New Theory Places First Americans on Delmarva Peninsula 20,000 Years Ago

[Frodo]

Radical theory of first Americans places Stone Age Europeans in Delmarva 20,000 years ago

By Brian Vastag, Published: February 29, 2012

When the crew of the Virginia scallop trawler Cinmar hauled a mastodon tusk onto the deck in 1970, another oddity dropped out of the net: a dark, tapered stone blade, nearly eight inches long and still sharp.

Forty years later, this rediscovered prehistoric slasher has reopened debate on a radical theory about who the first Americans were and when they got here.

Archaeologists have long held that North America remained unpopulated until about 15,000 years ago, when Siberian people walked or boated into Alaska and then moved down the West Coast.

But the mastodon relic found near the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay turned out to be 22,000 years old, suggesting that the blade was just as ancient.

Whoever fashioned that blade was not supposed to be here.

Its makers probably paddled from Europe and arrived in America thousands of years ahead of the western migration, making them the first Americans, argues Smithsonian Institution anthropologist Dennis Stanford.

“I think it’s feasible,” said Tom Dillehay, a prominent archaeologist at Vanderbilt University. “The evidence is building up, and it certainly warrants discussion.”

[King]

Paddling from Europe to Virginia?  Sounds infeasible to me.

[Frodo]

Paddling from Europe to Virginia?  Sounds infeasible to me.

How do you think the ancestors of the Inuit (i.e. the Dorset culture) colonized the far northern reaches of Canada and the western coast of Greenland? 

[John Dibble]

Paddling from Europe to Virginia?  Sounds infeasible to me.

How do you think the ancestors of the Inuit (i.e. the Dorset culture) colonized the far northern reaches of Canada and the western coast of Greenland? 

Wouldn't their ancestors have likely gotten there as part of those who migrated from Russia to Alaska? Paddling from Canada to Greenland is much more plausible than from Europe to Virginia (en masse no less) - just look at a map.

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

Most map projections vastly overstate the width of the Atlantic at those latitudes, but they have a good one here to give an idea of what might be involved:

[minionofmidas]

Wasn't there always an issue of evidence of sizable population in the Americas not starting until 15000 pre but some evidence of humans in all sorts of places, not all of it explainable with possible dating errors, existing for tens of thousands of years before that? If so, how does that prove they didn't also come across the Bering? I don't think you can do reliable deductions of that from shape of primitive stone tools.

[J. J.]

It is an interesting theory.  Prehistoric America is not well understood.

When I was growing up, pre-Clovis cultures were considered impossible and Meadowcroft was considered to be either "bad science" or a hoax.  It is now accepted.

One possibility is pre-Columbian waves of population.  There could have been a Solutrean wave, followed by later Asian waves.  One question is if the Solutrean wave survived and interbred with the Asian wave(s).

[Pingvin]

Sounds plausible for me.

[dead0man]

It seems the fellows that are pushing this theory, have been pushing this theory for years (unsuccessfully) and have just put out a book.  I aint saying that makes it impossible, just more evidence for the "hmmmm...sounds sketchy" camp.

[FEMA Camp Administrator]

Very interesting.

[J. J.]

It seems the fellows that are pushing this theory, have been pushing this theory for years (unsuccessfully) and have just put out a book.  I aint saying that makes it impossible, just more evidence for the "hmmmm...sounds sketchy" camp.

Actually, it seems to be becoming more popular currently.

[batmacumba]

Actually, Latin-American paleoanthropologists had been publishing pre-Clovis findings for decades, while the mainstream USA academics kept denying anything unearthed outside North-America.

The first remains found just 20Km from where I live were gathered in 1832-33 and published in 1844, at Denmark. Further excavations on another site at the same area, in the 1975 revealed very archaic types, with a morphology witch still resembled Indigenous Australians and estimated to have 11.500 years old - a too early date for Clovis theory.


Such kind of ancient population was also found throughout South and Central America, the most ancient being the Monte Verde site, in Chile, dating between 14,800 – 13,800 years ago and found also at 1975. Argentinian academics started to postulate a migration waves theory in the following years, stating there was a first coastal migration, a second and a third both terrestrial and a fourth through ice, which would be the ancestors of the Inuit. All of those would have departed from Beringia.
North-American Academia has only started to admit flaws on Clovis theory after findings on Canada and the USA were dated as being older than Clovis, even both sites being find by teams with American and European researches. The arrogance was such that a panel of 12 specialists was sent to Chile to 'validate' the site. And this happened only after the discovery of the Kennwick Man, which forced the acceptance of a more diverse theory than Clovis. About the Brazilian findings, a creepy silence lasted 30 years.



Since then, more findings are surfacing and the Clovis theory is now accepted only by extremely conservative researchers. Paleoclimatology also dismiss Clovis theory, once the icesheet over the range of mountains from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego would forbid a terrestrial route to South America.
The most interesting aspect is that the evidences are leading to conclude that the early populations which had migrated to the Americas had 'proto-asiatic' features, i. e., they diverged form Asian population before the main physical characteristics of modern eastern Asians developed, except for the Inuit and the Na-Dene. This would make them closer to Austronesians, Polynesians, Melanesians and Indigenous Australians. Sites throughout Siberia seems to demonstrate this, once the most recent findigs shows traits very similar to the Kennwick Man. Many scholars have been also stating the the Ainu is probably a remaining population of this group.

The matter of the Solutrean hypothesis is a bit more debatable. First there is a 5000 years span between the European and the American sites. Also, weather conditions over the icesheet way over the Atlantic would be prohibitive. Recent genetic studies made by Brazilian researches have also reinforced the link with Northeastern Asia. Adding up, findings at Northwestern Asia / Northeastern Europe are revealing a population not much different than the Northeastern Asian one and some researchers are linking the Cro-Magnon to them too. This would make Occam's razor to behead the hypothesis.