Re: Anthropologist advances 'kelp highway' theory for Coast settlement Migrating peoples were sophisticated in sea harvesting, Jon Erlandson says

Jack Linthicum wrote:
On May 29, 11:40 am, VtSkier <vtsk...@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Another great article which I have saved.

Of course this article brings up as many questions
questions as it answers.

1) Where was this group of 80 or so individuals who
were the founding population for the Americas?

If they were in the Americas, then there may have
been only one immigration route.

However, if they were in asia, then they may well
have had time to expand in size *before* they
traveled east. If so, then there well could have
been multiple routes.

2) Populations of humans in the late Pleistocene,
especially in cold regions, I would assume to be
rather sparse. It is easy to posit any number of
locations for this founding population group to
be located.

3) The article speaks of an up to 15,000 year
isolation of the founding population in Beringia.
If this is true, then the scenario is this:

The original 80 got to Beringia, maybe 25,000
years ago. The subsisted nicely, isolated by
maybe some meteorological events to the west in
Asia, but had lots of plentiful ice age fauna
to hunt and lived well.

They stayed there for 15,000 years eating well.
The Law of Nature says that a population (of
anything) will increase as it's food supply
increases (or is in excess of what is required
for the existing population).

Therefore the original band of 80 will have
increased to several thousands by 12 or 14k
years ago. They will have organized themselves
into groups no larger than bands and will have
lived in relatively isolated groups. Some will
have live near a shore line. Some will have
lived in the interior.

Those that lived near the shore will have had
population pressure to move. There may have been
impediments to moving west, so east (and
therefore south) would have been the direction.

The same will have gone for the groups in the
interior.

Even with the article on genetic distribution
provided, the possibility of more than one route
for colonization of the Americas is more probable
than only one.

But really, who can say. Beringia (or most of it)
is no longer with us and all that remains of
those people who may have lived there for 15k
years is gone.
--------------------
The article excludes Na-dene speakers from its
study. It has always been assumed that these
people were late-comers from Asia, oh, say,
6000 to 5000 BCE.

Stephen Oppenheimer posits that these people
are actually another isolate who were stuck in
the region of the Yukon River for many millennia,
maybe even predating the people who became
everybody except Na-dene speakers and who migrated
south after the ice sheets completely disappeared.

There is apparently a group in Central Asia, in
the area of the Lena River IIRC, who speak a
closely related language suggestive of a founding
population for Na-dene peoples or perhaps a
reverse migration from North America to Asia
in the distant past.

Try it this way. A large number of people ended up in Beringa
30-35,000 years ago. They couldn't go any further due to the glaciers.
Some found a way into an ice free interior (the Nenana culture), the
others stayed in Beringa for 15,000 years.

There was a Global Warming, probably due to too many campfires, and
either some of the Beringa crowd used boats they had used to chase
marine mammals or they planned a short trek to find better fishing and
hunting. Remember, they had been living off mostly marine life, animal
and vegetable, for a least part if not all of that 15k years. A group,
either by choice or exiled from the main group, started down the kelp
highway, stopping at the occasional ice free island to hunt bear and
other land mammals.

By the time they got to what is now Southeastern Alaska, some were
dropping out to live in the places they found and some were pushing
on. Pushing on must have been a strong trait with them because they
pushed on to the ends of South America.

The number that started might have been 300 (30 boats?) but by the
time they hit the Washington-Oregon coast they were in the 100-150s.
The ones that stayed and went East were in that article, the ones that
kept on were either in that group or others not yet separated out from
the crowd.

Sure, for the coast route. However, assuming
that everybody lived on the coast of Beringia.
But I think that's a wrong assumption. Eastern
Asia and Western North America were both home
to a great many Ice Age Mega-animals such as
mammoths, woolly rhinos, etc. south of the ice.
I think it would be a mistake to assume that
Beringia didn't have this population also

If that's so, then there is no reason to assume
that the whole population of Beringia lived on
the coast.

Also, while I think your 'push-on' theory is
good as far as it goes, I don't think it worked
exactly that way. You posited that a group would
be walking south and part of that group would
see a spot they liked and stay there while the
rest kept on moving. I think the group is
walking south and the whole group (a band of
no more than 100 individuals) sees a spot
they like and stay. The spot is pretty good
so there is an increase in population after
a few generations. This causes part of the
group, who well may be young and restless, to
pick up an move on. Moving north has more
impediments so moving south is the best option.
Repeat over probably no more than a thousand
years and you have migration probably to the
tip of South America.

Think of this like an upside down funnel. Sure
only a few groups were moving south when there
were ice sheets east and/or west of them, but
once they got south of the ice, there would have
been movement east and west as well as south.
.

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