals cross into the New World from Asia? Thats unclear, but it appears that people may have been settled in other parts of the continent at the same time. Waters says the pre-Clovis artifacts hes found at Buttermilk Creekmore than 16,000 of them, including stone blades, spearpoints, and chipsresemble artifacts found at sites in Virginia, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.
Theres a pattern here, he says. I think the data clearly show that people were in North America 16,000 years ago. Time will tell if that represents the initial occupation of the Americas or if there was something earlier.
Either way, the newest archaeological evidence comports with an increasingly important line of evidence in our understanding of the peopling of the Americas. In recent years geneticists have compared the DNA of modern Native Americans with that of other populations around the world and concluded that the ancestors of Native Americans were Asians who separated from other Asian populations and remained isolated for about 10,000 years, based on mutation rates in human DNA. During that time they developed unique genetic signatures that only Native Americans currently possess.
These genetic markers have been found not only in the DNA recovered from Naias skeleton but also in the remains of a child buried some 12,600 years ago in western Montana, on a piece of land now called the Anzick site. Last year Danish geneticist Eske Willerslev reported that an analysis of the childs remains had yielded, for the first time, a full Paleo-American genome.
Now weve got two specimens, Anzick and Hoyo Negro, both from a common ancestor who came from Asia, Waters says. And like Hoyo Negro, the Anzick genome unquestionably shows that Paleo-Americans are genetically related to native peoples.
Though some critics point out that two individuals are too small a sample to draw definitive conclusions, theres strong consensus on the Asian ancestry of the first Americans.
So how and when did the earliest inhabitants of the New World get here? That remains an open question, but given that people made it all the way to southern Chile more than 14,000 years ago, it would be surprising if they hadnt journeyed by boat.
The Channel Islands off the southern California coast are rugged and wild, home to a national park, a national marine sanctuary, and a training post for U.S. Navy SEALs. The archipelago also harbors thousands of archaeological sites, most of them still undisturbed.
In 1959, while exploring Santa Rosa Island, museum curator Phil Orr discovered a few bones of a human he named Arlington Springs man. At the time, the bones were judged to be 10,000 years old, but 40 years later researchers using improved dating techniques fixed the age at 13,000 yearsamong the oldest human remains ever discovered in the Americas.
Thirteen thousand years ago the northern Channel Islandsthen fused into a single islandwere separated from the mainland by five miles of open water. Clearly Arlington Springs man and his fellow islanders had boats capable of offshore travel.
Jon Erlandson of the University of Oregon has been excavating sites on these islands for three decades. He hasnt found anything as old as Arlington Springs man, but he has found strong evidence that people who lived here slightly later, some 12,000 years ago, had a well-developed maritime culture, with points and blades that resemble older tools found on the Japanese islands and elsewhere on the Asian Pacific coast.
Erlandson says that the Channel Island inhabitants might have descended from people who traveled what he calls a kelp highwaya relatively continuous kelp-bed ecosystem flush with fish and marine mammalsfrom Asia to the Americas, perhaps with a long stopover in Beringia. We know there were maritime peoples using boats in Japan 25,000 to 30,000 years ago. So I think you can make a logical argument that they may have continued northward, following the Pacific Rim to the Americas.
Beaches along the Pacific coast still teem with elephant seals and sea lions, and its easy to imagine hunters in small boats moving swiftly down the coastline, feasting on the abundant meat. But imagination is no substitute for hard evidence, and as yet there is none. Sea levels are 300 to 400 feet higher than at the end of the last glacial maximum, which means that ancient coastal sites could lie under hundreds of feet of water and miles from the current shoreline.
Perhaps ironically, the best evidence for a coastal migration might be found inland, as people traveling along the coast would likely have explored rivers and inlets along the way. There is already suggestive evidence of this in central Oregon, where projectiles resembling points found in Japan and on the Korean Peninsula and Russias Sakhalin Island have been discovered in a series of caves, along with what is surely the most indelicate evidence of pre-Clovis occupation in North America: fossilized human feces.
In 2008 Dennis Jenkins of the University of Oregon reported that hed found human coprolites, the precise term for ancient excrement, dating to 14,000 to 15,000 years old in a series of shallow caves overlooking an ancient lake bed near the town of Paisley. DNA tests have identified the Paisley Caves coprolites as human, and Jenkins speculates that the people who left them might have made their way inland from the Pacific by way of the Columbia or Klamath Rivers.
Whats more, Jenkins points to a clue in the coprolites: seeds of desert parsley, a tiny plant with an edible root hidden a foot underground. You have to know that root is down there, and you have to have a digging stick to get it, Jenkins says. That implies to me that these people didnt just arrive here. In other words, whoever lived here wasnt just passing through; they knew this land and its resources intimately.
That seems to be an emerging theme. It appears to be the story not just at Paisley Caves but at Monte Verde and the Friedkin site in Texas as well. In each of these cases people seemed to have been settled in, comfortable with their environment and adept at exploiting it. And this suggests that long before the Clovis culture began spreading across North America, the Americas hosted diverse communities of peoplepeople who may have arrived in any number of migrations by any number of routes. Some may have come by sea, others by land. Some may have come in such small numbers that traces of their existence will never be found.
Theres a whole lot of stuff that we dont know and may never know, says David Meltzer, an archaeologist at Southern Methodist University. But were finding new ways to find things and new ways to find things out.
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It seems the more we learn, the less we know.
Quote from Thomas Hobbes :
"No arts; no letters; no society; and which is worst of all, continual fear, and danger of violent death: and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short."
petey, what is the connection in Hobbes quote and the article. I'm sure that all know that man has been evolving through the centuries. Both physically and in intelligence.
I thought of that quote from the description in the article :
"By all appearances, the earliest Americans were a rough bunch. If you look at the skeletal remains of Paleo-Americans, more than half the men have injuries caused by violence, and four out of ten have skull fractures. The wounds dont appear to have been the result of hunting mishaps, and they dont bear telltale signs of warfare, like blows suffered while fleeing an attacker. Instead it appears that these men fought among themselvesoften and violently.
The women dont have these kinds of injuries, but theyre much smaller than the men, with signs of malnourishment and domestic abuse."
What I always find interesting is the each new discovery, replaces a prior theory. Anthropologist's have been drawing conclusions for centuries, and each one eventually proves to be inaccurate.
IMO the discovery and DNA testing of ''Montana Boy'' was a real break through. Connecting the Clovis people to Indians. Now, it seems,that there were people here long before the Clovis people.
In speaking to a group of linguists most are adamant that Indian people and/or their ancestors inhabited north America as long ago as 50,000 years.
Also what I found very interesting was the testing done on Kennewick man, proving him to be American Indian and directly connected to PNW tribes. although "Montana Boy'' was 3,000 years old than Kennewick man.
With the latest discovery of Naia, more information will be available.
It's a continuing jigsaw puzzle. And one that I thoroughly enjoy.
I'm sure that they were a rough bunch, survival in that time period required it.
Of course Chatters ''wild-type'' is speculative.
I have little doubt about that . I forget whether the Hobbes quote was inspired by distant history or not ...
If I remember correctly, Hobbes lived in the 16th or 17th century. I don't know what inspired him to make that quote. He was a philosopher though.
I thought the discovery of the ''buried wall'' in Orkney was amazing. Opening up a whole new chapter to the site.
Lot's of good information/discoveries with all the new advances in technology.
The use of drones and ground penetrating radar has really made some amazing discoveries in the last two years.
I'll try to findan article on the discovery of the connection between South American Indians and the people of Easter Island. That was a real shocker.
I like the preface that you suggested. Basicly, ''We don't know shit, but we're giving it a good guess.'' LOL
Found it.... ...
and another....
It is from his book Leviathan . And yes , he was a renowned philosopher .
NatGeo always does a good presentation, I liked this one too.
DNA is becoming a more useful too. Not only technically, but as more and more samples are tested the information they each present start to congeal. In the same way, it is becoming an important genealogical tool.
I joined a group with others of the same surname and could never connect, via research, to any of the hundreds of members. Later the DNA test also revealed no matches. Another person joined the group and tested and we matched. This connection came to this country ca. 1837 and mine predate 1784. Now there are two of us, within a surname grouping, that only match each other and no one else. We are waiting for other samples to match and to extend our familial line. It's that in between time, where the theories develop, but only until new information arises.
Thanks for posting this how many of the "puzzle pieces" will eventually be found and connected, and how many are long and forever gone?
The advances in DNA testing has been amazing. In the case of ''Kennewick man''...through the most advanced DNA testing they were able to trace his linage to the tribe that he came from.
In the field of genealogical tracing, it's opened whole new worlds, as you can attest to One.
Some for sure will be gone forever. Hopefully many are being found. Let's hope that it continues on that front, Mac.
Like you RW, I've always loved history and anthropology. No formal education in it, but I read everything I can find about it.
The puzzle strikes me as being so huge and that there are still so many pieces missing! One must really have a love for the subject to stay as dedicated to it as you are Kavika. You're more patient them I am.
I love the subject Randy. It's one of the very very few things I have patients for...
And, one of "our" favorite books - 1491, opens even more doors to wonderment
Indeed it is 1st. A lot more doors opened to a whole new world.
Dear Friend Kavika: We may never know the full story.
Some things fall through the cracks in human history.
Whatever and from wherever the originsof Indigenous North, Central and South American populations, I am glad for their presence then, now and going forward.
A recent un-begun research project at the University of Whatsamatter U. inconclusively determined that the first Native American Kosher bakery Chaplain, the Smie Reverend Myron Proudfoot first began blessing the wings on angel cakes as far back as the check in line at my local Department of Motor Vehicles office.
The results, should the study ever begin and end will most probably be published in the Journal of Obscure ArcheologicalFindingsWhich Should Never Have Been Written.
Smiles.
E.
I, too, find all this fascinating!
While drilling in glacial terrain, you can sometimes pop through the layers of glacial till, (deposited under a glacier), into a sand and gravel deposit with the thousand of years old tree roots, branches, and even leaves.. I have often wondered if there were humans there to see that bend of the river, before it was covered up by a glacier... I know we all have more questions than answers, but we're getting there!
Thanks for publishing this!
Don't you wish we could go back in time and meet them?
I would love to go back in time and meet them Dowser.
Fascinating stuff.
Actually niijii, we didn't come from anywhere, we've always been here. Some day they'll figure that out...
As for the rest of your comment...LOLOLOLOL
Sometimes, when I can't sleep at night, I imagine what it would be like to go back in time and meet the people... The stuff of science fiction!
My wife often says the same thing when someone uses a phrase from the bible to justify something. She says that in order to really know what the person being quoted in the bible really said you'd have to go back in time and actually be there, hear it yourself and know the language. Other then that it's all just guess work.
Amazing article. I can't believe the leaps that anthropology has made since I studied it as an undergrad (that was my original major).
It is such an evolving science, kind of like putting a puzzle together with some of the pieces missing. When one turns up, we get more of the picture.
This discovery of the first people is fascinating. I am so glad that we now have DNA to guide us and not just carbon dating. Mitochondrial DNA even helps more with the dating.
Thanks for sharing this with us. We can all learn more about ourselves when we learn from our past.
Some anthropologists have also described the MesolithiclowerPaleolithic hunter/gatherers asbeing nothing like Hobbes' proposal. Instead, we lived in symbiosis with the planet and other creatures as much as in competition. It has been described by some as the ancient Golden Age, or even the garden of Eden. In it we lived life playfully, and there was no storage to speak ofas there was hardlyany shortage, plenty was all over. The earth was bursting with life.Life, being, wasa matter of dailytakingearth's gifts, being grateful for, and enjoying them.
Glad that you liked the article sister.
Each new piece, opens up a whole new frontier. That's the part I love.
Randy, your wife is a wise women.
We are always taking about going into the future. I think that the past would be even more interesting Dowser.
Beautifully said Larry.
I take that quite literally.
We have missed the mark with our understanding, and have been lead astray by our own delusions. We are no more separate from nature than we ever have been, except in our own minds.
Beauty is not identical with truth , especially in what Larry said . He seems to have no interest in the text in your article . Hobbes was into large constructs of social organization and was a very important philosopher in that era . The only way the west achieved the ability to support large populations was by not focusing on nature . Not pretty perhaps but real ...
Guilty as charged Petey! Though it is something in the text, that reverberated in the quote from Hobbes. The illustration you gave is quite accurate; yet, also pushes the envelope further. Hobbes' description of humanity, especially during times of war; but, also manifest in human perception, as us being a mere other on the planet scrabbling for sustenance. Hobbes' premise still to this day inhabits all kinds of false Narratives, assumptions about who we could and should be. Indeed, Hobbes work is very important.
~LINK~
While this description may be the accepted state of reality, there seems to have apparently been a time before, that did not meet this description. Hobbes statement may indeed be a model by which we live, yet is not the only model available.
That model has been established for more mellenia than can be counted, but I discount it's popular affirmation...
...because you are correct! Sorta...
The West, and all of humanity has achieved mostly all of it's current prideful conquests on it's ability to control, subdue, and manipulate nature. To support our larger populations, we started devolping the agricultural model, building machines outta people, to enhance the labor and harvest. You say that there has not been a focus on nature, but that is truly the exact opposite of history. The sucsess of humanity has been measured, and still is to this day, by it's abilty to master nature in all it's forms. We believe that we can fulfill one day, the promise that one day here soon (don't worry, the scientific answer to all our problems is right around the corner)we will have the knowledge to finally and fully numerate reality, to bend and shape it to our will. I say that we have passed that knowledge and are now exploring an impossible reality that we hope to lord over.
Our progress has not lead to more rest, more recreation, more time with family and friends, more plenty, more quality of life, more beauty, more love...
I would suggest that indeed...truth and beauty are absolutely identical.
Perhaps off topic,,,if so, ignore.
:~)
Is exactly the epitome of the grand delusion, that humanity has fallen under.
The moment we recognize that our natural selves, so gracefully gifted to us on this big bright round garden, is all we need to live fully and happily, will be the moment we start living together rather than seperately, both with each other and this wonderful gift of a garden we call HOME.
Clearly we have some major philosophical differences here ...
Petey, I do thank you for your honesty my man.
I bet we could explore those differences in a manner unaccustomed to by some here. In a reasoned and honest manner.
Let us reason together.
I suggest an article apart from this one, whereby we could further explore the matter without the boundries of the present article's premise. You are correct in that the idea I raised, was off topic from kavika's article's theme.
I think it would be fun!
:~)
If you'd like to write something up and publish it I will take part . Just remember that we engineers are a dead serious bunch . I doubt there will be a resolution ... but who knows .
Awesome and thanks Petey!
Resolution, smedolution. Lab techs are so anal we make Preparation-H scream for mercy!
...but really, what possible damage could two scientific dudes do talkin' philosophy?
:~)
Sounds like a dangerous question !
I'll referee the match.
"They" said that Kennewick man was "most" related to people in the tribes,(plural) in the area. NOT to a specific tribe.
Remain skeptical, and thus remain scientific. The regional Indians had to be bought off with that doubtful revelation, as Indians have been an obstacle to knowledge since K-man was found. It was a political conclusion, in other words.