Transcript First Civilizations of North America

First Civilizations of North
America
Chapter 1 – Who Were the First
Americans?
http://courses.csusm.edu/hist337as/hb/h37hbfra.htm
http://employees.oneonta.edu/walkerr/North%20America/Pre-Clovis2.ppt
The Earliest Americans
Who were the earliest Americans?
• We know that at some time in the past no people lived in North or
South America.
• We have been taught that big game hunters crossed the Bering
Land Bridge and spread out across the continents.
• But is this simple scenario the whole story?
• Evidence from scientific fields (archaeology, physical anthropology,
paleontology, climatology, and geology) suggests more complex
events that reach back in time, long before the land bridge.
• To date, the oldest archeology sites are found in South America
rather than North America. And so far, the oldest sites found in the
United States are in the southeast.
• How do we interpret intriguing and often conflicting hints about the
past?
Friends of America’s Past
( A non-profit organization dedicated to advancing and promoting
the rights of scientists and the public to learn about America’s past)
Pre 1492…
• Until recently, most
anthropologists have accepted
the hypothesis…
• The ancestors of the
indigenous peoples of the
Americas must have come
from Asia by way of Beringia,
the now-sunken link between
Alaska and Siberia.
• Beringia becomes dry ground
during ice ages, when global
cooling locks sea water into ice
and sea level drops. The most
recent ice age hit its last peak
about 12,000 years ago.
• Beringia hypothesis and the argument that biggame hunters using Clovis points were the original
people of the Americas, presumably having
unknowingly followed their prey from Siberia into an
unpopulated western hemisphere.
• Stone points of the distinctive Clovis design were
made for about five hundred years, apparently,
beginning 12,000 years or more in the past.
• Clovis stone points were first found about seventy
years ago associated with mammoth bones near
Clovis, New Mexico. The people who made them
are called Paleoindians by anthropologists.
Evidence for an earlier arrival?
• Original
hypothesis…original
inhabitants here for
just 4,000 years…
• New hypothesis…
Clovis points were
persuasive evidence
for an earlier
date…maybe 40,000
years ago?!?!
North American Sites
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Meadowcroft Rockshelter, PA (16-19.5 kya).
Wilson Butte Cave, Idaho (14.5 kya)
Cactus Hill, VA (17 kya)
Bluefish Caves, Alaska (24.8 kya)
Topper, SC (16-15 kya)
Little Salt Spring (13.4 kya)
Monte Verde, Chile
• Broader agreement about
another site, called Monte
Verde, that seems to show that
people with a well-developed
culture were living in what is
now southern Chile no later
than 12,500 years ago.
• Archeologists have found wellmade tools of bone, tusk, and
stone, and evidence of a
medicine hut and substantial
timber-framed structures
covered with hides.
Monte Verde, Chile
Monte Verde, Chile
New Theories…
• Some anthropologists
now hypothesize…
• Ancestors of indigenous
Americans were not a few
hunters wandering
eastward across
Beringia …
• But rather diverse groups
of people who traveled by
boat as well as on foot
and came in many waves
by many routes over
many centuries.
Support for the argument that at least two distinctly different
groups lived in one region of North America at about the same
time…
• State of Washington, 1996
• Anthropologists identified the
bones as those of a man they
described as proto-caucasian…
“Kennewick Man.”
• Very different from the bones of
later Indian people.
• Same region and period…
• Suggest a common origin with
the proto-Caucasian Ainus ( “I
knew”), the indigenous people of
Japan.
Archeologist Jim Chatters and Kennewick
Man reproductions, and Newsweek cover
First Federal Decision
Memorandum
United States Department of
the Interior
NATIONAL PARK SERVICE
1849 C St. NW
Washington, D.C. 20240
Memorandum
To:
Assistant Secretary, Fish and Wildlife Parks
Through:
Director,
/s/Jackie Lowey for Robert G. Stanton
From:
Departmental Consulting Archeologist
/s/Francis McManamon
Subject:
Determination that the Kennewick Human Skeletal remains
are “Native American” for the Purposes of the Native
American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA)
Second Decision – a Federal Court
Native Science:
Nez Perce, Umatilla, Yakama, and Colville Tribes are united in their request
to bury the remains of Kennewick Man, whom they believe may be one of
their ancestors.
Western Science:
Eight scientists wish to use the remains of Kennewick Man to conduct
research.
2002 Court Decision:
No reburial for Kennewick Man. The U.S. Magistrate agreed with the
scientists. Some Kennewick body parts would be ground up for DNA testing,
including some at the Univ. of AZ.
OCTOBER 2002 AP BULLITEN