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+--- Thread: New history of 1st peoples + Solving a longstanding human-migration puzzle (/thread-4296.html)
New history of 1st peoples + Solving a longstanding human-migration puzzle - C C - Oct 4, 2017
A New History of the First Peoples in the Americas
https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/10/a-brief-history-of-everyone-who-ever-lived/537942/
EXCERPT: [..] Both ideas have now fallen from grace. The multiple-waves theory has failed as a model because the linguistic similarities used to show patterns of migration are just not that convincing. And the second theory fails because of timing. Cultures are often named and known by the technology that they left behind. In New Mexico there is a small town called Clovis, population 37,000. In the 1930s, projectile points resembling spearheads and other hunting paraphernalia were found in an archaeological site nearby, dating from around 13,000 years ago. These were knapped on both sides—bifaced with fluted tips. It had been thought that it was the inventors of these tools who had been the first people to spread up and down the continents. But there’s evidence of humans living in southern Chile 12,500 years ago without Clovis technology. These people are too far away to show a direct link between them and the Clovis in such a way that indicates the Clovis being the aboriginals of South America.
Today, the emerging theory is that the people up in the Bluefish Caves some 24,000 years ago were the founders, and that they represent a culture that was isolated for thousands of years up in the cold north, incubating a population that would eventually seed everywhere else. This idea has become known as Beringian Standstill. Those founders had split from known populations in Siberian Asia some 40,000 years ago, come across Beringia, and stayed put until around 16,000 years ago...
MORE: https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/10/a-brief-history-of-everyone-who-ever-lived/537942/
Tracing Oral Histories to Solve a Longstanding Human-Migration Puzzle
https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/10/when-indigenous-knowledge-could-solve-what-archaeology-missed/541764/
EXCERPT: [...] The Pueblo Revolt remains relevant to Cruz and other Tewa people because it illustrates how deftly they’ve withstood hundreds of years of colonization. The Tewa are one of five linguistic groups that fall under the umbrella of Pueblo Native Americans, and like other Pueblo groups, they speak a distinct language and have a unique culture. And because they were never forced off their land or corralled onto reservations, their place-based religious, agricultural, and oral traditions have continued unbroken. Generations of Tewa storytellers have kept the history of the Pueblo Revolt alive, whispered and sung in a language that invading Europeans couldn’t understand. They repeated stories of the revolt the same way they repeated even older stories, ones that told of their great migration from the north and the formation of Tewa clans.
Growing up in Ohkay Owingeh, Arthur Cruz heard these stories. He learned the songs. They helped shape his identity. And now, they’re helping reshape scientists’ understanding of the pulse of human life across the Southwest. Combined with new data analyses and a multidisciplinary approach that incorporates linguistics, genetics, and other fields, archaeologists working closely with Pueblo people like Cruz have begun to fill in the gaps of migration patterns that have long puzzled Western scientists. The story that’s emerging is a testament to the resilience of culture—and the scientific value of Indigenous knowledge....
MORE: https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/10/when-indigenous-knowledge-could-solve-what-archaeology-missed/541764/