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https://www.yahoo.com/news/humans-reached-americas-11-000-140807872.html

Looks like people were in Mexico 11,000 years earlier than we thought.

I've been listening to a lecture series by Edward Barnhart on pre-columbian South America and he talks about a site found in Argentina that suggests people were living in South America thousands of years before we thought they were but that it was just an 'archeological anomaly' because it was just one site.

And today this happens. I'm sure the archeological community is getting excited XD

 LordofHats wrote:
I've been listening to a lecture series by Edward Barnhart on pre-columbian South America and he talks about a site found in Argentina that suggests people were living in South America thousands of years before we thought they were but that it was just an 'archeological anomaly' because it was just one site.

And today this happens. I'm sure the archeological community is getting excited XD

Where there's one, there's another, and another. I can't wait for the next site to be discovered.

There was a theory that ancient migration wasn't just across the Alaskan land bridge, and not all at once. There are possibilities that people from Northern Europe just walked across glaciers during the ice age, and a possible small Japanese migration about 2300 years ago.

Don’t forget the Vikings!

Graham Hancock coming in hot and wants to add another 100K years(as well as use this breaking news to push his book).

New research, summarised below, drives the final nail into the coffin of Clovis First and puts humans in the Americas 33,000 years ago. That's still way too timid! My book America Before explains why 130,000 years ago is closer to the truth.

I'm highly skeptical of all that, but its fun listening/reading. Like Bigfoot/UFO/Monster shows.

There seem to be a fair few sites in central America where at least some archeologists have been reporting occupation around these sort of date,

but most have been sceptical either because the evidence is weak (disturbed layers, dating material not close enough to the tools to be sure they're associated)

or just because there 'can't' have been humans around then,

this may well lead so at least some of them being accepted too now there is really solid proof humans were in the Americas at that point

This is super-cool. 'Clovis First' -hypothesis was already dead, but oldest properly validated finds up until now were only about 1000 years older than Clovis (with exception of Bluefish Cave from Alaska which was older, but explained by it being a 'resting stop' when entrance to mainland was blocked).

This puts settlement of the Americas way back - there have been other finds, some estimated over 60,000 years old, but they have not been this well documented.

It also kills off the 'Blitzkrieg' hypothesis of Late Pleistocene extinction wave.

 cuda1179 wrote:

 LordofHats wrote:
I've been listening to a lecture series by Edward Barnhart on pre-columbian South America and he talks about a site found in Argentina that suggests people were living in South America thousands of years before we thought they were but that it was just an 'archeological anomaly' because it was just one site.

And today this happens. I'm sure the archeological community is getting excited XD

Where there's one, there's another, and another. I can't wait for the next site to be discovered.

There was a theory that ancient migration wasn't just across the Alaskan land bridge, and not all at once. There are possibilities that people from Northern Europe just walked across glaciers during the ice age, and a possible small Japanese migration about 2300 years ago.

There also potential South America and Polynesia. The sweet potato is a new world plant, but was being extensively cultivated in South East Asia possibly before Columbian contact, and there's ongoing research and speculation about potential genetic links between South East Asian and South American populations before the arrival of the Spanish. I'm not sure about the Japanese migration. I don't think it makes any sense. Either way, it's getting more and more exciting. I suspect history books on the pre-Columbian Americas will look very different by the time I'm an old man.

 LordofHats wrote:

 cuda1179 wrote:

 LordofHats wrote:
I've been listening to a lecture series by Edward Barnhart on pre-columbian South America and he talks about a site found in Argentina that suggests people were living in South America thousands of years before we thought they were but that it was just an 'archeological anomaly' because it was just one site.

And today this happens. I'm sure the archeological community is getting excited XD

Where there's one, there's another, and another. I can't wait for the next site to be discovered.

There was a theory that ancient migration wasn't just across the Alaskan land bridge, and not all at once. There are possibilities that people from Northern Europe just walked across glaciers during the ice age, and a possible small Japanese migration about 2300 years ago.

There also potential South America and Polynesia. The sweet potato is a new world plant, but was being extensively cultivated in South East Asia possibly before Columbian contact, and there's ongoing research and speculation about potential genetic links between South East Asian and South American populations before the arrival of the Spanish. I'm not sure about the Japanese migration. I don't think it makes any sense. Either way, it's getting more and more exciting. I suspect history books on the pre-Columbian Americas will look very different by the time I'm an old man.

The Japanese Migration is a theory involving a massive volcano eruption. Think Mount Saint Helen's x100. A massive volcano explosion happened in Japan that drove many people from the area. They had to go somewhere, and there are genetic markers in mainland Asia that correspond to that time. Those same genetic markers, and an extremely rare protein deficiency only show up in Asian populations, and surprisingly in some isolated South Americans, who also have some Asian-like facial features. They think REALLY desperate people from Japan island hopped up to Alaska and made their way down the West Coast of North America until they got to a better climate.

I also like the Easter Island connection to both South American and SE Asia.

Also, there are Egyptian mummies that have cocaine in them, which is indigenous to South America

I can't find anything on it now, but back in the late 1990's they found a Roman Galley near Brazil and Roman artifact near Mexico City.

Ancient people seem to be MUCH more mobile than we give them credit for.

 LordofHats wrote:
I suspect history books on the pre-Columbian Americas will look very different by the time I'm an old man.

I doubt that, or at least not for the reasons you seem to imply. Pre-Columbian Exchange tends to mean, relatively speaking, immediately before. What can be known historically about people who lived 20,000 years ago is ... well, virtually nothing.

Plus this basic insight is already about a quarter century old, at least. Check out Virginia’s own Cactus Hill.

 Jadenim wrote:
Don’t forget the Vikings!

Gotta love how Bjarni took one look at the Americas, muttered a big “nope”, and sailed back before even setting foot.

 cuda1179 wrote:

 LordofHats wrote:
I've been listening to a lecture series by Edward Barnhart on pre-columbian South America and he talks about a site found in Argentina that suggests people were living in South America thousands of years before we thought they were but that it was just an 'archeological anomaly' because it was just one site.

And today this happens. I'm sure the archeological community is getting excited XD

Where there's one, there's another, and another. I can't wait for the next site to be discovered.

There was a theory that ancient migration wasn't just across the Alaskan land bridge, and not all at once. There are possibilities that people from Northern Europe just walked across glaciers during the ice age, and a possible small Japanese migration about 2300 years ago.

Well glacier walking wouldn't likely explain these as this was before ice age.

Island hopping could be answer. The east asian island cultures were pretty advanced sailors for the time and made long journeys by boat.

 Manchu wrote:

 LordofHats wrote:
I suspect history books on the pre-Columbian Americas will look very different by the time I'm an old man.

I doubt that, or at least not for the reasons you seem to imply. Pre-Columbian Exchange tends to mean, relatively speaking, immediately before. What can be known historically about people who lived 20,000 years ago is ... well, virtually nothing.

I don't mean pre-Columbian exchange but the entire pre-Columbian history. We're finding lots of things that are turning the stories on their heads. In the Amazon we're finding mounting evidence of advanced civilizations that may have been the religious center of South America. In the Peten we've been finding Mayan cities previously unknown to us that are suggesting their civilization is older than we thought it was. New models of cultural diffusion are being proposed and new categorizations for civilizations we didn't know existed and mistakenly lumped into others.

There's lots of stuff going down all over the field.

 LordofHats wrote:


There also potential South America and Polynesia. .

That's the theory I've been hearing about these new sites, that the highest likelihood is sea-borne travellers who had boats and a history of sea-travel (whether they deliberately spotted and aimed for the Americas or ended up there by wind and wave).
Whether they stayed and survived long enough to be part of the populations that we know of later is an interesting question.

Jadenim wrote:Don’t forget the Vikings!

We can discard the Vikings entirely for this. 'Viking' refers to a type of raiding performed during a fairly narrow period of time (a few centuries). Little pre-seventh century really qualifies, let alone 10000+ years before the traditionally held settlement of the Americas (which itself was thousands of years before any 'vikings')

 cuda1179 wrote:

The Japanese Migration is a theory involving a massive volcano eruption. Think Mount Saint Helen's x100. A massive volcano explosion happened in Japan that drove many people from the area. They had to go somewhere, and there are genetic markers in mainland Asia that correspond to that time. Those same genetic markers, and an extremely rare protein deficiency only show up in Asian populations, and surprisingly in some isolated South Americans, who also have some Asian-like facial features. They think REALLY desperate people from Japan island hopped up to Alaska and made their way down the West Coast of North America until they got to a better climate.

That sounds like its losing something in summary. If true, it probably points to Ainu or speakers of the earlier Tungusic, Mongolian or Altaic language families.

If we find out that Ancient peoples were exploring significantly farther than we thought possible, could you imagine the very first meeting where a Roman Galley meets a Chinese Junk somewhere around the Middle East and both sides are like "WTF were they thinking when they made that POS boat?"

 cuda1179 wrote:


I can't find anything on it now, but back in the late 1990's they found a Roman Galley near Brazil and Roman artifact near Mexico City.

Ancient people seem to be MUCH more mobile than we give them credit for.

I seem to remember something like that too. I think the explanation was that a galley going down the coast of west Africa, which happened occasionally for trading purposes, got blown west and eventually sank. Possibly in a storm due to galleys being rather poor in the high seas.

IIRC there is some evidence of the Phoenicians having also made it to Brazil at least once, which I believe is based on a map of theirs that shows a non-descript western landmass beyond Africa. Its rather loose evidence to be sure and even in the best case scenario they probably never made any effort in that direction.

The unfortunate thing is that ancient people were mostly practical in their record keeping. While in the last few centuries we might find a guy raving about he found a new land to be interesting. To an ancient seafaring civilization someone saying "I found a jungle way out west" was probably met with "Were there people there to trade with?" to which he probably said "Not really".

Ancient civilizations didn't have as much expansionist pressure as there was in the 1800s to really make exploration a priority. Let alone much incentive to keep records of what was to them probably very mundane.

 cuda1179 wrote:
If we find out that Ancient peoples were exploring significantly farther than we thought possible, could you imagine the very first meeting where a Roman Galley meets a Chinese Junk somewhere around the Middle East and both sides are like "WTF were they thinking when they made that POS boat?"

Populations, and more importantly, ideas, had moved between Europe and East Asia a long time before anyone was sailing.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Grey Templar wrote:
IIRC there is some evidence of the Phoenicians having also made it to Brazil at least once, which I believe is based on a map of theirs that shows a non-descript western landmass beyond Africa. Its rather loose evidence to be sure and even in the best case scenario they probably never made any effort in that direction

There are no cartographic maps remotely as old as this. There are depictions of the world and of specific parts of it, but they are heavily symbolic and depicting something 'west of' somewhere else isn't really something they do.

 Grey Templar wrote:

 cuda1179 wrote:


I can't find anything on it now, but back in the late 1990's they found a Roman Galley near Brazil and Roman artifact near Mexico City.

Ancient people seem to be MUCH more mobile than we give them credit for.

I seem to remember something like that too. I think the explanation was that a galley going down the coast of west Africa, which happened occasionally for trading purposes, got blown west and eventually sank. Possibly in a storm due to galleys being rather poor in the high seas.

IIRC there is some evidence of the Phoenicians having also made it to Brazil at least once, which I believe is based on a map of theirs that shows a non-descript western landmass beyond Africa. Its rather loose evidence to be sure and even in the best case scenario they probably never made any effort in that direction.

The unfortunate thing is that ancient people were mostly practical in their record keeping. While in the last few centuries we might find a guy raving about he found a new land to be interesting. To an ancient seafaring civilization someone saying "I found a jungle way out west" was probably met with "Were there people there to trade with?" to which he probably said "Not really".

Ancient civilizations didn't have as much expansionist pressure as there was in the 1800s to really make exploration a priority. Let alone much incentive to keep records of what was to them probably very mundane.

I mean they did, but they mostly expanded into each other.

Rememebr, for most of Rome's history, it was a looter economy, kept prosperous by regularly invading its neighbors and taking their stuff. There's only a few hundred years where Roman society shifted away from expansion and looting being the primary driver of roman economics. And that was preceded by the almost complete collapse of the empire.

That's highly simplistic and also bit funny since the other half Stuck around quite a bit longer...

Well yeah, the aliens transported them over to build the New World pyramids.