Peopling of the Americas by Boat, Not Land

[Robert F. Smith]

Annalee Newitz, “Most scientists now reject the idea that the first Americans came by land,” Ars Technica, Nov 4, 2017, online at https://arstechnica.com/science/2017/11/majority-of-scientists-now-agree-that-humans-came-to-the-americas-by-boat/ , with map,

Quote

In the 2000s, overwhelming evidence suggested that a pre-Clovis group had come to the Americans before there was an ice-free passage connecting Beringia to the Americas. As Smithsonian anthropologist Torben C. Rick and his colleagues put it, "In a dramatic intellectual turnabout, most archaeologists and other scholars now believe that the earliest Americans followed Pacific Rim shorelines from northeast Asia to Beringia and the Americas."

Todd J. Braje, et al., “Finding the first Americans,” Science, 358/6363 (3 Nov 2017):592-594, online at http://science.sciencemag.org/content/358/6363/592 ,

Quote

Summary

For much of the 20th century, most archaeologists believed humans first colonized the Americas ∼13,500 years ago via an overland route that crossed Beringia and followed a long and narrow, mostly ice-free corridor to the vast plains of central North America. There, Clovis people and their descendants hunted large game and spread rapidly through the New World. Twentieth-century discoveries of distinctive Clovis artifacts throughout North America, some associated with mammoth or mastodon kill sites, supported this “Clovis-first” model. North America's coastlines and their rich marine, estuarine, riverine, and terrestrial ecosystems were peripheral to the story of how and when the Americas were first settled by humans. Recent work along the Pacific coastlines of North and South America has revealed that these environments were settled early and continuously provided a rich diversity of subsistence options and technological resources for New World hunter-gatherers.

It now appears that coming to America by boat was normal even from earliest times.  There is no longer any reason to credit the Beringia Land Bridge hypothesis, except in a much later period.

[strappinglad]

So everyone who ever came here was an immigrant?

[Scott Lloyd]

28 minutes ago, Robert F. Smith said:

Annalee Newitz, “Most scientists now reject the idea that the first Americans came by land,” Ars Technica, Nov 4, 2017, online at https://arstechnica.com/science/2017/11/majority-of-scientists-now-agree-that-humans-came-to-the-americas-by-boat/ , with map,

Todd J. Braje, et al., “Finding the first Americans,” Science, 358/6363 (3 Nov 2017):592-594, online at http://science.sciencemag.org/content/358/6363/592 ,

It now appears that coming to America by boat was normal even from earliest times.  There is no longer any reason to credit the Beringia Land Bridge hypothesis, except in a much later period.

Yes, I saw this cited in a Facebook post. 

But Robert, why are you shouting?

[strappinglad]

11 minutes ago, Scott Lloyd said:

But Robert, why are you shouting?

Either it was a ' caps lock ' error, or he is shouting to be heard over the din of decades of scientists who went to their graves knowing that the Bering Straight theory was the correct one , and are just now spinning .

[The Nehor]

1 hour ago, strappinglad said:

So everyone who ever came here was an immigrant?

If the buffalo had passed stricter laws keeping out illegal immigrants more of them would have survived.  

[Robert F. Smith]

17 hours ago, Scott Lloyd said:

Yes, I saw this cited in a Facebook post. 

But Robert, why are you shouting?

I try to put titles and headlines in all caps.  It's a habit.

No problem. We took on a new mod assigned to fix them. 

[Palerider]

Too bad none of this fits with a BoM scenario. The boat arrivals are supposed to be even earlier (up to 20,000 years). And it doesn't say the Bering Straight migration didn't happen, it just says they weren't the earliest. 

[Rajah Manchou]

18 minutes ago, Palerider said:

Too bad none of this fits with a BoM scenario. The boat arrivals are supposed to be even earlier (up to 20,000 years). And it doesn't say the Bering Straight migration didn't happen, it just says they weren't the earliest. 

It could fit a BoM scenario. The Dene (Navajo) arrived by boat around 3000 BC. Unless they swam across the Bearing Strait.

Ancient DNA Refines New World Settlement Paradigm

 

Edited November 6, 2017 by Rajah Manchou

[Robert F. Smith]

10 hours ago, Palerider said:

Too bad none of this fits with a BoM scenario. The boat arrivals are supposed to be even earlier (up to 20,000 years). And it doesn't say the Bering Straight migration didn't happen, it just says they weren't the earliest. 

Wrong, Palerider.  What it says is that coming to America at all times and all periods by boat was entirely normal.  It also notes that the Bering Strait (not Straight) Landbridge was blocked by ice in the early period and was not amenable to crossing then.  Plenty of crossings took place in other periods by both animals and humans.

For non-Mormon scientists like Mike Coe and Betty Meggars that helps explain the tight parallels between Asian, Pacific, and American cultures.  For Mormon scholars like John L. Sorenson, it clearly demonstrates that ocean voyaging to the New World across the Pacific was not only theoretically possible, but in fact all too common -- the Jaredites, Lehites, and Mulekites did nothing strange.

[smac97]

12 hours ago, Robert F. Smith said:

Annalee Newitz, “Most scientists now reject the idea that the first Americans came by land,” Ars Technica, Nov 4, 2017, online at https://arstechnica.com/science/2017/11/majority-of-scientists-now-agree-that-humans-came-to-the-americas-by-boat/ , with map,

Todd J. Braje, et al., “Finding the first Americans,” Science, 358/6363 (3 Nov 2017):592-594, online at http://science.sciencemag.org/content/358/6363/592 ,

It now appears that coming to America by boat was normal even from earliest times.  There is no longer any reason to credit the Beringia Land Bridge hypothesis, except in a much later period.

From Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetics_and_the_Book_of_Mormon

Quote

Map showing the generally accepted model of human spread over the world. Numbers indicate years before present. The indigenous peoples of the Americas are held by modern scientists to descend from the Paleo-Indians, who migrated from North Asia to Alaska via the Beringia land bridge, and not from the Middle East as claimed by the Book of Mormon.

I wonder if Wikipedia will allow updates to this.

-Smac

[Scott Lloyd]

12 minutes ago, Robert F. Smith said:

Wrong, Palerider.  What it says is that coming to America at all times and all periods by boat was entirely normal.  It also notes that the Bering Strait (not Straight) Landbridge was blocked by ice in the early period and was not amenable to crossing then.  Plenty of crossings took place in other periods by both animals and humans.

For non-Mormon scientists like Mike Coe and Betty Meggars that helps explain the tight parallels between Asian, Pacific, and American cultures.  For Mormon scholars like John L. Sorenson, it clearly demonstrates that ocean voyaging to the New World across the Pacific was not only theoretically possible, but in fact all too common -- the Jaredites, Lehites, and Mulekites did nothing strange.

Just goes to show that some people can be just as dogmatic on the pretext of science and scholarship as others are on the pretext of religion.

[smac97]

12 hours ago, Robert F. Smith said:

Annalee Newitz, “Most scientists now reject the idea that the first Americans came by land,” Ars Technica, Nov 4, 2017, online at https://arstechnica.com/science/2017/11/majority-of-scientists-now-agree-that-humans-came-to-the-americas-by-boat/ , with map,

Todd J. Braje, et al., “Finding the first Americans,” Science, 358/6363 (3 Nov 2017):592-594, online at http://science.sciencemag.org/content/358/6363/592 ,

It now appears that coming to America by boat was normal even from earliest times.  There is no longer any reason to credit the Beringia Land Bridge hypothesis, except in a much later period.

From Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetics_and_the_Book_of_Mormon

Quote

Map showing the generally accepted model of human spread over the world. Numbers indicate years before present. The indigenous peoples of the Americas are held by modern scientists to descend from the Paleo-Indians, who migrated from North Asia to Alaska via the Beringia land bridge, and not from the Middle East as claimed by the Book of Mormon.

I wonder if Wikipedia will allow updates to this.

-Smac

[hope_for_things]

13 hours ago, Robert F. Smith said:

Annalee Newitz, “Most scientists now reject the idea that the first Americans came by land,” Ars Technica, Nov 4, 2017, online at https://arstechnica.com/science/2017/11/majority-of-scientists-now-agree-that-humans-came-to-the-americas-by-boat/ , with map,

Todd J. Braje, et al., “Finding the first Americans,” Science, 358/6363 (3 Nov 2017):592-594, online at http://science.sciencemag.org/content/358/6363/592 ,

It now appears that coming to America by boat was normal even from earliest times.  There is no longer any reason to credit the Beringia Land Bridge hypothesis, except in a much later period.

Thanks for sharing this, its so interesting to find how new evidence is changing our paradigms on this subject.  

From what I'm reading in your first link, this doesn't mean the Clovis people didn't come over the Beringia Land bridge, this is just saying those people weren't the first inhabitants of the continent. 

Also, the hypothesis is that people traveled along the coastal regions on the Pacific coast in smaller boats while foraging along the coast.  No evidence to suggest they had the technology to build large boats that could traverse the vast ocean on a single voyage.  

[CV75]

7 minutes ago, hope_for_things said:

Thanks for sharing this, its so interesting to find how new evidence is changing our paradigms on this subject.  

From what I'm reading in your first link, this doesn't mean the Clovis people didn't come over the Beringia Land bridge, this is just saying those people weren't the first inhabitants of the continent. 

Also, the hypothesis is that people traveled along the coastal regions on the Pacific coast in smaller boats while foraging along the coast.  No evidence to suggest they had the technology to build large boats that could traverse the vast ocean on a single voyage.  

I think the Book or Mormon, being an abridgement, allows it to leave out voyage details such as stops along the way.

[hope_for_things]

 

48 minutes ago, Robert F. Smith said:

Wrong, Palerider.  What it says is that coming to America at all times and all periods by boat was entirely normal.  It also notes that the Bering Strait (not Straight) Landbridge was blocked by ice in the early period and was not amenable to crossing then.  Plenty of crossings took place in other periods by both animals and humans.

For non-Mormon scientists like Mike Coe and Betty Meggars that helps explain the tight parallels between Asian, Pacific, and American cultures.  For Mormon scholars like John L. Sorenson, it clearly demonstrates that ocean voyaging to the New World across the Pacific was not only theoretically possible, but in fact all too common -- the Jaredites, Lehites, and Mulekites did nothing strange.

Short distances in boats is what scientists believe was possible, not long distances. 

Quote

Humans probably did move from the Bering Land Bridge into the Americas once the ice free passage became available 12,500 years ago, but they would have arrived on a continent that was already populated with people who probably came along the Pacific coast thousands of years before. While it may sound improbable that humans could take boats along the coast from Asia, consider that humans arrived in Australia by boat, island hopping from Asia about 50,000 years ago.

Boat technology is one of our most ancient inventions, and it would have worked admirably for people who were using the vessels to go short distances along the coast, carrying supplies. Considered in this light, it shouldn’t surprise us if humans reached the Americas partly because they had developed fairly sophisticated transportation technology.

https://arstechnica.com/science/2016/08/time-to-scrap-the-idea-that-humans-arrived-in-the-americas-by-land-bridge/

Is there any theory by Sorensen or other Mormon scholars that talks about the BoM people traveling along the Pacific coastlines using short distances to arrive in the new world?  I'm not aware of one or how this would fit with this view of how the Americas became populated some ~14,000 yrs ago.  

 

[hope_for_things]

5 minutes ago, CV75 said:

I think the Book or Mormon, being an abridgement, allows it to leave out voyage details such as stops along the way.

These seem like two totally different methods of travel.  Slow and short increments using small boats and foraging as you go would have taken many many years to make these voyages and generations of people likely would have passed away.  See my last post and the quote from the article.  Island hoping down to Australia or short voyages along the Pacific coast would have gradually brought people to the continent.  Its a very different model than what is described in the BoM.  

I'm not saying the BoM method wasn't possible at the time it happened, that was thousands of years later and technology for boating had changed dramatically.  I'm just contesting the comparison between these early migrations and what the BoM describes, as the two are very different.  

[CV75]

1 minute ago, hope_for_things said:

These seem like two totally different methods of travel.  Slow and short increments using small boats and foraging as you go would have taken many many years to make these voyages and generations of people likely would have passed away.  See my last post and the quote from the article.  Island hoping down to Australia or short voyages along the Pacific coast would have gradually brought people to the continent.  Its a very different model than what is described in the BoM.  

I'm not saying the BoM method wasn't possible at the time it happened, that was thousands of years later and technology for boating had changed dramatically.  I'm just contesting the comparison between these early migrations and what the BoM describes, as the two are very different.  

I'm saying the Book or Mormon doesn't provide much of a model since it is an abridgement, and this also leaves open the possibility that voyagers stayed near coastlines or passed by islands.

[hope_for_things]

33 minutes ago, CV75 said:

I'm saying the Book or Mormon doesn't provide much of a model since it is an abridgement, and this also leaves open the possibility that voyagers stayed near coastlines or passed by islands.

The abridgment explanation doesn't make sense to me since the voyages are described in great detail, even the number of days on the sea in the Jaredite version.  They just weren't the same kind of voyages at all in their description.  It wasn't that the details were left out.  The Jaredites were inside their ships, even under the water like submarines.  Lehi's family experienced large storms and didn't see land for many days, the kind of narratives for both stories don't fit the descriptions for these kind of earlier migrations.  

[CV75]

23 minutes ago, hope_for_things said:

The abridgment explanation doesn't make sense to me since the voyages are described in great detail, even the number of days on the sea in the Jaredite version.  They just weren't the same kind of voyages at all in their description.  It wasn't that the details were left out.  The Jaredites were inside their ships, even under the water like submarines.  Lehi's family experienced large storms and didn't see land for many days, the kind of narratives for both stories don't fit the descriptions for these kind of earlier migrations.  

I guess the "great detail" is a matter of opinion. What detail is there is described only as part of an abridgement, and as far as the small plates go, a reflection of limited availability of plates and the priorities (1 Nephi 6:3).

That there were voyages of one kind does not preclude that there were voyages of another kind; the science is interesting that there were voyages to America and that such ancient mode of immigration is considered normal.

I'm glad you can find such certitude in the record, though!

[hope_for_things]

3 minutes ago, CV75 said:

I guess the "great detail" is a matter of opinion. What detail is there is described only as part of an abridgement, and as far as the small plates go, a reflection of limited availability of plates and the priorities (1 Nephi 6:3).

That there were voyages of one kind does not preclude that there were voyages of another kind; the science is interesting that there were voyages to America and that such ancient mode of immigration is considered normal.

I'm glad you can find such certitude in the record, though!

There is no evidence to support a claim that technology for long voyages across the Pacific or Atlantic oceans existed 14,000 years ago.  This is obvious, I'm confused as to how you are even disputing this.  

By the time of the BoM, either 2500 BCE or 600 BCE, the technology for boating was far different.  It may or may not have been advanced enough for this kind of voyage, but thats not even what I'm saying.  I'm not getting into any claims about what may or may not have been possible during the BoM times.  

[CV75]

3 minutes ago, hope_for_things said:

There is no evidence to support a claim that technology for long voyages across the Pacific or Atlantic oceans existed 14,000 years ago.  This is obvious, I'm confused as to how you are even disputing this.  

By the time of the BoM, either 2500 BCE or 600 BCE, the technology for boating was far different.  It may or may not have been advanced enough for this kind of voyage, but thats not even what I'm saying.  I'm not getting into any claims about what may or may not have been possible during the BoM times.  

Conceptually, the OP articles are about coming to America by boat and that this was normal. My observation is that if people did it in 14,000 (as you say with earlier, different technology), Lehites and Jaredites could also do it in Book of Mormon times (in the Jaredite case, using technology they already had, and in Nephi's case, different, revealed technology). Only the details of their voyages are lacking in the Book of Mormon, not the record that they took voyages, so we have lots of possibilities for the unmentioned details.

[bcuzbcuz]

15 hours ago, Robert F. Smith said:

Annalee Newitz, “Most scientists now reject the idea that the first Americans came by land,” Ars Technica, Nov 4, 2017, online at https://arstechnica.com/science/2017/11/majority-of-scientists-now-agree-that-humans-came-to-the-americas-by-boat/ , with map,

Todd J. Braje, et al., “Finding the first Americans,” Science, 358/6363 (3 Nov 2017):592-594, online at http://science.sciencemag.org/content/358/6363/592 ,

It now appears that coming to America by boat was normal even from earliest times.  There is no longer any reason to credit the Beringia Land Bridge hypothesis, except in a much later period.

It is not often, Robert, that I can fault your reasoning, but your with your OP title and your use of the authors conclusion to somehow wrangle a statement that can be construed as some support for the Americas first people coming here by boat, is nothing short of sloppy thinking.

Here, from Inverse.com, using the same source article, but using quotes from one of the authors of the hypothesis is,:

“If we really want to understand how humans got to America, Braje adds that archaeologists need to examine shorelines that haven’t changed dramatically in the last 20,000 years as well as look under the ocean. In 2016, archeologists announced they found evidence of pre-Clovis people by doing just that, discovering human and mastodon remains in a sinkhole 30 feet under the Aucilla River. Earlier this year, an unrelated group of archeologists found what are thought to be the earliest human remains found in the Americas in an underwater cave in Mexico, further supporting the idea that, if we want to understand how humans got here, we need to stick close to the water.

 

“Thirty years ago, we thought we had all the answers,” says Braje. “Now, there are more questions than answers.”

'Kelp Highway' Hypothesis Rewrites History of the First Americans

"Now, there are more questions than answers."

I was born and raised at the west coastline of North America. I’ve spent many hours in the kelp, studying and eating from everything there, from crabs to kelp. The Haida people of Haida Gwai (Queen Charlotte Islands) developed their inital wealth from the resources amongst the kelp. The study you reference has extremely little to do with boats and a whole lot more to do about how communities could string along the ice free coast from Alaska down through BC, Washington, Oregon, etc. for tens of thousands years ago.

Your implication that a coastal boat finding new resources along a coastline has something to do with boats in the BofM is sadly lacking in any correlation.

[Robert F. Smith]

55 minutes ago, bcuzbcuz said:

It is not often, Robert, that I can fault your reasoning, but your with your OP title and your use of the authors conclusion to somehow wrangle a statement that can be construed as some support for the Americas first people coming here by boat, is nothing short of sloppy thinking.

Here, from Inverse.com, using the same source article, but using quotes from one of the authors of the hypothesis is,:

“If we really want to understand how humans got to America, Braje adds that archaeologists need to examine shorelines that haven’t changed dramatically in the last 20,000 years as well as look under the ocean. In 2016, archeologists announced they found evidence of pre-Clovis people by doing just that, discovering human and mastodon remains in a sinkhole 30 feet under the Aucilla River. Earlier this year, an unrelated group of archeologists found what are thought to be the earliest human remains found in the Americas in an underwater cave in Mexico, further supporting the idea that, if we want to understand how humans got here, we need to stick close to the water.

 

“Thirty years ago, we thought we had all the answers,” says Braje. “Now, there are more questions than answers.”

'Kelp Highway' Hypothesis Rewrites History of the First Americans

"Now, there are more questions than answers."

I was born and raised at the west coastline of North America. I’ve spent many hours in the kelp, studying and eating from everything there, from crabs to kelp. The Haida people of Haida Gwai (Queen Charlotte Islands) developed their inital wealth from the resources amongst the kelp. The study you reference has extremely little to do with boats and a whole lot more to do about how communities could string along the ice free coast from Alaska down through BC, Washington, Oregon, etc. for tens of thousands years ago.

Your implication that a coastal boat finding new resources along a coastline has something to do with boats in the BofM is sadly lacking in any correlation.

Your points here are well taken, up to a point, and then you go off the rails.  Hugging the coast does make sense for these early peoples, but there is a much more important principle to be made herewith:  We have a major shift in general scientific thinking about how people traveled to the New World.  Boats are now primary, at least for the earliest immigrants, even if they hugged the coastline.

However, we have already known for many years, courtesy of the late Betty Meggars of the Smithsonian (very early Japanese Jomon pottery in Valdivia, Chile) and of Mike Coe of Yale (who is certain that there is a strong Southeast Asian connection to Mesoamerica), David Kelley (who showed systematically how Asian calendars match those of Mesoamerica), and others (showing tight cultural connections of the Kwakiutl of British Columbia with the Maori of New Zealand, etc.), that travel across the Pacific was quite normal -- and not just for the Polynesians.  All are non-Mormon scholars with no axe to grind.

[hope_for_things]

1 hour ago, CV75 said:

Conceptually, the OP articles are about coming to America by boat and that this was normal. My observation is that if people did it in 14,000 (as you say with earlier, different technology), Lehites and Jaredites could also do it in Book of Mormon times (in the Jaredite case, using technology they already had, and in Nephi's case, different, revealed technology). Only the details of their voyages are lacking in the Book of Mormon, not the record that they took voyages, so we have lots of possibilities for the unmentioned details.

I don't know if you're intentionally misinterpreting the data to continue your assertion with this poor comparison or if you just don't understand how this the scientific findings don't apply to the BoM transatlantic or transpacific migrations.  The only similarity is that they both used a boat on the water.  

The scientific articles are talking about gradual migration through very small boating expeditions that happen over the course of many many years times.  There is no evidence for an epic boating trip across the wide oceans as described in the BoM at this early time period of 14,000 years BCE.  I don't know of any apologists that would even argue that this could have happened, so I'm not sure why you're saying this is an apt comparison.  

Its akin to saying that the first airplane that the Wright Brothers invented could be used to travel around the globe.  These small boats couldn't make a migration across the wide ocean any easier than the earliest airplanes could travel around the world.  The technology didn't exist.  The way people came to the American continents by boat in 14,000 BCE is completely different than the way described in the BoM, and its not because of a lack of detail in the BoM accounts as you asserted earlier.  Those accounts are quite detailed, enough to see that they weren't taking fishing expeditions of small distances over the course of many many years and eventually making their way to a new continent.  I don't understand the desire to make this comparison.  

[hope_for_things]

7 minutes ago, Robert F. Smith said:

Your points here are well taken, up to a point, and then you go off the rails.  Hugging the coast does make sense for these early peoples, but there is a much more important principle to be made herewith:  We have a major shift in general scientific thinking about how people traveled to the New World.  Boats are now primary, at least for the earliest immigrants, even if they hugged the coastline.

However, we have already known for many years, courtesy of the late Betty Meggars of the Smithsonian (very early Japanese Jomon pottery in Valdivia, Chile) and of Mike Coe of Yale (who is certain that there is a strong Southeast Asian connection to Mesoamerica), David Kelley (who showed systematically how Asian calendars match those of Mesoamerica), and others (showing tight cultural connections of the Kwakiutl of British Columbia with the Maori of New Zealand, etc.), that travel across the Pacific was quite normal -- and not just for the Polynesians.  All are non-Mormon scholars with no axe to grind.

Robert,

I think you're really missing the point.  The type of boating anthropologists are talking about is not long cross-ocean expedition, that is the problem.  They are talking about very small boating trips, see the earlier quote I took from one of the linked accounts.  This comparison between a large ocean crossing and small incremental boating/fishing trips to explore the coastlines that had populations of people gradually making their way to the continents over the course of many years is completely different.  Surely you see the difference between the two.