Re: OT: Malhi, Eshleman, haplogroup A, language, time, and direction.....

From: Lee Olsen (paleocity_at_hotmail.com)
Date: 03/27/05 

Date: 26 Mar 2005 19:42:51 -0800

Dar Habel wrote:
> G Horvat wrote:
> > On Sat, 26 Mar 2005 02:15:22 GMT, G Horvat <g-horvat@shaw.ca>
wrote:
> >
> > >On 25 Mar 2005 12:28:47 -0800, "Lee Olsen" <paleocity@hotmail.com>
> > >wrote:
> > >
> > >>G Horvat wrote:
> > >[...]
> >
> > >>3. Micro-blades go with haplogroup A.
> > >
> > >Could you explain why you would make this association (as I am
> > >unfamiliar with the distribution of microblades in both the New
> World
> > >and Old).
> >
> > Is this description of the distribution accurate?
> >
> > "The use of microblades is quite common throughout
> > Europe and Asia, but it is a technology that is rare - virtually
> > nonexistent - in the Americas."
> >
> > Does "throughout" really mean the northern, southern, eastern, and
> > western portions of Europe & Asia?
> >
> > UNIVERSITY OF THE ARCTIC
> > Post Ice Age Geography and the Initial
> > Peopling of the Arctic and Subarctic
> > Developed by Michel Bouchard, Assistant Professor, Department of
> > Anthropology, University of Northern British Columbia; and Jeremei
> > Gabyshev, Professor, Department of History, Sakha State University
> >
> > http://www.uarctic.org/bcs/BCS321/mod1.pdf
> >
> > Comments - Lee and Dar?
> >
> > Gisele
>
> Well, I'd say "throughout" really means N, S, E, and W Asia in a
> general sense, but I'd qualify this with caution that I once (log
ago)
> called the Alaskan microblades "microliths" and caught all kinds of
> re-definition from Jacques Cinq-Mars who informed me the Eastern
> Eurasian small tools (even the blades) were microliths, but the
Arctic
> traditions had the "real" microblades. As illustration, the Dufour
> bladelets of some early Aurignacian industries in Western Eurasia
could
> probably be called microblades, technically. (They qualify as
> microlithic and they are bladelets, or small blades, meaning length
is
> at least 2X width). Lee and I had a few words about this confusion
> when we were discussing the Lia Buang microlithic blades. I think a
> distinction should be made as to whether the micro-tools form the
major
> part of the industry. The Aurignacian Dufour bladelets rarely form
the
> major part of the earliest Aurignacian assemblages (and are few or
> lacking in some later Aurignacian assemblages), while the opposite is
> the case for the Diuktai, which is a microblade-dominated industry.
In
> addition, there are differences in the core reduction used to
> manufacture Dufour bladelets and Diuktai microblades. Also,
> micro-tools are rare (no microblade-dominated industries) in
Southeast
> Asia (south of northern China) until at least the Holocene (in
> Australia), and microblade-dominated "industries" don't become common
> in Western Eurasia until about Mesolithic times. All in all, saying
> microblades existed "throughout" Eurasia is probably true (they were
> present here and there "throughout" at various times), but that
doesn't
> really make clear the qualifications I've (short-)listed here off the
> top of my head from memory (so there's probably a few other
> qualifications that can be noted, also).
>
> Lee probably has some criticism of this, so I'll stop here until he
> chimes in.

Well said, I agree completely.

>
> Dar