Interesting article on Paleolithic Boating

[roseembolism]

I've always had an interest in Paleoanthropology, which means this article in discovery I found fascinating. Bear in mind it's written for the public, so take anything said in it with a grain of salt.


Did Humans Colonize the World by Boat?

Comments

[heron61.livejournal.com]

Interesting, this fits well with the Solutrean hypothesis and the idea I've seen tossed around by some archeologists that the paleolithic americas were colonized by several waves of immigrants, some of which were pre-Clovis.

[roseembolism.livejournal.com]

It does indeed. Though the Solutrean hypothesis still does require an extremely difficult Atlantic passage.

I find that it's fascinating that over the last fifteen years the evidence for the colonization of the Americas is more contradictory rather than less. there's going to have to be some serious reconciliation between the archaeological record and genetic studies.

[heron61.livejournal.com]

It's rather inevitable, since it's only been quite recently that anyone was willing to seriously discuss pre-Clovis colonization. Combine that with the South American sites with dates from 15-22,000 BCE and the Carolina site, you're going to get lots of archaeologists trotting out all manner of pet theories they came up with 20 years ago and seeing what fits the evidence. Genetics will definitely help, as long as "genetic dating" isn't involved, since from everything I've seen attempting to create any sort of timeline based on genetic variation is total bat-science.