Anthropology
Lecture
Who
were the First People in the Americas:
Constructing the Solutrean Solution
2
June 2006
Friday,
June 2, 2006 kicked off the first RTP
day with a series of events focusing on
anthropology. First was a lecture by Dennis
Stanford, who discussed where the first
inhabitants of North America truly originated
from. It had been assumed for decades
that the first Americans crossed the Bering
Straight from Asia into Alaska some 15,000
years ago, eventually inhabiting much
of North and South America.
Stanford,
however, discussed a new theory that he
and his colleague Bruce Bradley have pushed
for in recent years. Perhaps the first
people of the Western Hemisphere did not
originate from Asia at all, but from Western
Europe. Stanford "went to Alaska
to search for the first Clovis point.
It was never found," he said. The
locations of Clovis points, which were
discovered in the 1930s and are the remnants
of spear points used to hunt large animals,
were mapped, and it became clear that
they were most concentrated in the eastern
part of North America, where the oldest
Clovis points were found as well.
The
role of Clovis point caches is another
critical component of Stanford's hypothesis.
In mapping the locations of these caches,
where Clovis points were stored for whatever
purposes they were intended for, the direction
of flow was towards the northwest, which
would be the opposite of the traditional
model, which should flow to the south
and east.
In an intriguing twist, the closest match
to the Clovis point technology found in
America came not from Asia but from Spain
from around 16,000 years ago. Stanford
explained the many remarkable connections
between Clovis people, as they became
known, with the Solutrean people of Spain
and Southwest France, who were famous
for their ancient cave art. Only Solutrean
spear points from Spain and France had
the same precise design of the American
Clovis points.
Coincidence? Stanford thinks not. In fact,
he says that the "entire tool-kit"
between the two cultures is similar, extending
to bladettes and knives as well. "Both
went long distances to get materials,
and both used crystal quartz" in
their construction, Stanford said. DNA
evidence has also supported relationships
between a single human line that extended
from Africa to Europe to Eastern America.
As
for how the Solutreans came to America
during the depths of the Ice Age, Stanford
believes that the ancient people were
hunting seals for food and oil and followed
across to the New World. Solutrean drawings
of seals, deep sea fish, and auks have
been discovered; this is significant because
auks only breed on islands, indicating
that the Solutreans must have had boats.
Furthermore, at this time the North Atlantic
was mostly frozen to the point where travel
across was more than plausible.
The
group got to see the museum's collection
of Clovis points and Clovis point casts.
"I thought it was really fascinating,"
said Jayme Job,
a RTP student focusing on anthropology.
"He had lots of evidence to support
what he was saying. Everyone really liked
it-even the non-anthropology people. It
was really neat, because we've only seen
stuff like that in textbooks, and now
we get hands-on experience. I'm definitely
going to buy his book," she added
with a laugh.
The
RTP group then went on a tour of a few
of the collections of human remains from
the Terry Collection, and the "Mummy
Vault" with specimens such as Egyptian
mummies and a Peruvian woman over 600
years old used in religious ceremonies.
Smaller exhibits were just as interesting,
such as mummified cats and lizards, some
of which were given to the Museum by superstitious
Europeans scared of Egyptian curses following
the discovery of the tomb of King Tut.
Also included were South American shrunken
heads, which were created by removing
the skull from a human head and applying
heat to shrink the rest of the head down.
Another
lecture, also by Hunt, dealt with the
enormous wealth of information that can
be learned by examining human bones. He
went over some key differences between
the male and female skeleton, such as
distinctions in the shape of the pelvis
and skull. The group got to see "Train
Man," a 28-30 year old African-American
male who was hit on the side by a trolley,
had his neck snapped, and lost control
over his body. His skeleton was eventually
given to the Museum. The exhibit even
included animal bone parts, such as broken
bear paws, which sometimes get mistaken
for human cases. All in all, an informatory
look into the distant past and of how
much bones and artifacts can still tell
us about the present.
-
Sandeep
Soman (RTP
Reporter, '06)
