
Most archaeologists think the first Americans arrived by boat - Thevet
http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/08/most-archaeologists-think-first-americans-arrived-boat-now-they-re-beginning-prove-it
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tzs
I've long thought that arrival of the earliest people by boat made a lot more
sense than coming over the land bridge from Asia.

There was a study published in Nature last year [1] that concluded that it
took hundreds of years after the ice sheets receded and the route become
passable before plants became established, and then later animals, to make it
possible to survive off the land during such a trip.

We know that the Clovis culture was established before then, so if they or
earlier people came by the land route then they must have brought their
supplies with them.

That was before the invention of the wheel, so if they brought all their
supplies with them for the journey it wasn't on wagons or carts. They only
animals they might have had to help carry things were dogs, because no other
animals were domesticated at that point.

So we're looking at carrying everything they need for the trip on their own
backs or on crude sleds, possibly with the aid of dogs (and if they are
bringing dogs, they have to bring all the food for the dogs, too).

This just seems to me to be too farfetched.

Now compare to coming by boats. With boats it is easy to bring plenty of
cargo. Whatever food they bring with them can be supplemented with fish and
other seafood they can catch on the way. Maybe they can even live entirely off
seafood.

[1] I haven't seen the study itself freely online, but here's an article that
goes into detail about it: [http://www.history.com/news/new-study-refutes-
theory-of-how-...](http://www.history.com/news/new-study-refutes-theory-of-
how-humans-populated-north-america)

~~~
louthy
Boats (capable of crossing seas) were invented before wheels?

I genuinely don't know, but that seems surprising.

~~~
JoBrad
I was surprised, too. I found this article[0] which specifically calls out
boats as having been invented before the wheel. It puts the wheel's invention
in good perspective, I think.

Regarding boats capable of crossing the ocean: Australia was settled 40,000
years ago, presumably by settlers who arrived by boat.

[0] [http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/a-salute-to-
the...](http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/a-salute-to-the-
wheel-31805121/)

~~~
contingencies
More like 65,000 years.

[https://doi.org/10.1038%2Fnature22968](https://doi.org/10.1038%2Fnature22968)

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vram22
Loosely related topic: the tales of the ancient Polynesians finding and
settling on many island groups in the Pacific, based on navigation skills they
developed over time, involving the sun, the stars, the wind, the waves, ocean
currents, bird flying patterns, etc. National Geographic magazine had an
article or a series on it several years ago, and IIRC, they sent a team out to
the Pacific area to research this stuff some, and to interview such living
Polynesian navigators. I had read the article/series.

The Morris West book "The Navigator" is also interesting in this connection
(though there is only a bit of discussion of the navigation topic in the book,
it is not the main focus), and the book is a good read apart from that, both
entertaining and for topics like human dynamics when on a voyage as well as
when stranded on an island for a long period.

Update: Added link to his Wikipedia page:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morris_West](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morris_West)

~~~
JoeDaDude
There was a great film about the discovery/arrival of humans in America and
the Polynesian culture was mentioned as a likely candidate to have arrived in
South America. As they said in the film (paraphrasing) "They discovered dozens
of Islands. How could they not find the largest island, America?

[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c0F8mUmQvwI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c0F8mUmQvwI)

~~~
contingencies
For a fun Wikipedia page which I try to keep up to date with occasional
emerging results of scientific studies, check out
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pre-Columbian_trans-
oceanic_co...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pre-Columbian_trans-
oceanic_contact_theories)

~~~
vram22
Checking it out, looks interesting ...

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dboreham
The really interesting question is : why did "experts" ever think the
opposite?

~~~
curtis
> _The really interesting question is : why did "experts" ever think the
> opposite?_

No evidence.

In all fairness, such evidence would be hard to find because at the time sea-
level was 400 feet lower than it is today. It is likely that the best
archaeological sites are now underwater. The article of course mentions this.
In fact, the article mentions one location in British Columbia (Quadra island)
where post-glacial rebound was so great that near-sea-level sites during the
last ice-age are still above sea-level today. But that investigation is
relatively recent.

~~~
ktRolster
In theory, that could be a good thing, as the sites could be better preserved,
not trammeled on by later generations of humans.

Although in practice, actually finding them is hard. Note there are sites like
this in Europe, too.

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whatnotests
So they invented boats that can travel across the ocean, but after more than
ten thousand years they never invented the wheel?

And we have consensus on this?

~~~
antonvs
Inventing the wheel is no longer considered significant in the way you seem to
imply - see e.g. [https://uncoveredhistory.com/mesoamerica/wheeled-
toys/](https://uncoveredhistory.com/mesoamerica/wheeled-toys/) :

> Archaeology has now revealed that the wheel wasn’t invented until the 4th
> millennium BC – which puts it thousands of years after the first cities were
> built and after the invention of metallurgy, and its importance in
> determining the intelligence of a race is no longer rational.

Boats solve a more basic problem. No-one _needs_ wheels - there are other
means of transportation available.

Also, the above article points out that Mesoamericans seem to have
independently invented the wheel, and even made wheeled toys.

You could say something similar about the Polynesians, although they came
later

~~~
WalterBright
Wheels also are not very useful without roads.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
Rollers for moving heavy items, pulleys for ...er ... moving heavy items; or
are they not classed as wheels? Wheels are good for farming too, laying
furrows, say. And making clay pots. And grinding corn. And crushing fruit.

Ah, this might turn in to a "What has the wheel ever done for us" sketch after
the style of Monty Python.

~~~
WalterBright
I suppose it hinges on what is the simplest and most useful thing a wheel
could be used for in a primitive society? Building a wheel with an axle and
framework is not a trivial undertaking, and someone would need an immediate
use for it to justify the effort.

(Try making a decent sized wheel out of a plank - it'll shatter along the
grain. Getting a snug 90 degree hole for the axle isn't trivial, either, and
without that the wheel will wobble so badly it'll be largely useless.)

~~~
roywiggins
Wheelbarrows relatively simple, you don't need a long axle and, of course,
only one wheel. And they are pretty good on poor roads.

[http://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2011/12/the-chinese-
wheelbarr...](http://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2011/12/the-chinese-
wheelbarrow.html)

~~~
WalterBright
Making a spoked wheel is not simple. (Remember, all you have to work with is
wood and a stone axe.)

A solid one is easier to make, but will be very heavy and have severe
durability problems.

You also have never seen a machine in your life. You have nothing at all to
guide or inspire you.

Wheels might have been invented and then abandoned and forgotten multiple
times, because they were too hard to make and not that useful.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
I imagine the model would come from moving things on rollers, out perhaps from
turning food on a spit.

From a piece of wood hanging on notched or Y shaped branches on which to hang
meat for smoking/cooking to a spit to a pulley doesn't seem to far?

A simple barrow is a couple of sticks with a pulley. Though the utility over a
simple dragged carrier is not much.

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mc32
They would have been the first _proto Canadians_ to arrive in the lower 48,
arrived by boat since if they were not native to here they could not very well
be (proto) Americans (of the lower 48) --their descendants yes, but the people
who landed here were by the nature of things, not from the lower 48.

Or they could simply have claimed, most archeologists believe the first
ancient people to arrive in the lower 48, arrived by boat.

~~~
mcbits
I can't parse what you're saying. Are you splitting hairs over the word
"American"? Context matters, and the context is obvious here.

~~~
mc32
Well, you wouldn't say the first Italians (or the first Frenchmen and
Frenchwomen, or the first Koreans) arrived from (some place) in xxxx BCE.

~~~
tomjakubowski
"Americans" can also mean "people living in the Americas".

~~~
mc32
True, but if you read the article it is referring to the first people to
arrive south of the 49th parallel. People were already inhabiting what is now
Canada.

The context is they theoretically traveled along the littoral in boats vs some
inland pathway on foot.

~~~
tomjakubowski
I read the article, thanks. There is mention of Clovis culture in what is now
the United States, but it clearly uses "Americans" in the broader sense. For
example, here, where Monte Verde is a site in modern day Chile:

 _Early Americans apparently knew how to take full advantage of its abundant
resources. At Monte Verde, once 90 kilometers from the coast, archaeologist
Tom Dillehay of Vanderbilt University in Nashville found nine species of
edible and medicinal seaweed dated to about 14,000 years ago._

