[HN Gopher] Archaeology and genetics can't yet agree on when hum...
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Archaeology and genetics can't yet agree on when humans arrived in
the Americas
Author : HR01
Score : 62 points
Date : 2022-12-31 12:44 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (aeon.co)
(TXT) w3m dump (aeon.co)
| neonate wrote:
| http://web.archive.org/web/20221231170006/https://aeon.co/es...
| taeric wrote:
| I love how the lede highlights that disagreement is good science.
| I realize that is largely just a hook, but it still makes me
| happy.
| cvg wrote:
| Interesting read. I'm curious if anyone is familiar with the
| software they use to connect the genetic sequencing. I'm amazed
| that they can find migration patterns from this data.
| Octokiddie wrote:
| > Then, in 2021, a team of archaeologists dropped a bombshell
| into this debate: they'd found footprints - unquestionable
| evidence of a human presence - at White Sands National Park in
| New Mexico, dating to between 23,000-21,000 years ago.
|
| The article places that date long before the Last Glacial Maximum
| (LGM):
|
| > It [the Clovis point] appeared widely across the continent
| beginning about 13,400 years ago, near the end of the LGM.
|
| Which raises the question of what people were doing in the
| Americas before the LGM?
|
| USGS has this to say about what might have been going on with the
| climate at the time the White Sands footprints were laid down:
|
| > During the late Pleistocene (~129,000 to ~11,700 years ago),
| full glacial conditions were interrupted repeatedly by abrupt
| warming events called Dansgaard-Oeschger, or D-O events. In the
| southwestern U.S., D-O events caused centuries-long megadroughts,
| which devastated spring ecosystems, lowered lake levels, affected
| sea-surface temperatures and circulation patterns, and even
| triggered seismic activity. One of these events, called D-O 2,
| dates to ~23,500 years ago and was especially impactful to spring
| ecosystems, as water tables never returned to the same levels
| after the event that they had maintained for thousands of years
| prior.
|
| https://www.usgs.gov/programs/climate-research-and-developme...
|
| Wikipedia notes that D-O events flared up extremely rapidly on a
| geological timescale:
|
| > In the Northern Hemisphere, they [D-O events] take the form of
| rapid warming episodes, typically in a matter of decades, each
| followed by gradual cooling over a longer period. ...
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dansgaard-Oeschger_event
| rfwhyte wrote:
| The only hypothesis I can come up with that lets me square the
| archaeological evidence (the numerous sites with pre-clovis
| dates) and the genetic evidence (almost all current North
| American indigenous population genetics derives from a single
| population that split off 17Kya) is that there's been multiple
| waves of people that have migrated into the Americas, and that
| either the events precluding or surrounding the Younger Dryas
| period contributed to a severe depopulating of the continent at
| that time, or that the most recent wave of immigrants almost
| entirely wiped out the previous population, as had they absorbed
| them I would assume we'd see more genetic evidence of that.
|
| Personally I think the preponderance of archaeological evidence
| is strongly suggesting that there were absolutely people in the
| Americas pre-clovis, but the really interesting question from
| here then is who were they and what happened to them?
| crazygringo wrote:
| Yes, multiple waves is suggested near the very end of the
| article, and that this is a focus of current data collection:
|
| > _Another possibility ties together evidence of Population Y
| and potential archaeological evidence at sites like White
| Sands. Could there have been multiple migrations into the
| Americas, with one pre-LGM migration consisting of Population Y
| individuals (and perhaps Unsampled Population A or other groups
| we have yet to identify), and one post-LGM migration? This
| would reconcile the archaeological evidence of early traces of
| humans in the Americas (if they are indeed legitimate, which
| has yet to be demonstrated to everyone's satisfaction) and the
| genetic data._
|
| > _Archaeologists sceptical of White Sands' early dates are
| dubious of the second scenario, and it is admittedly
| speculative. We need a great deal more data, both genomic and
| archaeological, to test it. But, as a field, we are actively
| engaged in collecting that data, even as I type these words._
| moloch-hai wrote:
| The comet strike of 12,800 years ago neatly wiped out north
| American camels, horses, giant sloths, mammoths, mastodons,
| saber-tooth cats, dire wolves, the biggest bear, cheetahs, and
| numerous others species, and neatly terminated all Clovis
| production. It would not be a stretch to guess it _also_ wiped
| out most of the people _making_ the Clovis points.
|
| People living in southeast Asia 70,000 years ago were certainly
| sailing out of sight of land, because they reached and
| colonized Australia. It beggars belief to suggest they did not
| also go to other places in equally easy reach, and then others
| from there.
|
| The article disgracefully trots out, once again, the
| "construction equipment" claim about the Cerutti mastodon site,
| despite its thorough refutation.
|
| The article further _vindicates_ Graham Hancock 's complaints
| of vicious mis-representation. His projections are certainly
| wrong in myriad details, but he is totally sincere in advancing
| them. He has predicted, correctly, embarrassingly many recent
| developments; I would not be surprised at more. When you feel
| you need to lie about your opponent to discredit him, it tells
| us more about you than about him.
| AlotOfReading wrote:
| The 16-17ka date is the divergence between Northern and
| southern native american groups, both related to the later
| (~13ka) clovis culture. Indigenous americans as a whole
| diverged from Eurasians sometime before 20ka. That initial
| population eventually split into multiple lineages (Unsampled
| Population A, Ancient Beringians, Clovis ancestors) that
| entered the Americas, although it's not clear what order those
| events occurred in.
|
| We know that there was also later admixture between Alaskan and
| Eurasian populations across the bering strait and groups like
| the paleoinuit likely originated (partially) on the siberian
| side of the straight, but the vast majority of indigenous
| ancestry across the Americas as a whole derives to the
| ancestors of the clovis complex. It's not clear how preclovis
| people relate genetically to those clovis ancestors in the
| absence of genetic data for them.
| ericmcer wrote:
| I read about 'Population Y' in David Reichs book "Who We Are and
| How We Got Here" (which is a good read but was a bit too in depth
| for me).
|
| One interesting thing in the book was how humans kept repeating
| this cycle: societies migrate outward and form new societies.
| Then one of the societies would eradicate/consume a bunch of
| nearby ones, form a gigantic society, and the process would begin
| anew. On a human timescale it is horrific and brutal but over a
| 50,000 year period it is interesting how we spread out but always
| eventually reunite with the group we split from, unfortunately in
| a brutal way :(.
| nothrowaways wrote:
| Interesting, the world might end up being one eventually
| skymast wrote:
| What happened to the Mound People? And as an added credit, which
| civilization of North American 'natives' did the Mound People
| exterminate?
| [deleted]
| resuresu wrote:
| Over 100k years ago according to serpent mound in Ohio.
| googlryas wrote:
| Wikipedia first line:
|
| > The Serpent Mound is believed to have been built by the
| Native American Adena peoples around 320 BCE, and then either
| added to or repaired by the Fort Ancient peoples around 1100
| CE.
|
| So maybe 2k years?
| maxbond wrote:
| (See correction below.)
|
| Much older.
|
| There are various disputed sites, but the recent discovery of
| footprints in White Sands establishes a lower bound of
| between 21k and 23k. (This is less settled than I'd thought.)
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Sands_fossil_footprints
|
| The previous uncontroversial lower bound was between 12.8k
| and 13.5k. (This hasn't been a lower bound for a while, see
| below.)
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clovis_point
|
| It's my understanding this is an active area of debate. To
| give a tentative upper bound, the Cerutti mastodon kill -
| who's anthropogenic origins, while they seem compelling to me
| (a nonexpert), are hotly debated, have a date of 130k years
| ago.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cerutti_Mastodon_site
|
| (I suspect GP meant to reference the Cerutti Mastodon site,
| rather than Serpent Mound?)
|
| (And of course, much of this is referenced in the article,
| I'm busted for reading the comments first! Interesting
| article that says it far better than I, worth reading.)
| jcranmer wrote:
| The current uncontroversial bound is roughly 15kya--as the
| article notes, the White Sands fossil footprints are still
| controversial. The Clovis First hypothesis has been
| considered thoroughly discredited in the academic community
| for about 20 years now.
|
| The Cerutti Mastodon site is not compelling to me, because
| a date of 130kya would put it before any other site of homo
| sapiens outside of Africa. Being so far out of line with
| other evidence means that the evidence in favor of hominids
| needs to be exceptionally rock solid, which it isn't.
| masklinn wrote:
| Cerutti being real doesn't mean it's H. Sapiens tho does
| it? It could be an older hominin, an other descendant of
| H.Erectus (after all as far as we know H. Neandertalensis
| did not evolve in africa, and H. Erectus reached the sea
| of china and the pacific ocean)
|
| Although Fuyan also shows H.Sapiens _may_ (its datation
| is also disputed) also have reached out of africa much
| earlier than otherwise supported.
| merpnderp wrote:
| Absolutely. Many H. subspecies were tool using.
| AlotOfReading wrote:
| The problem of cerutti's dating is that the
| archaeological record of hominids in the high Arctic
| begins <50kya, 80k after the hypothetical dating. There's
| some middle paleolithic stuff in southern/central
| Siberia, but also few options to get to the new world
| without boats or beringia (which was submerged during
| previous interglacials).
| maxbond wrote:
| For sure, thanks for keeping me honest. I'm a decidedly a
| nonexpert, I just watch some documentaries and such.
|
| I would submit we should be cautious with
| metaobservations like, "this is much older than other
| sites," because we should be trying to prove ourselves
| wrong, whereas these sorts of metaobservations amplify
| confirmation bias. I'm not saying skepticism is
| unwarranted, just that we need to be careful with this
| sort of reasoning.
|
| As a side note, I've seen people strike through stuff out
| on HN, and I'd like to strike through this claim to
| emphasize there's a correction; it's not in the
| undocumented features repo[1], and I've tried a few
| standard things like ~this~ and ~~this~~ and -this- and
| --this-- and have never figured it out. Can anyone tell
| me what the markdown is?
|
| [1] https://github.com/minimaxir/hacker-news-undocumented
| actionfromafar wrote:
| I think they use Unicode strike-through characters.
| maxbond wrote:
| Testing
|
| Beautiful, thank you.
| TedDoesntTalk wrote:
| Are you able to generate those characters on mobile, or
| were you on a laptop?
| maxbond wrote:
| I used this site: https://unicode-
| table.com/en/tools/strikethrough-text/
| kuhewa wrote:
| > I would submit we should be cautious with
| metaobservations like, "this is much older than other
| sites," because we should be trying to prove ourselves
| wrong, whereas these sorts of metaobservations amplify
| confirmation bias.
|
| Both 'we should be trying to prove ourselves wrong' and
| 'Being so far out of line with other evidence means that
| the evidence in favor of hominids needs to be
| exceptionally rock solid' can both be valid at the same
| time. The base rate of a 'false positive' for
| extraordinary claims that conflict with an existing body
| of evidence is typically much higher so confidence in the
| evidence would need to quite strong for that piece of
| evidence to move the consensus.
|
| I'd consider myself largely a frequentist but the
| relevant xkcd [1] comes to mind
|
| I'd argue that ignoring that aspect can amplify one's
| susceptiblity to confirmation bias if one is predisposed
| to believing in a very early American hominid story for
| whatever reason.
|
| [1] https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/frequentists_vs_bayesian
| s_2x.pn...
| notart666 wrote:
| Does that make sense for them to continued to have existed
| for thousands of years during the ice age where nothing
| grew? Or if the dating is even accurate at all?
| maxbond wrote:
| Well, the ice age[1] was everywhere right? Our ancestors
| would've had trouble surviving most anywhere, why not
| California? It's not that literally nothing grew,
| otherwise what were the mastadon & other animals in the
| kill site eating?
|
| Another possibility is that this was another group of
| hominids, not homo sapiens, and that they did in fact die
| out.
|
| But honestly I'm not qualified to say much more in the
| subject than I have, I think it's a fascinating
| hypothesis & that the evidence that the bones were broken
| apart by being impacted with stones, in a similar manner
| to how bones are broken up to extract marrow, is
| compelling. And that the further isotopic evidence
| suggesting it was the stones found around the site,
| rather than construction equipment, is also compelling.
| But I'm not an archaeologist, and when the debate
| settles, I'll accept the conclusion they come to.
|
| [1] Not to be pedantic, just to note because I find it
| fascinating, but the current ice age hasn't ended, this
| was the "last glacial period". Between ice ages there can
| be things like palm trees and turtles living at the
| poles. We're currently in an interglacial period of an
| ongoing ice age.
| kuhewa wrote:
| Yeah worth mentioning, to put a fine point on it -
| geological ice ages are millions of years long and
| include alternating glacial and interglacial periods. In
| popular use of the terms, ice ages are those shorter
| glacial periods.
| masklinn wrote:
| Things grew during "ice ages". Just not in the glacier-
| covered north.
|
| The ice stopped well short of the southern border of
| california: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/common
| s/2/26/Iceage_n...
|
| Furthermore the LGM event started around 33000 BCE,
| reached its peak around 25000 BCE, and the deglaciation
| started around 19000 BCE with a significant acceleration
| around 15000 BCE.
| kuhewa wrote:
| A good reference point is Los Angeles would have had a
| NorCal climate during the glacial.
| dmckeon wrote:
| Great review of a complicated and developing topic. Best line,
| and so true:
|
| > Unfortunately, because science is all too often taught in
| school as a collection of facts, rather than a dynamic process of
| enquiry, people can be vulnerable to being misled ...
| tdrgabi wrote:
| Tongue in cheek because I feel nitpicky:
|
| Feels like the above quote is misleading as well. It uses the
| pattern:
|
| <because reason suitable to my point> <situation that most of
| us agree happens>.
|
| We agree that situation happens but the reason is not obvious,
| it just sounds right.
|
| Maybe we will always be vulnerable to be misled, regardless of
| how we are thought, education won't change that, it just sounds
| pleasant etc...
| maxbond wrote:
| > When European settlers and explorers first encountered the
| Native peoples of the Americas, they sought to force the fact of
| the Native people's existence into a Biblical worldview. The
| First Peoples, who built the impressive earthworks, monuments,
| temples and pyramids throughout the Americas, were recast as
| members of a lost tribe of Israelites, Irish sailors, or possibly
| Vikings, for the ideological convenience of settlers.
|
| > The pretence that the first peoples of the Americas were a
| different race than Native Americans - a view known today as the
| Myth of the Moundbuilders - became extremely popular in the 18th
| and 19th centuries.
|
| I'm always struck by how there's nothing new under the sun. This
| is basically the same conspiracy theory as Ancient Aliens, with
| different aesthetics for different centuries.
| [deleted]
| hedgehog wrote:
| For whatever reason there's a consistent tendency for people of
| every era I've read about to think they are the smartest and
| most advanced that have walked the earth, topping a long arc of
| progress. The more I read about history the more obvious it is
| that over and over we've gained and then lost significant
| bodies of knowledge about civil engineering, surveying,
| agriculture, navigation, mathematics, etc. Pretty amazing.
| eesmith wrote:
| Minor nit: not all of the Norse settlers of Vinland were
| Christian.
| stevehawk wrote:
| I toured those mounds near St Louis.. it's absolutely amazing.
| Especially since none of my childhood public education made a
| single effort to state their existence, let alone go into just
| how much of a society existed before we (Europeans) showed up.
| rayiner wrote:
| Where did you go to elementary school? In Virginia we spent
| enormous amounts of time (way too long) covering Native
| American history.
| throwayyy479087 wrote:
| Same. Any time someone complains about X not being taught
| in school, it's important to remember that it likely is
| taught and they likely didn't pay attention.
|
| Hell, we made atlatls in middle school
| Avshalom wrote:
| no you didn't
| ijidak wrote:
| Wow! As an American that feels somewhat knowledgeable about
| Native American history, I can't believe I've never heard of
| this!?!?
|
| Sadly, the effect of past racisms and prejudices still
| distort what has become common knowledge today.
| mason55 wrote:
| That's interesting. Where I grew up in central Ohio, we had a
| whole year of "Ohio history" in, I think, 4th grade. We spent
| a ton of time on the Ohio mound builders and even took a
| class trip to see the mounds.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serpent_Mound
| mbg721 wrote:
| Serpent Mound and Sunwatch are the big show-stoppers, but
| lots of Ohioans have mounds practically in their backyards.
| My dad used to joke that the Adena and Hopewell had some
| mounds for burial, and some for religious rituals, but the
| one near our house was where they threw their empty beer
| bottles.
| throwayyy479087 wrote:
| There's oyster cairns all over NYs coastal and riparian
| plains. Not protected or anything, you can go and poke
| around
| TedDoesntTalk wrote:
| Maine, too.
| mrexroad wrote:
| > "[...] archaeologists believe that the mound's creation
| could have been influenced by two different astronomical
| events: the light from the supernova that created the Crab
| Nebula in the year 1054 CE [...] The light of the supernova
| would have been visible for two weeks after it first
| reached earth, which could even be seen in broad day
| light."
|
| I can't even begin to _imagine_ how humans would have
| interpreted such an event.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| Historical records from the year 1054 are available (and
| are of course the reason we date the nebula to "1054"
| rather than "the eleventh century"). You can just go see
| what people of the time thought.
|
| Wikipedia doesn't quote the records associated with 1054,
| but does quote the record of a supernova in the year 185:
|
| > In the 2nd year of the epoch Zhongping [Zhong Ping ],
| the 10th month, on the day Guihai [Gui Hai ] [December 7,
| Year 185], a 'guest star' appeared in the middle of the
| Southern Gate [Nan Men ] [an asterism consisting of e
| Centauri and a Centauri], The size was half a bamboo mat.
| It displayed various colors, both pleasing and otherwise.
| It gradually lessened. In the 6th month of the succeeding
| year it disappeared.
|
| ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SN_185 )
|
| What people thought appears to have been "sometimes there
| are new stars, but they go away again".
| mbg721 wrote:
| Cahokia is shockingly big, and the idea of multiple
| successive societies of mound-builders is sort of ignored or
| taken for granted; the concept of American Indians who
| wouldn't fit into a John Wayne movie doesn't cross Americans'
| minds.
| prpl wrote:
| On that point, can you name even 1 pre-columbian films that
| doesn't involve a white person?
|
| Here is a relevant wikipedia article:
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Films_set_in_pre-
| Co...
| mrexroad wrote:
| One tragedy, on top of the mountain of others, is that
| their histories were passed down orally. Much of that has
| been destroyed.
|
| One thing that struck me when I read about The Great
| Flood of 1862 [0], was that the Native Americans
| recognized the weather patterns for a series of
| atmospheric rivers and warned the settlers to relocate to
| the hills. (Tl;Dr: Central Valley ca was under water for
| months, Sacramento was abandoned) IIRC, it wasn't until
| the 1990s that we had the ability to detect/"recognize"
| atmospheric rivers with satellites and finally gave them
| a name.
|
| [edit: added link] [0]
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Flood_of_1862
| throwayyy479087 wrote:
| I'm Hacker News' resident chud, but this is an actual
| issue. Natives exist only in relation to colonization.
| Prey, Apocalypto, and other well-made movies about first
| peoples ALWAYS include a white guy. Prey was egregious,
| could have easily only been about natives.
|
| Maybe Atanarjuat doesn't?
| mbg721 wrote:
| I don't know many movies set in pre-Columbian America at
| all. The idea that this was once the largest city in
| North America north of Mexico and it's as unknown as it
| is even to people who live nearby is crazy to me.
| TedDoesntTalk wrote:
| > concept of American Indians who wouldn't fit into a John
| Wayne movie doesn't cross Americans' minds
|
| "Dances With Wolves", nominated for 12 Academy awards and
| won 7. Guess you missed that one.
| mbg721 wrote:
| I actually haven't seen it, you're right, but my
| understanding is that it's about the Sioux in the
| American Western frontier, which is more in line with
| media stereotypes than, for instance, the Iroquois in New
| York or Seminoles in Florida.
| pookah wrote:
| Comanche were the stereotype. The memory of the Comanche
| empire would have been fresh in the minds of Americans
| (and Mexicans) in the classical hollywood era. Comanche
| held territory from Kansas all the way to Mexico. They
| literally destroyed Northern Mexico. Europeans have no
| idea how intense life was for anybody that had to live in
| and around that tribe. And this was in the 1870's (not
| the 1400's).
| TedDoesntTalk wrote:
| With all due respect, perhaps you should see a seminal
| film before making sweeping judgements of American film
| portrayal of Native Americas? I'm not sure what your
| reference to the Iroquois and Seminoles has to do with
| it. Certain tribes are in American awareness more than
| others. That happened pre-TV and modern-day media. I
| don't think you get to decide who Kevin Costner writes
| films about, but you could write your own.
| Cupertino95014 wrote:
| > I'm always struck by how there's nothing new under the sun
|
| The fact that the 19th century featured provably wrong theories
| about where the native peoples came from is not suggestive of
| anything. They thought there was an ether that light traveled
| through, too.
|
| Native peoples' myths are often "we were always here; we sprang
| from the earth." Well, we all came from Africa, ultimately.
| maxbond wrote:
| I think you misunderstand me. I'm not making an argument (ie
| I'm not claiming this to prove anything), I'm remarking on a
| pattern that I see recur, and an example in this article that
| sparked my interest.
|
| I think it's interesting that conspiracy theory tropes seem
| to recur very reliably over time. I have an interest in this
| topic and when I'm reading about it, I find there's a lot of
| rhyming.
|
| Conspiracism and exploded scientific hypothesis are quite
| different in nature. They're "wrong" in quite different ways.
| I recently made a comment addressing this and it might
| interest you:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34186172
|
| To your last point, myths are a claim about religious truth,
| not scientific truth. You can't meaningfully compare
| statements from different epistemologies like that. (Because
| I spend too much time on HN, I actually have a comment where
| I elaborate on that point too.
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33952354)
| WalterBright wrote:
| I saw a PBS show some years back that found traces of french
| DNA in the eastern tribes, along with some similarities of
| arrowheads with some found in caves in France. The speculation
| is that some ice age french cavemen crossed the Atlantic ice to
| get to America.
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