Saturday, October 22, 2011
Link: Land bridge theory of American settlement "speared"
I thought this was a very interesting article. A mastodon bone with a weapon point embedded in it has been dated to a time long before the Clovis hunters came across the Bering strait into north America. So how did people first get here? It's a mystery...
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They still could have come across the same way. It's also possible that the Clovis are descended from the people who made that point -- Clovis refers to a specific kind of fltinknapping technology. This piece of data is really interesting, but I think it's hard to draw sweeping conclusions from one data point (though there have been other pre-Clovis finds; Monte Verde jumps to mind).
ReplyDeleteI wish the Science article was available online. News articles have to tell a a story, but I think the data's more interesting by itself -- which probably makes me boring :).
Thanks for posting to this -- great food for thought.
MK, indeed, it's always good to look into these things as thoroughly as possible when you have interest in them. I'm not aware of all of the various views and arguments about how people populated the Americas, but still I felt the article was thought-provoking.
ReplyDeleteOh, I agree -- very thought-provoking. If my comment came out as hostile, I'm sorry; it was really just excitement and gushing other possibilities. This is a fascinating time period, and the article left me wanting more.
ReplyDelete... Aliens!
ReplyDeleteMK, now that's a statement I can get behind! :) Recent scientific discoveries really excite me, and I only wish I had time to learn more about everything.
ReplyDeleteWiddershins... intriguing idea. ;)