Welcome, Guest. Please login or register.
Did you miss your activation email?
News:
Please Support Us!
Donate with PayPal!
November Goal: $40.00
Due Date: Nov 30
Gross Amount: $25.00
PayPal Fees: $1.58
Net Balance: $23.42
Below Goal: $16.58

©
59% 
November Donations
7th Anonymous $20.00
5th Anonymous $5.00
Pages: [1]   Go Down
Print
This topic has not yet been rated!
You have not rated this topic. Select a rating:
Author Topic: Seafaring clue to first Americans  (Read 833 times)
0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.
Administration
Webmaster: History Hunters
Administrator
Gold Member
*****

Karma: 84
OfflineOffline

Posts: 687


The Eyrie


View Profile
« on: October 07, 2006, 11:54:59 AM »


The tools could have been used for boat-building

People in North America were voyaging by sea some 8,000 years ago, boosting a theory that some of the continent's first settlers arrived there by boat.
That is the claim of archaeologists who have found evidence of ancient seafaring along the Californian coast.

The traditional view holds that the first Americans were trekkers from Siberia who crossed a land bridge into Alaska during the last Ice Age.

The report in American Antiquity makes arrival by boat seem more plausible.

Researchers conducted an archaeological analysis of 9,000-8,000-year-old tools unearthed at Eel Point on San Clemente, one of the eight Channel Islands that lie off the Californian coast.

They propose that some tools used by the prehistoric people of Eel Point may have had the same functions as implements employed for boat-building by Chumash Indians in the early 20th Century.

 For example, a triangular "reamer" tool from Eel Point closely resembles a Chumash "canoe drill" used to expand an existing hole in a wood plank.

On this basis, archaeologists Mark Raab, Jim Cassidy and Nina Kononenko argue that the inhabitants of Eel Point were accomplished seafarers.

Dolphin hunting

Animal remains uncovered at the site show that the inhabitants hunted dolphins, sea lions and seals and collected mussels.

Furthermore, Professor Raab points out that the nearby island of San Miguel was occupied by humans 12,200 years ago - circumstantial evidence that sea travel began even earlier.

"The only food resources on the Channel Islands effectively come from the sea. Living there means an intensively maritime way of life," the California State University scientist told BBC News Online.



 "People had settled San Nicolas island, about 60 miles from the nearest landfall, between 8,000 to 8,500 years ago. Clearly people were getting around in some kind of watercraft."

But some researchers reject suggestions that early Americans colonised the continent by coasting along its shoreline in boats.

They maintain that the first Americans were the Clovis people, who crossed into the New World from Asia when a fall in sea levels at the height of the last Ice Age created a land bridge, known as Beringia, between the two continents.

Lack of evidence

The problem for those backing the coastal migration theory has always been a lack of evidence.

 "The basic problem is that all boats are made out of organic materials that just don't preserve in the archaeological record," said Professor Knut Fladmark, of Simon Fraser University in Canada.



Professor Fladmark believes humans were building boats 40,000-50,000 years ago and cites evidence that Australia was colonised by this time despite the fact there was no land bridge connecting it to South East Asia.

"Until you find the boats there will remain a cadre of archaeologists who will insist on not accepting this," Professor Fladmark told BBC News Online.

"Sea level rise since the last Ice Age flooded much of the coastline of North America, presumably drowning any possible evidence of early coastal migrations," Prof Raab added.
Logged

Administration
Webmaster: History Hunters
Administrator
Gold Member
*****

Karma: 84
OfflineOffline

Posts: 687


The Eyrie


View Profile
« Reply #1 on: October 07, 2006, 12:01:07 PM »

Summary of Archaeological Collections from San Miguel Island and San Nicolas Island, California

By Caprice D. Harper       

During the 1920's, 1930's, 1940's and 1960's, archaeologists from the Los Angeles County Museum of Natural History (LACMNH, previously called the Los Angeles Museum) conducted archaeological research on the Channel Islands.  Arthur Woodward and later Charles Rozaire, former curators at the museum, both made significant systematic collections with excellent documentation that is curated at the LACMNH.  The Woodward and Rozaire collections are supplemented by smaller earlier collections and by a variety of donations of different sizes.  These collections, from San Nicolas and San Miguel Islands constitute a major resource in California archaeology, and they include unique and important assemblages and items including extremely scarce perishable artifacts such as large fragments of seagrass textiles.


Shell artifacts collected from various sites during the Los Angeles County Museum of Natural History Archaeological survey of San Miguel Island (Plate 20, page 229 in Archaeological Investigations on  San Miguel Island, Californiaby Charles Rozaire 1978).


Pestles collected from various sites during the Los Angeles County Museum of Natural History Archaeological survey of San Miguel Island (Plate 30, page 239 in Archaeological Investigations on  San Miguel Island, California by Charles Rozaire 1978).


Charles Rozaire at the bottom of Test Pit 1, SMI-525.
Photo by Charles Rozaire (1967).


Fishhooks and bone implements from SMI-525 collected by Charles Rozaire for the Los Angeles County Museum of Natural History
Logged

Diving Doc
Platinum Member
*****

Karma: 104
OfflineOffline

Posts: 1482


Treasure is In books


View Profile WWW
« Reply #2 on: October 07, 2006, 04:20:12 PM »

Some of these fish hooks remind me of the Polynesian pattern. What do you think about that?

Doc
Logged

Solomon
Guest
« Reply #3 on: October 07, 2006, 04:57:14 PM »

Well, that is a big subject Doc.

When I got married, some, er, at least 35 years ago, my wife had a paper on this. It was a thesis on cultural characteristics common to peoples across and around the Pacific. As I lived in Polynesia at the time and had just visited the museum in Suva, Fiji where I had examined the records of the Kon Tiki expedition, I took an interest.

Further, in late 1960s London, a friend of mine was Rafique Jairazbhoy (Ancient Egyptians and Chinese in America 1974). The young lady who I married was much surprised to discover this, as he authored one of her set books at Sir George Williams University. He told me of information he held of ancient voyages to the west coast of America, by Chinese. You see by the date, he eventually wrote the book on this.

This was one of many factors that brought me to the conclusion that everyone had sailed everywhere, at some point. I know of a voyage by a Frenchman across the Atlantic, in an open rubber boat with no water, or food. I know of a man who crossed the same ocean in a bath tub. Once man saw a log floating downstream, I reckon people began making voyages without even intending to.

There is DNA evidence of Africans migrating west to South America tens of thousands of years ago, at the same time other Africans started their eastward migrations which ended in Australia.

So, coming back to the point, bear in mind the time difference. From what period do these artefacts belong? And when did the Polynesians appear in the Pacific, or more exactly, in the eastern Pacific?

Sol
Logged
Baja Bush Pilot
Silver Member
**

Karma: 35
OfflineOffline

Posts: 165



View Profile WWW
« Reply #4 on: January 30, 2007, 05:54:24 PM »

Winds Blew in Reverse During Last Ice Age:

In one of the most stark illustrations of how a changing climate can have regional effects, scientists have learned that winds over North America have done a complete 180 since the time of the last Ice Age several thousand years ago.

Winter blizzards and spring thunderstorms today are usually fueled by moisture-laden winds blowing in from the West Coast.

?In this study, we found evidence that during the last glacial period, about 14,000 to 36,000 years ago, the prevailing wind in this zone was easterly, and marine moisture came predominantly from the East Coast,? said lead study author Xiahong Feng of Dartmouth College.?

The findings were detailed today in the online edition of the journal Geology.

Changing climate

These changes in wind direction were the result of global climate change, which can alter circulation patterns in the atmosphere, Feng explained. Changes in wind patterns can in turn cause changes in temperature and precipitation patterns, which are the measurements typically used to study past climates.

?Climate change involves interactions among temperature, precipitation and wind, but until now, research has rarely been able to observe or confirm prehistoric winds and their continental-scale patterns,? Feng said.

The researchers examined cellulose from ancient wood samples recovered from the mid-latitudes of North America (40-50 degrees N). The changes in the compositions of oxygen and hydrogen isotopes across the continent gave the researchers a picture of the distribution of moisture during the glacial period. While modern samples show high levels of moisture on both coasts, the ancient samples surprisingly showed high levels on the East Coast that steadily decreased to the West Coast.

?We didn?t expect to see a whole different pattern,? co-author Eric Posmentier told LiveScience.

Altered jet stream

Feng hypothesizes that the Laurentide Ice Sheet, which covered a large area of North America during the Ice Age, intensified winds swirling around the North Pole. This intensification caused the jet stream, along which many storms tend to track, to dip further south than does today and the weak polar easterlies above it were pushed down over the mid-latitudes of North America.

Essentially, the wind patterns of today ?got squished down toward the equator,? Posmentier said.

These changes in wind direction in turn changed  precipitation patterns. For example, the Pacific Northwest was found to be much drier than it is today, which earlier studies of vegetation in that region have also shown.

Feng hopes that the methods her team used in this study can be used to better understand climate interactions and to formulate better models of future climate change.

Logged

Regards,

Barry
Baja Bush Pilot
Silver Member
**

Karma: 35
OfflineOffline

Posts: 165



View Profile WWW
« Reply #5 on: January 30, 2007, 06:25:11 PM »

Prevailing winds today favor east to west ocean travel in the tropics and west to east farther north or south of the equator.  If the reverse were  true during the time Australia and parts of the South Pacific were settled, wouldn't it make travel from there to South and Central America more plausible?
Logged

Regards,

Barry
Diving Doc
Platinum Member
*****

Karma: 104
OfflineOffline

Posts: 1482


Treasure is In books


View Profile WWW
« Reply #6 on: January 30, 2007, 07:20:52 PM »

Barry,
Do you have a copy of the World Pilot Charts?
This would be most useful in answering this type of questions.
Cheers,
Doc
Logged

Solomon
Guest
« Reply #7 on: January 30, 2007, 09:01:18 PM »

With the idea of Thor Heyerdahl that Polynesians originated in South America having been disproved comprehensively, there is a delicious irony in arguing the opposite.

Polynesian culture
Origins, Exploration and Settlement (c. 1800 B.C. - c. 700 A.D.)

There are suggestions that Polynesian voyagers reached the South American mainland and made contact with indigenous South Americans. The sweet potato, known in Polynesian languages as kumara or kumala is widely grown around the Pacific but originated in the Andes. There is no evidence that Pacific peoples actually settled on the South American mainland or that South American peoples voyaged into the Pacific.

The Incan influences in Easter Island claimed by Heyerdahl may have been brought about by the exact reverse of his proposal, in that they arrived with Polynesians who had been in contact with South American culture.

They are not called 'The Vikings of the Pacific' for nothing!

Solomon
Logged
Diving Doc
Platinum Member
*****

Karma: 104
OfflineOffline

Posts: 1482


Treasure is In books


View Profile WWW
« Reply #8 on: January 30, 2007, 09:22:06 PM »

Solomon,
What an astute and concise observation! That is truly astounding in its implications!
What a neat take on the subject!
Cheers,
D0c
Logged

Baja Bush Pilot
Silver Member
**

Karma: 35
OfflineOffline

Posts: 165



View Profile WWW
« Reply #9 on: April 02, 2007, 08:06:44 PM »

High-tech undersea search for the first Americans

Ocean archeologist Robert Ballard is searching the floor of the Gulf of Mexico, via remote control.

By Moises Velasquez-Manoff | Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor

MYSTIC, CONN. - Inside a darkened room, oceanographer Robert Ballard stares at an array of flat-screen monitors. The monitor to his left shows a crew of scientists aboard the submarine support vessel Carolyn Chouest in the Gulf of Mexico. On a monitor to his right, a roomful of Rhode Island high school students are intently focused on something unseen. And directly ahead, a large plasma TV plays live footage of what's holding everyone's attention: the ocean floor some 115 miles off the Texas coast.

The picture is transmitted by Argus, an unmanned submersible 1,800 miles away from the Mystic Aquarium in Connecticut. In fact, Dr. Ballard is presiding over the first undersea expedition conducted entirely by remote control. "It's the first time I've had enough confidence in the technology to step ashore," he says.

The subject of his search, as well as its location, are as precedent-setting as the means he's using to conduct it.

Enabled by technological advances such as satellite uplinks and the next generation of Internet, the expedition is a step toward Ballard's vision of a world experienced via "telepresence" ? not in person, but via remotely operated cameras and sensors. It's cheaper, requiring less manpower than typical science expeditions. It also has profound implications for any kind of undersea exploration, especially for the nascent field of ocean archaeology.

Today, Ballard and his team are seeking submerged evidence of the first Americans. Any proof of past human habitation in this area of former coastline could sink a long-dominant ? and many say hopelessly eroded ? hypothesis about who the first Americans were, how they got here, and when they arrived.

"It's a great story in human history," says Kevin McBride, a professor of anthropology at the University of Connecticut at Storrs, who is involved in the project. "And as usual, it's a more complicated story than people think."

With the help of the US Navy's only research submarine, NR-1, Ballard's team is mapping the area to determine where early Americans might have lived when the Gulf's underwater hills sat at shoreline. At the height of the last ice age, sea levels were nearly 400 feet lower than they are today. The team's voyage began March 4, along a series of rises called the Flower Garden Banks. Scientists think the area, now filled with colorful sponges and abundant sea life, was a thriving coastal estuary 19,000 years ago ? and prime real estate for human habitation.

Dwellers on an ancient coast

An abundant amount of salt left from an even earlier time when a closed-off Gulf of Mexico completely evaporated would have provided an invaluable resource for preserving meat. Salt licks also would have attracted grazing animals and potential game. Inhabitants would have also found the coastal estuary full of easily harvestable shellfish, and if they ate shellfish, they probably left behind large piles of discarded shells that scientists can radiocarbon date. Because of the continental shelf's gradual incline in the area, rising seas would have quickly inundated the land, increasing the chances that artifacts were preserved.

This is Ballard's high-tech quest: proof of human habitation in the Gulf. That might refute the classic hypothesis that the first humans in the Americas were Siberian hunters, who followed herds over the Bering land bridge some 11,500 years ago. The hunters, the theory goes, passed into the interior of the continent via an ice-free corridor on the east side of the Canadian Rockies. Archaeologists call them the Clovis culture, after a distinctive spear point found near Clovis, N.M., in the 1930s.

But in the past 20 years, archaeologists have excavated many sites with radiocarbon dates older than the Clovis culture. Tools and shelters at Monte Verde in Chile are 12,500 years old. Stone flakes and fire pits found at the Meadowcroft Rockshelter in Pennsylvania date to 14,000 years ago ? before the corridor to the interior would have been open. This observation gave birth to an alternate hypothesis: Perhaps the first Americans skirted the glaciers in boats.

An ice-free corridor inland

Bolstering this possibility, scientists now think that a sliver of coast between the great Cordilleran glacier on the Canadian Rockies and the Pacific Ocean remained clear during the Ice Age.

In 1997, Daryl Fedje of the Canadian Parks service pulled up a stone tool from the seafloor 170 feet down. The tool could have fallen there, but the seafloor itself, which was dotted with tree stumps and littered with pine cones, was clear evidence of an inhabitable ice age forest along the coast. Early seafarers could have occasionally pulled up to land during their migration.

But nothing has complicated the picture more than genetic evidence. Studies of native American groups indicate that up to five waves of people arrived at different times. Four of them ? A, B, C, and D ? are related to populations in Asia. Several of these groups share genetic markers with people in modern-day Indonesia, Australia, and the Pacific Islands ? places scientists think were settled by seafaring people.

Further confusing the picture, this fifth group, called "X," also shares genetic markers with European populations. Although controversial, this evidence lends credence to another, stranger possibility: Stone Age Europeans sailed west and made landfall in what was, even then, a land of immigrants.

New methods produce new data

"Sometimes methodology explodes and theory plays catch-up," says James Adovasio, executive director of the Mercyhurst Archaeological Institute at Mercyhurst College in Erie, Pa., and the archaeologist who excavated Meadowcroft. "We're living at a time when the methodological techniques are exploding, and as they generate new, higher-resolution data, we have to reformulate how we think about stuff."

At stake in any undersea archaeological find is more than just the timing and chronology of the peopling of the Americas, says Professor Adovasio. Evidence of a seafaring culture in the Americas before the Clovis culture would overturn longstanding notions of our Stone Age forebears. Rather than a society of fur-clad, spear-wielding hunters stabbing mammoths, the first Americans may have been coastal dwellers, he says, a difference with great implications for everything from the division of labor in their society to the tools they used.

"Let us suppose that they find offshore campsites that are 16,000 years old," says Adovasio. "It would put yet another nail into the Clovis sarcophagus."

'Telepresence' may let scientists - and tourists - be everywhere at once

In 1979, Robert Ballard found the first "black smokers," undersea vents spewing black sulfides near the Galapagos Islands. In 1985, he cemented his fame with the discovery of the Titanic in the north Atlantic.

Now, Dr. Ballard wants to change ? and enhance ? how everyone from scientists to schoolchildren explores the planet. Using a combination of remotely operated vehicles and cameras, he sees a future where "electronic travel" lets anyone look in on Earth's hard-to-reach corners with minimal cost and effort.

"It's not critical that your gall bladder gets to the Serengeti," he says. But "your spirit has no mass; you can move your spirit around cheaply."

On expeditions, remotely operated vehicles will scour the seafloor thousands of miles away 24/7. Individuals on rotating shifts will monitor the images. Only when something interesting comes into view will an on-call scientist assume command.

For the layperson, remotely operated cameras left behind will provide live video of everything from African plains to ocean canyons. Not only will this "telepresence" give the average student real-time access to the planet's mysteries, it will also lessen humanity's impact on the natural wonders we so eagerly wish to view.

None of this would be possible were it not for the emerging Internet2 protocol, says Ballard. Enabled by a nationwide network of fiber-optic cables, the I-2 is up to 10,000 times faster than the average broadband connection ? 10 gigabits per second ? and allows for the live transmission of high-definition video.

In 2002, Ballard installed his first remotely operated camera in California's Monterey Bay. Children at his Institute for Exploration at the Mystic Aquarium in Mystic, Conn., could control an underwater vehicle 3,000 miles away. Remote cameras are slated for the Channel Islands off California, Hawaii and in the Florida Keys.

On the Flower Garden Banks expedition to the Gulf of Mexico (see main story), the public could tune in to one of the four live broadcasts online daily and submit questions in real time.



http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0314/p13s01-stgn.html?page=1

Logged

Regards,

Barry
Baja Bush Pilot
Silver Member
**

Karma: 35
OfflineOffline

Posts: 165



View Profile WWW
« Reply #10 on: June 05, 2007, 01:00:54 AM »

WASHINGTON ? Why did the chicken cross the ocean?

To get to America before Columbus ? and from the other direction ? according to a new report in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Many scholars had thought chickens arrived in the New World with the early Spanish or Portuguese explorers around the year 1500. When Juan Pizarro arrived at the Inca empire in 1532, however, he found chickens already being used there, raising the possibility they had been around for some time.

And now, researchers led by Alice Storey at the University of Auckland, New Zealand, report finding evidence that may ruffle some scholarly feathers. They found chicken bones of Polynesian origin at a site in what is now Chile.

Radiocarbon dating of chicken bones at the site on the Arauco Peninsula in south central Chile indicated a range of A.D. 1321 to 1407, well before the Spanish arrival in the Americas.

The researchers were able to obtain DNA from some of the bones of these early birds, and found they were identical to ancient chicken bones previously found in Tonga and Samoa.

Chicken had been used in the Pacific for at least 3,000 years, spreading eastward across the region as Polynesians gradually populated the islands.

The DNA from these chickens also shared some unique sequences with modern Araucana chickens from South America and some current chicken types in Hawaii and Southeast Asia, the researchers found.

http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/science/20070604-1400-fowlfinding250.html


Logged

Regards,

Barry
Tags: archaeology America dna Polynesia 
Pages: [1]   Go Up
Print
GoogleTagged: mid american land bridge

 
Jump to:  

Powered by SMF 1.1.4 | SMF © 2006-2007, Simple Machines LLC
History Hunters Worldwide Exodus | TinyPortal v0.9.8 © Bloc