Comments by "mpetersen6" (@mpetersen6) on "Ancient Americas" channel.

As Dennis Stanford once said. I paraphrase. Rivers and bodies of water are not barriers. They are highways and means of communications (1). And it is my personal opinion that by the time an Ice Free Corridor could have opened up between the Cordillian and Laurentide Ice Sheets capable of supporting prey animals into the more southerly regions of North America. Anyone who traveled down that corridor would eventually wind up meeting distant relatives whose ancestors had travelled down the coast and up rivers by boat. 1) I heard the statement regarding him giving a talk on the Solutrean Hypothesis. Whether that whole idea holds water or not is a whole different matter.
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@dukeon I have to agree the Solutrean Hypothesis is likely to be false. Unfortunately the hypothesis got hijacked by certain unsavory individuals. The Solutreans had to have been either early European Hunter Gatherers or related to people from North Africa. Stanford himself said North Africa was likely. They would not have been related to the Neolithic Farmers who basically took over Europe. Plus it opened up a can of worms in that it immediately became political in that Native Peoples rejected it as being a tool that could be used to reject any land claims. But note l said likely to be false. Art work found in the region the Solutreans occupied shows they were utilizing marine resources. Specifically images of what appear to be tuna and seals. You don't catch tuna from shore. That implies watercraft of some type capable of handling waves of decent size just to get on and off of the beach. Could seasonal hunters from Southwestern Europe have reached the eastern shores of North America? Possibly following seals. Although l think it unlikely l also have to admit it is possible. The only way to really prove it would be a stable find on a stone tool that could be traced back to a source in the area the Solutreans occupied. Evidently there is one. But the artifact in question was a surface find in the Jamestown area. Could the artifact be a hoax? It is possible. But if it is related to early settlers why would 17th or 18th century settlers being using stone tools. And if the artifact was produced by Native Peoples how did they acquire the stone. The artifact in question has been traced to a quarry known to be used by Solutrean flint knappers. In the end l suspect we will find the peopling of the Americas a much more complicated and older story.
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I vote for the water route. Boats have been around a long time. But who ever reached the Americas first it wasn't like they just packed their bags and decided to settle somewhere new. Any migration was likely a slow process that saw family groups split off when their numbers grew too large to be supported by their normal range. But there is one thing that may have speeded migrations along the way. If hunters were following seals or walrus into their summer feeding grounds then they could have noticed one population headed back the other way in fall. I suspect that a lot of the evidence of early human inhabitation of the Americas is under anywhere from 100 meters to 130 meters of water. Also there could have been early groups that died out for one reason or another. Where did the these people come from? The obvious answer of course is Northeast Siberia. The supposed genetic evidence for a southern route across the Pacific. I don't buy it. It's too far and any landfalls along the way are simply too tough of an environment. One possible route I could see having taken place by accident is from West Africa if there were coastal people that were fishing off shore and got swept out to sea due to bad weather. It's a long shot. Plus it would have to be a breeding population. The third possibility is along the fringe of the sea ice in the North Atlantic. The only way this could happen IMO is if a population in Western Eurasia was habitually hunting seals seasonally and wound up following the sea life down into the Maritimes or along the East Coast. The similarity between Clovis and Solutrean lithic point technology is intriqueing but not totally convincing
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Boats (or water craft of some kind) have been around a long time. There is some evidence of Neanderthal presence on Cyprus. And with the topography of the Mediterranean Basin they sure didn't walk there. There is also some evidence of possibly Homo Erectus in the Phillippines. It may have been possible to walk from Borneo to either Mindanao along the arc of islands that extend between the two or from Borneo via Palawan. But there's a stretch of deep water between Palawan and Mindaro. Another possible route is from Sulawesi along but it features a number of deep water gaps. Several of them fairly long.
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One thing l find amazing about the Spanish is they managed to miss Hawaii in all those voyages between Mexico and The Philippines.
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@casey9439 Copper from Lake Superior was traded widely across North America. Shells from the Gulf Coast went the other way. High quality stone for tool making was also traded widely.
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Worth a hell of a lot more than all the gold, silver and emeralds.
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If they were annealing they were practicing a form of metalurgy. Copper alloys unlike iron is annealed by heating and quenching.
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The Upper Great Lakes is one of the earliest sites of metal working for tools and weapons* in the world. Was it the first? I think that's open for debate. But one th using I wonder about is even though the Lake Superior region is deficient in chert and flint shouldn't the be basalt or obsidian in the area. Given that the area was once a failed rift zone that saw extensive volcanism around 1.5 billion years ago. This was an era when the Earths tectonic processes proceeded at a faster rate than today due to the Earth's internal temperature being hotter than today. IIRC most of the major earthquake activity in the eastern half of North America are thought to be related to this failed rift zone that could have split the early core of North America. If you are interested in plate Tectonics at all take a look at Christopher Scortese's YouTube channel. He has a number of syop motion maps that trace plate movements back at least as far 1.5 million years ago. Beyond that things start to get much more difficult to puzzle out due to the amount of errosion, impacts etc. *Weapons are tools. They differ only in that are usually meant to serve a single purpose. To kill, injure or maim in defense of ones self, in hunting and unfortunately war. War if our chimp cousins are anything to go by is a part of the human condition.
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My vote goes to the coastal route for an earlier migration. People have suggested a southern route out of Australia or Polynesia (1). But l don't by it. Yes people were fully human but l question whether navigational techniques or blue water voyaging technology would have been up to it. One needs to remember that technological change was very slow at this time. Not because people were stupid and could not innovate. I suspect that the slow pace of technological change had to do with the mental agility of people in general. Technological change in the 20th and 21st Centuries has been the fastest it has ever been. I do not think that is because we are smarter or more capable. I think it has to do with in any society there are very few innovators. And the societies of the Paleo, Meso and Neolithic periods were not that large to start with. Even if a tool maker in one extended family group found a better way to knapp stone tools for a more efficent blade how long would it take for the knowledge of the technique to spread to other groups? The same would go for techniques for any other technology used by these peoples. And aside from any meteoric iron or native cooper they might have found everything they had was either stone or organic materials. There is another thing to consider. The single most important tools needed for people to inhabit the more extreme climates of the Northern Hemisphere were the needle and awl. The needle for sewing clothings and the awl for piercing skins and hides to facilitate that activity. Being able to sew hides allows the building of boats made from skins sewen over a frame. 1) I've heard people suggest Antarctica. But that has to be insane. As extreme as conditions are there today imagine what they were like 20 or 30 years ago.
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@Oddball5.0 I have never really understood the rational behind this idea. There were definitely sources of copper much closer to the centers of Bronze Age culture in Europe and the Mediterranean. Now were the ships of the Bronze Age capable of making trans Atlantic voyages. Yes they probably were. Especially if Mediterranean societies were voyaging to Britian for Tin. Now Britian is not the only source of Tin available to these Bronze Age cultures. Spain and Afghanistan come to mind. There are likely others. As to voyaging to North America you are looking at either making a landing in the Gulf of St Lawrence or the mouth of the Mississippi. And then either trading for raw copper. Or forming expeditions to travel up river through the Great Lakes or the Mississippi and St Croix rivers. Just how long would these voyages be. 1 year? Two? Three? I think it likely there may have been occasional ships from the Old World that wound up in the Americas (1). The impact they may have made is negligible. And the number that could have found their way back home can probably be counted on one hand. 1) One every 50 years? And just how many of the crews would have been pretty much dead on arrival.
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@truthnpaws3866 I bet to differ. There is nothing but deep water between Hawaii and Alaska The Hawaiian Chain extends to the West Northwest (approximately 300° true) to Midway. After that it's submerged seamounts until you reach about 172° East. Then the seamounts track makes an abrupt change to the North (say 355° true) heading toward the Western end of the Aleutian Islands and Trench. The change in direction of the seamounts is related to the Pacific Plate having changed direction in the distant past. The Plate has moved. Not the island generating Hot Spot.
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I have a theory as to the relative slow pace of innovation over the course of human history. I can't back it up but it makes sense to me. In any generation there are a relatively few numbers of innovators as a percentage. Way under 1%. This means when a new technique is developed coupled with limited communication that technique can die out or spread very slowly. As populations got larger the number innovators goes up. Increased communications help them spread. Even then new techniques or tools can get lost. Today the pace of innovation has increased expotentially. The same basic percentage of innovators are out there. But between population size and communications new techniques can spread rapidly. And these new techniques can inspire others. Consider the pace of technological change in the 19th century. Then compare it to the 20th century. What will it be in the 21st. Same percentage of innovators. Larger population with increased communications technology.
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@iivin4233 Just the leap to deciding which seeds to plant had to be a big leap. Especially with hybrids. Acouple of years ago my brother got some excellent squash at the farmers market. Saved the seeds. The next year all they got were gourds. Which are useful but taste like crap. There are some types of apples where you need say four yellowdelicious trees and one tree of a different kind in order to get the apples you want.
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We have several mammoth butchering sites locally. The Schaefer site has been dated to 14,500 years ago and the Hebior site one mile to the north is 150 to 250 years older. Another site called the Mud Lake site to my knowledge has not been fully excavated in terms of finding any more remains of the mammoth involved. A total of 31 bones were gound in the original excavation. This site was discovered in 1936 during a drainage ditch project. All three sites are in Kenosha Co, Wisconsin. The Schaefer specimen is on Display at the Kenosha Public Museum. The Hebior specimen is on display at the Milwaukee Public Museum. The Hebior specimen is the largest to be found east of the Mississippi River. It was 90% complete. The Schaefer specimen was 80% complete. There is a fourth site SE of the Schaefer and Hebior site called the Fenske site. But l do not know much about that one as l only found out about it today. I believe the site was found in the 1920s https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&opi=89978449&url=https://www.archaeology.org/issues/145-1409/features/2372-peopling-the-americas-schaefer-hebior&ved=2ahUKEwjzzO6EnbOEAxUjLdAFHST7DZoQFnoECAQQAQ&usg=AOvVaw024rAaaamoaZmhuOMZDEZm All three sites show evidence of butchering on the bones. There is another site to the southwest in Dupage Co, ll. IMO it is highly likely that there are other kill and/or butchering sites in the area.
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In my opinion the highest state of technological development of any lithic/wood/shell based culture. There were lithic/wood/shell based culture technologies that were superior in some areas. Think Dorset/Inuit in terms of clothing. But overall I think the Polynesian top them. The circumnavigation. Did they transit the Panama and Suez Canals ? I would hate to think of facing the Drake Passage in a voyaging canoe. Or the Cape of Good Hope.
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The Upper Great Lakes may have been rich in native copper and rich iron ores. But they were sadly deficient in other areas. Domesticatable food stuffs for one. Aside from Wild Rice and Cattails I really can not think of anything else. Plus there are no readily domesticatable animals in the region. Never mind the winters. Summers are short.
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You annealed copper by heating and quenching. Iron alloys are annealed be heating and cooling gradually. Some copper alloys will work harden during machining. Aluminum Bronzes aka Ampco bronzes are one. They can also be difficult to machine due to their ability to absorb heat very fast. Drills can get stuck in holes that heat up and actually cause the hole to get smaller because the material surrounding it gives it no where else to go. The company Ampco (where the term comes from) initial bronze alloy product was actually a cutting tool grade Bronze used for machining steel. It was superior to the carbon steel cutting tools of the time.
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A sideline for shaft mining of copper in the UP and Northern Wisconsin was noth gold and silver. It wasn't a major sideline but it was there.
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Once the Woodland period is reached I can see some trade in Native Copper (either artifacts or raw material) and hoods from other regions being conducted bl ot just in short distance trade over long periods of time. But in trips of one year or shorter directly between peoples from the Lake Superior area to the area they were looking for materials from. West to areas rich in Obsidian. East or South for shells. The only possible impediments being the existence of tribes sitting on choke points trying to extract excessive tolls. Similiar as to how the city we commonly call Troy may have done in the Bronze Age controlling trade through the Dardanelles. I can see a trade expedition setting out down the St Croix or the Wisconsin Rivers by canoe in late summer bound for the Gulf Coast. Then wintering over and heading north in the Spring. Perhaps places like Poverty Point served not just as ceremonial centers but also as trade nexis.
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@AncientAmericas Hueyatlaco sounds like a real can of worms. Given the extremely wide range in dates derived l wonder if the site is contaminated with material that washed in at some time. Some of the dated material is evidently volcanic ash deposits. The tools were "found" in the ash layer. I use the quotes because the dates just seem to extreme. I would not accuse anyone of planting the artifacts but extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Another site could be Cerutti near Dan Diego. This was dated at 130Ka. If there was an earlier presence of human, archaic human, denisovans or other member of the extended family in the Americas could they possibly arrived during the last Interglacial. Which was warmer as l understand it. Still if they arrived during the last Interglacial then that implies watercraft. Just how far back do "boats" go?
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There is the Cerutti site near San Diego. 130K years old. Plus there have been other sites with usually old dates. One that comes to mind is one site in Mexico with an extremely wide range of dates. 300Ka+ to 20Ka.
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@AncientAmericas The hard rock copper and iron mines of the UP and Northen Wisconsin are all pretty much closed now. These mines were started in the last half of the 19th century. They were almost all closed by the end of the 1950s not because there was no ore left. They were closed because they were economically uncompetitive with iron and copper from surface mines. Plus they had to be pumped continuously due to water intruding from aquifers largely fed from Lake Superior.
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 @procrastinator41 Larson's cave men are smarter.
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There is talk on YouTube by an archeologist from Texas. Dub Wilson iirc. He mentions one thing that hascommonly been found on n early sites has been tutles. He had a thought that if caught live they could just be set on there backs as a way of keeping fresh meat around. Early inhabitants of the Americas were likely opportunists as much as anything else. I think certain high risk game such as Mammoth and Giant Bison may have been hunted more for their uses as hides for clothing and shelters than their meat. What would a small extended family group do with a whole Mammoth(1). How large were groups of people 10k years ago on the Plains. 1) A Mammoth kill must have attracted scavengers from miles around the kill site.
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The existence of the Copper Cultures* of the Great Lakes Basin was well known in that region in the 1950s when I was a wee sprout (I'm a boomer, you don't like it go find a rope to, you get the idea). Certain areas in Northern Wisconsin and the UP of Michigan used the Copper Cultures and the logging period of the mid to late 19th Century as the basis for tourist attractions. If the early nativd peoples had had the skill to exploit it there was a far richer source of metals in the area. The UP and the Indian Head Country** are incredibly rich in high grade iron ore. The only reason it is not mined today is because the mines along with the copper mines were not surface mines but deep tunnel operations that simply became to expensive to operate due to the costs of pumping. *Plural because they may have had slight cultural differences they all used Native copper. What they lacked was Tin to takes the next step into bronze. To my know.edge the only good source of Tin in North America is in Northern Mexico **Look at a map. Look at the Northwestern portion of Wisconsin. It should be self explanatory.
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Copper and copper alloys are annealed by heating and then rapidly cooled by quenching in water.
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I doubt it. It's a matter of distance. Yes people have been using boats for a long time. There seems to evidence of boats* being used by both Neanderthals and Homo Erectus. I'm not positive that sea levels dropped low enough during Glavial Maximums for the Homo Erectus population that reached the island of Flores to have arrived on foot. If they did they were then cut of and then due to local environmental pressures slowly became the smallest known member of the genus Homo. That being Homo Florensis. The earliest arrivals in the Americas** probably arrived by boat hopping along the coasts of Eastern Siberia, Alaska and Beringia when sea levels dropped during a period of glaciation. A second possibility is from Western Africa around Senegal with the initial arrivals being fishermen driven across the Atlantic to Brazil's northern coast. The third option is people from Western Europe following seal populations along the edge of the pack ice. Both number 2 and 3 seem unlikely to lead to substantial populations in my opinion. The idea of people following the southern route route of Auxtralia, to Antarctica is very implausible in my opinion. This would involve crossing large stretches of ocean in the face of the worst seas on the planet. They aren't called the Roaring Forties and the Furious Fifties for the calm weather. Part of the reason for their being so bad is the Antarctic Current circling around the continent with no landmasses to deflect it. This is also why Antarctica iced over. Now for the wild cards in the deck. There is a site in Texas that turned up Carbon 14 dates of 26KYA. There is another site in Mexico that was dated around 120KYA iirc. Then there's the mammoth found in an excavation in the LA area that possibly shows evidence of butchering tools. My guess is the peopling of the Americas is a tale far more complicated and longer than we think. It may even include members of Homo Erectus who made it to the Americas only to die out. We don't even know just how many members of the Genus Homo actually existed. The Denisovians were unknown until recently. *Well watercraft of some sort. Part of the problem is organic materials simply don't last very long. **As noted in the video the name has baggage but we're stuck with it.
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