But Nova reported the other night that 25% of mtDNA among the Ojibwa
was Soulutrian.

Day Brown wrote:


But Nova reported the other night that 25% of mtDNA among the Ojibwa
was Soulutrian.

http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=1180497

Did NOVA forget to tell you how many ancient Solutreans skeletons have
tested positive for Hap X? (hint:zero).

Assuming (and probably wrongly) the same % of X existed in Europe
20,000 years ago as today, that means about 96% of Europe then was
something else besides X. This means the odds of X being in the group
getting to America, if such a group did get here, would be slim. Where
then are these major European groups in the Native American population
today? The odds of the 4% X group surviving and the other 96% groups
going extinct are what? Near zero?
How many ancient skeletons do we have to look at? How do we know they

Lee Olsen wrote:
Day Brown wrote:


But Nova reported the other night that 25% of mtDNA among the Ojibwa
was Soulutrian.

http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=1180497

Did NOVA forget to tell you how many ancient Solutreans skeletons have
tested positive for Hap X? (hint:zero).

Assuming (and probably wrongly) the same % of X existed in Europe
20,000 years ago as today, that means about 96% of Europe then was
something else besides X. This means the odds of X being in the group
getting to America, if such a group did get here, would be slim. Where
then are these major European groups in the Native American population
today? The odds of the 4% X group surviving and the other 96% groups
going extinct are what? Near zero?
How many ancient skeletons do we have to look at? How do we know they
are representative?

96% of Europe was, at the time, hunters, not fishermen. Only those
familiar with boats would have left.

It'd be interesting to see a map of the coastline at the time. Were
there islands that are now submerged?

We see the Ainu, who remained islolated on Hokkaido for millennia
retaining a unique genetic endowment. If they ever get any DNA from
the Kennebic man, I'd like to know if he had Ainu markers.

We know in historic times innumerble examples of individual men making
remarkably long journeys, whose genetic endowment, if any was left,
was washed out in larger gene pools.

I dont really claim to know Lee. I dont have a dog in the Clovis
fight. I do, however, expect that tracing haplotypes will be a far
more complex process than generally imagined.

Day Brown wrote:
Lee Olsen wrote:
Day Brown wrote:

But Nova reported the other night that 25% of mtDNA among the Ojibwa
was Soulutrian.

We see the Ainu, who remained islolated on Hokkaido for millennia
retaining a unique genetic endowment. If they ever get any DNA from
the Kennebic man, I'd like to know if he had Ainu markers.

All modern (except proven recent admixture) Native Americans and all
ancient skeletons that have been tested so far are A,B,C,D, and X.
What would the Ainu have to do with anything? If you go back far
enough in time we are all related.

Day Brown wrote:
Lee Olsen wrote:
Day Brown wrote:


But Nova reported the other night that 25% of mtDNA among the Ojibwa
was Soulutrian.

http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=1180497


http://www.saa.org/publications/amantiq/65-2/Straus.html
Lawrence Guy Straus
Solutrean Settlement of North America? A Review of Reality
American Antiquity Volume 65 Number 2 April 2000

Abstract
The Solutrean techno-complex of southern France and the Iberian
Peninsula is an impossible candidate as the "source" for either pre-
Clovis or Clovis traditions in North America. Primarily this is
because the Solutrean ended ca. 16,500-18,000 B.P. (at least 5,000
years before Clovis appeared) and was separated from the U.S. eastern
seaboard by 5,000 km of ocean. In addition, there are major
differences between the Solutrean and Clovis (and even more between it
and "pre-Clovis") in terms of the composition of lithic and osseous
technologies and with regard to evidence of artistic activity. Nor is
there any evidence that Solutrean people had navigation, deep-sea
fishing, or marine mammal hunting capacities which could have made a
transatlantic crossing even conceivable. Furthermore, there is no
evidence that people lived above about 48? N latitude in western
Europe during the Last Glacial Maximum, making a "jumping-off" point
from the (then largely glaciated) area of the current British Isles
unlikely. The peopling of the Americas, even if the result of several
"migrations," was from Asia.

Sellet 1998, Clark 2000, and Schurr 2004 have written similar shorter
papers expressing their disgust with the Stanford and Bradley
hypothesis.

Did NOVA forget to tell you how many ancient Solutreans skeletons have
tested positive for Hap X? (hint:zero).

Assuming (and probably wrongly) the same % of X existed in Europe
20,000 years ago as today, that means about 96% of Europe then was
something else besides X. This means the odds of X being in the group
getting to America, if such a group did get here, would be slim. Where
then are these major European groups in the Native American population
today? The odds of the 4% X group surviving and the other 96% groups
going extinct are what? Near zero?
How many ancient skeletons do we have to look at? How do we know they
are representative?

96% of Europe was, at the time, hunters, not fishermen. Only those
familiar with boats would have left.

It'd be interesting to see a map of the coastline at the time. Were
there islands that are now submerged?

How did it happen that only the 4% haplogroup X were fishermen and the
96% of the hunters were H and V etc.? Are the Ojibwa coastal
fishermen?

We see the Ainu, who remained islolated on Hokkaido for millennia
retaining a unique genetic endowment. If they ever get any DNA from
the Kennebic man, I'd like to know if he had Ainu markers.

All modern (except proven recent admixture) Native Americans and all
ancient skeletons that have been tested so far are A,B,C,D, and X.
What would the Ainu have to do with anything? If you go back far
enough in time we are all related.


We know in historic times innumerble examples of individual men making
remarkably long journeys, whose genetic endowment, if any was left,
was washed out in larger gene pools.

And after making landfall, would these individual men remember (after
a 5000 year hiatus) how to make a Solutrean point?

I dont really claim to know Lee. I dont have a dog in the Clovis
fight. I do, however, expect that tracing haplotypes will be a far
more complex process than generally imagined.

In seven years of waffling on the issue, Stanford and Bradley have
produced absolutely nothing in the way of empirical evidence to
support their hypothesis.

For NOVA to make such a claim based on such a pathetic hypothesis
demonstrates incompetence beyond comprehension IMO. The sad part is
that there are always gullible people out there who will believe dog
shit.

pete wrote:

snip

Thank you for your thoughtful comments. If you are interested in this
subject, it is being discussed (to death) on MAAT, a very large
moderated list.
http://www.hallofmaat.com/list.php?1

There have been numerous long threads on the subject within the last
month or so. The search box works great so it shouldn't be too hard
to find them.
Rather than me paste all the arguments back over to here (and some of
this hypothesis is close to being off-topic on sap anyway), it would
be easier for you to see all of them, so far, over there. If you see
something to comment on, join in.

In sci.anthropology.paleo, on 27 Feb 2007 17:15:20 -0800,

Yipes, what a site. I've known about it, but never bothered to
explore it because I'm not terribly interested in holocene egypt; I

didn't realize it ranged beyond that. A huge quantity of postings.

Man, the interface is a beast, though. I generally hate mouse-driven
interfaces, and the pages, god, the pages are so bloody big they
take ages to load when you go in and out of an article. Anyway, I

select this excerpt from a post quoting:

snip

Well, that rather succinctly hits just about all the points that
occurred to me in my comment upthread, and adds much more.

--
==========================================================================
vincent@triumf[munge].ca Pete Vincent
Disclaimer: all I know I learned from reading Usenet.

In sci.anthropology.paleo, on 25 Feb 2007 05:50:46 -0800,
Lee Olsen <paleocity@hotmail.com> sez:

Day Brown wrote:
Lee Olsen wrote:
Day Brown wrote:


But Nova reported the other night that 25% of mtDNA among the Ojibwa
was Soulutrian.

http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=1180497


http://www.saa.org/publications/amantiq/65-2/Straus.html
Lawrence Guy Straus
Solutrean Settlement of North America? A Review of Reality
American Antiquity Volume 65 Number 2 April 2000

Abstract
The Solutrean techno-complex of southern France and the Iberian
Peninsula is an impossible candidate as the "source" for either pre-
Clovis or Clovis traditions in North America. Primarily this is
because the Solutrean ended ca. 16,500-18,000 B.P. (at least 5,000
years before Clovis appeared) and was separated from the U.S. eastern
seaboard by 5,000 km of ocean. In addition, there are major
differences between the Solutrean and Clovis (and even more between it
and "pre-Clovis") in terms of the composition of lithic and osseous
technologies and with regard to evidence of artistic activity. Nor is
there any evidence that Solutrean people had navigation, deep-sea
fishing, or marine mammal hunting capacities which could have made a
transatlantic crossing even conceivable. Furthermore, there is no
evidence that people lived above about 48? N latitude in western
Europe during the Last Glacial Maximum, making a "jumping-off" point
from the (then largely glaciated) area of the current British Isles
unlikely. The peopling of the Americas, even if the result of several
"migrations," was from Asia.

Sellet 1998, Clark 2000, and Schurr 2004 have written similar shorter
papers expressing their disgust with the Stanford and Bradley
hypothesis.

I dunno. I'll agree it's somewhat unlikely, but I would not be
so sanguine about it as these guys. They mention deep sea fish
and marine mammals; yup no evidence they were hunted, but then
the sites available to us now would have been inland then. All
the places where one might find coastal tribes with maritime
skills are now 100m under water. And note, here where we have
the experience of our recent arrival, the natives have
radically different cultures and skills if you just travel a
few miles inland = ca. a hundred metres altitude. Which is only
sensible - the inland tribes were not mobile - the terrain
discourages it - they would live in a river valley, hunt in the
woods and fish the salmon travelling by. Meanwhile down the river
a few miles, on the coast, the tribes built canoes and went out
harpooning on the ocean.

Note also these guys failed to make mention of the great auks,
essentially a boreal penguin, which existed in how big of
numbers during the ice age? Possibly like their southern
counterparts. And so easy to catch they were wiped out shortly
after large numbers of europeans started crossing the northern
ocean with post-renaissance weaponry. Who knows what the
coastal tribes of europe encountered on the atlantic ice
floes 16kya? We do know they seem to have colonized britain
as soon as the retreating ice made it possible - perhaps,
on the broad now-submerged plain SW of cornwall, they were
present much earlier.

Did NOVA forget to tell you how many ancient Solutreans skeletons have
tested positive for Hap X? (hint:zero).

Assuming (and probably wrongly) the same % of X existed in Europe
20,000 years ago as today, that means about 96% of Europe then was
something else besides X. This means the odds of X being in the group
getting to America, if such a group did get here, would be slim. Where
then are these major European groups in the Native American population
today? The odds of the 4% X group surviving and the other 96% groups
going extinct are what? Near zero?
How many ancient skeletons do we have to look at? How do we know they
are representative?

96% of Europe was, at the time, hunters, not fishermen. Only those
familiar with boats would have left.

It'd be interesting to see a map of the coastline at the time. Were
there islands that are now submerged?

How did it happen that only the 4% haplogroup X were fishermen and the
96% of the hunters were H and V etc.? Are the Ojibwa coastal
fishermen?

Um, I dunno how useful modern measurements of gene frequencies
on east coast natives are (or are these archaeological pre-contact
Ojibway they're testing?) but if it says only 25% have the X,
then if the originating population was 4%, aren't we talking about
something like a one in six chance?

From the abstract: "...,we identified an individual radiocarbon dated
to 1,340 +/-40 years BP that is a member of haplogroup X, found near

We see the Ainu, who remained islolated on Hokkaido for millennia
retaining a unique genetic endowment. If they ever get any DNA from
the Kennebic man, I'd like to know if he had Ainu markers.

All modern (except proven recent admixture) Native Americans and all
ancient skeletons that have been tested so far are A,B,C,D, and X.
What would the Ainu have to do with anything? If you go back far
enough in time we are all related.


We know in historic times innumerble examples of individual men making
remarkably long journeys, whose genetic endowment, if any was left,
was washed out in larger gene pools.

And after making landfall, would these individual men remember (after
a 5000 year hiatus) how to make a Solutrean point?

What 5000 year hiatus? Presumably the arriving population would
have been small, and living on now-submerged continental shelf
land. After all, they must have been a maritime people if they
got here that way. The appearance of the Clovis material is rather
suspiciously near the time such people would have been nudged
up onto the higher ground by the rising sea level.

From page 2002:259-60: "Although the combined artifact samples from
both sites are small, we suggest that these two assemblages should be

I dont really claim to know Lee. I dont have a dog in the Clovis
fight. I do, however, expect that tracing haplotypes will be a far
more complex process than generally imagined.

In seven years of waffling on the issue, Stanford and Bradley have
produced absolutely nothing in the way of empirical evidence to
support their hypothesis.

For NOVA to make such a claim based on such a pathetic hypothesis
demonstrates incompetence beyond comprehension IMO. The sad part is
that there are always gullible people out there who will believe dog
shit.

It's not a slam dunk, not a problem. But I sure don't see any
call for them using the word "impossible". Nothing can ever
really be demonstrated to be impossible, and with this stuff,
there isn't enough evidence from that period to say one way
or the other with that level of confidence. I would buy a
statement that said something like "we have 90% confidence
that it didn't happen". I won't buy 100%.

--
==========================================================================
vincent@triumf[munge].ca Pete Vincent
Disclaimer: all I know I learned from reading Usenet.

pete wrote:
In sci.anthropology.paleo, on 25 Feb 2007 05:50:46 -0800,
Lee Olsen <paleocity@hotmail.com> sez:

Day Brown wrote:
Lee Olsen wrote:
Day Brown wrote:


But Nova reported the other night that 25% of mtDNA among the Ojibwa
was Soulutrian.

http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=1180497


http://www.saa.org/publications/amantiq/65-2/Straus.html
Lawrence Guy Straus
Solutrean Settlement of North America? A Review of Reality
American Antiquity Volume 65 Number 2 April 2000

Abstract
The Solutrean techno-complex of southern France and the Iberian
Peninsula is an impossible candidate as the "source" for either pre-
Clovis or Clovis traditions in North America. Primarily this is
because the Solutrean ended ca. 16,500-18,000 B.P. (at least 5,000
years before Clovis appeared) and was separated from the U.S. eastern
seaboard by 5,000 km of ocean. In addition, there are major
differences between the Solutrean and Clovis (and even more between it
and "pre-Clovis") in terms of the composition of lithic and osseous
technologies and with regard to evidence of artistic activity. Nor is
there any evidence that Solutrean people had navigation, deep-sea
fishing, or marine mammal hunting capacities which could have made a
transatlantic crossing even conceivable. Furthermore, there is no
evidence that people lived above about 48? N latitude in western
Europe during the Last Glacial Maximum, making a "jumping-off" point
from the (then largely glaciated) area of the current British Isles
unlikely. The peopling of the Americas, even if the result of several
"migrations," was from Asia.

Sellet 1998, Clark 2000, and Schurr 2004 have written similar shorter
papers expressing their disgust with the Stanford and Bradley
hypothesis.

I dunno. I'll agree it's somewhat unlikely, but I would not be
so sanguine about it as these guys. They mention deep sea fish
and marine mammals; yup no evidence they were hunted, but then
the sites available to us now would have been inland then. All
the places where one might find coastal tribes with maritime
skills are now 100m under water. And note, here where we have
the experience of our recent arrival, the natives have
radically different cultures and skills if you just travel a
few miles inland = ca. a hundred metres altitude. Which is only
sensible - the inland tribes were not mobile - the terrain
discourages it - they would live in a river valley, hunt in the
woods and fish the salmon travelling by. Meanwhile down the river
a few miles, on the coast, the tribes built canoes and went out
harpooning on the ocean.

But the Continental Shelf is not the same distance from land now
everywhere on the Iberian Peninsula, so the sea in some areas was just
as close (or within reason) then as it is now. Sea mammal hunters use
high ground to spot their game, where are those artifacts? They have
marine cultural artifacts on Anangula Island from before the sea level
came up to its present level.

Mousterian artifacts dredged up from the North Sea bottom, why no
Soutrean items?

Also, if someone was in Europe with a marine culture at that time, why
would it be typed Solutrean? Why would it even remotely look Solutrean
if they claim it is now under water? If you can't see it, what is it?

Note also these guys failed to make mention of the great auks,
essentially a boreal penguin, which existed in how big of
numbers during the ice age? Possibly like their southern
counterparts. And so easy to catch they were wiped out shortly
after large numbers of europeans started crossing the northern
ocean with post-renaissance weaponry. Who knows what the
coastal tribes of europe encountered on the atlantic ice
floes 16kya? We do know they seem to have colonized britain
as soon as the retreating ice made it possible - perhaps,
on the broad now-submerged plain SW of cornwall, they were
present much earlier.

No undisputed Solutrean sites have been found on the British Isles
that I know of, but Gravettian sites have. Bradley and Stanford have
only argued Solutrean similarities.

Did NOVA forget to tell you how many ancient Solutreans skeletons have
tested positive for Hap X? (hint:zero).

Assuming (and probably wrongly) the same % of X existed in Europe
20,000 years ago as today, that means about 96% of Europe then was
something else besides X. This means the odds of X being in the group
getting to America, if such a group did get here, would be slim. Where
then are these major European groups in the Native American population
today? The odds of the 4% X group surviving and the other 96% groups
going extinct are what? Near zero?
How many ancient skeletons do we have to look at? How do we know they
are representative?

96% of Europe was, at the time, hunters, not fishermen. Only those
familiar with boats would have left.

It'd be interesting to see a map of the coastline at the time. Were
there islands that are now submerged?

How did it happen that only the 4% haplogroup X were fishermen and the
96% of the hunters were H and V etc.? Are the Ojibwa coastal
fishermen?

Um, I dunno how useful modern measurements of gene frequencies
on east coast natives are (or are these archaeological pre-contact
Ojibway they're testing?) but if it says only 25% have the X,
then if the originating population was 4%, aren't we talking about
something like a one in six chance?

http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=1180497
It is notable that X2 includes the two complete Native American X
sequences that constitute the distinctive X2a clade, a clade that
lacks close relatives in the entire Old World, including Siberia. The
position of X2a in the phylogenetic tree suggests an early split from
the other X2 clades, likely at the very beginning of their expansion
and spread from the Near East.

Ripan S. Malhi and David Glenn Smith 2002 Breif Communication:
Haplogroup X Confirmed in Prehistoric North America. American Journal
of Physical Anthropology 119:84-86.

From the abstract: "...,we identified an individual radiocarbon dated
to 1,340 +/-40 years BP that is a member of haplogroup X, found near
the Columbia River in Vantage, Washington."

Page 86: "These lines of evidence together with recent criticism of
similarities between the Clovis and Solutrean cultures (Straus 2000)
that were cited by Stanford (1997), strongly suggest that haplogroup X
did not reach the Americas via an ancient European migration........a
characteristic mutation in HVSI of the control region not found in
European or Asian members of haplogroup X (the G->A transition at hp
16,213), imply it is a founding Native American lineage."

A quote from Jason Eshleman, a member of this list:
"...the popular depiction of Kennewick Man as a pre-Columbian
Caucasoid in the New
World, coupled with the discovery of haplogroup X as a founding Native
American lineage,
fueled premature speculation about early European migrations to the
New World. Genetic
evidence does not support such a migration."

X2e (X2 Europe) in Europe does not equate, not has it been
demonstrated, to be in any way associated with the Solutrean.

Pretty much the same arguements for haplogroup Y as far as I know.

The Solutrean hypothesis is falsified at the 90% confidence level by
the DNA evidence before we hardly begin. Impossible yet? No.

We see the Ainu, who remained islolated on Hokkaido for millennia
retaining a unique genetic endowment. If they ever get any DNA from
the Kennebic man, I'd like to know if he had Ainu markers.

All modern (except proven recent admixture) Native Americans and all
ancient skeletons that have been tested so far are A,B,C,D, and X.
What would the Ainu have to do with anything? If you go back far
enough in time we are all related.


We know in historic times innumerble examples of individual men making
remarkably long journeys, whose genetic endowment, if any was left,
was washed out in larger gene pools.

And after making landfall, would these individual men remember (after
a 5000 year hiatus) how to make a Solutrean point?

What 5000 year hiatus? Presumably the arriving population would
have been small, and living on now-submerged continental shelf
land. After all, they must have been a maritime people if they
got here that way. The appearance of the Clovis material is rather
suspiciously near the time such people would have been nudged
up onto the higher ground by the rising sea level.

But there is Cactus Hill and Meadowcroft inland early and those are
the site types they use. Those two were not lost underwater.
So.....

Lee: "I just reread Stanford and Bradley's (2002, 2004) explanation on
how they cover the now back to 5000 year timing problem (Waters 2007).
They have to sell their last claim to competency in order to do it
IMO.

First they claimed there were many similarities (Collins originally
about 1 between Solutrean and Clovis. Then they claim the 5000 year
hiatus between the two is filled with the industries at Cactus Hill
and Meadowcroft, which are dated closer, but exhibit none (none that
are especially different from many other cultures) of the the
similarities between Solutrean/Clovis. The only possible exception
between the S/C, their major claim, would be overshot flaking (Straus
2000:219) and there is none at CH/M.

From page 2002:259-60: "Although the combined artifact samples from
both sites are small, we suggest that these two assemblages should be
considered part of the same technological complex. Further, their
chronological placement suggests to us that they are prime candidates
for the developemental Clovis."

Well, if Clovis wasn't developed yet, what pray tell do the
similarities with the Solutrean have to do with anything? Are they
saying once the Solutreans got to America they stopped using overshot,
shaft wrenches, etc. for 5000 years and then suddenly remembered to
use them again during Clovis times? Why didn't their descendants back
home remember to use all these neat innovations during the later
Azilian period if they were so necessary to cultural status?

Where I live Native Americans forgot where they got something as
important as the horse in three or four generations and forgot how to
flintknap (after a continuous hominid run of 2.6 million years) in
only two generations.

technique simmered in limbo, was not forgotten for 5000 years?"

Kat: "When I was watching the show and Stanford was holding a
Solutrean, a Cactus Hill, and and a Clovis point and explaining that
the technology went from here to here to here ..well... I did scream
at the TV then ...."

Lee: "Yes, anyone who understands science can see the BAIT and SWITCH
going on here, but the problem is the National Science Foundation has
determined that 60-70% of Americans are technically scientifically
illiterate. What those people really see then is an argument that
Europeans beat Native Americans to America. An initially poorly-
thought-out hypothesis that would be squished dead in the journals
becomes a racially motivated national news item instigated by
scientists who have a personal motive. Of course that motive is to
protect the remaining stock of Native American skeletons housed at the
Smithsonian."

Stanford and Bradley have two ways they can deal with their
hypothesis, they can either appeal to their peers in the science
journals or they can bypass science and take their case to national
TV, newspapers, and web sites. When they take the TV route they obtain
celebrity status. They are subject to the same rules as any one else
in the public realm and in a way have reduced their hypothesis to the
level of mass entertainment. When a newspaper columnist draws a
grotesque face of a politician and publishes it in the editorial
section of a paper it is not slander. It is from the direction of the
media aspect of Stanford and Bradley's position that I feel justified
in my name calling of their work. If we were talking about data in a
journal I would not do so. Press-release archaeology is archaeology of
the worst kind and Standford is a master at it, IMO.

Clovis has washed up from unknown sources on beaches from out at sea,
so Clovis has been demonstrated offshore, where are the pre-Clovis
artifacts, why don't they wash up also?

I dont really claim to know Lee. I dont have a dog in the Clovis
fight. I do, however, expect that tracing haplotypes will be a far
more complex process than generally imagined.

In seven years of waffling on the issue, Stanford and Bradley have
produced absolutely nothing in the way of empirical evidence to
support their hypothesis.

For NOVA to make such a claim based on such a pathetic hypothesis
demonstrates incompetence beyond comprehension IMO. The sad part is
that there are always gullible people out there who will believe dog
shit.

It's not a slam dunk, not a problem. But I sure don't see any
call for them using the word "impossible". Nothing can ever
really be demonstrated to be impossible, and with this stuff,
there isn't enough evidence from that period to say one way
or the other with that level of confidence. I would buy a
statement that said something like "we have 90% confidence
that it didn't happen". I won't buy 100%.

Straus was talking to his peers, not the general public. How
impossible is used was previoulsy discussed in the Greenman paper in
1963, and since Straus cited Greenman, we can assume he read the
paper. However, if I were to argue that Henry Ford built six 1964 Ford
Mustangs in 1910 and hid them in a garage and I'm going to offer you
one of those for sale today, would you not claim "impossible"?

You tell me, if 90% (DNA) X 90% (overshot) X 90% (arguments you
haven't seen yet) falsify so many parts of the hypothesis as to equal
a number so ridiculously large that for all 'practical purposes' is
impossible ( just maybe not from a pure science point of view)?

Anyway, I select this excerpt from a post quoting:

"Constructing the Solutrean Solution
Dennis Stanford and Bruce Bradley
Smithsonian Institution
University of Exeter
" [...] a connecting ice bridge
eliminated the necessity of a 4,000-mile blue voyage
between Lisbon and New York City.
The southern margin of this ice bridge was a relative rich environment
inhabited by migrating sea mammals, birds, and fish attracting Solutrean
people. [...]"
snip

In sci.anthropology.paleo, on 28 Feb 2007 08:21:25 -0800,
Lee Olsen <paleocity@hotmail.com> sez:
this is getting long, let's snip some of the old statements tha

Not to mention all the mammoth bones and
Mousterian artifacts dredged up from the North Sea bottom, why no
Soutrean items?

None at all?

from Spain, so I would have expected the submerged shelf to
reflect the culture present in Spain. It was my impression that
the colonization of britain was accomplished by land before
the channel formed, so even if solutreans were an inland
culture, they should have been able to migrate, leaving
artefacts in their wake. I guess it's possible that the
migration occurred later, after the solutrean tradition
was abandoned, but then we can equally ask why are not any
post-solutrean artefacts found? Perhaps it's just an
issue of sampling - Mousterian was around a lot longer. I can't
believe that there are no Solutrean objects to be found there,
but of course up til now what is found has been mostly (entirely?)
by unintentional byproduct of the fishing industry, so perhaps
that is part of it. And if a fisherman found a five inch long
laurel leaf biface, how often would he be likely to report it?

Also, if someone was in Europe with a marine culture at that time, why
would it be typed Solutrean? Why would it even remotely look Solutrean
if they claim it is now under water? If you can't see it, what is it?

Well, the whole point was to provide an explanatory story for
the similarity of Clovis and Solutrean, so why would those
looking for a physical connection want to speculate that
it didn't exist? Of course, you're right, the maritime
culture may not have been Solutrean at all, but in that
case, if it existed, and did reach north america, what
evidence might it have left to indicate that it had done
so? The only hope for putting the C-S connection on a
more solid footing is the discovery of intermediate tools
in intermediate locations.

No undisputed Solutrean sites have been found on the British Isles
that I know of, but Gravettian sites have. Bradley and Stanford have
only argued Solutrean similarities.

OK. I'm not too surprised at that, in that the further north and
upland you go, the less hospitable it gets. The most tolerable
regions at such northern latitudes during those times would be the
most southerly and close to sea level, exactly those regions now
under water. I'm sure my knowledge of these cultures is now out
of date, but didn't Gravettian predate the most severe period
of the last glaciation? A quick search nets me Wiki, so sorry
about the dodgy reference, but it sez Gravettian is 22kya and
back, while Solutrean is forward from 19k. ...Wiki also sez in
one place that "Creswell Crags" in England has some Solutrean,
but elsewhere that is written "proto-solutrean" and no date is
offered. However, it does say it was occupied 15-12kya - rather
surprising, its location is about central, far further north and
inland than I would have expected for that period.

Ripan S. Malhi and David Glenn Smith 2002 Breif Communication:
Haplogroup X Confirmed in Prehistoric North America. American Journal
of Physical Anthropology 119:84-86.

Of course, if there is no evidence of that particular subgroup
anywhere in the old world, it doesn't say anything about siberia
vs atlantic, one way or the other.

As I said above, this eliminates a particular argument for a positive
molecular link to europe, but does not introduce a negative
counterexample. We are left with no information favouring one or the
other.

looking in the wrong places, and now the Clovis Mafia is being
subdued, we'll have more material coming forth which will give
us a better characterization.


good point, snip

But something as useless as the overshot
technique simmered in limbo, was not forgotten for 5000 years?"

Clearly, if the C-S theory is to work, that technique must
be demonstrated to have endured through the intervening
period. The only other way it could be substantiated would
require the demonstration of the linkage of an equally
distinctive characteristic technology, and I don't think
it likely that there will be a candidate considering how much
Solutrean material exists, and is there really anything
else other than the point which is uniquely Solutrean?

Clovis has washed up from unknown sources on beaches from out at sea,
so Clovis has been demonstrated offshore, where are the pre-Clovis
artifacts, why don't they wash up also?

I'm rather interested in that.

But of course, the analogy is not really the same, is it?

You tell me, if 90% (DNA) X 90% (overshot) X 90% (arguments you
haven't seen yet) falsify so many parts of the hypothesis as to equal
a number so ridiculously large that for all 'practical purposes' is
impossible ( just maybe not from a pure science point of view)?

Just looks about the same as it did before the current proponents
came along - not highly likely, but intriguing, and not completely
beyond consideration considering how little we know of the period,
and how much of the potential evidence is now under water. We
really don't have near enough data to say for certain what was
going on in NA 16kya, and it will probably be a long time before we
do. Probably the thing that would most convince me of its not
having happened would be a much more solid set of evidence mapping
out the alternative. Currently Clovis appears somewhere around
the Carolinas, apparently by divine revelation, and spreads north
and west from there. That really needs work.

--
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vincent@triumf[munge].ca Pete Vincent
Disclaimer: all I know I learned from reading Usenet.