Who Were the Clovis Folk ?

[uniface]

This is an exceptionally interesting (although very obviously biased) look at who at least some of the early inhabitants of this country "were." The author's bias makes me uncomfortable -- but then again, so does the opposite bias that basically says that anybody disagreeing with the Siberian hypothesis is an idiot who can just sit down and shut up.

We're obviously still a long way from being able to just deal with evidence as evidence, and the interpretation of it without falling back on non-archaeologically-based assumptions, but this is one presentation (and interpretation) that deserves to be heard and examined, IMHO.

http://www.harbornet.com/folks/theed...e/Kennewic.htm

[SoIll]

Seems to me that both migration routes have to be true.

[SoIll]

...and then there's this
http://ipoaa.com/first_americans_were_australians.htm

[uniface]

I'm glad that at least it didn't start a war. I hesitated to put it up, but some of that information I'd never seen anywhere else before.

[joshuaream]

Neat article.

Not to detract from real possibility that Clovis points have european ancestry, I still think people attach too much meaning to the word caucasian. Caucasian doesn't mean European or White. Many Ainu peoples form Japan have very Caucasian looking traits, just like some Saami people Norway and Russia have what used to be called mogoloid skull features yet still have blond hair and blue eyes... Saying Kennewick Man had Caucasian features, doesn't mean he is or isn't related to a living group.

Genetic testing pretty conclusively shows that caucasian or mongoloid traits like blond hair, the epicanthic fold ('oriental eyes' for lack of a quicker description), excessively pale nordic skin, narrow noses adapted for cold weather are for the most part traits that showed up during the last ice age (at which time the Americas had clearly been populated.)

As an example, just look at the variation between indigenous groups from Mexico south. Perhaps not a first glance, but Mayans look very different than indigenous people from Central Mexico or Northern Mexico. The native peoples in Colombia and Ecuador are easy to pick out, as are the former Incans. The Mapuche/Araucas in Chile and Argentina have distinct noses and are much light skinned than Peruvians and Bolivians, the Amazonian peoples look different than all of them. All of those changes are certainly post Clovis. The same goes for people in Asians, Europeans and Africans.

[uniface]

All good points, Joshua. And certainly congruent with the body of assumptions and attitudes currently in force within the anthropological establishment.

But more and more, as I read various accounts in a wide range of fields (not only anthropology but religion, "climate change" and other areas where opinions diverge pretty radically), I'm reminded of the comment in Bere--deleted--h Rabbah on Genesis 11:2 -- They found a plain in Shinar because they were looking for a plain in Shinar.

[Edit : It's Hebrew, for Pete's sake ! Beres_hith Rabbah. The oldest surviving Commentary on the Book of Genesis].

People (just because they're people) tend to find what they're looking for. They start with a set of expectations, mine the data with an eye to pulling out what supports them, and overlook what doesn't. And when there's a Brain Police controlling what people can even say, let alone what gets published, a lot gets swept under the rug or disguised. So since there probably isn't anyone alive who doesn't have some sort of agenda (conscious or unconscious), I'm not all that sure that you can use "current thinking in the field" to form an overall impression of what's involved without at least looking at (and for) what's missing and/or suppressed by it. Otherwise, you're coming to conclusions that are dictated by the choice of information available and -- even more importantly -- the assumptions built into that choice.

A case in point from the latest Pleistocene Coalition Newsletter :

Michael Collins has already announced evidence of 14,500 year old occupation at Gault, Texas, repeating a similar date reported by Reid Ferring from the Aubrey Site on the upper Trinity some 22 years previously. But Ferring's oldest dates of 14,000 years had to be averaged in with younger dates to produce an acceptable 11,500 year date that would ensure limited publication of his report. And if (since) that's the case even with C14 dates, to what extent must the body of official thinking with respect to genetics be "massaged" into conformity with orthodoxy ? Seeing as assumptions tend to dictate conclusions, I suspect that THIS is the real code red issue for the Brain Police.

To the Brain-Police State, there are no races of people -- only consumers. And by the time they get done rationalising the differences between us away (as ideas if not as facts), that's what the resulting picture looks like. But when you look at the fossil record, you find only stability over vast stretches of time. Conditions change, but the fossil forms remain constant. In our own time, Black people living in Canada are not becoming lighter-skinned and narrower-nosed in response to the climate there, nor are White South Africans becoming morphologically "Africanised." Making (to my way of thinking) the airy claim that "adaption" is what produced our differences worse than just suspect as an "explanation" -- suspect in its motivation, the same way "the dog ate my homework" is.

What "the truth" may be I have no idea. But when I see the Brain Police going absolutely ballistic over something, using every weapon they have to suppress awareness of it, argue it out of existence and persecute anybody who rocks the boat, it sets my bulls_hit detector off.

Scientists examine the unexplained
Brain Police explain the unexamined.

[uniface]

They even do this with each other. From the

Journal of California and Great Basin Anthropology
Vol. 13, No. 2, pp. 242-272(1991).
Clovis Technology at the Anzick Site, Montana
PHILIP J. WILKE, Dept. of Anthropology, Univ. of California, Riverside, CA 92521.
J. JEFFREY FLENNIKEN and TERRY L. OZBUN, Lithic Analysts, P.O. Box 684, Pullman, WA 99163.

We were unable to examine the specimens obtained at the Anzick site by the University of
Montana. These were lent to the National Museum of Natural History/National Museum of Man, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC, for casting. Although many years have passed, the specimens were never returned to Montana
(D. C. Taylor, personal communication 1989).

A cast was made of one of the beveled bone tools from the Anzick site by the National Museum
of Natural History/National Museum of Man. It was lent to the Center for the Study of the First Americans, University of Maine, Orono, and our request to borrow it went unanswered. The whereabouts of the original of this specimen, which is beveled on both ends, is unknown. It was illustrated by Lahren and Bonnichsen (1974:Fig. Id-f), and either it or a cast of it was illustrated by Canby (1979:349).

Finally, a large collection of ivory beveled tools, perhaps of Clovis affiliation, has been recovered
from underwater sites in Florida. Many of these objects are housed at the Florida Museum of Natural History, University of Florida, Gainesville, and 60 specimens were reported by Webb et al. (1990). Our requests to examine these specimens or merely to obtain xerox illustrations of them to leam how pointed they are were denied.

Un-Be-Lucking Feaveable.

[Th3rty7]

Wow, round of applause for the reply in post 6! good stuff.

[Tnmountains]

Bill
I am stealing this quote that Harry Fossis quoted in another section. I thought of you when I saw it

."There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there always has been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.' "
--- Isaac Asimov, column in Newsweek (21 January 1980)

[uniface]

If they were being honest, you would be able to find pictures of the several Clovis-era (and pre-Clovis) skulls &c. involved, with point-by-point analysis of their features and discussions of them. But not even in your dreams does this happen. Ordinary people just have to (wink wink, nudge nudge) take their word for it. After all, they're the experts. Right ?

[Tnmountains]

If they were being honest, you would be able to find pictures of the several Clovis-era (and pre-Clovis) skulls &c. involved, with point-by-point analysis of their features and discussions of them. But not even in your dreams does this happen. Ordinary people just have to (wink wink, nudge nudge) take their word for it. After all, they're the experts. Right ?

That why its our job to go out and dig this stuff up and put it on here to be studied. Oh wait its a Federal crime to examine an excavated pre/clovis skull and caves are becoming off limits because that is where they might be. Hmmm sounds fishy to me. Lets see I am in what is called the cave belt of the South and am a spelunker with knowledge of many caves.