Posted by:
SL Cabbie
(
)
Date: August 20, 2018 07:24PM
I'm "financially challenged" right now, and I've never had a cab fare to Laramie; Jackson Hole is as far as I've gone... Feel free to make an offering to the cab god on my behalf, however, but I'm doubtful I'll get that lucky.
http://www.academia.edu/1651686/Is_that_all_there_isThis is an overview of Fiedel's views; as far as I know, nothing has changed since Monte Verde was "blessed" (for those wondering if there's a "controversy" or not, see Anna C. Roosevelt's YouTube presentation on the "Peopling of South America").
>>So, returning to the question in my title, I ask, is that all there is, after nearly a century and a half of searching for “Early Man” in the East? Why is the record so pathetically sparse and equivocal, compared to the Upper Paleolithic of Europe? I take it as a sign of frustration that enthusiasts are now giving up on the terrestrial record and taking the quest offshore. The record of human colonization elsewhere (e.g., Australia, Peru) tells us,however, that initial coastal settlement is rapidly followed by movement into the interior. Is it possible that pre-Clovis evidence is hiding in plain sight? Have we been looking in all the wrong places, or can we not recognize the signs? It will surprise no one here when I say that I do not regard the bizarre, effectively unprovenienced assemblage from Monte Verde as a valid human toolkit. But those who have uncritically accepted this material as artifactual must now face the consequences. All but six of the 750 stones claimed to be tools cannot on any grounds be distinguished from naturally cracked and rounded cobbles; this stuff makes the 2-million-year-old Oldowan industry look sophisticated. If such things were found in a plowed field or in a shovel test, you or I would toss them away without a moment’s hesitation. So, if the pre-Clovis toolkit really looked like this, we will never recognize it. The good news is that the handful of Eastern sites that might contain pre-Clovis tools suggests that what we should be looking for is not expedient, crude cobbles and flakes, but a sophisticated Upper Paleolithic industry with blades and bifaces.
Here also is Fiedel's "poop on the Paisley Cave poop" (another reply by a separate author in Quentin Mackie's column made a strong case the coproplites in question were not human):
http://www.academia.edu/2146675/Comment_on_Paisley_Caves_pre-Clovis_evidence>>Newly reported lithic artifacts, coprolites, and C-14 dates from Paisley Caves do not prove that a distinctive population of the Western Stemmed Tradition (WST) preceded people of the Clovis culture in the Far Western US. The WST artifacts are no older than 11,200 14C yr BP and may be younger than 10,800 14C yr BP. Leaching and contamination remain viable explanations for anomalous human mtDNA in coprolites from the deepest strata.
And a really "narsty" question for Richard: Why this "avoidance" of discussion of Dennis Stanford and the Solutreans?
Stanford, incidentally, was one of those who "proclaimed Monte Verde legitimate," and it was Fiedel who raised a stink about those findings.
For those who also want to follow this discussion, Fiedel published these same conclusions in a journal (elsevier.com) and I have a pdf file on my desktop.
"The Anzick Genome Proves Clovis was First, After all"
>>The close relatives who buried the Anzick infant ca. 12,800 cal BP made classic Clovis tools and were unequivocally the lineal genetic ancestors of all the living Native peoples of southern North America, Central America, and South America. Clovis-derived Fell I fishtail points track the rapid southward migration of this ancestral population all the way to Tierra del Fuego. Any hypothesized earlier populations, if they (improbably) ever existed, must have been replaced or genetically swamped by these Clovis descendants.
Finally, I don't do Facebook (there are two individuals with the same name as mine who do, however. I promise I could get a huge laugh with some one-liners on that subject, but I live in Utah, and there be Danites around), What I was able to read was that the DNA of the Anzick Child was shown to be part of a population that was ancestral to "all Native Americans." I reported that information several months ago and brought it up in a discussion with Simon Southerton.
Simon has kind of dropped out of sight (he may be busy and we remain good friends) when I brought up the issue of geography and the "Coastal Migration Hypothesis" (essentially that one's a prerequisite if one is to believe in "Pre-Clovis in the Americas"). I am worried that he did "go over to the dark side" when he mentioned pre-Clovis people in some of his writings.
I told Simon the story about a businessman back east who asked a colleague in Salt Lake to "drive over to Cheyenne on his lunch hour." Then I framed it within the larger scope of a discussion about the geography of Alaska, the Aleutians, and the coast of British Columbia. Big places, honest, and very cold, too...
Finally a last bit of "Cabdriver Wisdom": Threads like this should be marked "OT," seriously.
Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 08/21/2018 12:46PM by SL Cabbie.