New Evidence Suggests Stone Age Europeans Discovered America

[Tekania]

They were not your ancestors... even assuming this hypothesis was right they were relative cousins to neolithic European cultures which your ancestors displaced.

The Solutrean culture was Upper Paleolithic, not Neolithic. It predated Neolithic by some 7,000 years.

True, correction on that part.

[Ifreann]

They were not your ancestors... even assuming this hypothesis was right they were relative cousins to neolithic European cultures which your ancestors displaced.

The Solutrean culture was Upper Paleolithic, not Neolithic. It predated Neolithic by some 7,000 years.

I wanted to make a "NO U predated the Neolithic by some 7,000 years", but then I noticed who I was quoting.

[Farnhamia]

The Solutrean culture was Upper Paleolithic, not Neolithic. It predated Neolithic by some 7,000 years.

I wanted to make a "NO U predated the Neolithic by some 7,000 years", but then I noticed who I was quoting.

[Gigaverse]

Is that supposed to be a Hitlerian post?

Is your sarcasm detector plugged in?

Not until now, I guess... Sorry about that

[Farnhamia]

Is your sarcasm detector plugged in?

Not until now, I guess... Sorry about that

After a while you get into the habit of leaving it on all the time.

[The Archregimancy]

I promised to summarise some of the responses by the North American archaeological community to the news in the OP if substantive opinions were being offered on professional listservs.

Here's a representative sample. I've edited out the names of the posters to preserve anonymity since I didn't ask for permission to reproduce these. Spelling and grammar is otherwise as in the original.

I have not seen 'evidence' as presented in the book yet, but I assume you all know that there are Paleolithic European artifacts that were found in excavations in Savannah, South Carolina, and in Montreal, Canada, which when due diligence was done, were found to have come from ship's ballast.

I don't recollect the particulars of the Montreal story, but in South Carolina, French merchants came to get cotton bales, but the American colonies were not yet affluent enough to buy many imported European goods, so the French merchants filled their holds with mainly with rock ballast from nearby shorelines, which turned out to have been the loci of Paleolithic occupations, so unknowingly French merchant ships transported artifacts over to South Carolina and then dumped them in a back bay to get
rid of the ballast. Good enough records were kept that it was indisputably proven that the artifacts, though quite genuine, were not
fabricated by European paleolithic peoples living in South Carolina, but brought over in the 18th century as ballast.

If Stanford's wishful thinking that these are really Solutrean actually pans out, I would not be at all surprised to find a a few years a similar story.

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I don’t believe that I have seen any suggestion of the following hypothesis – that the point ended up where it did, perhaps even thousands of years ago, because it was on or imbedded in sea ice, which, having broken off from its source, floated south until it dissolved. That does not solve where the ice broke off from, but it might explain the blade’s method of arrival. The tusk may have arrived at the same time or independently. It is not unlikely that the sea is littered with such remains, dropped over thousands of years from melting hunks of ice. But how it got to where it was found should be secondary to the first and most important question – is it Solutrian?

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In their book, Stanford and Bradley do discuss the issue of ice raft debris, but not in the context of being a possible way the Cinmar Solutrean point got where it was found. Also have not seen mentioned the possibility that it was included in ship ballast.

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I was actually going to mention ships' ballast, but decided not to muddy the waters too much. However, for it to be ship's ballast, it would have to be from a shipwreck. And would the tusk then be part of the cargo? Ship's ballast is clearly the origin of the "Punic" inscriptions found in Brazil's harbors, particularly when paired with the known commerce between the Levant and Brazil in the 19th century and the huge influx of immigrants from Lebanon, etc., who settled at that time in Brazil. It is sad that there were no GPS fixes available when these items were hauled up. With an exact location, one could more easily search for a shipwreck. Ships have no need to alter their ballast while at sea, so shipwreck is the most logical explanation if one went the ballast route.

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Now it’s getting silly. Carping about the provenance of a couple of artifacts at this stage of the game is just silly. The Solutrean hypothesis will not be proved or disproved based on the provenance of a couple of artifacts. It’s going to take thirty years of research and the discovery (or lack of discovery) of archaeological sites and additional artifacts to do that. A “hypothesis” is a collection of ideas and ideas are not discrete and insular like an individual archaeological site—and they can’t be killed like a site. A hypothesis is not a Meadowcroft or a Topper or a Monte Verde where a bunch of site-specific carping (justified or not) about one thing or another means something. Whether you like it or not, Stanford and Bradley have posited a hypothesis that will revolutionize North American and European archaeology.

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While you are right that it will not be proved or disproved on the basis of the provenance of a few specific artifacts, they are currently presented as supporting points (no pun intended there, I guess) for the Solutrean hypothesis, and it IS important that they be established that they are or are not what they are being purported to be. Yes, the Solutrean hypothesis will bear examination and not automatic dismissal, but it must be subjected to the same scrutiny as any other hypothesis. After reading the book, I went to try to find the peer-reviewed literature on which it was based, and found very little - that bothered me a little.

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I’m not sure if it’s the same artefact, but in another article (by Vastag – Washington Post National) they mention that it (if it’s the same artefact) was found with a mastodon tusk and that the tusk turned out to be 22,000 years old. It doesn’t say how they dated the tusk. It does say that both were found back in 1970 by workers on a scallop trawler 60 miles off the coast. In the three articles that I read, it say whether anyone went back to check out the site and confirm the provenance of the tusk and blade. (This may come as a shock to some, but sailors have been known to tell an occasional tall tale.) But it looks like someone will be going back there this summer to investigate it. If they find more such artefacts in situ and can date them, then I think that it would one of the most (if not THE most) important discovery in New World prehistory.

Why I’m not sure that there the same artefacts is that in the article by Verblya (Gazette-Journal) it says that artefact was chemically analysed (by XRF) and confirmed to be made from Rhyolite of South Mountains, Pa. The article by Keys (The Independent) speaks of a similar artefact also found in Virginia in 1971 (not 1970) that was chemically analysed and determined to be flint from France. I’m a bit skeptical about that. I’d really like to know what method they used and how they determined that it was from France as opposed to somewhere else.

Flints are notoriously hard to source beyond saying which local/local-ish source they likely came from. When you start comparing too many potential sources from further and further away, you start to get more and more overlap between flints that COULD be the source material. At best you can say which sources it could NOT come from, and then list a set of sources where it COULD HAVE come from. If you extend the source range to 1000s of km away then there would be so many sources that you would have to sample and analyse in order to eliminate them as potential sources that this would become a huge study – just to source one artefact. Unless this French flint has some extremely rare ratio of elements, then I can’t see how they confirmed it as the source.

Does anyone know if this has been published? I’d really like to know more about how they chemically sourced this artefact.

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I share the concern about the dating. Unless the point was embedded in the tusk, this sounds like really bad relative dating, based on what must surely be an extremely disturbed context. Not only will the underwater context have likely caused frequently shifting of the sediments, there is a strong chance that either object could have been introduced from elsewhere especially as the sea level slowly rose (heavy artifacts ARE mobile in those conditions). Shades of Old Crow Flats… a big cautionary flag goes up here.

The provenience work, however, has a much stronger basis. If the tool actually was rhyolite, that means an igneous origin -- lava flows geochemistries can be quite specific, even to an individual flow. I don’t recall if that’s the case for the Pennsylvania quarries, but it’s possible. The story mentioned X-ray fluorescence, and the geologists have definitely done those studies many Northeastern rhyolites so there’s a decent base to work from.

BUT good sourcing relies on a clean sample, and the artifact’s outer surfaces have been exposed for a long time to a very mixed chemical environment, so that would be difficult. Most artifacts are so thin, the chemical changes go right through them, so you have to be really careful with your work… and they are not likely to want to start cutting slices out of that precious artifact… Again, a second big cautionary flag goes up here.

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There are several lines of circumstantial evidence that point towards multiple migrations from Asia over time. Evidence of a Solutrean-era migration into the New World does not degrade (or challenge) any pre-existing research in any way. The Solutrean hypothesis merely adds a wonderful new ‘wrinkle’ to what may have happened and this is not an either/or (zero-sum) situation. The Solutrean hypothesis is A REALLY GOOD THING for North American archaeology. Before it’s over a couple hundred million dollars in grant funds will be spent trying to confirm it.

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I have read the book and had extensive talks with Bruce Bradley and Dennis Stanford on this subject. They have never and do not in their book argue Europe NOT Asia. In fact I think both are inclined to the idea that there were multiple migrations through time. Every time a new hypothesis is proposed we do not have to jump to the black or white conclusion....


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I made a film for NOVA that broadcast in November 2004 - America's Stone Age Explorers.
We included the solutrean hypothesis along with other evidence that the new world was populated earlier than traditionally accepted in the clovis first theory.

a program description
http://to.pbs.org/z3zAjL

transcript
http://to.pbs.org/yJZtyW

it is not online on the PBS website, but here is a vimeo link -
http://bit.ly/zuwHMf

[Cromarty]

they came to America and genocided the Native white people.

Prove it.

[EnragedMaldivians]

How'd I miss this. And I know this has been covered, but nonetheless:

Because they're not the first people in America, they came to America and genocided the Native white people.

And by "genocided" you would probably include that they may have inter-bred with them; going by the bizzare stormfront logic that "race-mixing" = white genocide..

You don't know that they genocided. There's also a high liklihood that they were simply absorbed.

What's the difference?

There we go.

[The Archregimancy]

And another interesting contribution on the material culture evidence from a professional listserv:

This discussion is confounding two different items at this point. Cinmar biface , found offshore made from PA material is NOT the same as the Solutrian point of French chert excavated in VA.

The Cinmar biface was found 70km offshore of Virginia in 240 feet of water. Near, with it, or ?? were the mastodon tooth and tusk. They went with the 22,000 tusk date, which Stafford said had the best preserved collagen he has yet sampled (heresay from DS), rather than the TPQ of 16,500 or so from when that spot went underwater for good. The rhyolite Cinmar biface was sourced to a specific railroad cut in se PA that has an interesting story to come about that. The Cinmar biface is NOT historic ballast. The Cinmar biface is weakly weathered on one face and UNWEATHERED on the obverse... And this material weathers quickly as someone pointed out earlier.

At another site, dug in 1970 or 71 and reported in 1981 was found a bipointed Solutrian point made from French chert. I've seen the xrf sheets... its French. Its a multicompent site from Paleo to Historic abandoned prior to anyone but colonists showing up in the Americas. While I am not clear on the exact provenience (even I have not tracked down every CRM report from the 80s- though Darrin Lowry well may have) it is from a closed context of some kind and just about impossible to be introduced in historic times. The just so story that would have to be lego'd together to put it in an Englishmans pocket at that time would be more fanciful than giving a Solutreman a paddle and a bead on the sunset...

Please don't base your opinions on the press release that went with the book release.... There is plenty more to all of this story but it is not my story to tell. Go see Dennis. The material is all right there in his office. Not 25 people have made the trek and handled this material themselves - I asked him the # point blank in Dec. This is ongoing research and they are trying to build the dataset at this point.

[Seangoli]

Archregimancy:

A bit interesting, but I'm wondering if you could clear a handful of question up for me. If you don't have the information on hand, that's fine, but I'm a tad confused on a few points being made.

The first I have is having to do with the type of material being discussed. It seems that rhyolite has entered the picture, which as one statement made clear is a bit more easily sourced than flints. I'm just a bit confused on what is being discussed here, as some are discussing rhyolite and others flints. I'm assuming that two different finds are being discussed, rather than confusion over a single find.

Am I understanding it right that the point in question was dated based upon the association of the point with a tusk that were trawled up by a fishing boat? If so, this is horribly problematic for dating and provenience. It also appears that the actual location(s) of the finds are questionable, as no clear data was obtained. This is even more problematic, as it may be unclear as to exactly when and under what conditions the point and tusk where found. I wouldn't expect fishermen to really know the importance of detailed reporting of a find, and it may be possible that the two finds were unrelated in reality but associated by a "layman" so-to-speak.

I'm sure I have others, but those are my main two concerns at the moment. Of course I should just read the book, which I just might get around to in the near future.

[Farnhamia]

Archregimancy:

A bit interesting, but I'm wondering if you could clear a handful of question up for me. If you don't have the information on hand, that's fine, but I'm a tad confused on a few points being made.

The first I have is having to do with the type of material being discussed. It seems that rhyolite has entered the picture, which as one statement made clear is a bit more easily sourced than flints. I'm just a bit confused on what is being discussed here, as some are discussing rhyolite and others flints. I'm assuming that two different finds are being discussed, rather than confusion over a single find.

Am I understanding it right that the point in question was dated based upon the association of the point with a tusk that were trawled up by a fishing boat? If so, this is horribly problematic for dating and provenience. It also appears that the actual location(s) of the finds are questionable, as no clear data was obtained. This is even more problematic, as it may be unclear as to exactly when and under what conditions the point and tusk where found. I wouldn't expect fishermen to really know the importance of detailed reporting of a find, and it may be possible that the two finds were unrelated in reality but associated by a "layman" so-to-speak.

I'm sure I have others, but those are my main two concerns at the moment. Of course I should just read the book, which I just might get around to in the near future.

Rhyolite?

Sorry, I had to ...

[Lackadaisical2]

I'm so glad this thread turned out to be about how white people are genetically superior.

Can't help the truth, too bad for the natives so little of those superior drinking genes were left.

[EnragedMaldivians]

I'm so glad this thread turned out to be about how white people are genetically superior.

Can't help the truth, too bad for the natives so little of those superior drinking genes were left.

Hey now, it's cheaper to have a good time, for those us with a lower tolerance.

[The Archregimancy]

Archregimancy:

A bit interesting, but I'm wondering if you could clear a handful of question up for me. If you don't have the information on hand, that's fine, but I'm a tad confused on a few points being made.

The first I have is having to do with the type of material being discussed. It seems that rhyolite has entered the picture, which as one statement made clear is a bit more easily sourced than flints. I'm just a bit confused on what is being discussed here, as some are discussing rhyolite and others flints. I'm assuming that two different finds are being discussed, rather than confusion over a single find.

Am I understanding it right that the point in question was dated based upon the association of the point with a tusk that were trawled up by a fishing boat? If so, this is horribly problematic for dating and provenience. It also appears that the actual location(s) of the finds are questionable, as no clear data was obtained. This is even more problematic, as it may be unclear as to exactly when and under what conditions the point and tusk where found. I wouldn't expect fishermen to really know the importance of detailed reporting of a find, and it may be possible that the two finds were unrelated in reality but associated by a "layman" so-to-speak.

I'm sure I have others, but those are my main two concerns at the moment. Of course I should just read the book, which I just might get around to in the near future.

On the issue of the point trawled up by a fishing boat... As I've previously noted in this thread - before I started quoting colleagues' reactions - this one really bothers me too. Like you, I find it deeply problematic to the point of almost automatic disqualification as evidence. I'd already separately mentioned the ship's ballast hypothesis here in this thread before several colleagues brought it up.

It does look like more than one object might be under discussion here, though. The most recent listserv post I quote above claims that there are two separate projectile points under discussion, the 'Cinmar biface' made of rhyolite and found offshore, and a 'Solutrean' French chert projectile point recovered in Pennsylvania in the 1970s.

I can't really vouch for the validity of either of these claims. The offshore biface strikes me as unacceptable as evidence at present. If the Pennsylvania projectile point is corroborated, that would be better evidence. As I've noted in a previous post, the dating evidence for some projectile points recently discovered on the Delmarva Peninsula is indirect, and predicated on C14 dating of the soil, not the actual objects (which can't be C14 dated, of course, because they're not organic).

I hope that helps, at least a little.

[Ashmoria]

thanks for the professional chatter.

[The Global Proletariat]

The first people of North America were from Europe. Thousands of years later, invaders from Asia crossed the land bridge from Siberia and stole our land.

New evidence suggests Stone Age hunters from Europe discovered America
New archaeological evidence suggests that America was first discovered by Stone Age people from Europe – 10,000 years before the Siberian-originating ancestors of the American Indians set foot in the New World. A remarkable series of several dozen European-style stone tools, dating back between 19,000 and 26,000 years, have been discovered at six locations along the US east coast. Three of the sites are on the Delmarva Peninsular in Maryland, discovered by archaeologist Dr Darrin Lowery of the University of Delaware. One is in Pennsylvania and another in Virginia. A sixth was discovered by scallop-dredging fishermen on the seabed 60 miles from the Virginian coast on what, in prehistoric times, would have been dry land.

Does this information change how you view race relations in North America? How you view the "Native Americans" and "First Nations"?

Not really, even if it were conclusive. Let say Europeans did make it over here in 20,000 BC. We really don't know how many of them crossed the Atlantic Ocean, or what became of them. Most likely, they were simply absorbed into migrating Asian populations. Either that, or they died off at some point in the intervening five to ten millenia.

[The Archregimancy]

A couple of days on, a highly regarded colleague based in Virginia has made the following comment on the 'Virginia chert Solutrean point', which I thought worth adding here:

Making the wild assumption that the '1970 excavation published in 1981 French flint Solutrean point' is in fact what we are really dealing with in these discussions, yes, it was published. The point was from a test excavation on a 17th century site on Eppes Island, Charles City County, VA done by the Archeological Society of VA. The point was immediately recognized as visually identical with and was identified as: A) Solutrean and B) French from appearance. As excavated, it was in 2 halves with two small wedge shaped pieces missing. It was published in the Quarterly Bulletin of the Archeological Society of VA Vol. 35 #3, pp 139-158, March 1981 issue. (Shameless informational plug follows: the ASV has just finished scanning all of the QB's from the beginning in 1940 to 2010 and will have those ready for sale in searchable pdf format by October, so check www.asv-archeology.org later if interested). The bad news is that it was not a smoking gun as it was firmly within a 17th century feature. The presumption was that it had been used as a source of gunflints as these are not uncommon in the Chesapeake region in the 17th and 18th centuries. So unless there is another Solutrean point with a 1970 excavation date that was published in 1981, then this one is it.

[AETEN II]

I view them exactly the same as I did before. Why should my views change?

Because they're not the first people in America, they came to America and genocided the Native white people.

Yes, because a group of ebil people from thousands of years ago passed their sins down, and by killing millions of Native Americans, we did the right thing.

Obviously Jews should kill every German. Why, all blacks should kill whites.

GENOCIDE FOR EVERYONE! YAY!

[Mount Huaguo]

The first people of North America were from Europe. Thousands of years later, invaders from Asia crossed the land bridge from Siberia and stole our land.

New evidence suggests Stone Age hunters from Europe discovered America
New archaeological evidence suggests that America was first discovered by Stone Age people from Europe – 10,000 years before the Siberian-originating ancestors of the American Indians set foot in the New World. A remarkable series of several dozen European-style stone tools, dating back between 19,000 and 26,000 years, have been discovered at six locations along the US east coast. Three of the sites are on the Delmarva Peninsular in Maryland, discovered by archaeologist Dr Darrin Lowery of the University of Delaware. One is in Pennsylvania and another in Virginia. A sixth was discovered by scallop-dredging fishermen on the seabed 60 miles from the Virginian coast on what, in prehistoric times, would have been dry land.

Does this information change how you view race relations in North America? How you view the "Native Americans" and "First Nations"?

This source doesn't actually say how many of these European-style stone tools were found, anyone know? And more importantly, were they in a sealed context? It's not very detailed.

Anyway all humans are still humans, and that will never change.

[Farnhamia]

The first people of North America were from Europe. Thousands of years later, invaders from Asia crossed the land bridge from Siberia and stole our land.



Does this information change how you view race relations in North America? How you view the "Native Americans" and "First Nations"?

This source doesn't actually say how many of these European-style stone tools were found, anyone know? And more importantly, were they in a sealed context? It's not very detailed.

Anyway all humans are still humans, and that will never change.

It's literally a handful, as I understand it, and one at least was dredged up off the ocean floor, from a depth of about 240 feet.

The whole thing is what professional archaeologists like to call "controversial." The more amusing aspect of this thread is Walden Pond's not so subtle attempt to make it about race, about an early population of Europeans (read "white people") were wiped out (read "genocide") by invading Asians (read "mud people").