US Pre-Columbian Immigration: The Clovis First Paradigm Hoodwink

Last year the theories of prehistoric new world migration and settlement were put under the loop. The findings, published in the journal Science by Dennis Jenkins and his colleagues at the University of Oregon, caused a stir in the archaeological community. The site of the discoveries is at Paisley Caves in Oregon where research has been ongoing since 2002. The new revelations are significant because the researchers uncovered feces (coprolites) containing human DNA which were in situ with various stone tools; namely, spearheads and arrow tips. Furthermore, the carbon dating of more than 100 artifacts securely documents the age of the tools at the site as being up to 13,000 years old.

The coprolite samples which contained mitochondrial DNA have been analyzed and confirm that the peoples who left them there were indeed of Asian origin. This is because of the haplogroup A mitochondrial DNA also found in Native Americans which suggests a progressive lineage. The coprolites were dated at 14,500 year BCE (before the current era) which is even older than the artifacts. The commotion around the article is that the date o 13,000 years ago predated by a 1,000 years the orthodox theory of Clovis First. The team of scientists have termed this stone tool technology as Western Stemmed Tradition. The underlying implication is that two divergent groups migrated from Asia each with its own distinct tool technology. This is an remarkable discovery and a fascinating story but it remains a scientific propaganda campaign.

Clovis First as a theory is an example of the rigidity and tunnel vision which the established scientific community uses to anchor itself. The migration and settlement of the New World is vastly more complex and surprising than a decades old and theoretically bankrupt paradigm. Firstly, one needs to be familiar with the prevailing theory of prehistoric migration from Asia to the Americas to appreciate the disparities. Secondly, to fully grasp the convoluted findings published in the journal Science, an example of an alternative theory of migration is required. How has archaeology portrayed the Asian migration to the New World?

The orthodox theory of land migration posits that thes Paleo-Indians crossed into the New World from Asia via an ice age land bridge. This hypothesis is generally known as the Bering Strait Theory or Beringia Theory. This specific culture of big game hunters (big game is meant to include Mastodons, Mammoths and other “woolly” large mammals) crossed the Bering Strait at the latest 12,000 years ago but as early as 35,000. The evidence thus far doesn't support any migration occurring before 22,000 years ago. The crux of the revisionist argument is that it is illogical and quixotic to assume that a peoples could have migrated southward, eventually reaching the tip of South America by 11,000 years ago, and had sufficient time to socially evolve into a sedentary and highly civilized culture. The recent findings by The University of Oregon are a testament to those shortcomings.

Take for instance, Monte Verde chile which has been archaeologically dated at 14,800 years before the present era, a good 1000 years before the emergence of the Clovis culture. How can it be explained that a hunter-gather society traveled so far and was simultaneously able to develop a tool technology different from Clovis? The clovis pundits maintain that the migration was primarily a coastal migration which would allow for a more rapid expansion towards the southern tip of South America.

However, there are carbon dated in situ finds in the interior of North America and as far flung as Florida. One of these Clovis culture anomalies is the Page-Ladson prehistory site in Northern Florida. At the site which is underwater a pit was discovered containing elephant bones, bone tools and flakes from presumably tool making. Furthermore, some organic material from the pit sets the chronology of the site from 13,000 to 11,700 years. This means that the earliest dates for artifacts found in the site predate the accepted beginning of the Clovis First period by between 1,000 and 1,500 years. More interesting to dispelling the Clovis First hegemony is that some of the bones from a particularly older stratum are radiocarbon dated at 22,000 years BCE and have apparent human manufactured cut marks, most notably on a complete mastodon tusk. The Asian hunter-gather migrating nomads had reached Florida well before the dawn of the Clovis First period.

The Topper archaeological site in South Carolina sheds an even brighter light on the failings of the Clovis First theory. The artifacts recovered from this site seem to predate Clovis Culture by at least 3,000 years. Of the various artifacts found in a stratum dating back 16,000-20,000 years BP, by far he most infamous is the “Topper Chopper”. Animal renderings, possibly a birdlike effigy, on the stone tool is consistent with Native American and European artifacts occurring around the same time in the Paleolithic period. This is intriguing evidence which makes the link to European technologies and potential settlement of the New World by Europeans.

Of course there are many theories which compete with Clovis First as alternative explainations for the glaring discrepancies in migration and settlement of the New World. Perhaps the best known and one which carries the most weight is the Solutrean Hypothesis. Its theoretical foundation is built upon the similarities between stone tool technologies of the Solurean Culture and late Clovis Culture. The Solutrean Culture is thought to be a chiefly European tool technology emanating from the Iberian Peninsula and the interior of France. Imbedded in the theory is the idea that a migration pattern would have followed the aquatic kelp forests along the ice sheet running along Northern Europe to North America. The hypothesis maintains that people would have crafted kayaks or some other vessel and lined its hull with animal skins. A kelp forest is abundant enough in sea life and vegetation to supplement or supplant the diet of the travelers. The Solutrean Hypothesis doesn't negate nor render other theories or hypotheses invalid, like the Clovis First theory does. It merely adds a thread to the fabric of New World migration and settlement theories.

The scientific wrangling won't be cleared up with the University of Oregon's serendipitous find which only bolsters the orthodoxy Clovis First theory. A more objective and fulfilling hypothesis would be that pre-colombian America was discovered and settled by disparate groups of migrating peoples from Eurasia. The Bering Straight land bridge theory coupled with the Clovis First Hypothesis is riddled with statistical anomalies as a paradigm. The struggle for a supreme New World migration theory continues which is, more often than not, the rule in scientific inquiry. When a interdisciplinary approach is finally attempted then the true splendor of New World migrational peoples and their cultures will bear fruit.

Spinoza's Chutzpah

Synching up the profane and the sacred

 

     When I made the decision as an undergrad to pursue a minor in Anthropology instead of a double major along with History, my philosophical world view was disassembled, rearranged and pieced back together. But in a positive way. It galvanized the dissimilar and sometimes incongruent paradigms which oozed back and forth between the hard and soft science classes at the university. One of the prerequisite courses was an introduction to Anthropology of the Family. Although the course was as interesting as the professor could eek out in a 4 month stint, ultimately it proved to be underwhelming at best. By default I was able to enroll in this course but the course I really wanted to follow to satisfy my requirements was Medical Anthropology. At the time, youth was my driving force like a fire in the belly which spurred me on and didn't accept disappointment. I told myself that if I couldn't follow the lectures, so be it; but I was going to study the book and handouts which were listed. 
 

      The title of the book eludes me now but the contents of the book; its basic tenets, the gist of the narrative, fascinated me to the point of obsession. Primitive cultures, now abandoned for the p.c. Pre-literate moniker, was and still is the first stepping stone in American and European Anthropology education. The early 20^th century paradigm shift in Anthropology from the concept of “other” to “different” is still prevalent and woven seamlessly into today's curriculum. Pioneering anthropologists like Franz Boas taught a second generation of pioneering anthropologists to throw off the shackles of Social Darwinism and study indigenous cultures as unique and intrinsically equal cultures. Without being laden down in nominal conclusions of good and bad, anthropologists like Ruth Benedict and Margaret Mead spearheaded the Relativism movement in the social sciences. Mead's seminal work on sexuality; “Coming of Age in Samoa”, shown a light on a sexually repressed Western Culture. Franz Boas, in his forward to her book, illuminates what Mead's work represented; “Courtesy, modesty, good manners, conformity to definite ethical standards are universal, but what constitutes courtesy, modesty, very good manners, and definite ethical standards is not universal. It is instructive to know that standards differ in the most unexpected ways." This was what the textbook from Medical Anthropology was espousing at its core; knowledge and wisdom are two separate concepts which are universal to all cultures but differ in meaning within various cultures. 
 
      The example which rattled my brain as most poignant and epiphanic was not from some far flung exotic Polynesian island; it was from New England USA. In the winter months when Northern climes are subject to but seldom reported epidemics of flu those areas utilize home spun remedies to combat and stave off the demoralizing secondary infections. One of those remedies is called Grog. Apparently the word grog stems from the British Vice Admiral Edward Vernon who was know as "Old Grog". The libation was formerly a mixture of alcohol and fruit juices and spices which rationed to sailors as a means of avoiding drinking stagnant water and preventing scurvy. Sailors being sailors the rations were often gulped down prematurely leaving them little recourse but to drink the algae ridden water. The solution was to dilute the mixture with water which stretched the rations for a longer duration. Initially a maritime drink it is found all over Europe and the Western world. It is documented to even have an equivalent in Fuji, no doubt unintentionally introduced by seamen on shore leave. Regardless, the New England variant was a combination of vinegar, honey and occasionally alcohol. The ratio of ingredients shows a dichotomy at work; bitter and sweet made palatable by a jigger of alcohol (exact amount may vary). Of course, the honey has a dearth of nutritional goodness and the alcohol can lull the sick and afflicted into a nice slumber. I believe the vinegar might give the illusion of a medicinal wheelhouse. If it doesn't taste bad then it's probably not helping. 
 
      This explanation is the HOW. This is what it would tell us empirically, scientifically. But to the those drinking the grog it is only the WHY which is important. The disparate properties jumbled together work because they work together well. This is maybe over simplified and tautological but it led me to continue to extrapolate on pre-literate societies and their ethnobotanical remedies. A healer or a shaman or a witchdoctor in a pre-literate community has a mind numbingly expansive knowledge of his or her immediate pharmacopeia. Much like the New England grog maker, the healer, shaman or witchdoctor mixes and blends a variety of plants, roots and herbs and often hallucinogens to aid in the recovery of a ailing tribesman. The chemistry, biology, and scientific underpinnings can be studied and understood giving us the HOW the remedy worked. That doesn't satiate a cosmology where the profane and sacred are inexorably intertwined. The need to complete the whole must have a WHY. Those pre-literate societies might assume that a deity is embodied in a plant or root and through a concisely dictated ritual resulting in drinking the liquid, a spirit is released which goes forth and heals. The WHY doesn't negate the HOW. It forms a set; an ethical circuit which satisfies the sacred and the profane and ipso facto brings structure. This allows for an individual within a society to experience moral cohesion below the surface tension of empirical reality. 
 
      How and Why are therefore cut from the same cloth but remain in the western world at odds with each other. For example, take the words demonstrate and inspire. Etymologically demonstrate is taken from Latin meaning “de = proove/monstrum = divine, sacred” but it has been bastardized into meaning empiricism: science. Inspire derives from the Latin word inspirationem which connotes breathing. At its root it incorporates the word spirare which is where we get the word spirit. The act of blowing and inhaling would allow us to ingest the sacred. So are science and mythology doomed to be at rivaling ends of our ethical world view? We can stoically marvel at the universe and proclaim that there must be some sort of intelligent design for such complex sequencing of DNA as proven in the multi-celluar life forms we call humans. There are, however, numerous flaws in the design which make me reluctant to believe in an omnipotent and benevolent greying old man perched on a cloud who's counting the number of fire ants who die in order to keep the biosphere in balance. The fact that life is sustained by killing seems to me to be a major flaw. Science supplies us with a progression of replicable hypotheses which allow us to comprehend the HOW of evolution. They tell us what mechanisms are at work selecting certain traits. Which of these traits may be helpful in the long run but also which ones are benign or antique but continue to be passed down from our homo sapiens ancestors who first interbred with Neanderthals. Like the archaic genes for small brains or the still valid but rapidly fading gene for red hair. 
 
      The total of nature's wonders in the vastness of diversity on this blue marble or the greater cosmos, either perceived or theorized like dark energy and dark matter, causes me to add credence to Spinoza's view God and the divine. Spinoza theorized a God who exists and is abstract and impersonal. The nutshell of Spinoza's believe in God is that the profane and the sacred are one in the same and exemplified by nature. All the cosmos and all the terrestrial beings are part of a God who is the sum of the universe and nature and not of a guardian overlording it. Spinoza was, uncharacteristically for the Jewish faith, excommunicated because of his heretical philosophy. Thankfully he was able to fused together the HOW and the WHY eloquently and holistically and in a neat and tidy philosophy; albeit posthumously. 
 
      If we accept the union of the sacred and the profane as being equally beneficial to our moral and ethical development we can begin to pose more stringent philosophical questions. When we ask ourselves one of the quintessential philosophical question : “what is death?” Intrinsically and by default the HOW alone becomes moot and irrelevant. The WHY usurps our self-reflective brain power and takes over the philosophical high ground. Will it be that the sacred provides us with solace not only in preparation for death but also moral support for those we leave behind? Science is not devoid of its WHY deliberation. Let's assume that most of the educated population believes in the Big Bang theory. In doing so we a priori concedes that we are all made from the same interstellar flotsam and jetsam that was spewed out over the universe at the moment of the Big Bang. If we agree to those two criteria then the WHY for science becomes easy. We humans just as all organic matter will return to the cosmic dust fragments from whence we came.

     Bridging the gab between the HOW and the WHY will make the derisive camps of the profane and sacred irrelevant and at the same time reduce a heap of metaphysical stress on all of us.