ARTICULOS

The following is taken from a video recorded in March of 1997.

It's been a real exciting time in Paleo Indian studies the last year or two - we've just learned so much about Paleo Indians or the first people in the Americas.  And it's totally changed our point of view on the evolution of early cultures in the New World and their ties to the Old World. 

If you read your textbooks, Clovis are thought to be the first people into the New World, (North America) via Siberia.  But when you look at the archeology of Siberia, which we have now had ample opportunity to do in the last few years, there really is not much in Siberia that is a direct Clovis predecessor.  Consequently, we've been - or at least, I've been, convinced that Clovis is a New World invention and developed from a population of people that were already in North America.  In fact, the Smithsonian has been working along with researchers in Tennesee and in the Southeast in particular where we have the largest (and oldest) concentration of Clovis artifacts anywhere in North America.  But if Clovis did develop in the Southeast, who did Clovis develop from?  When did that happen?  And where did those people come from?  Was it Siberia or was it someplace else? 

These are really exciting questions and what brings that to real immediate attention are the findings that physical anthropologists have been making in the last few years and particularly in the last few months, of human skeletons which have been found from this time period, the Paleo Indian time period.  There's less then ten and if you cut off the time period at ten thousand years, there's probably less than four skeletons of that age.  But as they began to examine these skeletons, and there's been some really good ones found, they did not appear to be classic Indian.  And in fact they have a number of caucasoid traits and if you look at them in a world wide perspective, the physical traits appear to be more in line with an early population that probably spread across Northeastern Europe into Asia and even into the Japanese Islands.  And based on the recent discoveries of Kennewick Man in Washington, Spirit Cave and the latest discovery in Southwest Alaska, of a mandible in a cave site up there,  this appears to be the case that our first Americans were indeed from this earlier, pre northern Asian population.  And it's really critical that we be able to capitalize and study the few very rare remains we have.  There are just so many questions that can be resolved on the peopling of the Americas if we have a full scale study of each and every one of these specimens that are found.

From looking at the artifactual evidence we now have from North America and from Northeast Asia as well as the physical remains, it's very clear to me, at least, that we are looking at multiple migrations through a very long time period - of many different peoples of many different ethnic origins, if you will, that came in at different times.  Some of these people probably survived, some of them may have gone back home and some of them probably did not survive.  And by sudying all these skeletons, particularly the DNA and the morphological differences and similarities, we'll be able to - I think eventually, figure out how many groups and from where they came.  And it's clear that we have to have a very broad mind about the issue and not ignore some seemingly impossible migration theories. 

To talk about some of the migration routes that are being considered as plausible now that we wouldn't have even considered several years ago, there's some thought that perhaps Clovis technology came from Europe.  We would have been hooted right out of the lecture hall if we had said that a few years ago.  The idea is based on several things that are now beginning to emerge from our research in the Southeast where it appears that Clovis may actually have its earliest sites.

If we look at Clovis technology, and the Clovis technology of North America is relatively unique in the world, it's a bifacial technology.   In bifacial, I'm referring to the fact that the artifact, here you can see that there are flake scars on this side of the specimen and when we turn it over there are flake scars on the opposite side - hence the name bifacial.  And this is opposed to artifacts that are unifacial.  Most of the classic Upper Paleolithic cultures of Eurasia are unifacial.  There are some bifacial manufacturing technologies in that part of the world and one of them is the Solutrean.  This is a replica of a Solutrean biface which is commonly found in France and down through the Iberian peninsula.  It is older than Clovis but not that much older.  This technology is very, very close to the Clovis technology.  There are some differences but you do get the bifaces and you get caches.  I think caches are important.  In Clovis we find a lot of caches of these bifacial artifacts as we do in the Solutrean.  The caches are normally associated with red ochre.  We don't know the significance of the red ochre but they are both in Solutrean and Clovis.  They may well have adapted to a maritime economy and become very familiar with watercraft.  It wouldn't take too much for an intelligent person to learn how to handle the ocean and perhaps even get to North America.  Now this is really an off the wall kind of idea right now but it's one that I don't think we should ignore.  And I think we will see scholars begin to look at that idea.  I know that some folks are going to be looking at DNA comparisons between hair found in Solutrean sites versus hair found in Clovis age sites to see if there is any link that way as well as looking at the technology in more detail and depth.  In fact there is going to be an exhibit comparing Clovis caches with Solutrean caches at the type site of Solutre in France this coming summer which should be real exciting.  We're going to go over with some of our Clovis caches and be able to look at that material first hand and I'm really looking forward to that.

We also should not discount ideas of coastal migration particularly around the Pacific Rim.  With the southern Asian populations that were apparently moving out of China and Indo-China, they moved  as far as Australia by at least 40,000 years ago if not 100,000 years ago.  In order to do that you have to be able to navigate some pretty rough ocean travel.  And it seems to me that if folks are able to do that then there's no question in my mind that they can move across the coastal areas of the northern Pacific Rim and move down through the coastal regions of British Columbia and clearly get as far south in South America as Tiera del Fuego.  

I would say that 99% of Paleo archeologists haven't given maritime tradition and Paleo Indians much play at all.  Some people are beginning to talk about the coastal migration, but I think it's time we talk about it a whole bunch.  These people had water craft. If you look at the distribution of Clovis sites in the East, they seem to be associated with the large rivers and you can follow them up and down these rivers and, I think it's a matter of time before we find a site where there are boats preserved.  These people are using the rivers as ways to get around, ways to transport flint.  One of the real interesting facets of Clovis technology is that they select the best flint possible.  Look at this speciment here.  That's a marvelous artifact.  Look at the rock, the color.  It was chosen for these colors, it was flaked  to incorporate this red here at the tip.  It has a prominent white stripe coming all the way across the center section.  So they're playing with the colors.  They're going out of their way, sometimes several hundred kilometers - or more - to get raw materials.  There's probably a lot of reasons for that.  This raw material here, the guy had to go some 300 kilometers to pick up (from where we found the artifact) while in fact, there was excellent chert within 50 miles of where he was.  We see that over and over again, they were selecting for specific rocks.  They have to be the highest quality.  Now why that is, I'm not sure.  I think it probably goes back to some of the ideas about respect for the game.  These people are hunting mammoths and probably having to fend off saber-toothed tigers and cave bears. They've got some pretty wild critters out there that they're dealing with.  And one way to deal with it of course is through magic - through more power - and you can get more power if you select the right rock, particulary colored rocks, it shows respect for your animals.  Well they're doing that and in the process, particularly on the East Coast, they're moving great amounts of rock up and down these river valleys.  The only way you're going to do that to the extent that we see it, is either a long, long time period, which is probably going on, but it would be a whole lot easier to pack these rocks up and down the river by boat too.  So I think water craft plays a big part in the peopling of the New World.  Not only from the arrival but through the distribution over the entire continent.  And I think we're going to have to start thinking in terms of people with boats.

We're beginning to get a whole new picture.  It's clear that it's much more complex.  But that's what's so exciting because some day we will know.  All we have to do is keep plugging away and keep an open mind on what we're seeing out there and play with some of these ideas that we might at first blush say, "Oh that's ridiculous, we'd never say that..." but I think if we keep going we'll be surprised at what we find.  Humans are humans and these are modern humans just like you and me, with well developed brains that can reason and figure out.  Ocean going travel isn't that much and they could do it.  And it's going to be real fun to get the answer to that one.

( Fuente: Smithsonian Institution)