Roots � Deep Ones

The perils of looking into American prehistory.

By John J. Miller, NR's national political reporter June 9‑10, 2001

��

One of the secrets of

archaeology is that many truly

great finds aren't made by

archaeologists. It was a farmer,

Harold Conover, who

stumbled on a clue in the late 1980s that led to a magnificent

site in Virginia called Cactus Hill. Conover and his wife were

walking on logging roads near their home when he spotted a

few Indian artifacts mixed in the sand. He soon traced the

sand back to a quarry about ten miles away. Thanks to this

detective work, a group of archaeologists led by Joseph

McAvoy started digging near that quarry in the early 1990s.

They unearthed signs of human habitation stretching back

about 18,000 years � making Cactus Hill one of the two or

three oldest sites in North America. They also found evidence

to support one of the most provocative developments of our

time: the growing suspicion among physical anthropologists,

archaeologists, and even geneticists that some of the first

people who settled in the New World were Europeans.

Ten years ago, hardly anybody outside crackpot circles

would have contemplated this notion. There's a whole

speculative literature of oddball theories on groups coming to

America in antiquity. Ivan Van Sertima's They Came Before

Columbus points to statues produced by Mexico's Olmec

civilization as representations of Negroid faces, and the book

remains a perennial grocery‑store seller. Nancy Yaw Davis

argued last year in The Zuni Enigma that New Mexico's

Zuni tribe has too much in common with ancient Japanese

culture for it to be a coincidence. Many of these ideas persist

simply because they're hard to disprove, and it's important to

remember that the whole field is afflicted with celebrated

frauds like the Kensington Runestone � a large stone slab

that came to light a century ago and claims to describe the

travels of 14th‑century Vikings in Minnesota.

Despite the uncertainty, it has become increasingly clear over

the last decade that the history‑textbook version of ancient

American settlement no longer holds up. The first Americans,

according to the standard view, arrived about 12,000 years

ago by way of a land bridge that once connected Siberia and

Alaska. Thanks to a handful of sites like Cactus Hill, it is now

beyond dispute that some people got here much earlier. Asia

remains a likely source for migrations, because of its

proximity and the fact that today's Indians indisputably have

ancestors who lived there. But Asia may not be the only

source, and there's good reason to think it wasn't.

This ought to be thrilling news for the multiculturalists. What

better project for them than the serious study of America's

prehistory; a glorious mosaic whose rich diversity is only

now seeing daylight? But it must be remembered that

multiculturalism is motivated not by sincere curiosity about the

past, but by the sensitivities of modern victimology. An

important part of American Indian identity relies on the belief

that, in some fundamental way, they were here first. They are

indigenous, they are Native, and they make an important

moral claim on the national conscience for this very reason.

Yet if some population came before them � perhaps a group

their own ancestors wiped out through war and disease, in an

eerily reversed foreshadowing of the contact Columbus

introduced, then a vital piece of their mythologizing suffers

a serious blow. This revised history drastically undercuts the

posturing occasioned by the 500th anniversary of Columbus's

1492 voyage.

The prime mover behind the European‑migration theory is

Dennis Stanford, a jovial anthropologist who has spent nearly

three decades at the Smithsonian Institution studying Stone

Age technology. A big table dominates his office in the

National Museum of Natural History, and it's often cluttered

with primitive tools borrowed from the Smithsonian's huge

collection. He is an authority on Clovis Culture, named for the

town in New Mexico where the first remnants of it were

found in 1932. The Clovis people were said to be big‑game

hunters who stalked mammoths, and they left behind

distinctive relics. Researchers were so sure that they were the

continent's original settlers � about 12,000 years ago � that

suggesting otherwise was professional heresy.

But by the late 1980s, Stanford and a few of his colleagues,

including his former student Bruce Bradley, began to harbor

serious doubts about the Clovis theory. For starters, there

were a handful of sites, such as Pennsylvania's Meadowcroft

Rockshelter, that seemed older than Clovis. But more

�� important, in Stanford's view, was the complete lack of

�� evidence that Clovis culture ever existed outside the

�� Americas. He spent years scouring museum collections

�� around the world, but always came away empty. "It was

�� getting pretty discouraging," he says.

�� In truth, there is a Stone Age technology that looks an awful

�� lot like Clovis, and its existence troubled Stanford and

�� Bradley: The culture that produced it wasn't found in Siberia,

�� where just about everybody would have expected it, but at

�� the other end of the same landmass � in modern‑day France

�� and Spain. It's called Solutrean, and it vanished some 20,000

�� years ago. Stanford and Bradley were especially intrigued by

�� the fact that the greatest concentration of Clovis sites occurs

�� in the southeastern United States: If the technology is native

�� to the Americas, it was probably invented in this area. If it

�� wasn't native, then this was probably the site to which it was

�� imported � on the side of the North American continent

�� facing Europe. But a pair of insurmountable obstacles

�� appeared to separate the Clovis and Solutrean cultures:

�� several thousand years, and a large ocean.

�� Then came the findings at Cactus Hill. "As soon as we started

�� to see some of that stuff come out, we thought about the

�� connection to Solutrean," says Stanford. Joseph McAvoy

�� and his team found Clovis artifacts on the site, as well as

�� irrefutably older material that Stanford and Bradley think is a

�� developmental form of Clovis technology.

�� That's a groundbreaking observation. Experts in ancient

�� technology like to build family trees. Just as a sculptor can

�� hack a limitless number of objects out of a stone block, there

�� are an infinite number of ways to chip a hand ax or spearpoint

�� from a rock. Over time, cultures develop particular

�� techniques; archaeologists can identify them and create tool

�� genealogies. If they find tools that look similar and were

�� manufactured in the same way, there's a good chance the

�� people making them shared cultural traits. They may have

�� been blood relatives or trading partners, but whatever their

�� precise relationship, they almost certainly drew from the same

�� storehouse of knowledge.

�� Stanford is one of the world's few remaining accomplished

�� flintknappers: Give him the right type of rock and he can flake

�� it into a long, bifacial, and fluted spearpoint just like a Clovis

�� hunter would. While other scholars have noted the similarities

�� between Clovis and Solutrean technology as a mildly

�� interesting example of cultural convergence � in other

�� words, a coincidence � Stanford's expertise in flintwork

�� made him suspect a deeper connection: "There are so many

�� matching steps in how they made their tools: bifacial flaking,

�� heat treatment, similar ceremonial items, the presence of red

�� ocher. There must be fifty or sixty points of comparison. It

�� can't be chance." And yet nobody could figure out a way to

�� bridge the thousands of years and miles dividing the two

�� groups.

�� Then, in 1994, a team of Emory University scientists studying

�� genetic diversity made an unexpected discovery. They

�� examined a specific kind of DNA lineage known as

�� mitochondrial DNA in ethnic groups around the world. Their

�� survey of American Indians found four major varieties, which

�� they labeled haplogroups A, B, C, and D. Each of these has

�� antecedents in Asia, confirming that today's Indians descend

�� almost entirely from Asian stock. But there's a fifth lineage,

�� too, called haplogroup X. It occurs in about a quarter of all

�� Ojibway Indians, and in lesser amounts among members of

�� the Sioux, Navajo, and other tribes. A version of the X

�� haplogroup shows up in only one other place on the planet:

�� Europe.

�� "That's what pushed me over the edge," says Stanford. If the

�� X haplogroup had found its way to America through Siberia,

�� it almost certainly would have left behind a mark somewhere

�� in Asia; but exhaustive searching has turned up no indications

�� of any passage. The simplest explanation is an Atlantic

�� crossing.

�� Out of Europe?

�� Actual human remains might help clinch the case.

�� Unfortunately, not many 9,000‑year‑old skeletons survive

�� today. The small sample that are known raise fascinating

�� possibilities. The much‑disputed Kennewick Man, for

�� instance, is said to have Caucasoid features, as opposed to

�� the Mongoloid ones of present‑day Indians. (This isn't to say

�� he was "white" � nobody knows the color of his skin.)

�� Some researchers have suggested his morphology most

�� closely resembles the Ainu, an indigenous Japanese

�� population. But the prospect of early migrations from places

�� other than Asia can't be dismissed. One skull found in Brazil

�� shares more similarities with Australian Aborigines than with

�� any other group. "The evidence is mounting that the earliest

�� North Americans were a distinct people, or perhaps several

�� distinct peoples, who cannot easily be linked to modern

�� American Indians," writes James C. Chatters � the forensic

�� anthropologist who recovered Kennewick Man � in his

�� just‑published book, Ancient Encounters.

�� How might Europeans have made it to the Americas so long

�� ago? The challenge appears immense, but there is a tendency

�� to underestimate the cleverness of ancient peoples � a

�� tendency that grows over time, perhaps, as we depend more

�� on sophisticated technology and begin to believe that only a

�� half‑wit would sail beyond sight of the coast without hooking

�� up to a GPS satellite. But boats and navigation aren't recent

�� inventions; human beings reached Australia at least 40,000

�� years ago, and getting there would have required � at least

�� a trip of about 80 miles on the high seas, from New

�� Guinea. That's much shorter than traversing the Atlantic, to be

�� sure, but the important point is that it represents a willingness

�� and ability among ancient people to leave the relative safety

�� of coastal waterways.

�� A migration out of Europe seems distinctly possible if we

�� consider a number of factors that probably would have given

�� ancient travelers a boost. During the last ice age, the sea

�� levels were lower; today's coasts were inland, and the

�� distance from Western Europe to the Grand Banks (which

�� then formed the easternmost part of North America) would

�� have been about 1,400 miles � far, but much closer than it is

�� today. In addition, an ice shelf extending south from the

�� Arctic would have presented a clear route. Seals, penguins,

�� and fish would have offered nourishment along the way. The

�� prevailing ocean current, too, would have swept these early

�� people in the right direction. So the journey wouldn't have

�� required the prehistoric equivalent of the Apollo space

�� program. may have been a few guys on an ice floe," says

�� Stanford.

�� Discovering an 18,000‑year‑old Irish coracle off the New

�� Jersey shore would settle a lot of questions, but ancient boats

�� were made of perishable materials. Tools and bones last

�� longer, and that's what makes the Cactus Hill artifacts and the

�� Kennewick remains so important. Prehistory isn't called

�� prehistory for nothing: It's a challenge to study, because the

�� people who made it left only scant traces of themselves. Even

�� if a European migration really did happen, the evidence

�� proving it conclusively may not exist today. What evidence

�� does exist seems to turn up by happenstance, such as when a

�� farmer takes a stroll down a logging road. In the case of

�� Kennewick Man, a pair of boozed‑up college students

�� waded into the Columbia River to avoid buying $11 tickets

�� for a boating exhibition, and then spotted a skull sticking out

�� of the mud. These important discoveries were essentially

�� accidents.

�� The truth may be out there, but some people would prefer to

�� keep it hidden. Kennewick Man, for instance, is currently

�� locked up in Seattle's Burke Museum, where nobody is

�� allowed to study him. Last September, interior secretary

�� Bruce Babbitt announced his intention to give the priceless

�� remains to modern‑day Indian tribes that intended to bury the

�� bones without allowing scientists a look. Several researchers

�� (including Stanford) sued, and a judge stopped the handover.

�� Lawyers will argue the case on June 19, and the fate of

�� Kennewick Man � perhaps the most important human

�� skeleton ever found in the Western Hemisphere � remains

�� uncertain.

�� This case is hardly an exception. Thanks to the Native

�� American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act of 1990,

�� federally recognized tribes have the right to petition for human

�� remains. The idea was to help them protect their ancestors

�� from grave robbers � but in practice the law has become a

�� tool for tribal activists to prevent the study of ancient people.

�� The Friends of America's Past, an organization based in

�� Portland, Ore., counts five other sets of bones � rough

�� contemporaries of Kennewick Man � that have been lost to

�� science under this or similar laws, and another six "in

�� jeopardy" of the same fate. Most of these remains are said to

�� share the vaguely "Caucasoid" traits seen on Kennewick Man

�� but again, research opportunities have been restricted.

�� Stanford and Bradley are completing a manuscript on the

�� Clovis‑Solutrean connection, which the University of

�� California Press expects to publish next year. It's impossible

�� to say whether the next generation of scholars will come to

�� look at their work as a turning point in our understanding of

�� prehistory, or a less‑than‑completely‑convincing argument

�� that makes creative use of meager material. What seems

�� increasingly clear, however, is that the old story of a simple

�� land migration from Siberia 12,000 years ago won't survive.

�� The question of what will replace it should be a matter of

�� concern to all of us, because the first Americans represent the

�� heritage of all Americans. No single person or group owns

�� the past; we all do, collectively. And it is only through a spirit

�� of scientific inquiry that we may learn the answer to that

�� fascinating question: How did the New World come to have

�� such people in it?

��

�� Roots � Deep Ones

�� WASHINGTON, DC

�� The perils of

�� looking into American

�� prehistory�by John J.

�� Miller

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