Every time I read one of these articles or reports I can’t help but think of what I like to call
'A politically incorrect case of déjà vu all over again”.
It seems when we boil it all down that we have two basic schools of thought and points of debate, regarding the early peopling of the Americas. One group argues that people started arriving in what we now call the America’s well over 14,000 years ago. They say the people probably came from several different regions, via several different paths, and in several different journeys.
The other group argues that people first arrived via an overland opening in the ice sheets covering what is now northwestern Canada, roughly 14,000 years ago, and that those were the only migrants to these continents and that it was those people, and only those people who were here when people from the rest of the world arrived roughly 500 years ago.
I say they both can be somewhat correct if we are not afraid to confront the huge woolly mammoth in the room. What do you imagine would have happened if there were diverse groups of people already scattered about the Americas when the land bridge in northwestern Canada opened, and large scale overland migration to these continents became possible? We really don’t need to imagine what would have happened, since we already have a politically correct version of what happened under a similar scenario just 500 years ago or so. Why can we not just apply the same politically correct scenario we are all familiar with, to the earlier proposed migration?
Let us quickly review the Hollywood version of what happened starting roughly 500 years ago. We find that “Native Americans” had been living peacefully amongst themselves and nature for thousands of years, when uninvited invaders from the east landed upon the shores of these continents. The uninvited warlike intruders brought with them superior weapons for hunting and war; guns, cannons and the like to overpower the bows and flaked stone tipped arrows. Bringing with them different cultures/cults from which they learned their strange morals, values and ethics. With these superior weapons and strange values they managed, and desired, to kill, push and displace the Native Americans from east to west. The strange new diseases brought by the invaders from the east often outpaced the invaders themselves, decimating the Native American populations. Within less than 500 years the Native Americans were nearly extinct surviving on reservations, much like the displaced and nearly extinct native bison. Species such as the carrier pigeons were not so fortunate, and no longer exist as result of this invasion. The eastern invaders damaged not only the peoples and creatures already here, but also decimated the landscape, cutting trees for their homes, blocking rivers with their dams, and building large unnatural structures where they congregate for their religious rituals. Gathering religiously on winter Sundays, surrendering their ticket tithes to enter their stadium congregations to watch grown men dressed in costumes and uniforms depicting mythical creatures, or wild animals of the jungles and forests, Lions & Tigers and Bears oh my… Lions & Tigers and Bears oh my…Faithfully turning their headwear inside out and backwards, or their beverage bottle labels towards the playing fields as part of their devout dogma as a rally cap prayer, or to supernaturally empower a grown man to better kick a toy ball through a toy goalpost.
Why should this largely accepted, politically correct, scenario not also apply to the proposed migration 14,000 years ago? If so, we find that roughly 14,000 years ago there was an unwanted, uninvited and warlike group of invaders coming down through the land bridge, bringing with them superior weapons for hunting and war, and cultures/cults that were strange in this land. The invaders possessed powerful atl atl weapons, tipped with sharp chipped flint points that easily dominated the hand held wooden or bone tipped hunting spears of the earlier occupants. These earlier occupants who lived in true peace and harmony with each other and nature, and who left no scars or unnatural impacts upon the land whatsoever. With these advanced weapons and strange moral desires to spread themselves across new lands they forced the earlier occupants from west to east. The devastating new diseases brought by the northwestern invaders, outpacing the invaders themselves, often painfully killing the peaceful existing occupants before personal contact was made. Within 500 years the invading Clovis people had moved across most of the continent, leaving the original occupants nearly extinct, similar to the woolly mammoth which only temporarily survived extinction from the invaders by existing on isolated islands. Many other mega fauna species, not being so fortunate, were wiped out by the unwanted invasion through the ice free corridor. The northwestern invaders decimated not only the peaceful previous peoples and native mega fauna, but they damaged the environment. Instead of living in peace and harmony with each other and nature as the previous people did they dug holes into the earth to mine stone to fashion their weapons of death and war, holes that can still be seen scaring the landscape thousands of years later. They dug large areas of earth and mounded it into temples to their culture in the form of serpents and other objects significant to their cults. They manipulated natural water courses to build weirs to entrap fish. They damaged forests by cutting trees to build their homes and canoes, and torched other areas of the forest to chase out and kill the animals that lived there, etc. etc.
For anyone possibly upset by what I have wry fully written here, take solace in that it was written half tongue in cheek, and the other half with tongue fully exposed in a loud wet raspberry towards our current pop culture cults reliance on political correctness. My point is not to profess the above as my belief, but rather just to get folks to think about things in a way they might not have before, and to make their own judgements.
I would like to note that I find it rather naïve to read too much into the DNA or skull shape findings, as referenced in the linked reports, at least in regards to the debate about the earliest peopling of the Americas.
Think about it… here we have a small sample of a dozen or so skulls and DNA samples dating from roughly 8000 to maybe 13,000 years ago, which by my calculations is roughly 1000 to 6000 years after the proposed migration through the ice free corridor. What is this supposed to tell us about people who might have been here before 14,000 years ago? Is it not the statistical and mental equivalent of taking a small number of DNA and skull shape samples from people living here about 5000 years in the future, and proposing that those samples should tell us something about the peoples that lived here more than 500 years ago before the invasion from the east?? In other words, if you were to open a US phonebook in the 1950's, and take DNA or skull shape samples from the dozen or so folks you pinpointed in the phonebook, how many of those do you suppose would show Native American DNA or skull shapes?
IMO, we will not have any meaning full DNA or skull info about people that might have been here more than 14,000 years ago, until we get a decent sample of skulls and DNA that is well more than 14,000 years old.
