Here is an article about the Solutrean Solution that I wrote for my history class:
Arguing Against the Clovis Theory
Imagine yourself as a prehistoric hunter during the last ice age, known as the Pleistocene, which occurred about 20,000 years ago. Your main food source consists of mega fauna such as the woolly mammoth, species of bison, tapir, and several other animals that eventually went extinct. Due to climatological factors, a giant ice shelf that once blocked your path is now open for you to travel through to follow herds of game. Eventually you come to a new area where after several generations your descendants have populated the entire continent. Archeologists have come to call these people the Clovis culture and since the 1930s many believed that these were the ancestors to modern day Amerindians and the first inhabitants of the new world after several spear points were discovered in Clovis, New Mexico. However, there has been much opposition to the notion of the Clovis hunters being the progenitor of modern Amerindians, most of it is controversial to this day because it postulates that the Clovis people were not the first inhabitants of the new world and that earlier people existed before they came along. According to James Dixon, author of Coastal Navigators: the First Americans May Have Come by Water, “A growing body of evidence indicates that the pathway between the great glaciers of the last Ice Age was closed—in fact, the way south may have been blocked until centuries after the dawn of Clovis.”(34) Contrary to the popularity of the Clovis defenders theories about the peopling of the Americas, there are several alternative arrival hypotheses to their claims that will disprove the notion of the Clovis culture being the first people to the Americas.
One alternative arrival hypothesis that could be used to counter the theory of Clovis Culture is the idea that the first inhabitants may have come to the Americas via the surrounding oceans. “Some researchers believe humans may have crossed the vast expanse of the Pacific and colonized South America before anyone reached North America. Support for this theory is based on sites such Monte Verde in southern Chile and Tiama –Tiama in northern Venezuela, which may be older that the oldest sites in North America. Biological evidence suggests some of the earliest skeletons in South America may share similarities with inhabitants of Polynesia and Australia.” (Dixon 34) What is interesting about these two sites is the fact that they are located near the ocean, they are coastal sites and in other words, they were left wide open for any sea going peoples to reach and use as a hub for establishing some form of civilization. It has been proven that Aborigines of Australia had reached that country at about 60,000 years ago, well enough time for them to spread across the country and eventually sea fare their way to South America and establish a significant presence on the continent long before the supposed Clovis culture had dawned in North America. However, the inhabitants of the land bridge called Beringia in the Bering Strait may have traveled down the pacific coast via boats to North America during the last ice age, but there is still little evidence for this point of view to be accepted because the sea levels have raised enough since the last ice age to cover up any evidence of coastal to make any credible guess as how they settled in the Americas.
A second alternative arrival hypothesis is the so called Solutrean solution. The Solutrean solution postulates the Clovis people learned their stone making techniques from a group of prehistoric Europeans that inhabited the Iberian Peninsula called the “Solutreans” who may have reached North America by traveling along the ice sheets of the North Atlantic Ocean. Dennis Stanford and Bruce Bradley, authors of The Solutrean Solution:Did Some Anchient Americans come from Europe? Say, “Our cursory examination revealed an amazing correspondence between Solutrean and Clovis, in fact, Solutrean has more in common with Clovis than with the Paleolithic technologies that followed it in Europe.” So, some of the European migrated to the Americas and must have passed on their stone working techniques to the Clovis people. Although the Solutrean Solution is a controversial theory in regards to the first people to the Americas, there is proof in the genes of some modern day Amerindians. “The ultimate test of this hypothesis may be found in the genetic research on ancient human remains. Michael Brown colleagues reported in 1998 that mitochondrial DNA haplogroup X(a genetic marker of population groups) is found in low frequencies in both Europeans and Native American populations, but not among Asians. This indicated to them that some of the American founders may have come from Europe between 36,000 and 12,000 years ago.” (Stanford and Bradley 55) Although the Solutrean Solution has not been officially proven, the fact that some Amerindians share a haplography that is exclusively found only in Europeans, the presence of halo group X in low frequencies of Amerindian populations proves that the Europeans had a place in the founding of the Americas.
The third and final alternative arrival hypothesis is the genetic and linguistic evidence of the South American continent. Micael B. Collins, author of Clovis Second: Time is Running Out for an Old Paradigm, says about the genetic evidence, “And the earliest human skeletal remains in the Americas do not have the Mongoloid traits that would be expected for a people who came from Siberia.”(50) The Clovis defenders have postulated that the Clovis people traveled from Siberia in Asia, crossed the Bering Strait land bridge and after several thousand years populated the Americas. However, the fact that skeletal remains much older than the Clovis must shine light on the possibility that the Clovis defenders defensive stance on the topic may be in vain. But, we must also include the linguistic, or language, of the peoples of the region. “Linguist cannot account for the great diversity found among Native American languages in the limited time afforded by the Clovis model.”(Collins 51) Apparently the Clovis people did not have enough time in the Americas to establish a language that would be carried down by their descendants, so, in a sense; some people must have existed before Clovis arrived and their language must have diversified long before the dawn of Clovis culture.
In conclusion, no matter what you stance on the topic of how the Americas became populated, one thing must be kept in mind, which is time. In the words of Jack L. Hofman, author of The Clovis Hunters, “Once thought to span thousands of years, the Clovis era is now dated to a few hundred, roughly from 11,400 to 10, 900 radiocarbon years.”(43) In my own mind, I don’t follow the Clovis theory because my own hunch about the topic figures that sources of human settlement in the Americas came from several different sources that ranged from the Australian Aborigines, Asians, Europeans, and possibly African and that these people eventually crossed genetically, culturally and technologically over a period of time and once the spigot turned off for their migration from their source to the new world, they eventually developed their own identity which carried onto today’s native populations of North, Central and South America via genetic drift. However, like any other part of history, there are those who accept a theory and those who oppose it. Therefore, regardless of whether the Clovis theory is accepted or not, the battle for which the earliest inhabitants of the new world were may go on forever.
Topic: Halbred's Paleo-News Thread (Read 118326 times)
