Re: Ancient Americas bottle gourd discovery

Hayabusa wrote: 
On Thu, 15 Dec 2005 00:53:03 GMT, Philip Deitiker
<Donevenask@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:


In sci.archaeology.mesoamerican message news:4977-439FB4B8-874@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx by
Topiltzin-2091@xxxxxxxxx . . . : 


Ancient humans brought bottle gourds to the Americas from Asia
Plants widely used as containers arrived, already domesticated,
some 10,000 years ago



CAMBRIDGE, Mass., Dec. 13, 2005 -- 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.


Hey, if that is not a hoax, it is amazing. As I understand it, that
pumpkin is a tropical plant. If it came from Asia to America, how did
it end up in icy northeastern Asia in the first place? And if it
didn't reach NE-Asia, how did it end up in America anyway? That makes
the migration by canoe at least a remote possibility.

I am anything but convinced, but I want to know more. There is one
detail one needs to remember: the Pacific islands were settled by the
Lapita people 1600BCE-800CE, but this was mostly because the islands
did not exist before that, they first had to emerge from the ocean.

Global sea level rise since LGM has been 120-130 m, mostly completed say 5000 years ago. Allthough some atolls would need rebuilding by corals to emerge, others would not since they are significantly higher.

Of course the islands existed before, but after the sea level rise at
the end of the ice age they were all flooded, except for the highest
ones. They re-emerged only after the Earth's mantle readjusted to the
additional load by the new water due to the rise, around 2000 BCE.

What do you mean? The mean depth of the Pacific is in the order of 3-4000 m, the additional 120-130 m is thus not much. And the isostatic rebound of the crust (not mantle!) where the ice was several km thick has typically been on the order of 100 m.

That could mean, of course, that they had been discovered once before,
ie before the sea level rose, at glacial maximum. Today there would be
no trace left except possibly for the highest islands, such as Hawaii.
I think this is a very long shot, but worth thinking about it.

There were no humans (HSS) around to explore the Pacific before the LGM.
.

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