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Just a short gruntle about blind spots in archaeology today. I will do another post about the annoying viral twitter thread by Incunabula soon.
Archaeology is a very vexing science. On the one hand, it's amazing that we are able to figure out so many things about humans who lived tens of thousands of years ago. On the other hand, archaeologists are so timid in their approach, so unwilling to commit to any conclusion that they cannot prove by means of the stones and bones they dig up, and so wedded to certain theories that give them huge blind spots and force them to propound absurd conclusions, like the one underlying the dates on the arrows in the Americas for this map from Wikipedia.
We know that around 60,000+ years ago, ice age humans built boats and navigated across the water between Sunda (southeast Asia plus some of Indonesia) and Sahul (the rest of Indonesia and New Guinea/Australia). Ice age humans knew how to build boats. We know this for certain, because the people of Australia and New Guinea arrived there at a time when there was ocean between them and the rest of Eurasia, which they had to cross.
But change the context to the Americas, and suddenly the fact that humans were building boats and going around on the ocean 60,000 years ago vanishes utterly, and the conventional archaeological view is that the Siberian people who would go on to become the original Americans were land-dwelling people who walked across Beringia (the land between Siberia and Alaska) to North America 25,000 years ago, then cooled their heels in Alaska for 10,000 years until an ice-free route through the Rocky Mountains opened up, allowing them to walk, or rather, sprint, overland from Alberta to Tierra Del Fuego in less than 2,000 years.
This despite the fact that in historical times, with much more moderate weather, people who make a living in the arctic have often been boat-using people who get much of their food from the sea. If post-ice age people found the best way to survive in the far north was by going on the water, fishing and hunting whales and seals, why are we expected to believe that ice age people, facing a much harsher climate, would limit themselves to the food they could find on land?
Part of this absurdity - the idea that ancient Americans only arrived south of the ice sheets 16,000 years ago - is finally starting to crumble under the increasing weight of evidence for a much older human presence in the Americas - from the 23,000 year old footprints of children found in White Sands National Monument (published just this week, sadly paywalled), to 30,000 year old tools found in caves in Mexico (open access version), and on to many more studies going back decades. The archaeological community is very good at straining at gnats and swallowing camels, attacking any evidence that contradicts the accepted conventional theory as being misdated, misinterpreted, or not actually of artefacts made by humans at all. In other words, these findings of people in the Americas 20,000+ years ago are still, sadly, controversial.
And it doesn't have to be this way. We know that humans built boats, even if none of those boats have survived to be dug up. We know that the sea shore and shallows are one of the richest habitats on the planet for food-collecting peoples - a fact obscured by the way that those who collect food from the sea have been labelled as "fishers" while land based food collectors are called "hunter gatherers."
There is no way. No. Way. that inland dwelling food collectors of 60,000-ish years ago walked to the end of the land in Sunda, built boats to get to Sahul, and then walked away from the shore inland. They were fishers and boat people, they lived on the shore. They travelled up rivers, looking for more good fishing spots, settling on lakes and marshes away from the shore, and gradually over time, the descendants of those fresh water boat people adapted to a fully land-based lifestyle and filled the interior of the continent.
We know that the sea today is around 120 meters higher than it was during the ice age, which means that all of the homes used by the sea peoples of 60,000 years ago are now buried deep under the water, but that doesn't mean they did not exist. If ice age people were building boats in Sahel 60,000 years ago, why are we expected to believe that ice age people 25,000 years ago in Siberia did not know how to build boats and walked to Alaska, then were stuck there for ten thousand years waiting for a clear walking path through the ice to the rest of America?
Thankfully, some archaeologists are more sensible than the bulk of their colleagues and have begun advocating for the initial peopling of the Americas to have been done by boat people who, having fished and sealed their way along the coast from Siberia through Beringia to Alaska, skirted the ice sheets covering the shore of the Northwest Coast, hopping from one ice-free cove or island to another until they got south of the ice and had clear rowing (or sailing) to warmer parts further south.
I find it far more believable that a boat-based, marine mammal hunting and fishing people just kept going south in their boats, filling the coast throughout both continents, then gradually moved inland, than the mainstream theory that the entire continent was filled virtually all at once by land-dwellers who sprinted through a dozen different climates and biomes, their population exploding while they were constantly on the move, on foot, ever southward.
Archaeology is a very vexing science. On the one hand, it's amazing that we are able to figure out so many things about humans who lived tens of thousands of years ago. On the other hand, archaeologists are so timid in their approach, so unwilling to commit to any conclusion that they cannot prove by means of the stones and bones they dig up, and so wedded to certain theories that give them huge blind spots and force them to propound absurd conclusions, like the one underlying the dates on the arrows in the Americas for this map from Wikipedia.
We know that around 60,000+ years ago, ice age humans built boats and navigated across the water between Sunda (southeast Asia plus some of Indonesia) and Sahul (the rest of Indonesia and New Guinea/Australia). Ice age humans knew how to build boats. We know this for certain, because the people of Australia and New Guinea arrived there at a time when there was ocean between them and the rest of Eurasia, which they had to cross.
But change the context to the Americas, and suddenly the fact that humans were building boats and going around on the ocean 60,000 years ago vanishes utterly, and the conventional archaeological view is that the Siberian people who would go on to become the original Americans were land-dwelling people who walked across Beringia (the land between Siberia and Alaska) to North America 25,000 years ago, then cooled their heels in Alaska for 10,000 years until an ice-free route through the Rocky Mountains opened up, allowing them to walk, or rather, sprint, overland from Alberta to Tierra Del Fuego in less than 2,000 years.
This despite the fact that in historical times, with much more moderate weather, people who make a living in the arctic have often been boat-using people who get much of their food from the sea. If post-ice age people found the best way to survive in the far north was by going on the water, fishing and hunting whales and seals, why are we expected to believe that ice age people, facing a much harsher climate, would limit themselves to the food they could find on land?
Part of this absurdity - the idea that ancient Americans only arrived south of the ice sheets 16,000 years ago - is finally starting to crumble under the increasing weight of evidence for a much older human presence in the Americas - from the 23,000 year old footprints of children found in White Sands National Monument (published just this week, sadly paywalled), to 30,000 year old tools found in caves in Mexico (open access version), and on to many more studies going back decades. The archaeological community is very good at straining at gnats and swallowing camels, attacking any evidence that contradicts the accepted conventional theory as being misdated, misinterpreted, or not actually of artefacts made by humans at all. In other words, these findings of people in the Americas 20,000+ years ago are still, sadly, controversial.
And it doesn't have to be this way. We know that humans built boats, even if none of those boats have survived to be dug up. We know that the sea shore and shallows are one of the richest habitats on the planet for food-collecting peoples - a fact obscured by the way that those who collect food from the sea have been labelled as "fishers" while land based food collectors are called "hunter gatherers."
There is no way. No. Way. that inland dwelling food collectors of 60,000-ish years ago walked to the end of the land in Sunda, built boats to get to Sahul, and then walked away from the shore inland. They were fishers and boat people, they lived on the shore. They travelled up rivers, looking for more good fishing spots, settling on lakes and marshes away from the shore, and gradually over time, the descendants of those fresh water boat people adapted to a fully land-based lifestyle and filled the interior of the continent.
We know that the sea today is around 120 meters higher than it was during the ice age, which means that all of the homes used by the sea peoples of 60,000 years ago are now buried deep under the water, but that doesn't mean they did not exist. If ice age people were building boats in Sahel 60,000 years ago, why are we expected to believe that ice age people 25,000 years ago in Siberia did not know how to build boats and walked to Alaska, then were stuck there for ten thousand years waiting for a clear walking path through the ice to the rest of America?
Thankfully, some archaeologists are more sensible than the bulk of their colleagues and have begun advocating for the initial peopling of the Americas to have been done by boat people who, having fished and sealed their way along the coast from Siberia through Beringia to Alaska, skirted the ice sheets covering the shore of the Northwest Coast, hopping from one ice-free cove or island to another until they got south of the ice and had clear rowing (or sailing) to warmer parts further south.
I find it far more believable that a boat-based, marine mammal hunting and fishing people just kept going south in their boats, filling the coast throughout both continents, then gradually moved inland, than the mainstream theory that the entire continent was filled virtually all at once by land-dwellers who sprinted through a dozen different climates and biomes, their population exploding while they were constantly on the move, on foot, ever southward.
