Rhyfelwyr
08-05-2013, 19:40
I read the Madoc thread here recently and so I thought it was interesting when I noticed this bit (http://www.cracked.com/article_20451_5-dumb-myths-about-prehistoric-times-that-everyone-believes_p2.html) in a Cracked article:
In fact, the whole assumption that the settlement of America was done by a single cultural group from Siberia is more or less based on the distinctive pointed Clovis tools found in a New Mexico town called Clovis (archaeologists are not particularly inventive when it comes to naming things). The strange thing is that researchers have found no link between the tools of ancient Siberians and the Clovis people. In fact, the oldest Clovis tools have been found on the East Coast of the USA, not the west, as would be expected from people who came in from Siberia.
However, the tools share surprising similarities to those made by a group called Solutreans, a European tribe who used to live in Spain and southern France. According to Dennis Stanford of the Smithsonian Institute, Solutreans might have been able to reach the Americas by paddling along the coasts of Atlantic ice sheets 22,000 years ago, and thus got a massive head start in the settlement of the continents. We're actually kind of enjoying this theory, if only because it would bring a deliciously M. Night Shyamalanian twist to the Spanish conquest of the Inca empire: They were raiding their own people all along.
I find all this stuff about ancient migrations very interesting, so I was wondering what the residents here thought about this sort of thing.
Here's a Washington Post article (http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/radical-theory-of-first-americans-places-stone-age-europeans-in-delmarva-20000-years-ago/2012/02/28/gIQA4mriiR_story.html) with some detail.
Is it credible? Fringe? Probable?
In fact, the whole assumption that the settlement of America was done by a single cultural group from Siberia is more or less based on the distinctive pointed Clovis tools found in a New Mexico town called Clovis (archaeologists are not particularly inventive when it comes to naming things). The strange thing is that researchers have found no link between the tools of ancient Siberians and the Clovis people. In fact, the oldest Clovis tools have been found on the East Coast of the USA, not the west, as would be expected from people who came in from Siberia.
However, the tools share surprising similarities to those made by a group called Solutreans, a European tribe who used to live in Spain and southern France. According to Dennis Stanford of the Smithsonian Institute, Solutreans might have been able to reach the Americas by paddling along the coasts of Atlantic ice sheets 22,000 years ago, and thus got a massive head start in the settlement of the continents. We're actually kind of enjoying this theory, if only because it would bring a deliciously M. Night Shyamalanian twist to the Spanish conquest of the Inca empire: They were raiding their own people all along.
I find all this stuff about ancient migrations very interesting, so I was wondering what the residents here thought about this sort of thing.
Here's a Washington Post article (http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/radical-theory-of-first-americans-places-stone-age-europeans-in-delmarva-20000-years-ago/2012/02/28/gIQA4mriiR_story.html) with some detail.
Is it credible? Fringe? Probable?