DOCSLIB.ORG

Maybe We Do Know When People First Came to North America; and What

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Maybe We Do Know When People First Came to North America; and What ARTICLE IN PRESS Quaternary International 109–110 (2003) 133–145 Maybe we do know when people first came to North America; and what does it mean if we do? Robert L. Kelly Department of Anthropology, University of Wyoming, Laramie, Wyoming 82071, USA Abstract The history of research in North America suggests that we already know when people arrived in the continental US: about 11,500 14C yr BP. Research also suggests that people were in the southern cone of South America by a comparable age, if not earlier. If the New World was colonized by Late Pleistocene migrants from Asia via the Bering Strait, then the earliest sites should be in North not South America. Several possibilities might account for this apparent paradox: (a) the inability to locate pre-11,500 14C yr BP sites in North America, (b) asynchroneity of late Pleistocene/early Holocene 14C dates between North and South America, (c) inaccurate dating of South American sites, or (d) a coastal migration that by-passed interior North America. All these possibilities currently appear unlikely, and the paradox resists explanation at this date. r 2002 Published by Elsevier Science Ltd. 1. Introduction There have always been challenges to this model, North American sites purported to be more ancient than Some years ago David Meltzer asked ‘‘Why don’t we Clovis. Especially compelling evidence has come, how- know when the first people came to North America?’’ ever, from South America. Best known to a North His answer was ‘‘it is entirely possible that we already American audience is the site of Monte Verde in do’’ (Meltzer, 1989; p. 483). It is from this statement that southern Chile, which appears to date to 12,000– I take my title. 12,500 14CyrBP(Dillehay, 1989, 1997). This is only All archaeologists will agree that people were in one of a number of South American sites that raise the North America by at least 11,800 14C yr BP (uncali- possibility that people were in the western hemisphere brated 14C dates are used throughout this paper). This is before the population who manufactured Clovis spear- the earliest date on the ‘‘Nenana complex’’ in Alaska points, and that realization suggests that the ‘textbook’ (Hamilton and Goebel, 1999; Dixon, 2001). In the Clovis-first model may be incorrect. continental US, the earliest unquestioned evidence for It is clear that the ancestors of living Native peoples of the presence of humans is the Clovis complex, with dates the western hemisphere came from Asia, and it is clear from 11,500 or 11,300 to about 10,900 14C yr BP. The that there were several times in the late Pleistocene when standard ‘text book’ model is that arctic-adapted they could have crossed over to North America. The hunters entered North America by passing through the question is when did they first do so? An ancillary ice-free corridor that was open by about 12,300 14Cyr question is whether some migrants came from other BP between the Cordilleran and Laurentian ice sheets places, such as Europe. In my opinion, the current that covered northern North America. This population evidence for a non-Asian origin of Native Americans is then allegedly grew in size and moved rapidly across the weak. But the question here is not so much where they Americas. In some instances these Clovis hunters are came from but what is the earliest evidence of their seen as exclusive hunters of megafauna (e.g., Martin, appearance. We can never know with certainty that we 1967), but in other reconstructions they have a more have found the earliest remains in North America varied diet (Meltzer and Smith, 1986; Kelly and Todd, because there may always be something that we have not 1988). found. But we can generate some idea of the probability that we have found the earliest remains. I argue that the E-mail address: [email protected] (R.L. Kelly). probability is very high that we have found the earliest 1040-6182/02/$ - see front matter r 2002 Published by Elsevier Science Ltd. PII: S 1040-6182(02)00209-4 ARTICLE IN PRESS 134 R.L. Kelly / Quaternary International 109–110 (2003) 133–145 occupation of North America. But research also Jelinek pointed out that establishing the antiquity of suggests that the earliest occupation of the southern human occupation of a continent has much to do with cone of South America is at least nearly as early as that the intensity of archaeological research on that con- of North America, if not even earlier. If the New World tinent. In the year 1900 American archaeologists did not was colonized by Late Pleistocene migrants from Asia know how long people had been in North America in via the Bering Strait, then the earliest sites should be in large part because there were so few archaeologists and North not South America. Several possibilities might thus so few field investigations. So, to answer the account for this apparent paradox: (a) the inability to question of whether North American archaeologists locate pre-11,500 14C yr BP sites in North America, (b) have looked hard enough let us compare North America asynchroneity of late Pleistocene/early Holocene 14C to two other places that also face questions about the dates between North and South America, (c) inaccurate timing of initial human colonization: Australia and dating of South American sites, or (d) a coastal western Beringia. migration that by-passed interior North America. In Australia, the earliest sites in 1960 dated to 9000 14C yr BP; by the 1970s, sites accidentally discovered at Lake Mungo pushed the colonization of Australia to 35,000 14C yr BP (see history in Mulvaney and 2. Dating the late Pleistocene colonization of North Kamminga, 1999). Subsequent finds pushed the con- America tinent’s prehistory back to at least 38,000 yr. Today we know of over 150 Pleistocene sites in Australia One way to estimate the probability of whether we (Mulvaney and Kamminga, 1999). Controversial work have found the earliest occupation of North America is in northern and southwestern Australia, as well as new to look at how long it took archaeologists to establish dating of the Lake Mungo skeletal remains may push the age of a human presence on the continent. Take the the continent’s prehistory back to 50,000 or 60,000 yr year 1900 as a starting point. A number of tantalizing (see Thorne et al., 1999; Turney et al., 2001). In brief, sites had been discovered in the late 19th and early 20th Australia has an established prehistory of at least centuries but it is the Folsom site in new Mexico that is 40,000 yr. widely regarded as the ‘smoking gun’ of a Pleistocene To the Australian case, we can add that of western presence in North America. Beringia. East of the Lena River, 14C dating of The Folsom site was discovered in 1908 by the excavated deposits established a progression of early African–American cowboy, George McJunkin. He sites: Ushki-1 at 14,000 14C yr BP in the 1960s, Berelekh unfortunately did not live to see its excavation in the at 12,200 14C yr BP in the 1970s, and Verkhen– late 1920s, when an artifact of undoubtedly human Troitskaia, at 18,000 14C yr BP in the 1970s (Goebel, manufacture (a Folsom spearpoint) was found in 1999; Goebel and Slobodin, 1999). There are some unambiguous association with the remains of extinct claims of still earlier sites but what is important is that fauna (Bison antiquus), and its age guessed (not too western Beringia has an established prehistory of at least badly) at about 10,000 yr. During the 1930s other sites 18,000 yr. of comparable age or slightly older were found (perhaps In sum, archaeologists in Australia and western due to the erosion that accompanied the Dust Bowl Beringia have established prehistories that are older years), including the Clovis locality at Blackwater Draw than that of North America. This is interesting because in New Mexico. These sites’ ages were later confirmed the US has seen far more intensive archaeological by radiocarbon dating in the 1950s (see history of research than either of these other places. Cultural research in Meltzer, 1993). We now have quite a few heritage laws in the US and Australia have ensured a Clovis and Folsom sites, and thousands of fluted points large amount of archaeological fieldwork in the past have been found on the surface throughout the US 35 yr. But more has occurred in the US than in Australia (Anderson and Faught, 2000; Anderson and Gillam, because there are more people in the US (270 million) 2000). So, the minimal age of the colonization of North compared to Australia (19 million) and thus more America was established in the 1920s by a site first found construction activities that legally require archaeological in 1908; by the 1930s we had convincing evidence of a research. There are no such heritage laws at work in Clovis occupation. western Beringia. In the past 50 yr many sites have been offered as There are also more archaeologists in the US than in evidence of a pre-Clovis occupation in North America, Australia or western Beringia. The Society for American although most have been discarded by even ardent Archaeology has about 7000 members (and a recent proponents of pre-Clovis. The question arises: have survey suggests that there could be 10,000 practicing North American archaeologists looked hard enough? A archaeologists in the US) while the Australian decade ago, Jelinek (1992) offered a way to answer this Archaeological Association has only 430 (and there question.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Climatic Events During the Late Pleistocene and Holocene in the Upper Parana River: Correlation with NE Argentina and South-Central Brazil Joseh C
    Quaternary International 72 (2000) 73}85 Climatic events during the Late Pleistocene and Holocene in the Upper Parana River: Correlation with NE Argentina and South-Central Brazil JoseH C. Stevaux* Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul - Instituto de GeocieL ncias - CECO, Universidade Estadual de Maringa& - Geography Department, 87020-900 Maringa& ,PR} Brazil Abstract Most Quaternary studies in Brazil are restricted to the Atlantic Coast and are mainly based on coastal morphology and sea level changes, whereas research on inland areas is largely unexplored. The study area lies along the ParanaH River, state of ParanaH , Brazil, at 223 43S latitude and 533 10W longitude, where the river is as yet undammed. Paleoclimatological data were obtained from 10 vibro cores and 15 motor auger holes. Sedimentological and pollen analyses plus TL and C dating were used to establish the following evolutionary history of Late Pleistocene and Holocene climates: First drier episode ?40,000}8000 BP First wetter episode 8000}3500 BP Second drier episode 3500}1500 BP Second (present) wet episode 1500 BP}Present Climatic intervals are in agreement with prior studies made in southern Brazil and in northeastern Argentina. ( 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd and INQUA. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction the excavation of Sete Quedas Falls on the ParanaH River (today the site of the Itaipu dam). Barthelness (1960, Geomorphological and paleoclimatological studies of 1961) de"ned a regional surface in the Guaira area de- the Upper ParanaH River Basin are scarce and regional in veloped at the end of the Pleistocene (Guaira Surface) nature. King (1956, pp. 157}159) de"ned "ve geomor- and correlated it with the Velhas Cycle.
    [Show full text]
  • Sea Level and Global Ice Volumes from the Last Glacial Maximum to the Holocene
    Sea level and global ice volumes from the Last Glacial Maximum to the Holocene Kurt Lambecka,b,1, Hélène Roubya,b, Anthony Purcella, Yiying Sunc, and Malcolm Sambridgea aResearch School of Earth Sciences, The Australian National University, Canberra, ACT 0200, Australia; bLaboratoire de Géologie de l’École Normale Supérieure, UMR 8538 du CNRS, 75231 Paris, France; and cDepartment of Earth Sciences, University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China This contribution is part of the special series of Inaugural Articles by members of the National Academy of Sciences elected in 2009. Contributed by Kurt Lambeck, September 12, 2014 (sent for review July 1, 2014; reviewed by Edouard Bard, Jerry X. Mitrovica, and Peter U. Clark) The major cause of sea-level change during ice ages is the exchange for the Holocene for which the direct measures of past sea level are of water between ice and ocean and the planet’s dynamic response relatively abundant, for example, exhibit differences both in phase to the changing surface load. Inversion of ∼1,000 observations for and in noise characteristics between the two data [compare, for the past 35,000 y from localities far from former ice margins has example, the Holocene parts of oxygen isotope records from the provided new constraints on the fluctuation of ice volume in this Pacific (9) and from two Red Sea cores (10)]. interval. Key results are: (i) a rapid final fall in global sea level of Past sea level is measured with respect to its present position ∼40 m in <2,000 y at the onset of the glacial maximum ∼30,000 y and contains information on both land movement and changes in before present (30 ka BP); (ii) a slow fall to −134 m from 29 to 21 ka ocean volume.
    [Show full text]
  • First Peoples in a New World: Colonizing Ice Age America
    1 OVERTURE It was the fi nal act in the prehistoric settlement of the earth. As we envision it, sometime before 12,500 years ago, a band of hardy Stone Age hunter-gatherers headed east across the vast steppe of northern Asia and Siberia, into the region of what is now the Bering Sea but was then grassy plain. Without realizing they were leaving one hemisphere for another, they slipped across the unmarked border separating the Old World from the New. From there they moved south, skirting past vast glaciers, and one day found themselves in a warmer, greener, and infi nitely trackless land no human had ever seen before. It was a world rich in plants and animals that became ever more exotic as they moved south. It was a world where great beasts lumbered past on their way to extinc- tion, where climates were frigidly cold and extraordinarily mild. In this New World, massive ice sheets extended to the far horizons, the Bering Sea was dry land, the Great Lakes had not yet been born, and the ancestral Great Salt Lake was about to die. They made prehistory, those latter-day Asians who, by jumping continents, became the fi rst Americans. Theirs was a colonization the likes and scale of which was virtually unique in the lifetime of our species, and one that would never be repeated. But they were surely unaware of what they had achieved, at least initially: Alaska looked little different from their Siberian homeland, and there were hardly any barriers separating the two. Even so, that relatively unassuming event, the move eastward from Siberia into Alaska and the turn south that followed, was one of the colonizing triumphs of modern humans, and became one of the great questions and enduring controversies of American archaeology.
    [Show full text]
  • Science Journals
    Early human impacts and ecosystem reorganization in southern-central Africa Item Type Article; text Authors Thompson, J.C.; Wright, D.K.; Ivory, S.J.; Choi, J.-H.; Nightingale, S.; Mackay, A.; Schilt, F.; Otárola-Castillo, E.; Mercader, J.; Forman, S.L.; Pietsch, T.; Cohen, A.S.; Arrowsmith, J.R.; Welling, M.; Davis, J.; Schiery, B.; Kaliba, P.; Malijani, O.; Blome, M.W.; O'Driscoll, C.A.; Mentzer, S.M.; Miller, C.; Heo, S.; Choi, J.; Tembo, J.; Mapemba, F.; Simengwa, D.; Gomani-Chindebvu, E. Citation Thompson, J. C., Wright, D. K., Ivory, S. J., Choi, J.-H., Nightingale, S., Mackay, A., Schilt, F., Otárola-Castillo, E., Mercader, J., Forman, S. L., Pietsch, T., Cohen, A. S., Arrowsmith, J. R., Welling, M., Davis, J., Schiery, B., Kaliba, P., Malijani, O., Blome, M. W., … Gomani-Chindebvu, E. (2021). Early human impacts and ecosystem reorganization in southern-central Africa. Science Advances, 7(19). DOI 10.1126/sciadv.abf9776 Publisher American Association for the Advancement of Science Journal Science Advances Rights Copyright © 2021 The Authors, some rights reserved; exclusive licensee American Association for the Advancement of Science. No claim to original U.S.Government Works. Distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial License 4.0 (CC BY-NC). Download date 01/10/2021 20:13:45 Item License https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ Version Final published version Link to Item http://hdl.handle.net/10150/660624 SCIENCE ADVANCES | RESEARCH ARTICLE ANTHROPOLOGY Copyright © 2021 The Authors, some rights reserved; Early human impacts and ecosystem reorganization exclusive licensee American Association in southern-central Africa for the Advancement Jessica C.
    [Show full text]
  • The Easternmost Occurrence of Mammut Pacificus (Proboscidea: Mammutidae), Based on a Partial Skull from Eastern Montana, USA
    The easternmost occurrence of Mammut pacificus (Proboscidea: Mammutidae), based on a partial skull from eastern Montana, USA Andrew T. McDonald1, Amy L. Atwater2, Alton C. Dooley Jr1 and Charlotte J.H. Hohman2,3 1 Western Science Center, Hemet, CA, United States of America 2 Museum of the Rockies, Montana State University, Bozeman, MT, United States of America 3 Department of Earth Sciences, Montana State University, Bozeman, MT, United States of America ABSTRACT Mammut pacificus is a recently described species of mastodon from the Pleistocene of California and Idaho. We report the easternmost occurrence of this taxon based upon the palate with right and left M3 of an adult male from the Irvingtonian of eastern Montana. The undamaged right M3 exhibits the extreme narrowness that characterizes M. pacificus rather than M. americanum. The Montana specimen dates to an interglacial interval between pre-Illinoian and Illinoian glaciation, perhaps indicating that M. pacificus was extirpated in the region due to habitat shifts associated with glacial encroachment. Subjects Biogeography, Evolutionary Studies, Paleontology, Zoology Keywords Mammut pacificus, Mammutidae, Montana, Irvingtonian, Pleistocene INTRODUCTION Submitted 7 May 2020 The recent recognition of the Pacific mastodon (Mammut pacificus (Dooley Jr et al., 2019)) Accepted 3 September 2020 as a new species distinct from and contemporaneous with the American mastodon Published 16 November 2020 (M. americanum) revealed an unrealized complexity in North American mammutid Corresponding author evolution during the Pleistocene. Dooley Jr et al. (2019) distinguished M. pacificus from Andrew T. McDonald, [email protected] M. americanum by a suite of dental and skeletal features: (1) upper third molars (M3) Academic editor and lower third molars (m3) much narrower relative to length in M.
    [Show full text]
  • Variable Impact of Late-Quaternary Megafaunal Extinction in Causing
    Variable impact of late-Quaternary megafaunal SPECIAL FEATURE extinction in causing ecological state shifts in North and South America Anthony D. Barnoskya,b,c,1, Emily L. Lindseya,b, Natalia A. Villavicencioa,b, Enrique Bostelmannd,2, Elizabeth A. Hadlye, James Wanketf, and Charles R. Marshalla,b aDepartment of Integrative Biology, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720; bMuseum of Paleontology, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720; cMuseum of Vertebrate Zoology, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720; dRed Paleontológica U-Chile, Laboratoria de Ontogenia, Departamento de Biología, Facultad de Ciencias, Universidad de Chile, Chile; eDepartment of Biology, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305; and fDepartment of Geography, California State University, Sacramento, CA 95819 Edited by John W. Terborgh, Duke University, Durham, NC, and approved August 5, 2015 (received for review March 16, 2015) Loss of megafauna, an aspect of defaunation, can precipitate many megafauna loss, and if so, what does this loss imply for the future ecological changes over short time scales. We examine whether of ecosystems at risk for losing their megafauna today? megafauna loss can also explain features of lasting ecological state shifts that occurred as the Pleistocene gave way to the Holocene. We Approach compare ecological impacts of late-Quaternary megafauna extinction The late-Quaternary impact of losing 70–80% of the megafauna in five American regions: southwestern Patagonia, the Pampas, genera in the Americas (19) would be expected to trigger biotic northeastern United States, northwestern United States, and Berin- transitions that would be recognizable in the fossil record in at gia. We find that major ecological state shifts were consistent with least two respects.
    [Show full text]
  • New Archaeological Evidence for an Early Human Presence at Monte Verde, Chile
    RESEARCH ARTICLE New Archaeological Evidence for an Early Human Presence at Monte Verde, Chile Tom D. Dillehay1,2,3*, Carlos Ocampo4, José Saavedra4, Andre Oliveira Sawakuchi5, Rodrigo M. Vega6, Mario Pino6, Michael B. Collins7, Linda Scott Cummings8, Iván Arregui4, Ximena S. Villagran9, Gelvam A. Hartmann10,11, Mauricio Mella12, Andrea González13, George Dix14 1 Department of Anthropology, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee, United States of America, 2 Universidad Austral de Chile, Valdivia, Chile, 3 Universidad Catolica de Temuco, Chile, 4 Fundación Wulaia y Sociedad Chilena de Arqueología, Santiago, Chile, 5 Departamento de Geologia Sedimentar e a11111 Ambiental, Instituto de Geociências, Universidade de São Paulo, São Paulo, Brasil, 6 Instituto de Ciencias de la Tierra, Universidad Austral de Chile, Valdivia, Chile, 7 Texas State University, San Marcos, Texas, United States of America, 8 PaleoResearch Institute, Inc., Golden, Colorado, United States of America, 9 Museu de Arqueologia e Etnologia, Universidade de São Paulo, São Paulo, Brasil, 10 Observatório Nacional, Rio de Janeiro, RJ, Brazil, 11 Departamento de Geofísica, Instituto de Astronomia, Geofísica e Ciências Atmosféricas, Universidade de São Paulo, São Paulo, Brasil, 12 Oficina Técnica, Servicio Nacional de Geologia y Mineria, Puerto Montt, Chile, 13 Facultad de Estudios del Patrimonio Cultural y Educación, Universidad SEKA, Santiago, Chile, 14 Department of Earth Sciences, Carleton University, Ottawa, Ontario, OPEN ACCESS Canada Citation: Dillehay TD, Ocampo C, Saavedra J, * [email protected] Sawakuchi AO, Vega RM, Pino M, et al. (2015) New Archaeological Evidence for an Early Human Presence at Monte Verde, Chile. PLoS ONE 10(11): e0141923. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0141923 Abstract Editor: John P.
    [Show full text]
  • A Possible Late Pleistocene Impact Crater in Central North America and Its Relation to the Younger Dryas Stadial
    A POSSIBLE LATE PLEISTOCENE IMPACT CRATER IN CENTRAL NORTH AMERICA AND ITS RELATION TO THE YOUNGER DRYAS STADIAL SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA BY David Tovar Rodriguez IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF SCIENCE Howard Mooers, Advisor August 2020 2020 David Tovar All Rights Reserved ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank my advisor Dr. Howard Mooers for his permanent support, my family, and my friends. i Abstract The causes that started the Younger Dryas (YD) event remain hotly debated. Studies indicate that the drainage of Lake Agassiz into the North Atlantic Ocean and south through the Mississippi River caused a considerable change in oceanic thermal currents, thus producing a decrease in global temperature. Other studies indicate that perhaps the impact of an extraterrestrial body (asteroid fragment) could have impacted the Earth 12.9 ky BP ago, triggering a series of events that caused global temperature drop. The presence of high concentrations of iridium, charcoal, fullerenes, and molten glass, considered by-products of extraterrestrial impacts, have been reported in sediments of the same age; however, there is no impact structure identified so far. In this work, the Roseau structure's geomorphological features are analyzed in detail to determine if impacted layers with plastic deformation located between hard rocks and a thin layer of water might explain the particular shape of the studied structure. Geophysical data of the study area do not show gravimetric anomalies related to a possible impact structure. One hypothesis developed on this works is related to the structure's shape might be explained by atmospheric explosions dynamics due to the disintegration of material when it comes into contact with the atmosphere.
    [Show full text]
  • Overkill, Glacial History, and the Extinction of North America's Ice Age Megafauna
    PERSPECTIVE Overkill, glacial history, and the extinction of North America’s Ice Age megafauna PERSPECTIVE David J. Meltzera,1 Edited by Richard G. Klein, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, and approved September 23, 2020 (received for review July 21, 2020) The end of the Pleistocene in North America saw the extinction of 38 genera of mostly large mammals. As their disappearance seemingly coincided with the arrival of people in the Americas, their extinction is often attributed to human overkill, notwithstanding a dearth of archaeological evidence of human predation. Moreover, this period saw the extinction of other species, along with significant changes in many surviving taxa, suggesting a broader cause, notably, the ecological upheaval that occurred as Earth shifted from a glacial to an interglacial climate. But, overkill advocates ask, if extinctions were due to climate changes, why did these large mammals survive previous glacial−interglacial transitions, only to vanish at the one when human hunters were present? This question rests on two assumptions: that pre- vious glacial−interglacial transitions were similar to the end of the Pleistocene, and that the large mammal genera survived unchanged over multiple such cycles. Neither is demonstrably correct. Resolving the cause of large mammal extinctions requires greater knowledge of individual species’ histories and their adaptive tolerances, a fuller understanding of how past climatic and ecological changes impacted those animals and their biotic communities, and what changes occurred at the Pleistocene−Holocene boundary that might have led to those genera going extinct at that time. Then we will be able to ascertain whether the sole ecologically significant difference between previous glacial−interglacial transitions and the very last one was a human presence.
    [Show full text]
  • ARCL 0141 Mediterranean Prehistory
    INSTITUTE OF ARCHAEOLOGY ARCL 0141 Mediterranean Prehistory 2019-20, Term 1 - 15 CREDITS Deadlines for coursework: 11th November 2019, 13th January 2020 Coordinator: Dr. Borja Legarra Herrero [email protected] Office 106, tel. (0) 20 7679 1539 Please see the last page of this document for important information about submission and marking procedures, or links to the relevant webpages 1 OVERVIEW Introduction This course reunites the study and analysis of prehistoric societies around the Mediterranean basin into a coherent if diverse exploration. It takes a long-term perspective, ranging from the first modern human occupation in the region to the start of the 1st millennium BCE, and a broad spatial approach, searching for the overall trends and conditions that underlie local phenomena. Opening topics include the glacial Mediterranean and origins of seafaring, early Holocene Levantine-European farming, and Chalcolithic societies. The main body of the course is formed by the multiple transformations of the late 4th, 3rd and 2nd millennium BC, including the environmental ‘mediterraneanisation’ of the basin, the rise of the first complex societies in east and west Mediterranean and the formation of world-system relations at the east Mediterranean. A final session examines the transition to the Iron Age in the context of the emergence of pan-Mediterranean networks, and this also acts as a link to G202. This course is designed to interlock with G206, which explores Mediterranean dynamics from a diachronic and comparative perspective. Equally, it can be taken in conjunction with courses in the prehistory of specific regions, such as the Aegean, Italy, the Levant, Anatolia and Egypt, as well as Europe and Africa.
    [Show full text]
  • Pleistocene - the Ice Ages
    Pleistocene - the Ice Ages Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore Pleistocene - the Ice Ages • Stage is now set to understand the nature of flora and vegetation of North America and Great Lakes • Pliocene (end of Tertiary) - most genera had already originated (in palynofloras) • Flora was in place • Vegetation units (biomes) already derived Pleistocene - the Ice Ages • In the Pleistocene, earth experienced intensification towards climatic cooling • Culminated with a series of glacial- interglacial cycles • North American flora and vegetation profoundly influenced by these “ice-age” events Pleistocene - the Ice Ages What happened in the Pleistocene? 18K ya • Holocene (Recent) - the present interglacial started ~10,000 ya • Wisconsin - the last glacial (Würm in Europe) occurred between 115,000 ya - 10,000 ya • Height of Wisconsin glacial activity (most intense) was 18,000 ya - most intense towards the end of the glacial period Pleistocene - the Ice Ages What happened in the Pleistocene? • up to 100 meter drop in sea level worldwide • coastal plains become extensive • continental islands disappeared and land bridges exposed 100 m line Beringia Pleistocene - the Ice Ages What happened in the Pleistocene? • up to 100 meter drop in sea level worldwide • coastal plains become extensive • continental islands disappeared and land bridges exposed Malaysia to Asia & New Guinea and New Caledonia to Australia Present Level 100 m Level Pleistocene - the Ice Ages What happened in the Pleistocene? • up to 100 meter drop in sea level worldwide • coastal
    [Show full text]
  • In Search of the First Americas
    In Search of the First Americas Michael R. Waters Departments of Anthropology and Geography Center for the Study of the First Americans Texas A&M University Who were the first Americans? When did they arrive in the New World? Where did they come from? How did they travel to the Americas & settle the continent? A Brief History of Paleoamerican Archaeology Prior to 1927 People arrived late to the Americas ca. 6000 B.P. 1927 Folsom Site Discovery, New Mexico Geological Estimate in 1927 10,000 to 20,000 B.P. Today--12,000 cal yr B.P. Folsom Point Blackwater Draw (Clovis), New Mexico 1934 Clovis Discovery Folsom (Bison) Clovis (Mammoth) Ernst Antevs Geological estimate 13,000 to 14,000 B.P. Today 13,000 cal yr B.P. 1935-1990 Search continued for sites older than Clovis. Most sites did not stand up to scientific scrutiny. Calico Hills More Clovis sites were found across North America The Clovis First Model became entrenched. Pedra Furada Tule Springs Clovis First Model Clovis were the first people to enter the Americas -Originated from Northeast Asia -Entered the Americas by crossing the Bering Land Bridge and passing through the Ice Free Corridor around 13,600 cal yr B.P. (11,500 14C yr B.P.) -Clovis technology originated south of the Ice Sheets -Distinctive tools that are widespread -Within 800 years reached the southern tip of South America -Big game hunters that killed off the Megafauna Does this model still work? What is Clovis? • Culture • Era • Complex Clovis is an assemblage of distinctive tools that were made in a very prescribed way.
    [Show full text]