Re: REPOST: Re: Siberian Arctic site dated to 27,000 BP

From: Daryl Krupa (icycalmca_at_yahoo.com)
Date: 03/18/05 

Date: 17 Mar 2005 21:23:10 -0800

Philip Deitiker wrote:
> In sci.archaeology, Daryl Krupa created a message ID
> news:reposted.0.1110871980.988948.248400
> @z14g2000cwz.googlegroups.com:
>
> > It's not a matter of belief, it's a matter of
> > available evidence. Dyke, et al. are pretty comprehensive
> > the subject.
> >
> > If you want the latest and best informationas of
> > early 2001, hunt down a copy of the Quat. Sci. Rev's
> > article:
> >
> > A. S. Dyke, J. T. Andrews, P. U. Clark, J. H. England,
> > G. H. Miller, J. Shaw and J. J. Veillette
> > 2002
> > The Laurentide and Innuitian ice sheets during
> > the Last Glacial Maximum.
> > Quaternary Science Reviews.
> > Volume 21, Issues 1-3, Pages 9-31
> >
> > It's online (go to the links in upper right for "Full
> text" or
> > "PDF"):
> > http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?
> _ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6VBC-44MX5WF-2&_user=10&_coverDate=01%
> 2F31%2F2002&_rdoc=2
> &_fmt=summary&_orig=browse&_sort=d&view=c&_acct=C000050221
> &_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=
> 8aa8e436161ff08f7ff6ffdfed1bd1d5
> >
> > OR
> >
> > http://tinyurl.com/3o65l
<snip>
> I pretty much understand you are very strongly
> in favor of this as the primary possibly only route.

  Phil:
  That is a mis-reading of my position.
  I just want a pre-Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) inland
route to be considered as a viable possibility for
early North American immigration.

> However I question the verosity of stance on several
> grounds.
>
> 1. That even the most knowlegdable scientist can deduce
> extent based on end point phenomena. These tills allow
> to mark the ends of the reciprocation but they do not
> neccesarily advance at certain stages, for example
> exactly where the ice fields were at certain stages.

  In your reply, the only part of this discussion
so far that you quoted was part of the URL to
"The Laurentide and Innuitian ice sheets during the
Last Glacial Maximum."
  The part of that work that relates to a pre-LGM
ice-free corridor (IFC) is not so much a discussion
of tills as it is a discussion of available pre-LGM
radiocarbon dates.
  I refer you again to the relevant figure, which has
this caption:

"Fig. 3. The distribution of Middle Wisconsinan (stage 3)
sites that have yielded finite radiocarbon ages.
The probable interstadial ice margin at 27?0 14C ka BP
approximately follows the margin of the Canadian Shield."

http://members.cox.net/quaternary/NAmericaStage3Ice.gif

  Note that there are two classes of radiocarbon dates
depicted; triangles denote dated material younger than
30 ka BP, and squares denote dated material older than
30 ka BP.
  These are samples of organic material that could not
have been emplaced under glacial ice.
  Therefore, there was no glacial ice in the area of
each sample at the time its original organism was alive.
  Ergo, the Laurentide Ice *** (LIS) limit was closer
to the spreading centre of the LIS, which means,
effectively, that the edge of teh LIS was to the
northeast, leaving a wide IFC between the LIS and the
Cordillera.
  Nothing to do with glacial tills.
  Those radiocarbon dates do not tell us "exactly where
the ice fields were at certain stages" but they do tell
us what parts of North America were not covered by ice
fields at certain times.
  You don't have to be "the most knowlegdable scientist":
you just have to know that (e.g.) camels don't live on
ice sheets.

> 2. The claim that BC was only lightly glaciated is
> rather difficult to believe because you don't have to
> go far north of the US border to see glaciers
> streaming down the passes of many mountains.

  You don't even have to go north of the U.S.; you can
see such features in Montana's Glacier National Park:

http://www.nps.gov/glac/images/02289sm.jpg

  The ice extent Dyke's Fig. 3 is similar to
what you can see today.
  I don't see the objection.

> In fact cold periods more recently might have
> covered up earlier advances. The consideration of
> isolated mountain top glacies in BC in the middle
> of an ice age I think is presenting a foolishly
> understated case.

  Dyke's Fig. 3 goes not depict conditions
"in the middle of an ice age"; the mid-Wisconsin was
a relatively warm interstadial period of limited
glacial ice extent between colder glacial stadial
preiods of greater ice extent.
  B.C. has older Early Wisconsinan glacial deposits
separated from younger Late Wisconsinan glacial
deposits by intervening non-glacial sediments.
  There is nothing foolish about interpreting that
sequence as indicating two periods of glaciation
separated by a period of limited glaciation.

> [Have you been to british columbia?]

  Several dozens of times. To all parts except the
northwest corner. I've seen it from the air, from
the road, and from hiking trails. I've examined
glaciers, glacial deposits, and glaciofluvial
deposits. My slide collection of glacier pics is
quite comprehensive. I've even narrowly escaped death
due to falling glacial ice there.
  I've forgotten more about B.C. glaciers
than you'll ever know.

> 3. The situation with humans is that they are most
> productive as complex hunters and forage not only
> mammals but fish, grain seeds, flowers, etc.
> You are trying to present a rosey situation that
> I don't think you are capable of substantiating.

  "A rosey situation"? No; life in a mid-Wisc. IFC
was likely to be "nasty, brutish, and short".
  And I don't see what foraging grain seeds and
flowers has to do with life in a periglacial
steppe-tundra environment.
  I'm not at all sure that you understand the
situation that early peoples in a mid-Wisc. IFC
would have faced.

> A. Being between a moutain range and a very tall
> glacier, obviously capable of advaning and closing
> together by 24 kya, my have presented an ecology
> that was harsh,

  The western edge of the LIS, or any other continental
ice *** margin, was very, very unlikely to have been
viewed as "very tall" by anybody. Those margins slope
gradually, only forming tall cliffs where they are in
contact with water.

> B. The biomass of flora may not have been substantive
> enough to support large populations of animals,

  Phil, there was enough floral biomass to support a
substantive population of _mammoths_ in the mid-Wisc.
IFC.
  We have found their bones.
  Your argument is specious.
  And contrary to the evidence.
  And unsubstantiated.

> there
> may have been no fish and the plant seeds
> might have been sparse.

  And porcids may have had wings.

> C. Animal bones found could be from
> regional specialist species and from animals that
> ventured off and simply starved.

  Mammoths are not "regional specialist species".
 "Ventured off" from where?
  Look at the distribution of dated fossil finds
in Dyke's Fig. 3. They're widely distributed
throughout the mid-Wisc. IFC. Mammoths didn't wander
off from Alaska all the way to Edmonton just to
establish a mid-Wisconsinan elephant graveyard in
the Clover Bar pit.
  That's special pleading. Unsubstantiable.

> D. This is most important. The human specialist
> from the western asia did not arrive until after
> 18 kya, I am presuming that the siberian/alaskan
> population at the time is derived from the west
> pacific rim via tiawan region some from inland
> china via Japan or Korea. We know the occupation
> of the more balmy Japan started between 45 and 35
> kya, and the tools for megafauna hunting were not
> apparent until the incipient Jomon, prior to that
> the tool culture was largely composed of pebble
> stone tools most adapted to smaller to moderate
> sized animals.
> If there was specialization in that region it was
> toward maritime culture.

  I have no idea what you mean by "human specialist",
unless you mean a human cannibal.
  And since when are we discussing the situation in
the Japanese littoral?
  Irrelevant.

> So while humans could have been in siberia 30 kya,
> the bigger problem with making vast inland migrations
> is cultural adaptations. If these peoples were
> culturally adapted to smaller animals and fish, and
> used also to seasonal migration by boat (IOW it became
> difficult for them to stalk herds 100s of miles), IOW
> they were small time garden variety foragers,
> then there could be reasoning in terms of their culture
> for not heading 1000 miles down a path with few resources
> scattered very sparsely. Their efficiency of tracking and
> killing arctic specialist of the time may not have been
> good enough, and if those animals were spread to widely
> then it is possible that 'culturally' the trip was
> impossible..

  Anything is "possible". I take your point that
a culture specialising in megafauna exploitation
is unlikely to have arisen in the Japanese littoral.
  That point is only relevant if you assume that
any mid-Wisc. immigration to North America
had to originate in the Japanese littoral.
  Humans elsewhere were already adapted to periglacial environments and
megafauna exploitation.
  It is not necessary or plausible to restrict the
source area of mid-Wisc. immigrants to North America
to the Japanese littoral.
  Beringia was not primarily a coastal environment.
  The Japanese littoral is a poor analogue for the
environment that would have been occupied and exploited
by mid-Wisc. immigrants to North America.
  Conditions in the Japanese littoral are
not directly germane to the topic of
human exploitation of periglacial environments.

  I would not be surprised if Jomon sites smelled like
red herring.

> We can put this into a more abstract equation.
> A glaceir, apriori is not a inpenitrable wall.
> Even 100 years ago people travel across the expanse
> of antartica. The difference however is that
> 100 years ago the people who did it successfully
> combined aspects of several modern and arctic
> cultures.

  Nobody but you is positing travel across ice sheets.
  The comparison with the Antarctic ice cap is
not relevant.

> One has to consider the west pacific rim
> dwellers as the wave front of human expansion,
> the attraction of new lands always pulling them
> away from the centers of technological complexity
> closer to africa.

  No, one does not have to consider the west pacific
rim dwellers as the wave front of human expansion
into North America.

> Again we have to use Japan as an example of the
> contrast,

  Nobody has to do that.

> because when the Paleolithic Japanese run into
> these western asians via the transbiakal region,
> a cultural transformation takes place that rapidly
> expands technological complexity in the region.
> It should be no surprise that these Soluterean
> like tools appear about the same time as pottery
> and other refined products that subsequently we are
> seen new tool cultures and new morphologies appear
> in the new world, at the same time you are seeing
> megafauna extinctions.
<snip>

  You have strayed a dozen millennia into the future.
  This discussion is now definitely off-topic.
  Your opening sentence,
"D. This is most important.",
was misleading.
  I have useful things to do now.

  The End.