Theories on the Earliest Colonists (Module 05)

	Principle 6: Basic Archaeological Skills - øStudents of archaeology must also understand the epistemological 
		ramifications of the discipline - how they come to know what they know about ancient peoplesƒ life ways . . . they 
		understand and interpret what they encounter under the ground.Ó

		Discussion 1 - Alternative routes for earliest colonization? - Until quite recently there seemed almost 
		an air of øpolitical correctness" to the notion that the earliest migrants into the New World were pedestrians, 
		that is, that the most ancestral Native Americans came walking from Asia across the Bering Land Bridge and 
		then, after spending some time locked by ice and snow from moving out of Alaska, that they finally moved 
		down into North America via the newly-opened øIce Free Corridor.Ó  This has always seemed a bit strange, 
		especially considering evidence that quite early on people were taking advantage of the ecological richness 
		provided by the coastal northern Pacific Rim.  We also know that early East and Southeast Asians were 
		successfully traveling across open water to places like Australia, Okinawa and parts of the Philippines; 
		that they most probably were doing this as cultures already familiar with coastal travel in some kind of crafts.  
		Even if such early peoples had lacked water craft, it is hard to conceive of them having avoided travel along 
		the Pleistocene coasts, gathering shellfish, fishing, maybe occasionally hunting sea mammals - and perhaps 
		doing so just a bit farther along the coasts than had their parents.  Even accepting that parts of the Pleistocene 
		coastline may have offered little land before one encountered massive mountain glaciers on their way to the 
		sea, still, people could have slowly worked their way north, east, and then south to what is now British 
		Columbia and then further south.
			Happily, such scenarios are now being formally entertained and there exist examples of 
		archaeological testing to see if there are indications of such alternate coastal movements of peoples out of 
		Asia into the Americas.

		Discussion 2 - Monte Verde - The archaeological site of Monte Verde in Chile, while nominally 
		geographically outside the bounds of a class in North American archaeology, nonetheless is relevant as a site 
		that appears pivotal in our reassessment of the chronology of early migration into the New World.  Finds 
		there furthermore bring into question the notion of what I often call in class the øPaleo-Macho-Carnivorous-
		Big-Game Hunter.Ó  How do we integrate the notions of the Clovis hunters decimating the unwitting 
		Pleistocene fauna with the idea that already (around at least 12,000 B.C.) there were people living in rather 
		stable, albeit small, communities clear at the southern extremes of the Western Hemisphere; that they were 
		at that time taking advantage of a øbroad spectrumÓ of resources - hunting and gathering for food, for 
		pharmacological reasons, and as well for materials to build their huts?