Re: Were seafarers living in British Columbia 16,000 years ago?

On Aug 24, 12:00 pm, David <pchristain...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Times Colonisthttp://www.canada.com/victoriatimescolonist/news/story.html?id=348058...

To me the evidence is clear. Pushing on, I would be interested in
what other NGers
have to say about SPECULATION on New World colonization several tens
of millennia earlier.

Regards,
David Christainsen
Newton, Mass USA

Sort of a summary of the New Scientist article (New Scientist, 11
August 2007, p.40 "Follow That Kelp").

Jon Erlander, archaeologist at the University of Oregon will publish
with colleagues a paper in the "Journal of Island and Coastal
Arcaheology" on a wide range of findings that suggest the migration of
peoples down the coastal kelp highway that extends from Southern Japan
over the arc of islands and peninsulas to mid Baja California. An
extension begins again in Ecuador and encompasses Southern South
America around to Uruguay.

The kelp highway is the home of many food fish and shellfish,
providing the knowlegable traveler a source of food throughout the
long journey.

The path along the kelp highway has clues in the form of the tooth
DNA, connected to an inhabitant of a cave on this coast, the existence
of Arlington man (woman) 13,000 years ago, the discovery of a 10,000
year old black basalt tool scooped out of a bucket dredge in the
Queen Charlotte Islands. A suitable search site at Section Cove in the
QCI has been selected for an underwater archaeological excavation next
year.

http://waddle.uoregon.edu/?id=439
"Kelp highway" may have helped peopling of the Americas
Productive kelp forests found near many early coastal archaeological
sites

ST. LOUIS, Mo.-(Feb. 19, 2006)-If humans migrated from Asia to the
Americas along Pacific Rim coastlines near the end of the Pleistocene
era, kelp forests may have aided their journey, according to research
presented today at the American Association for the Advancement of
Science (AAAS) annual meeting.

Until recently, the "coastal migration theory" was not accorded much
importance by most scholars. However, new discoveries have moved it to
the forefront of debate on the origins of the First Americans. It is
now known that seafaring peoples living in the Ryuku Islands and Japan
near the height of the last glacial period (about 35,000 to 15,000
years ago) adapted to cold waters comparable to those found today in
the Gulf of Alaska. From Japan, they may have migrated northward
through the Kurile Islands, to the southern coast of Beringia (ancient
land bridge between what is now Siberia and Alaska), and into the
Americas.

"The coastal migration theory has yet to be proven with hard evidence,
but we have been finding earlier and more widespread evidence for
coastal settlement around the Pacific Rim," said Jon Erlandson,
professor of anthropology and director of the Museum of Natural and
Cultural History at the University of Oregon and the study's lead
researcher. "The fact that productive kelp forests are found adjacent
to some of the earliest coastal archaeological sites in the Americas
supports the idea that such forests may have facilitated human coastal
migrations around the Pacific Rim near the end of the last glacial
period. In essence, they may have acted as a sort of kelp highway."

Kelp forests are some of the world's richest ecosystems. They are
found from Japan to Baja California and to South America's west coast.
They would have provided a similar assortment of food resources-
including shellfish, fish, sea mammals, and seabirds-along thousands
of miles of the North Pacific coast, and also reduced wave energy for
people in boats. These people also would have had access to a variety
of land resources. In contrast, people migrating through the interior
would have had fewer options and would have had to pass through much
more varied landscapes, including tundra, boreal and tropical forests,
and deserts.

"This study is a unique example of collaboration between coastal
archaeologists and marine biologists," Erlandson said. "I've worked on
many early sites near kelp forests from Alaska to California, but I
never realized similar habitats were present around much of the
Pacific Rim. Combining our very different perspectives provided an
opportunity to reach insights that none of us would have attained
alone."

The "kelp highway hypothesis" first crystallized among an
interdisciplinary group working at the National Center for Ecological
Analysis and Synthesis. The study's other researchers include: Michael
Graham of Moss Landing Marine Laboratories; Bruce Bourque of Bates
College; Debbie Corbett of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in
Anchorage, Alaska; James Estes of the U.S. Geological Survey and the
University of California-Santa Cruz; and, Robert Steneck of the
University of Maine.

.

Relevant Pages

  • peopling of America
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    ... "Kelp highway" may have helped peopling of the Americas ... Productive kelp forests found near many early coastal archaeological ... Americas along Pacific Rim coastlines near the end of the Pleistocene ... "The coastal migration theory has yet to be proven with hard evidence, ...
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