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¶ … Inhabitants of N. America

The First Inhabitants of North America

For the last 50 years schools have taught that the first people in America were Asians who came from Siberia across the Bering Straits. Because the ice melted, they were able to walk across a "land bridge" into Alaska, and gradually they migrated south. According to this theory, they were the ancestors of the Clovis people. In "The North Atlantic Ice-edge Corridor: A Possible Palaeolithic Route to the New World," Bradley and Stanford (2004) say no, it couldn't have happened that way. They argue there is no archaeological evidence Asians or any other people crossed the Beringia land bridge or that they passed down through Canada on their way southward. They claim there is really no connection between Asians and the Clovis culture and that there are no pre-12,000-year-old sites in Beringia with technology that resembles Clovis.

The authors point out that Clovis tool makers practiced biface thinning, a difficult and sophisticated process not present in Asian tool kits. Clovis blade production resulted in large wedge-shaped cores with a single acute-angle platform, produced on a single face with a flat back. Clovis flint knappers also sometimes heated raw material to improve its flaking ability. In the opinion of the authors, this technology developed over a long period of time and was passed down to the Clovis people by a pre-Clovis culture. These technologies are unrelated to the Asian microblades and wedge-shaped microblade cores found at Alaskan sites. Beringian blade makers used inset technologies not found in Clovis sites; moreover, they are from the same period as Clovis, not earlier. Whatever similarities there might be would be attributable to contact with Clovis people. Moreover, after deglaciation the Beringia land was barren; thus, it was unsuitable for human habitation or migration.

Bradley and Stanford argue that the first people in America came from Europe using watercraft. They reason that early humans in the South Pacific traveled on the water -- why not Europeans -- and it is logical that the spread of human beings around the world has to involve water routes. They argue that there are significant similarities (overwhelming, in fact) between Clovis technologies and Upper Paleolithic Solutrean technologies found in southwestern Europe. They point out that Solutrean is more than 6000 years older than Clovis and its technology is very similar to Clovis, including details of typology and manufacturing. Salutrean sites are found in Europe and date from 22,000 to 16,500 BP during the Last Glacial Maximum. The similarities of technology point to Solutrean culture evolving into Clovis. The two share pre-core shaping, core face set-up, and blade detachment techniques. Solutrean blade technology is more like Clovis than any other European blade core technology. Both cultures used exotic raw materials to manufacture bifaces, such as quartz, jasper, chalcedony and agate. Both cultures cached large bifaces made from exotic materials.

Solutrean people lived where colder weather and shorter growing seasons may have reduced the natural grasslands in Europe during the Last Glacial Maximum. Game animals may have been negatively impacted so that both animals and humans had to move to better areas -- most likely along the rivers and coastlines of Southwestern Europe where they could hunt and fish. Solutrean artists left evidence in rock art, which shows sea mammals, deep water fish, and great auks.

Faunal collections also show Solutreans were making use of marine resources, which were available all year round. All this would have required tool kits, waterproof clothes, nets, harpoons, and watercraft.

The authors theorize that seal would have played a large role in their lives. Probably, the Solutreans developed techniques for hunting seal during a colder period, and when the weather got warmer they would have had to travel farther out to find seals, eventually making extended trips. They came to the Atlantic Coast by following the migration of Canadian seals. Some families decided to stay. The authors state that artifacts of pre-Clovis people have been found in Eastern North America showing transitional technologies between Solutrean and Clovis.