New evidence suggests Stone Age hunters from Europe discovered
America
by David Key
New archaeological evidence suggests that America was first
discovered by Stone Age people from Europe - 10,000 years before the
Siberian-originating ancestors of the American Indians set foot in the
New World.
A remarkable series of several dozen European-style stone tools,
dating back between 19,000 and 26,000 years, have been discovered at six
locations along the US east coast. Three of the sites are on the
Delmarva Peninsular in Maryland, discovered by archaeologist Dr Darrin
Lowery of the University of Delaware. One is in Pennsylvania and another
in Virginia. A sixth was discovered by scallop-dredging fishermen on the
seabed 60 miles from the Virginian coast on what, in prehistoric times,
would have been dry land.
The new discoveries are among the most important archaeological
breakthroughs for several decades - and are set to add substantially to
our understanding of humanity's spread around the globe.
The similarity between other later east coast US and European Stone
Age stone tool technologies has been noted before. But all the US
European-style tools, unearthed before the discovery or dating of the
recently found or dated US east coast sites, were from around 15,000
years ago - long after Stone Age Europeans (the Solutrean cultures of
France and Iberia) had ceased making such artefacts. Most archaeologists
had therefore rejected any possibility of a connection. But the
newly-discovered and recently-dated early Maryland and other US east
coast Stone Age tools are from between 26,000 and 19,000 years ago - and
are therefore contemporary with the virtually identical western European
material.
What’s more, chemical analysis carried out last year on a
European-style stone knife found in Virginia back in 1971 revealed that
it was made of French-originating flint.
Prof Dennis Stanford, of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington
DC, and Prof Bruce Bradley of the University of Exeter, the two leading
archaeologists who have analysed all the evidence, are proposing that
Stone Age people from Western Europe migrated to North America at the
height of the Ice Age by travelling (over the ice surface and/or by
boat) along the edge of the frozen northern part of the Atlantic. They
are presenting their detailed evidence in a new book - Across Atlantic
Ice - published recently.
At the peak of the Ice Age, around three million square miles of the
North Atlantic was covered in thick ice for all or part of the year.
However, the seasonally shifting zone where the ice ended and the open
ocean began would have been extremely rich in food resources – migrating
seals, sea birds, fish and the now-extinct northern hemisphere
penguin-like species, the great auk.
Stanford and Bradley have long argued that Stone Age humans were
quite capable of making the 1,500 mile journey across the Atlantic ice -
but till now there was comparatively little evidence to support their
thinking.
But the new Maryland, Virginia and other US east coast material, and
the chemical tests on the Virginian flint knife, have begun to transform
the situation. Now archaeologists are starting to investigate half a
dozen new sites in Tennessee, Maryland and even Texas - and these
locations are expected to produce more evidence.
Another key argument for Stanford and Bradley’s proposal is the
complete absence of any human activity in north-east Siberia and Alaska
prior to around 15,500 years ago.
If the Maryland and other east coast people of 26,000 to 19,000 years
ago had come from Asia, not Europe, early material, dating from before
19,000 years ago, should have turned up in those two northern areas, but
none have been found.
Although Solutrean Europeans may well have been the first Americans,
they had a major disadvantage compared to the Asian-originating Indians
who entered the New World via the Bering Straits or along the Aleutian
Islands chain after 15,500 years ago.
Whereas the Solutreans had only had a 4,500 year long ‘Ice Age’
window to carry out their migratory activity, the Asian originating
Indians had some 15,000 years to do it. What’s more, the latter
two-thirds of that 15 millennia long period was climatologically much
more favourable and substantially larger numbers of Asians were
therefore able to migrate.
As a result of these factors the Solutrean (European originating)
Native Americans were either partly absorbed by the newcomers or were
substantially obliterated by them either physically or through
competition for resources.
Some genetic markers for Stone Age western Europeans simply don’t
exist in north- east Asia – but they do in tiny quantities among some
north American Indian groups. Scientific tests on ancient DNA extracted
from 8,000 years old skeletons from Florida have revealed a high level
of a key probable European-originating genetic marker.
There are also a tiny number of isolated Native American groups whose
languages appear not to be related in any way to Asian-originating
American Indian peoples.
But the greatest amount of evidence is likely to come from under the
ocean - for most of the areas where the Solutreans would have stepped
off the Ice onto dry land are now up to 100 miles out to sea.
The one underwater site that has been identified - thanks to the
scallop dredgers - is set to be examined in greater detail this summer -
either by extreme-depth divers or by remotely operated mini submarines
equipped with cameras and grab arms.
- The Independent
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