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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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Hatty, you'll have to explain then how seals and whatnot find that blubber is protection enough against Arctic wind coupled with wetness. What's sauce for the goose...
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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Seaweed!
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Hatty
Site Admin
In: Berkshire
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Of course! (And, moreover, it contains iodine).
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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How does iodine keep you warm?
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Hatty
Site Admin
In: Berkshire
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Sorry, I was thinking about medicinal properties. Jumping ahead as per usual.
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DPCrisp
In: Bedfordshire
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| But wouldn't you have to absorb an enormous number of calories to maintain all that blubber? |
Plenty of Arctic animals manage it. Are you saying food might have been so depleted that people took to wearing skins to compensate for their weight loss? Isn't that special pleading? Special special pleading, since it would have to work first time.
But aren't skins required to explain the transition from water to land/ice? (Blubber is no good for land animals.) If there was less food, Aquatic Man would stay aquatic and stay where the food is: no need to put on a coat.
Even now, crisis doesn't make people strike out to seek their salvation: we huddle together, eat the children and the dead and die in droves... I don't think any kind of environmental squeeze can explain a change in mode of human life. It's in times of plenty that people have the time and resources to try new things and strike out in search of... things they don't actually need.
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DPCrisp
In: Bedfordshire
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Young Cro-Magnon tries out the latest seal skin swimwear.
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Look at this kid's hands, feet and cranium.
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Grant
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I will countenance the idea that modern man evolved in the Arctic, but it's a step too far to believe that he came out of the water onto ice of all things - and only about 100,000 years ago! This means that our cousins like the Neanderthals and the Hobbits would also have had to come out of the water, but separately.
What's wrong with a simpler scenario? -
- Cro-magnons conquer the world with their simple toolkit
- a small group of CMs in the north develop a more sophisticated toolkit to cope with the arctic environment
- they become so successful living their Eskimo life they feel no pressure to leave
- the retreat of the ice forces some of them to change lifestyle
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DPCrisp
In: Bedfordshire
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| I am, however, open to the suggestion that the sudden presence of ice in America prompted them to arrive in Europe. |
The oxymoronicality of "sudden glaciation" notwithstanding, if you mean that in a 'bad' way, then I disagree. But in a 'good' way, ice sheets spanning the continents would make the Atlantic easily traversable by the competent and equipped. Later though, according to the evidence.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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| I will countenance the idea that modern man evolved in the Arctic, but it's a step too far to believe that he came out of the water onto ice of all things - and only about 100,000 years ago! |
I have rarely countenanced it. The sea is completely superflous to my theory. However, as is the way with the AEL, I have been happy to see where the trail led and it hasn't all been bad since, coldwise, living in the sea and living in the Arctic are bedfellows.
| This means that our cousins like the Neanderthals and the Hobbits would also have had to come out of the water, but separately. |
This certainly does not follow. The differences between us and the hominids (Neanderthal is clearly a continuation of the various hominids in a way that we are not) is quite sufficient to propose that they were never aquatic. Remember, the Aquatic Ape Theory does not make us truly aquatic mammals -- our relationship to the hominids would be equivalent to otters' relationship to stoats.
What's wrong with a simpler scenario? -
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This is just like a typical orthodox palaeo-anthropological account. They (and you) seem to think it sufficient to string together a sequence of not-altogether-impossible steps that achieve the required outcome but with no explanation of why each happened (never mind evidence!). Thus:
| - Cro-magnons conquer the world with their simple toolkit |
Why would Cro-Magnon suddenly conquer the world with their simple toolkit in 35,000 BP when they must have had their simple toolkit for aeons?
| - a small group of CMs in the north develop a more sophisticated toolkit to cope with the arctic environment |
If a more northerly group need to evolve more sophisticated tools to cope with the Arctic (rather than just die of cold or move to somewhere more clement, two rather more obvious reactions) then where were all the southerly Cro-Magnons all this time?
| - they become so successful living their Eskimo life they feel no pressure to leave- until the retreat of the ice forces some of them to change lifestyle |
If they are so happy being eskimos they don't want to change, why would they change? Eskimos exist today so we know for certain sure that the receding ice didn't destroy their habitat. According to you they were the only ice-adapted people on earth at the time so why didn't they just plod northwards following the retreating ice. Polar bears do it very year.
As I keep on telling you until Hatty is blue in the face, it is not the retreat of the ice that is important it is the advance of the ice. We know that because 35-40,000 is when the ice reached its greatest extent. It didn't retreat until 12,000. So, again, what did the advancing ice do to Cro-Magnon? Where did it force him to go and what did he encounter there?
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| No. Or at least No, but can you check? There are pre-30 000 dates in Alaska but not in North America south of the ice sheets, which lasted coast to coast along the present US/Canadian border until 12,000 BP (the end of the last 'Ice Age'). We hear of earlier stuff from orthodoxy occasionally (and frequently from the Crazies) but as far as I know it is still the Official Version that Man arrived in the US of A in 12,000 BP ono. |
It's all pre-Clovis now...
This is from Archeology ('The Publication of the Archaeological Institute of America')
"From 1977 to 1985, Tom Dillehay of the University of Kentucky excavated at Monte Verde, some 31 miles (50 km) inland from the Pacific of southern Chile. The water-saturated deposits of the site, on Chinchihuapi Creek, afforded excellent preservation of organic remains in what was interpreted as a habitation surface, designated MV-II, of a small camp used by 20 to 30 people. Radiocarbon dates from the level averaged ~12,500 years ago. Among the features recorded by the excavators were two large and many small hearths and 12 huts about ten by 11.5 feet (3 by 3.5 m). Most of the stone tools found at the site were made of local raw material and consist of cobbles with a few flakes removed to make simple but functional working edges. There were two bifacially flaked points. Worked wood, from logs to branches, was also found. Bones, ivory, and possible tissue from mastodons were found along with remains of Pleistocene llamas, small mammals, fish, and mollusks. Remains of plants that could be from coastal to Andean to arid grassland habitats were recovered. The imprint of a human foot in clay is among the most intriguing finds from the site. Upstream, limited excavation uncovered another deposit, designated MV-I, with some possible stone tools and three possible hearths dated to ~33,000 years old.
At 12,500, Monte Verde was earlier than any other site in North or South America by a full millennium. Moreover, it was nowhere near the Bering Strait, the place where most scholars assumed that people entered the Americas from Asia. That implied an even earlier arrival, after all it meant that people had to pass through the ice-free corridor and travel some 7,500 miles (12,000 km) south. Needless to say, the Clovis-first crowd didn't initially give in. In fact, the archaeological benediction of the site came only in 1997. That year many of the foremost Paleoindian specialists traveled first to Kentucky, to hear presentations by Dillehay and his team members and to view many of the artifacts, then to Valdivia, Chile, for further presentations and review of additonal, and finally to Monte Verde itself. Most of the site's occupation area had been obliterated by a bulldozer sometime after excavation, so the group had to content themselves with examining a few remnants. Later that year, the consensus was in and published in the journal American Antiquity: "The central issue dealt with at that final meeting was whether MV-II is archaeological, and, if so, whether there can be any reasonable doubt that the MV-II occupation is ~12,500 radiocarbon years old. On this critical issue there was complete unanimity: MV-II is clearly archaeological, and there is no reason to question the integrity of the radiocarbon ages." The validity of the dates received a boost when results of radiocarbon testing published in American Antiquity earlier this year by R.E. Taylor, a University of California-Riverside dating specialist, C. Vance Haynes, and others revealed nothing that might undermine the ~12,500 dating of the site in terms of either contamination, or the "old wood" effect, or radiocarbon reservoir.
With Monte Verde generally accepted, the Clovis-first orthodoxy was overthrown and discussion on how and when the Americas were colonized became wide open."
There are also the dates I gave you of human occupation -- up to 50 000BP. As pre-Clovis layers are investigated, I predict we'll get more and more pre-Clovis finds....I expect them anyway....
I found this too that might be of interest:
http://allendale-expedition.net/publications/AL_ORIGN1.PDF
| But I think our discussions have illustrated that these 'other methods' do not have the same validity as carbon-dating. |
Not from my end. I still think that carbon-dating isn't secure and that these other methods are just as valid (albeit a "non-secure" valid!)
| No, it isn't. Especially as we do think of the Minoans as the Earthquake People! |
I didn't make my point well (!) -- I meant that the nobody ties the Minoans development to the earthquake -- just their disappearance. For example I might tie the disappearance of these cultures from North America to the ice, but not their development in the first place to the ice. In other words, just as I don't think that living on an earthquake zone was a fundamental part of the Minoans development (and their development or very presence impossible otherwise) nor do I tie the Modern Man in North America (if there was one) to the ice. The ice may have been the cause of their disappearance, but not necessarily the cause of them being there in the first place.
The earliest Cro-Magnon archaeology dates from the period 35-40,000 and is reported in Beringia, the Middle East and Australia. This is still the orthodox version since even they concede that these (alleged) earlier findings of anatomically modern man (100,000 in Israel, 200,000 in Africa) lack the very diagnostic Cro-Magnon toolkit (basically anything other than a hand-axe).
Cro-Magnon arrived for the first time in the Old World. All you have to do is ask yourself what was waiting for him in the Old World? |
We need to settle our terms: What do you mean by Cro Magnon? Do you mean Homo Sapiens?
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| The oxymoronicality of "sudden glaciation" notwithstanding, if you mean that in a 'bad' way, then I disagree. But in a 'good' way, ice sheets spanning the continents would make the Atlantic easily traversible by the competent and equipped. Later though, according to the evidence. |
You're right -- but I can't get a handle on the glaciation dates.
The Aurignacian period is about 40 000 -- 28 000BP ... right?
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Hatty
Site Admin
In: Berkshire
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| Even now, crisis doesn't make people strike out to seek their salvation: we huddle together, eat the children and the dead and die in droves... I don't think any kind of environmental squeeze can explain a change in mode of human life. It's in times of plenty that people have the time and resources to try new things and strike out in search of... things they don't actually need. |
But why did CMs have to change their lifestyle? They're attached to animals not to a mud and wattle hut; if camels, bison, reindeer and assorted fauna are wandering across the land bridge it's fair to assume wolves, and humans, won't be far behind. The lifestyle is based on following the herds not huddling in a village.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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I think your accounts completely support the supposition that there is nothing earlier than 12,000 (except Out-of-Africa style whistling-in-the-wind). This is absolutely classic
| Radiocarbon dates from the level averaged ~12,500 years ago [blah blah until the reader has grasped this point but forgotten it only applies to the initial finding, then this bit gets slipped in] with some possible stone tools and three possible hearths dated to ~33,000 years old. |
But this is clearly the orthodox position
| At 12,500, Monte Verde was earlier than any other site in North or South America by a full millennium. Moreover, it was nowhere near the Bering Strait, the place where most scholars assumed that people entered the Americas from Asia |
But then this piece of chutzpah
| With Monte Verde generally accepted, the Clovis-first orthodoxy was overthrown and discussion on how and when the Americas were colonized became wide open. |
This is typical of orthodoxy. They think that arguing over plus-or-minus a thousand years is really rocking the paradigm boat. Ooh, aren't we radical?
| There are also the dates I gave you of human occupation -- up to 50 000BP. As pre-Clovis layers are investigated, I predict we'll get more and more pre-Clovis finds....I expect them anyway.... |
Why not stop waiting for them, Claire and accept the evidence! The trouble with Crazies is that they think they have to overthrow the evidence in order to overthrow the prevailing paradigm. It's much better just to assume the prevailing paradigm is crazy but the evidence is true.
| We need to settle our terms: What do you mean by Cro Magnon? Do you mean Homo Sapiens? |
Well, yes, personally I do but that's because I regard Cro-Magnon, Anatomically Modern Man and Homo Sapiens to be one and the same thing and arrived on the scene in c 35-40000 BP. This used to be the orthodox case too.
However, in the last ten, twenty years this has become untenable because the genetics makes a direct evolvement of Neanderthal to Us a non-starter. So the start of the Great Hunt to find where we had been for a reasonable period beforehand, and the rise of a) out-of-Africa and b) the 100,000 and 200,000 findings of Us.
But this raised a problem. We had for yonks been using Cro-Magnon archaeology as a sign of the presence of Cro-Magnon (rather reasonably). No bones were required because Cro-Magnon archaeology was wildly different from Neanderthal/hominid (we had a zillion specialised tools made from all sorts, he had duh a stone hand axe). But these new sites did not have a Cro-Magnon toolkit. So enter Anatomically Modern Man ie Cro-Magnon without the Cro-Magnon archaeology. You know the rest.
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Hatty
Site Admin
In: Berkshire
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| some possible stone tools and three possible hearths dated to ~33,000 years old. |
The radiocarbon dating gives 12,500 BC (actually they write "RCYBP", whatever that means) in the article cited. How does the earlier date of 33,000 tally?
| Moreover, it was nowhere near the Bering Strait, the place where most scholars assumed that people entered the Americas from Asia. |
Assuming then like the author that the traffic was all one-way, why would people from ice-free Siberia want to cross over into ice-bound Alaska?
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