A wave of archaeological revisionism, fueled in part by unfolding discoveries in South Carolina, is challenging long-held views about the first Americans: who they were, where they came from, when they arrived and even what happened after they got here.
Generations of students have been taught that hardy hunters, ancestors of today's Native Americans, crossed a land bridge from Siberia into Alaska as the last ice age was ending 13,000 years ago and, within several centuries, had spread out across much of North and South America.
But increasing evidence from archaeological excavations and new analyses of prehistoric human migrations is testing that once widely accepted view of "coming to America."
Nothing much new here that hasn't been posted here and elsewhere before. We do take some issue with this statement: "The old ideas on New World origins are based on informed speculation and not supported by evidence," said Smithsonian Institution archaeologist Dennis Stanford. This is refuted rather conclusively further down in the article: Genetic and linguistic similarities between modern Native Americans and the people of Siberia strongly support the notion that, at whatever time they arrived, the first Americans came from Asia. This is where the "speculation" began in the first place: the apparent similarities between aboriginal and east asian populations, further demonstrated later by craniometric and genetic data. Stanford may have been referring to strictly archaeological evidence though, so we'll give him the benefit of the doubt there.
New archy motto! Morover / Dig they must
"I found it is all mosaic floor," Yehuda Batir says in his broken Hebrew. He is 25, born in Uzbekistan, has been in Israel only two and a half years and is already serving time in Megiddo Prison for domestic violence. Now he is working there as part of a "rescue dig" organized by the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA), which is uncovering what turned out to be a mosaic of perhaps the oldest church ever found anywhere, dating back to the fourth century C.E.
"First I found corner," Batir continues. "I go, dig with hoe, saw here a little, 10 centimeters, and I think to myself there is something here. There was plaster, shards, no pictures. After that I saw fish and I know it is Christian."
Interesting, using prison labor for excavations. But we like the quote: "Dig we must." Hmmm. Might have to make up a new logo for that one.
Good news China to strengthen int'l co-op in archaeology
China will offer more chances to foreign experts to take part in archaeological research in China and encourage domestic scholars to conduct research abroad, said acultural heritage official.
At a national conference on archaeology held recently in Changsha, capital of central China's Hunan Province, Zhang Bai, vice director of the State Administration of Cultural Heritage (SACH), said the administration will send archaeological teams to Pakistan, Kenya, Mongolia, Vietnam and other countries to conduct archaeological research.
Ancient tombs and artifacts found in northern province
Archaeologists have discovered nine ancient tombs dated between 2,300 and 2,500 years ago and many artifacts belonging to the Dong Son culture 2,300 years ago, including axes, spearheads, jewelry and ceramic vases, in a village in Viet Tri City, northern Phu Tho province.
According to the archaeologists, Ca village in Tho Son ward is home to many historical vestiges since the Hung King Age. Through two excavations in the 1976-1977 period, the archaeologists found 314 ancient tombs and many valuable artifacts dated 2,400 years ago.
Phu Tho province is projecting to build an open-air museum in this village to display the region's artifacts and a stage serving its folk song performances to attract visitors to see the province's tangible and intangible cultural heritages.
That's the whole thing.
Hmmmmmmmm. . . . Ancient humans brought bottle gourds to the Americas from Asia
Thick-skinned bottle gourds widely used as containers by prehistoric peoples were likely brought to the Americas some 10,000 years ago by individuals who arrived from Asia, according to a new genetic comparison of modern bottle gourds with gourds found at archaeological sites in the Western Hemisphere. The finding solves a longstanding archaeological enigma by explaining how a domesticated variant of a species native to Africa ended up millennia ago in places as far removed as modern-day Florida, Kentucky, Mexico and Peru.
The work, by a team of anthropologists and biologists from Harvard University, the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History, Massey University in New Zealand and the University of Maine, appears this week on the web site of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Integrating genetics and archaeology, the researchers assembled a collection of ancient remnants of bottle gourds from across the Americas. They then identified key genetic markers from the DNA of both the ancient gourds and their modern counterparts in Asia and Africa before comparing the plants' genetic make-up to determine the origins of the New World gourds.
Interesting. It struck us that the earliest specimens they dated only went back to about 10k BP. We're beginning to think it's more than coincidence that the vast bulk of everything discovered so far only dates to the beginning of the Holocene. We're starting to lose some confidence that there was any substantial human presence here much before then.
News from the EEF
Actually, not much of interest this week. Here's one item though:
The website of Alain Guilleux has some 3000 color photos of ancient Egyptian monuments:
http://alain.guilleux.free.fr/
[In light of the forum thread: under 'Tomb of Sethi II', you may find a depiction of Menkeret: http://snipurl.com/kt7x
http://alain.guilleux.free.fr/vallee_des_rois/vallee_des_rois_merenptah_sethi_2.html ]