How were the Americas first populated?
Columbus sailed his small fleet west into the New World in 1492. At his first landfall, after two months at sea, Columbus states he encountered “people..of good height, of pleasing appearance and well built” (See: Log of Christopher Columbus , October 12, 1492.). It was not a surprising encounter for Columbus or his crew. Columbus mistaken assumed he was sailing along the coast of the Far East, perhaps off the cost of ”Chipangu” (Japan), or the “Indies” where large human populations existed. He simply assumed the natives he encountered were people of the East (or in Spanish: “Indios”).
For over two hundred years, at least since the trading voyages and travels of Marco Polo in the second half of 13 century, Europeans had known of the people of the Far East. (And perhaps Europeans knew of China and its people even earlier. For in 166 AD, Chineses account record that the Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelia sent a Roman emissary to the the Emperor Huan of the Han Dynasty in China. ) .
Columbus, who was so wrong about his ship’s longitude and his location on the Earth’s surface, was correct in thinking these natives were “Indios”. (Columbus mistakenly assumed he was off the coast of Asia (at about 138 deg W, while his actual location was only about 74 deg W). His location on October 12, 1492 was 64 degrees of modern longitude off course. In his defense, in Columbus’ day there was no accurate way for mariners to determine longitude. Various scholars had several estimates of this figure. The Greek philosopher Eratosthenes was very close to modern calculations. But the estimate Columbus used for the value of a degree of longitude, or the actual circumference of the Earth, was about 37% too small.)
It is ironic that Columbus was correct in his assumption about the “Asian” character of the natives he encountered on the island of San Salvador and the rest of the New World. For we now know that the Americas were peopled by prehistoric hunters arriving from the east. Modern archaeological studies have now confirmed these theories.
However assured Columbus was of the Asian character of the “Indios” he encountered , the first serious scientific investigation concerning the origin of Native Americans had to wait many hundreds of years. Even up to the late 19th and early 20th Century the North American archeology establishment considered human occupation of North America could not have occurred before @ 1000 BC, or about 3000 years before the present time (BP).
THE FOLSOM SITE (11,000 years BP)
But soon after the turn of the century, in 1908, an African-American, buffalo hunter and cowboy in northern New Mexico would change all that. After a particularly severe August rain storm, George McJunkin, an ex-slave, working as the cattle ranch foreman on the Crowfoot Ranch near Folsom, New Mexico rode out to Wild Horse Arroyo, part of the drainage basin of the Cimarron River of northern New Mexico, to check on the longhorn herd in that section of the ranch. An arroyo, is a normally dry, narrow canyon, in which water flows only very infrequently. Though after heavy rains in the upper regions of the drainage basin will cause violent torrents of muddy water to rush down these narrow gorges and deeply erode the stream bed and cause the walls of the arroyo to collapse. Arriving there, McJunkin made an interesting observation. The rainstorm and subsequent erosion has washed out the canyon wall, exposing deeply buried soil and within it a mass of unusual bones.
McJunkin was an experienced cattleman and Buffalo hunter who quickly realized that the bones were too big, and buried too deep, to be those of domestic cattle, or even the wild formerly numerous native Buffalo (Bison bison). The exposure of ancient bones peaked the curiosity of the cowboy. When McJunkin examined them more carefully, he discovered several unusual stone points among them. He made a small collection of what he found and returned to the ranch. Later that, year he attempted to interest the local New Mexico scientific community about the site, but to no effect.
Finally, ten years later, in 1918, he sent some of the bone and the unusual stone points to the Denver Museum in neighboring Colorado. Archeologist Harold Cook of that institution agreed to join McJunkin in New Mexico to collect bones, and more of the distinctive points at the site. Cook did make a formal collection and museum acquisition file and may have realized that he had evidences of human artifacts associated with the bones of a long extinct buffalo species, but may have been hesitant to publish his preliminary findings. At that time, (prior to radiocarbon dating techniques first developed in 1946) the archeology establishment centered in museums in New York and Washington DC were convinced that there were no verifiable human evidences in North America older than about 3000 BP. Archeologists claiming otherwise would be harshly attacked. Critics would be quick to claim that such “”unconventional evidence” was tainted. Without C14 dating such claims could be readily discounted as a the result of disturbance by animal burrowing, or earth movements, which, as a result of gravity, mixed younger human-crafted artifacts with more deeply buried and much older extinct mammal bones. The charges from the establishment might even suggest that the site was “salted” and accuse the archeologist of unprofessional behavior. Cook realized he would be putting his reputation on the line without firm proof that the extinct animal bones and the ancient bones were truly contemporaneous. Thus the collected evidence remained in the Denver Museum, gathering dust.
It was not until 1926, when Jesse Figgins, took over the post as director of the Denver Museum, He was an experienced and professional archeologist and polar explorer with many contacts with eastern museums in Washington and New York. It was at Figgins’ direction that the Cook-McJunkin collection was re-examined. The unusual stone points in the collection stirred the curiosity of Figgins. He directed an excavation team to the site, and with his team, he carefully and methodically excavated. His efforts paid off with a major discovery.
In 1927 Figgins concluded that the site was a marsh-side, kill-site, where 32 extinct buffalo (Bison antiguus) had been killed by prehistoric hunters who used distinctive stone points on their hand spears or atlatal darts. The unusual points have a characteristic “flute” or shallow groove which often runs nearly the full length of the leaf-shaped, concave-based, finely pressure-knapped, microcrystalline quartz artifacts. Figgins realized that he had a significant find because these distinctive human artifacts were intimately related with the remains of a species of buffalo that had become extinct some 10,000 years ago.
The startling evidence of this conclusion was uncovered when during the excavation, Figgins and his associates came upon a fluted, Folsom point fragment ( its base and tip having been shattered) lodged between two bones of the fossil rib cage of the extinct buffalo skeleton. Figgins secured irrefutable evidence of this by removing intact the portion of the fossil rib cage, while leaving the stone point in situ between the rib bones. This excavated feature with fractured stone point intact was returned to the Museum and became the irrefutable first evidence of stone artifacts made by humans, found in close association with evidences of extinct mega fauna known to have become extinct some ten thousand year ago.
Figgins eventually dated the site from about 11,000 BP to 10,000 BP terming it the Folsom Site, the type site for the Folsom Tradition, a paleo-Indian cultural site. This site established the fact that ancient humans of the Late Pleistocene (129,000 BP to 11,700 BP) were living in North America and hunting large game animals thousands of years before previously thought. Americans clearly lived in North America during the latter stages of the Ice Age and they hunted large game with specialized stone points.
WHERE DID THESE PEOPLE ORIGINATE?
What route did they take to North America? When did they first arrive?
It was a Jesuit priest, Father Jose de Acosta, SJ (1539-1600) a theologian, anthropologist and missionary to Peru, who after a long stint as a missionary in Peru wrote a survey in 1590 of the New World, and its relation to Europe, based on his many years as a missionary in South America. His work, entitled:Historia natural y moral de las Indias, proposes that native Americans arrived in the New World by way of a northern land bridge from Asia.
Although De Acosta’s work became a primary source for academic study of the western part of South America, his hypothesis was ignored for more than 300 years. That is until 1936, when a Swedish botanist, Eric Hulten (1894-1981) published his doctoral thesis. Hulten, in preparation for his doctoral candidacy, found close relationships between the plants of Siberia in Russia, and those of Alaska and the Aleutian Islands in North America. His doctoral thesis concluded that during the Pleistocene, an ice-free land bridge, he termed “Beringia” existed between Siberia and Alaska. It was over this land bridge which Asian tundra plant species dispersed from Asia into North America.
Not long after this, anthropologists and archeologists, now armed with the fact that humans were hunting megafauna in northern New Mexico as late as 11,000 years BP had a possible ice free route through which paleo-hunters may have traveled. Beringia, the 600 mile wide ice-free region where a marine climate limited snow fall, and where tundra species survived the Ice Age, could be the route ancient humans might have used to pass from Asia to North America. These new evidences made the 16th century de Acosta hypothesis all the more likely. The “out of Asia across the tundra plains of Beringia and to North and South America” hypothesis became a popular theory— at least for several decades.
THE CLOVIS SITE (11,500 BP)
Only ten years later, and about 220 miles south of the Folsom site an even older paleo Indian site, (about 500 years older) was discovered in 1936 at Clovis, New Mexico.
In 1936, at a previously known paleo Indian site at Clovis, New Mexico, Blackwater Locality #1 archeologists unearthed two mastodon skeletons. Among the fossil mastodon bones the excavators recovered four distinctive Clovis stone points associated in situ with these two skeletons, as well as two bone points made of mastodon long bones, cutting tools made of flake fragments, and a core for a Clovis point. Nearby other ivory and bone tools were recovered. Radiocarbon dates gave a 11,500BP to 10,800 BP date for the site.
The Clovis stone points are beautifully well crafted, fluted, leaf shaped, bifacial, pressure-flaked spear points, generally longer than Folsom points. The flute is formed on both sides and extends only partway up the blade (unlike the Folsom point). The base of the point is “eared”. The point structure and size suggests that is was used as a spear point, for thrusting into the body of a large game animal rather than as a point for a throwing dart (for an atlatal dart) as was the Folsom point. Other Clovis sites have been identified in other areas of the USA, in Mexico, Central America, and in northern South America. At these varied sites evidence indicates that the Clovis hunters were exploiting megafauna such as mammoths, Bison antiguus, mastodons, gomphotheres, sloths, tapirs and other smaller game.
The Clovis tradition lasts several hundred years then seems to disappear. It is commonly assumed that the Clovis “people” or their tradition died out, perhaps as a result of the decline in the herds of Pleistocene megafauna, such as mammoths, mastodons and other huge, ungainly beasts for which their hunting implements were well adapted. ( These animals died out as climate change proceeded and as the climate moderated and glaciers retreated.). These Clovis hunters may have been replaced with the people of the Folsom culture (smaller points more likely used as the points on atlatl darts). This change from the Clovis points seem a weapon adaptation to exploiting more agile, more mobile herds, in particular those of the extinct giant bison (Bison antiguus) which appear to have replaced the earlier megafauna in the changing landscape.
But the Clovis site revealed not only an older cultural tradition and the most unique and beautifully crafted points. The Clovis site had human genetic evidence too. The only human remains ever recovered at a Clovis site occurred at the Blackwater 1 site. There the skeletal remains of an infant boy, was recovered. More recent analysis of the DNA of the remains, termed “Anzick 1”, revealed genetic relationships to modern Native American tribes of the southern tier of states, as well modern native populations in Central and South America. Also detected we’re genetic ties to populations in Central Asia as well as Siberia. These data strongly support the theory that the settlement of the Americas occurred via Beringia, or by way of a Pacific coastal route.
COOPER’S FERRY, SALMON RIVER SITE (16,000 BP)
The oldest paleo-Indian site in the Americas, one which seems to support the Pacific costal route hypothesis, was recently discovered far from New Mexico, in north western Idaho. The Cooper’s Ferry Site is found on the Salmon River near the confluence of the Salmon and Snake Rivers. Just further east the Snake flows into the Columbia River— which drains almost directly west into the Pacific Ocean. (See: NW News 8/29/19, Tom Banse “Beside an Idaho River, signs of the oldest human presence in the Americas”.)
A University of Oregon team of archeologists has discovered distinctive stone points, stone tools, animal bones and charcoal buried deeply in fine sediments described as glacially derived loess. The loess deposits within which the artifacts are found were formed by and are related to continental glaciation of the region. These loess deposits are themselves dated to between 40,000BP to 10,000 BP (See: “Timing of Late Quaternary Glaciations in the Western United States Based on the Age of Loess on the Eastern Snake River Plain, Idaho”, by Forman,Steven, et.al, Camb Univ Press, 1/20/2017).
The site has revealed evidences such as small (0.5 inch to 2 inch) points of the Western Stemmed Point Tradition, hammer stones, stone blades, stone cores, modified flakes perhaps used as burins or cutting tools, fire cracked rock, and bone with evidence of butchering marks. The preserved carbon at the site has been reliably carbon-isotope dated at between 14,000 to 16,000 years ago. The fine textured, glacially derived loess sediments in which the cultural evidences were found, no doubt helped preserve the chemical and physical integrity of the evidence.
The site location is on a river drainage system linked it to the Pacific coast via the Columbia River. The age of the evidences all point to the likelihood of the earliest immigrants into the Americas moved down the Pacific coast. Along the coast they came upon coastal river systems which they followed inland. Following the course of the Columbia River east from the Pacific Ocean to the approximate site of the Cooper Ferry site is an approximate distance of about 425 miles (@684 km). Modern walkers following such a route might take only about 47 days. (Based on: Average hikers take about 7 months to hike the 2000 miles of Appalachian Trail, or @286 miles per month, or about 9 miles per day, 425/9= 47)
During the time period, 16,000 years ago, the Beringia land bridge remained ice free, but passage into North America was still blocked by great walls of ice associated with the the Alaskan and Canadian continental glaciers. The Cooper’s Ferry site as well a the human genetic evidence from the Clovis Blackwater 1 site seem to strongly support the theory that the earliest immigration into the Americas must have followed a Pacific coastal route, and then moved inland along the river systems into the Americas.
Other than the strong evidence for carbon dating, the cultural evidences found here are not overwhelming. The excavators found very limited evidence of megafauna or toothed animal bone, or tools to suggest the hunting of megafauna. They recovered small, (one half inch to 2 inch long) crudely formed stone points commonly found elsewhere in the inter-montane west, as well as fire cracked rock, stone tool debitage, pits for food storage (?) and as noted above, importantly they recovered charcoal able to be dated.
These evidences seem to suggest a less specialized hunting strategy, and cultural traditions much different than the later Clovis and Folsom cultural traditions. They are clearly those of specialized megafauna hunters. Why were no megafauna hunted at Cooper’s Ferry? Perhaps the Copper’s Ferry people left evidence of a less specialized, more generalized cultural, hunting and exploitation tradition. Perhaps these developed elsewhere, perhaps in Siberia or Bereingia or along the Pacific coast route, and were carried inland, eventually to Cooper’s Ferry. Only later did these new Americans adapt to hunting megafauna?
(* Log of Christopher Columbus , October 12, 1492.)
