The Late Ice Age

The First Americans (? Before 15¸000 years ago to 11¸000 B.C.E. ago)

During all of the last glaciation¸ the Nearing Land Bridge joined extreme northeast Siberia and Alaska. During warmer intervals¸ it was more than a narrow isthmus¸ during the glacial maximum a broad plain. Thus it was theoretically possible for humans with out canoes to cross into North America from the Old World dry shod for all of the past 100¸000 years. Therein lies one of the great questions of world prehistory. When and how did the first humans settle the New World?

The controversies that surround the first Americans are still unresolved. Most authorities agree that the first Americans were anatomically modern humans. This is a string argument in favor of the first settlements during the past 45¸000 years¸ especially since recent mitochondria DNA research suggests there were four mtDNA lineage's for the Americans¸ with considerable¸ as yet undefined¸ time depth. The chronology of first settlements divides archaeologists into two camps. Some scientists argue passionately for a late–Ice Age occupation before 30¸000 years ago¸ perhaps as much as 15¸000 years earlier. Their theories pit them against most American archaeologists¸ who believe humans first crossed into Alaska at the very end of the Ice Age perhaps as the land bridge flooded after 15¸000 years ago. We must examine these two viewpoints more closely.

Settlement Before 30¸000 Years Ago?

The case for early settlement rests on a handful of sites¸ most of them in South America¸ none of the them yielding much than a scatter of alleged stone artifacts and sometimes animal bones. Therein lies the controversy¸ for what one archaeologist claims as a stone tool is rejected out of hand by another. Unfortunately¸ most of the claims for early settlements are based not on fine–grained¸ scientific examination of the artifacts and their context in the surrounding deposits but on an individual archaeologist's subjective belief that a handful of chipped stones are humanly manufactured by humans rather than of natural origin. For example¸ if one finds 35¸000–year–old “stone artifacts” deep in a hypothetical Peruvian cave¸ it is not sufficient to state they are manufactured by humans. One must prove beyond all measures of reasonable scientific doubt that they were made by prehistoric people and not formed for example by stones falling from a cliff face or by pebbles being time consuming and very difficult and this research has not yet been carried out as most of the sites where early settlement has been claimed. Let us briefly examine some of the early sites.

In South America¸ French archaeologist Nie´de Guidon has reported evidence of hearths and stone artifacts dating back to as early as 47¸000 years ago in the bottom layers of a rock shelter named Boqueiráo da Pedra Furada in northeastern Brazil. Many experts have expressed doubt about how these early levels and the artifacts in them were formed. They are concerned that a stream once ran through the rock shelter and about the possibility that rock falls from the surrounding cliffs manufactured tools. Almost certainly¸ human occupation did not begin here until after 10¸000 years ago.

Further south¸ in northern Chile¸ Tom Dillehay has uncovered a remarkable settlement on the edge of a stream. Monte Verde was occupied by foragers living in simple wooden dwellings between 11¸800 and 12¸000 B.C.E. A 31,000 year old lower level is said to contain split pebble and wood fragments¸ but¸ to date¸ excavations in these levels have been relatively limited¸ insufficient to document the proven presence of human occupation at such an early date.

There is no theoretical reason why Homo sapiens could not have moved south from Beringia well before 25¸000 years ago¸ but we still lack credible proof of such early humans settlement in Siberia¸ let alone the Americans. Whether this is because the Americans were still uninhabited¸ or because the human population was so mobile and tiny that little or no material survived continues to be hotly debated. As an outside observer¸ African archaeologist Nicholas Toth has made the important observation that it is pointless to place too much reliance on isolated finds. Rather¸ we should be searching for patterns of very early human settlement¸ characteristic distributions of artifacts and human activity that occur over wide areas¸ that indeed reflect widespread early occupation. Such patterns document the very earliest human occupation on earth. There is no theoretical reason why similar patterns should not turn up to chronicle the first Americans. So far¸ consistent distributions of human settlement in the New World date to after the Ice Age¸ to after 15¸000 years ago. However, we stress again that there is no reason why earliest settlement might not be found one day. So far¸ however the evidence is unconvincing.

Another scenario places first settlement during a brief warmer spell of the last glaciation between 30¸000 and 20¸000 years ago. This would be shortly before the late–Ice Age maximum cutoff movement south of Alaska until after about 13¸000 years ago.

Settlement Before 15¸000 Years Ago?

Most American archaeologist consider first settlement a much later phenomenon. Under the late scenario¸ a few families may have moved into Alaska during the very late Ice Age¸ perhaps before 15¸000 years ago. At that time¸ vast ice sheets mantled much of northern North America¸ effectively blocking access to the mid-continent. After 14¸000 years ago¸ these ice sheets retreated rapidly¸ allowing a trickle of human settlers to move onto the plains and into a new continent.

This hypothesis is based on the earliest indisputable archaeological evidence for human settlement¸ which dates to between 14¸000 and 12¸000 years ago. In North America¸ a handful of sites¸ among them Meadowcroft Rock Shelter in Pennsylvavina¸ and Fort Rock Cave¸ Oregon¸ may belong in this time frame. So do scattered sites from Central and South America¸ among them Velsequillo in Mexico¸ Taima Taima in Venezuela¸ and Monte Verde in northern Chile. All these sites have yielded small scatters of stone artifacts¸ occasionally a projectile project. After about 9¸2000 B.C.E. the trickle of archaeological sites turns into floods. There are now traces of Paleo–Indian (Greek paleos¦old)settlement between the southern margins of the ice sheets in the north and the Straits of Magellan in the far south. (The term Paleo–Indian is conventionally used to refer to the prehistoric inhabitants of the Americans from earliest settlements up to the beginning of the Archaic people in about 6000 B.C.E.)

How¸ then¸ did Paleo–Indians travel southward from the arctic to the heart of North America? Where they big–game hunters who followed small herds of animals southward through a widening corridor between the tow great North American ice sheets to the east of the Rockies as the ice sheets melted? Or were the first Americans expert sea-mammal hunters and fisherfolk¸ who crossed from Siberia along low– lying coasts in canoes while fishing and sea mammal hunting? Did their successors then travel southward along the Pacific coast into more temperate waters? Again¸ fierce controversy surrounds what is virtually nonexistent archaeological evidence. Perhaps both coastal settlement and terrestrial occupation took hold in the rapidly changing world of the late Ice Age. We simiply do not know¸ partly because the coastal sites of the day are buried hundreds of feet below modern sea levels.

At present¸ the consensus of archaeological opinion favors a relatively late late human occupation of the Americans at the very end of the Ice Age¸ but it is entirely possible that this scenario will change dramatically as a result of future research.

However why did first settlement take place? In all probability¸ the first Americans were probably behaving in the same way as other animal predators. They spent their days tracking the game herds¸ and perhaps sea mammals¸ that formed an important part of their subsistence¸ and when Siberian game herds moved onto the Bering Land Bridge during the coldest millennia of the last glaciation¸ their human predators followed. The higher ground to the east—Alaska—formed part of the same hunting grounds.

Site

Monte Verede

Monte Verde lies in a small river valley in Southern Chile¸ a streamside settlement covered by a peat bog¸ so that not only stone and bone but also wooden artifacts survive (page 116). The site had been excavated very thoroughly and has been radiocarbon–dated to between 11¸800 t0 12¸000 B.C.E. This far¸ only a portion of the site has been excavated¸ revealing two parallel rows of what are said to be rectangular houses¸ joined by connecting walls. The skin– covered houses were 9 to 13 feet (3 to 4 meters) square¸ with log and crude– plank foundations and a wooden framework. Clay–lined hearths¸ wooden mortars¸ and large quantities of vegetable foods were found in the houses. A short distances away a wishbone–shaped structure associated with chewed boloplant leaves (used today to make a form of medicinal tea)¸ mastodon bones¸ and other work debris. This may have been a work area.

The Monte Verde people exploited a very wide range vegetables foods¸ including wild potatoes ¦ they also hunted small game and perhaps mammals such as extinct camels and mastodons (it is possible that they scavenged such meat¸ however). Monte Verde was in a forest¸ with abundant vegetable foods year–round. The site was almost certainly a long–term campsite. What is fascinating is that 90 percent of the stone artifacts are crude river cobbles. It is clear that wood was the most important raw material. It was certainly used for spears and digging sticks and for haft–flaked-stone artifacts like those of which have survived in the wooden handles. Sites yielding simple as far south as Patagonia¸ but this is the first place that anyone has been able to make more complete discoveries.