Pre-Clovis When did people first appear in North America? How did they get here?/Where did they come from? What was their environment and culture like?

Late Paleolithic Migrations The last lands to inhabit: Glacial conditions and Migration to New Frontiers Sumatra and Borneo before 20,000 B.P. connected by land bridge to SE Asia People could walk to new areas. Sea level was much lower because water taken up in polar ice regions. Approximately 120 meters lower than at present.

Oldest Australians-35 kya How did they get there and where did they come from? Could not walk; even at glacial max., water too deep Invention of water transport (boats), modern computer simulations have shown that at certain times of the year it would take seven days to go from Borneo/Java to Australia/New Guinea (55 miles of open water).

Long Chronology (PreClovis) Humans in many migrations in New World, as early as 30-40 kya. Small groups, largely a wood and bone tool industry. Also chopper and scraper industry. Postulated due to recent finds of sites which date to before 15 kya. Monte Verde, Chile excavated by Tom Dillehay One area of site dates to ca. 13 kya houses, preserved by an overlayer of peat. Wood, bone, skin, meat, botanicals are extremely well preserved. Ambiguous lower level of three possible cultural features and some stone tool fragments dated to 33 kya. Affiliation unclear, but more recent research suggests early dates very compelling.

Pre-Clovis Sites

Monte Verde, Chile

Monte Verde, Chile

Monte Verde, Chile

Monte Verde Culture

North American Sites Meadowcroft Rockshleter, PA (16-19.5 kya) artifacts include stone blades, scrapers and knives. Wilson Butte Cave, Idaho (14.5 kya) Cactus Hill, VA (17 kya)

Meadowcroft Rockshelter

Meadowcroft Rockshelter

Cactus Hill, VA

How did they get here? Bering Land Bridge Pacific Coast Atlantic Coast South American Re-Entry Africa

Bering Land Bridge Crossed during glacial maximum (last was 18-11 kya) Came through ice-free corridor between Laurentide and Cordilleran ice sheets. Continued down into North America and South America. http://instaar.colorado.edu/QGISL/bering_land_bridge/downloads/beringlandbridge1l.mov

Pacific Coastal Entry The coastal entry hypothesis opens for an earlier date for the spread of human beings into the Americas, as this mode of settlement would not require an ice-free land corridor. The Arlington Springs Woman, found on Santa Rosa Island, has recently been carbon dated to 13,000 years. Her presence on the island at this early date is consistent with the hypothesis that migrations into the new world took place by sea. Such coastal migration also opens up for a new set of possible routes and entry times.

Asian-Coastal Western North America

Arlington Springs Woman One of Califlornia's biggest recent archaeological discoveries occurred not in the field, but in the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History, where this block of earth from a site on Santa Rosa Island had been in storage since 1960. Bones sealed within the sediments have proven even older than the site's original investigators suspected. http://www.peak.org/csfa/mt14-3.html

Asian-Coastal Western North America Tool found Submerged Underwater In coastal Pacific

Atlantic Coastal Route

Atlantic Route With much of the world's water having been evaporated and converted to ice, sea levels during the last Ice Age were as much as 400 feet below today's levels. An expanded coastal region probably extended from the Iberian Peninsula in southwestern France and northern Spain to the southern tip of Ireland. In addition, the Grand Banks, a series of submerged plateaus extending several hundred miles off the coast of Newfoundland, probably were above water. The geological conditions meant the prehistoric travelers would have needed to pull off only a 1,500-mile Atlantic Ocean crossing along sheltered ice sheets teeming with easily hunted marine mammals and fish, Bradley and Stanford said. Stanford noted that 50,000 years ago or more, humans had become skilled enough at open sea travel that they were able to arrive on the continent of Australia. They most likely used small, animal-skin boats, taking advantage of favorable sea currents. http://www.jsonline.com/news/state/mar02/24849.asp?format=print

Clovis vs. Solutrean Different shapes, but similar technology

Inuit Skin boats

Three wave theory People came in three waves of migration Amerinds (>21,000+) NaDene (ancestors of Navajo, Apache, and Dine) (12,000) Eskimo-Aleut (6,000)

Evidence for 3-wave Biological Evidence-Dental Patterns Very few skeletal remains dating to this time period (>9,000 B.P.). Browns Valley, Wyoming Horn Shelter, Texas Hourglass Cave, Colorado Spirit Cave, Nevada Wizard Beach, Nevada Gore Creek, British Columbia Kennewick Man, Washington

Genetic Evidence for 3-Wave Genetic research-mtDNA and JC Virus. mtDNA-mitochondria passed down by women, shows relationships. All modern, native americans are descended from a single group of Asians. But, earlier migrations of people from Europe could have died out.

JC Virus and Modern Native Americans When human beings arrived in North America about 30,000 years ago, they brought language, fire, flint tools and skin tents. They also brought something they didn't know they had--a tiny microbe called JC virus sequestered in their kidneys. Researchers are now using the virus to bolster the hypothesis that American Indians are the distant offspring of those migrants, and that they came from eastern Asia on a land bridge across the Bering Strait. The strain of JC carried by modern-day Navajos, as it happens, is nearly identical to that carried by modern residents of Tokyo. It's somewhat different from the virus carried by the Chamorro, the aboriginal inhabitants of the South Pacific island of Guam. It's very different, however, from the virus carried by West Africans, East Africans and Europeans. All in all, the evidence suggests the Navajo and the Japanese are closely related to each other, and are related (but more distantly) to the Chamorro. All are descended from the same prehistoric population of eastern Asians. http://cogweb.ucla.edu/Chumash/JCMicrobe.html

Evidence for 3-wave Linguistic evidence Glottochronology Words change gradually but at steady rate Comparison of contemporary native languages can give a time frame for their first divergence, and can say reconstruct proto-language Linguistic evidence. Joseph Greenberg suggested three separate migrations: Amerind before 11,000 BP, Na-Denes (Athabaskan) ca. 9000 Bp, and AleutEskimo about 4000 Bp.

What was their environment? There were three short-faced bear species, all larger, two specialized as super carnivores (one about 7-8 feet at the shoulder-Arctodus simus), and one as a super vegetarian convergent with Europe's cave bear. In addition there were true lions, only twice the mass of African specimen, two species of large sabre toothed cats, jaguars, large cheetah-like running cats and big dire wolves. Remains of some of the mammals and birds present in the Los Angeles valley between 10,000 and 40,000 years ago -- including thousands of sabre-toothed cats -- can be seen at the La Brea Tarpits.

Extinct Pleistocene Mammals Smilodon Dire Wolf Short faced Bear

Saber tooth Cat http://www.museum.state.il.us/exhibits/larson/smilodon.html

What was their culture? Small Populations Probably very mobile Hunters and gatherers Sometimes megafauna, but probably more often medium and small mammals, birds and fish. Stone, bone and wood tool industry that was different from later cultures.