• The Peopling of the Americas

    From JTEM@21:1/5 to All on Tue Sep 20 12:21:46 2022
    I posted this in the better group but thought I'd
    share it here:

    https://youtu.be/K1uHmLVg-7k

    It /Seems/ long but it's not. The talk is under 30
    minutes and he's such a great story teller that it'll
    seem much shorter.

    THAT is the one "argument" people are going to
    make against him: He is a good story teller. I
    mean, any story a good story teller tells you is
    going to sound good. Are the facts convincing you
    or his personality, his delivery?

    Now I say this because if you do the Google you'll
    see that a lot of the things he's saying aren't
    universally accepted. Take the stroll down Google
    Lane in search of "The oldest well," for example.
    This guy in the video is talking about a Clovis era
    well, THOUSANDS of years older than what is
    generally attributed as the "Oldest" well...

    (It's in the Q&A, following the talk)

    A couple of other points he makes are truly fascinating.
    One is that there are but 17 Mammoth kill sites known,
    and even then I have to wonder if "Kill Sites" is correct.

    We know they butchered the animals, but did they kill
    them?

    I dunno, maybe I'm wrong but if you find evidence of
    butchering a Mammoth, even a baby, anywhere where
    people inhabited, doesn't that sound strange? Mammoths
    wandering over to human habitats?

    We don't really know their personality, how aggressive
    they were, so it's all guess work. But I would guess that
    the Mammoths would either attack or avoid humans,
    not visit them...

    The are really truly interesting point he makes is something
    I have been talking about for years: The continental shelf.

    Oh; and "The light over here is better."

    If you want to excavate where seafaring people would have
    lived on the east coast during the glacial period, be prepared
    to walk about the length of the state of Connecticut (and
    then some) into the ocean. And that's why the search for
    America's oldest people concentrates on the west coast:

    The continental shelf is much smaller.

    What he doesn't talk about is bias, and how people who
    assume an Asian-Only origins wouldn't even want to look
    on the east coast..

    But it's a great video. Watch it.




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  • From Peter Nyikos@21:1/5 to JTEM on Tue Sep 27 17:57:25 2022
    This is not on the thread where we are quits, and there is a paleontological dimension to it, so I'm responding.

    On Tuesday, September 20, 2022 at 3:21:47 PM UTC-4, JTEM wrote:
    I posted this in the better group but thought I'd
    share it here:

    https://youtu.be/K1uHmLVg-7k

    It /Seems/ long but it's not. The talk is under 30
    minutes and he's such a great story teller that it'll
    seem much shorter.

    I hope you are right. I dislike listening to almost all talks more than
    5 minutes long unless there is no transcript available.
    I could breeze through a transcript for a 30 minute talk in 5 minutes.


    THAT is the one "argument" people are going to
    make against him: He is a good story teller. I
    mean, any story a good story teller tells you is
    going to sound good. Are the facts convincing you
    or his personality, his delivery?


    Excellent turns of phrase are worth lingering over.
    Shakespeare was especially good at them.


    Now I say this because if you do the Google you'll
    see that a lot of the things he's saying aren't
    universally accepted. Take the stroll down Google
    Lane in search of "The oldest well," for example.
    This guy in the video is talking about a Clovis era
    well, THOUSANDS of years older than what is
    generally attributed as the "Oldest" well...

    (It's in the Q&A, following the talk)

    A couple of other points he makes are truly fascinating.
    One is that there are but 17 Mammoth kill sites known,
    and even then I have to wonder if "Kill Sites" is correct.

    We know they butchered the animals, but did they kill
    them?

    My guess is they did, for reasons given below.


    I dunno, maybe I'm wrong but if you find evidence of
    butchering a Mammoth, even a baby, anywhere where
    people inhabited, doesn't that sound strange? Mammoths
    wandering over to human habitats?

    Unlike the African and Indian elephants, new world proboscideans
    did not coevolve with humans. Thus humans were able to perfect
    sharp stone tools with which to make easy kills possible without
    the mammoths and mastodons knowing they had anything to fear.

    And even if the tools were inadequate to that task, they were
    well adapted to butchering, unlike the primitive tools of
    Homo habilis.



    We don't really know their personality, how aggressive
    they were, so it's all guess work. But I would guess that
    the Mammoths would either attack or avoid humans,
    not visit them...

    The are really truly interesting point he makes is something
    I have been talking about for years: The continental shelf.

    Oh; and "The light over here is better."

    If you want to excavate where seafaring people would have
    lived on the east coast during the glacial period, be prepared
    to walk about the length of the state of Connecticut (and
    then some) into the ocean. And that's why the search for
    America's oldest people concentrates on the west coast:

    The continental shelf is much smaller.

    Not in the Bering Sea. And that is where I read most about
    underwater searches. How much has there been on the west coast
    of the continental USA?


    What he doesn't talk about is bias, and how people who
    assume an Asian-Only origins wouldn't even want to look
    on the east coast..

    There's also the pesky matter of there being no
    land bridge from the east coast like the one that crossed
    the Bering Strait.

    By the way, have you heard of *any* good finds off the east coast in
    the Clovis or pre-Clovis times?

    But it's a great video. Watch it.

    Maybe next month. It's already been a busy week, and is apt to get busier.


    Peter Nyikos
    Professor, Dept. of Mathematics -- standard disclaimer--
    University of South Carolina
    http://people.math.sc.edu/nyikos

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  • From JTEM@21:1/5 to peter2...@gmail.com on Tue Sep 27 21:14:56 2022
    peter2...@gmail.com wrote:

    Unlike the African and Indian elephants, new world proboscideans
    did not coevolve with humans. Thus humans were able to perfect
    sharp stone tools with which to make easy kills possible without
    the mammoths and mastodons knowing they had anything to fear.

    And even if the tools were inadequate to that task, they were
    well adapted to butchering, unlike the primitive tools of
    Homo habilis.

    You say "Even if the tools were inadequate," which returns us to the
    issue of whether or not the small number of kill sites are in fact a
    small number of butchering sites.

    If you want to excavate where seafaring people would have
    lived on the east coast during the glacial period, be prepared
    to walk about the length of the state of Connecticut (and
    then some) into the ocean. And that's why the search for
    America's oldest people concentrates on the west coast:

    The continental shelf is much smaller.

    Not in the Bering Sea. And that is where I read most about
    underwater searches. How much has there been on the west coast
    of the continental USA?

    Well "Coastal Dispersal" is the norm everywhere, including the
    Americas. Quite frankly we had arrivals by boat long before there
    was any so called land bridge. And humans were probably capable
    of making the crossing from Europe/west Africa as far back as
    100,000 years ago. That's the oldest evidence for water crossings
    in the Mediterranean.

    There's also the pesky matter of there being no
    land bridge from the east coast like the one that crossed
    the Bering Strait.

    They were already here, long before any land bridge.

    By the way, have you heard of *any* good finds off the east coast in
    the Clovis or pre-Clovis times?

    Yes. And the video discusses them.





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