So school bench we are told that America settled by the inhabitants of Asia, who moved there in groups through the Bering Isthmus (in the place where the strait is now). They settled in the New World after a huge glacier began to melt 14-15 thousand years ago. Is not it indigenous people America came to the mainland (more precisely, two continents) in this way?!
However, recent discoveries by archaeologists and geneticists have shaken this coherent theory. It turns out that America was inhabited repeatedly, some strange peoples did this, almost related to the Australians, and besides, it is not clear on what transport the first "Indians" reached the extreme south of the New World.
The population of America. First version
Until the end of the 20th century, the “Clovis first” hypothesis dominated American anthropology, according to which it was this culture of ancient mammoth hunters that appeared 12.5-13.5 thousand years ago that was the most ancient in the New World.
According to this hypothesis, people who ended up in Alaska could survive on ice-free land, because there was quite a bit of snow here, but then the path to the south was blocked by glaciers until a period of 14-16 thousand years ago, due to which settlement in the Americas began only after the end of the last glaciation.
The hypothesis was coherent and logical, but in the second half of the 20th century some discoveries were made that were incompatible with it. In the 1980s, Tom Dillehay, during excavations in Monte Verde (southern Chile), found that people had been there at least 14.5 thousand years ago. This caused a strong reaction from the scientific community: it turned out that the discovered culture was 1.5 thousand years older than Clovis in North America.
In order not to rewrite students and not change their view of the characteristics of the American population, most American anthropologists simply denied the find scientific reliability. Already during the excavations, Delai faced a powerful attack on his professional reputation, it came to the closure of funding for excavations and attempts to declare Monte Verde a phenomenon not related to archeology.
Only in 1997 did he manage to confirm the dating at 14,000 years, which caused a deep crisis in understanding the ways of settling America. At that time in North America there were so many places ancient settlement was not, because of which the question arose of where exactly people could get to Chile.
Recently, the Chileans suggested that Delea continue excavations. Influenced by the sad experience of twenty years of excuses, he initially refused. “I was fed up,” the scientist explained his position. However, in the end he agreed and found tools at the MVI site, undoubtedly man-made, whose antiquity was 14.5-19 thousand years.
History repeated itself: archaeologist Michael Waters immediately questioned the findings. In his opinion, the finds can be simple stones, remotely similar to tools, which means that the traditional chronology of the settlement of America is still out of danger.
Delays found "guns"
Seaside nomads
To understand how justified the criticism new work, we turned to the anthropologist Stanislav Drobyshevsky (Moscow State University). According to him, the tools found are indeed very primitive (processed on one side), but made from materials that are not found in Monte Verde. Quartz for a significant part of them had to be brought from afar, that is, such items cannot be of natural origin.
The scientist noted that the systematic criticism of discoveries of this kind is quite understandable: "When you teach in school and university that America was inhabited in a certain way, it is not so easy to give up this point of view."
Mammoths in Beringia
Conservatism American researchers is also understandable: in North America, recognized finds date back to a period of thousands of years later than the period specified by Deley. And what about the theory that before the melting of the glacier, the ancestors of the Indians blocked by it could not settle south?
However, Drobyshevsky notes, there is nothing supernatural in the more ancient dates of the Chilean sites. The islands along Canada's present-day Pacific coast were not glaciated, and bear remains from the Ice Age have been found there. This means that people could well spread along the coast, swimming across in boats and not going deep into the then inhospitable North America.
Australian footprint
However, the fact that the first reliable finds of the ancestors of the Indians were made in Chile does not end with the oddities of the settlement of America. Not so long ago, it turned out that the genes of the Aleuts and groups of Brazilian Indians have features characteristic of the genes of the Papuans and Australian Aborigines.
As the Russian anthropologist emphasizes, the data of geneticists are well combined with the results of the analysis of skulls previously found in South America and having features close to Australian ones.
In his opinion, most likely, the Australian trace in South America is associated with a common ancestral group, part of which moved to Australia tens of thousands of years ago, while the other migrated along the coast of Asia to the north, up to Beringia, and from there reached the South American continent. .
The appearance of Luzia is the name of a woman who lived 11 thousand years ago, whose remains were discovered in a Brazilian cave 
As if that wasn't enough genetic research 2013 showed that the Brazilian Botakudo Indians are close in mitochondrial DNA to the Polynesians and part of the inhabitants of Madagascar. Unlike the Australoids, the Polynesians could well have achieved South America by sea. At the same time, traces of their genes in eastern Brazil, and not on the Pacific coast, are not so easy to explain.
It turns out that a small group of Polynesian navigators, for some reason, did not return after landing, but overcame the Andean highlands, which were unusual for them, in order to settle in Brazil. One can only guess about the motives for such a long and difficult overland journey for typical sailors.
So, a small part of the American natives have traces of genes that are very far from the genome of the rest of the Indians, which contradicts the idea of a single group of ancestors from Beringia.
30 thousand years before us
However, there are more radical deviations from the idea of settling America in one wave and only after the melting of the glacier. In the 1970s, the Brazilian archaeologist Nieda Guidon discovered the Pedra Furada cave site (Brazil), where, in addition to primitive tools, there were many bonfires, the age of which was shown by radiocarbon analysis to be from 30 to 48 thousand years.
It is easy to understand that such figures caused great rejection by North American anthropologists. The same Deley criticized radiocarbon dating, noting that traces could remain after a fire of natural origin.
Gidon reacted sharply to such opinions of her colleagues from the United States in Latin American: “Fire of natural origin cannot arise deep in a cave. American archaeologists need to write less and dig more.”
Drobyshevsky emphasizes that although no one has yet been able to challenge the dating of the Brazilians, the doubts of the Americans are quite understandable. If people were in Brazil 40 thousand years ago, then where did they go then and where are the traces of their stay in other parts of the New World?
Toba volcano eruption
The history of mankind knows cases when the first colonizers of new lands almost completely died out, leaving no significant traces. That's what happened to Homo sapiens who settled Asia. Their first traces there date back to the period up to 125 thousand years ago, however, genetic data say that all of humanity originated from a population that emerged from Africa, much later - only 60 thousand years ago.
There is a hypothesis that the reason for this could be the extinction of the then Asian part as a result of the eruption of the Toba volcano 70 thousand years ago. The energy of this event is considered to exceed the combined yield of all the combined nuclear weapons ever created by mankind.
However, even an event is more powerful nuclear war difficult to explain the disappearance of significant human populations. Some researchers note that neither Neanderthals, nor Denisovans, nor even Homo floresiensis, who lived relatively close to Toba, died out from the explosion.
And judging by individual finds in South India, local Homo sapiens did not die out at that time, traces of which are in the genes modern people while for some reason it is not observed. Thus, the question of where the people who settled 40 thousand years ago in South America could have gone remains open and to some extent casts doubt on the most ancient finds of the Pedra Furada type.
Genetics vs genetics
Not only archaeological data often come into conflict, but also such seemingly reliable evidence as genetic markers. This summer, the Maanasa Raghavan group from the Copenhagen Museum natural history announced that genetic analysis data refutes the idea that more than one wave of ancient settlers participated in the settlement of America.
According to them, genes close to Australians and Papuans appeared in the New World later than 9,000 years ago, when America was already inhabited by immigrants from Asia.
At the same time, the work of another group of geneticists led by Pontus Skoglund came out, which, based on the same material, made the opposite statement: a certain ghost population appeared in the New World either 15 thousand years ago, or even earlier, and, perhaps, settled there before the Asian wave of migration, from which the ancestors of the vast majority of modern Indians originated.
According to them, relatives Australian aborigines crossed the Bering Strait only to be displaced by the subsequent wave of "Indian" migration, whose representatives came to dominate both Americas, pushing the few descendants of the first wave into the Amazon jungle and the Aleutian Islands.
Ragnavan's reconstruction of the settlement of the Americas
Even if geneticists cannot agree among themselves on whether the “Indian” or “Australian” components became the first natives of America, it is even more difficult for everyone else to understand this issue. And yet, something can be said about this: skulls similar in shape to the Papuan ones have been found on the territory of modern Brazil for more than 10 thousand years.
The scientific picture of the settlement of the Americas is very complex, and at the present stage it is changing significantly. It is clear that groups of different origins participated in the settlement of the New World - at least two, not counting a small Polynesian component that appeared later than the others.
It is also obvious that at least part of the settlers were able to colonize the continent despite the glacier - bypassing it in boats or on ice. At the same time, the pioneers subsequently moved along the coast, quite quickly reaching the south of modern Chile. The early Americans appear to have been highly mobile, expansive, and well versed in the use of water transport.
According to the genetic studies of the University of Michigan, the ancestors of the Indians and Eskimos moved to America from northeast Asia through the "Bering Bridge" - a wide isthmus on the site of the current Bering Strait between America and Asia, which disappeared more than 12 thousand years ago.
Migration continued between 70 thousand years BC. e. and 12 thousand years BC and had several independent friend from a friend of the waves. One of them was a wave 32 thousand years ago, the other - to Alaska - 18 thousand years ago (at this time the first settlers had already reached South America).
The level of culture of the first settlers corresponded to the Late Paleolithic and Mesolithic cultures of the Old World.
It can be assumed [some news contradicts] the following flows of settlement in America (according to racial types- roughly, but chronologically - more likely):
50,000 years ago - the arrival of the Australoids (or Ainoids) through the Aleutian Islands (10,000 years after the Ainu ancestors settled Australia), and their spread over 10,000 years along the western (Pacific coast) to the south (settlement of South America in 40,000 BC) . From them - the active structure of the sentence and the open syllable in many (especially South American) Indian languages?
25,000 years ago - the arrival of the Americanoids (ketoids) - the ancestors of the Athabaskans (Na-Dene Indians). From them - incorporation and ergative system?
13,000 years ago - the arrival of the Eskimos - the ancestors of the Escaleus. Did they pour a nominative jet into the languages of the Indians?
9000 years ago - the arrival of Caucasians (the legendary Dinlin, Nivkhs?). Have you also made your nominative contribution to Native American language structures?
Settlement and ancient cultures of North America
Clovis hunters of mammoths and mastodons, supposedly exterminating many species of large mammals in the Americas in just a few centuries, turned out to be the ancestors of the indigenous population of the New World south of the United States.
In total, about 400 tribes of Indians lived in North America.
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Ancient cultures and anthropological populations of North America (articles)
Settlement of North America at the Anishinabemovin site.
Ancient cultures of North America. S.A. Vasiliev.
. (18.03.2008)
The genome of the prehistoric boy showed that modern Indians are the direct descendants of the Clovis mammoth hunters. (22.02.2014)
Beringian Standstill and Spread of Native American Founders.
S.A. Vasiliev. Ancient cultures of North America. St. Petersburg, 2004. 140 p. Institute of the History of Material Culture RAS. Proceedings, vol. 12.
Monograph S.A. Vasiliev is an important event in Russian science of the past. Not only our understanding of the development of the culture of America before Columbus depends on the solution of the question of the time and ways of the initial settlement of the New World, but also the disclosure of mechanisms social evolution generally. From the time of Julian Steward, if not earlier, it was the basic similarity of the ancient civilizations of Western Asia, Mexico and Peru that served as the main argument in favor of the existence of the main path of evolution. The weight of this argument largely depends on how early the Indians were cut off from their Asian ancestors and what cultural baggage they brought from their Asian ancestral home. Determination of the dating of the initial settlement of the New World and identification of the appearance of the earliest local cultures is extremely important. So far get reliable information about the oldest human footprints in America Russian reader there was nowhere. Not only the humanities in general, but also many ethnographers and even archaeologists' ideas on this subject are borrowed from academic publications of the middle of the last century, and sometimes even from irresponsible popular publications. Now this information gap is closed. S.A. Vasiliev perfectly knows both the Paleolithic of Eurasia, primarily Siberia, and ancient monuments North America, which are familiar to him not only in literature, but also de visu. The book is distinguished by the completeness of the coverage of the material, the use of reliable primary sources, terminological accuracy, clarity of presentation.
On two dozen pages of the Introduction and Chapter 1, the author managed to tell about the history of the study of the Paleolithic of North America, its chronological framework, problems of dating, research methods, strengths and weaknesses of the American and Russian archeology, infrastructure of Paleolithic studies in the US and Canada ( research centers and their hierarchy, publications, priority areas, interaction with other disciplines). In Chapter 2, the paleogeography and fauna of the North American continent in the final Pleistocene are described in the same compact and succinct way, with reference to this picture of the main Paleo-Indian traditions. Dating, as is customary in Paleolithic studies, is given in conventional radiocarbon years, which for the final Paleolithic is younger than the calendar years by about 2 thousand years. Chapters 3 - 6 contain an analytical description of the most ancient American Clovis culture (including its eastern one - from New England to the middle Mississippi - a variant of the Heiney) and the cultures of the final Paleolithic that arose immediately after the Late Clovis - Goshen, Folsom and Egate Basin on the Great Plains and in Rocky Mountains, parkhill and crowfield in the Great Lakes region, debert vale in the Northeast. The worse known monuments of the South-East and the Far West are also characterized. Most of these regional traditions (except goshen and parkhill) continue into the early Holocene. In general, the period of radical changes in culture in North America falls not at the turn of the Pleistocene and Holocene, but at the beginning of the Altitermal (c. 6000 BC in calendar years), so it would be interesting to trace the fate of ancient hunter-gatherer cultures up to that time. Of course, this is a special task that goes beyond the professional interests of the author of the monograph. In chapter 7, Vasiliev considers the Paleolithic traditions of American Beringia - Nenanu, Denali and Northern Paleo-Indian. Throughout the book, the presentation is based on the most representative sites, illustrated with site plans, stratigraphic sections, and drawings of typical finds. Complete lists of radiocarbon dates and summary tables of faunistic material characteristic of individual traditions are given.
Alaska was part of the land bridge from Siberia to America, and therefore its Paleolithic sites are of particular interest. Most of them are concentrated in a small area in the valleys of the Tanana River and its tributaries, the Nenana and Teklanika (west of Fairbanks). Geological conditions make it extremely difficult to find sites in other places. characteristic type tools of the nenana complex (11-12 thousand years ago) - bilaterally processed tear-shaped points of the chindadn type. It is important to note products made from mammoth tusk. The Denali complex (10-11 thousand years ago) is considered to be an offshoot of the Dyuktai tradition in Siberia. His characteristic technique is the chipping of microblades from wedge-shaped cores. Although the difference in time between Nenana and Denali is confirmed by the stratigraphy of a number of sites, there is no complete certainty here. The radiocarbon dates of both complexes overlap, and the opinion about the functional rather than cultural reasons for the differences in the lithic inventory of the sites cannot yet be discounted.
The most mysterious is the northern Paleo-Indian tradition (NPT). It is mainly localized in the extreme northwest of Alaska (Arctic slopes of the Brooks Range), although one site (Spain Mountain) was found 1000 km south of this zone, near the mouth of the river. Kuskokwim. Most of the radiocarbon dates according to the MPT (mainly from the Meise site) fall within the range of 9.7–11.7 thousand years ago. This pushes the beginning of the SPT at least by the time of the appearance of Clovis, although the earliest dates may be erroneous (in this case, the SPT is dated within 9.6–10.4 thousand years ago). SPT, in contrast to Nena and Denali, is characterized by elongated bilaterally processed arrowheads, which in general contours resemble Clovis and the arrowheads of post-Clovis Paleo-Indian cultures in the mainland of the United States. The greatest similarity is seen with the Agate Basin tips in the north of the Great Plains, so archaeologists believe that either a reverse migration from the Plains to Alaska took place in the final Pleistocene, or the creators of the SPT left Alaska to the south and became the ancestors of the creators of the Aegate Basin tradition. Approximately the same is assumed with regard to undated finds of points with a groove in central Alaska (the locality of Batza Tena1), resembling folsom points.
The problem, however, does not end there. All monuments of the SPT are extremely specialized hunting camps on mountain ledges and plateaus, from where it was convenient to follow herds of animals. For most other cultures of the Late Paleolithic of America and Siberia, there is no such category of monuments. Archaeologists have found appropriate tools only because the Northern Paleo-Indians resorted to this particular hunting tactic. Where and how did people live, who briefly climbed viewing platforms watch the bison, we don't know. Apparently, the sites were used only in the era of the so-called Young Dryas - cold snap, which was preceded by a warm period, when temperatures in northern Alaska were higher than today. During warm periods, the tundra-steppe was covered with woody vegetation and large herds of animals disappeared, although this does not mean that people could not use other sources of food at that time. Most likely, the creators of the SPT lived in Alaska before the time that Meiza and similar monuments date back to, and after that, but their traces elude us. It is possible that SPT did not come to Alaska from the south, but goes back to the same root as clovis, and this root should be looked for in Beringia. Unfortunately, most of the territory that this hypothetical proto-Clovis cultural community could have occupied is now flooded with the sea2.
The vast majority of the dating of the Clovis culture falls within the interval of 10.9 - 11.6 thousand years ago, which, with the introduction of an amendment, allows us to attribute the beginning of this culture to the time of 13.5 thousand years ago, or to the 12th millennium BC. This is synchronous with the rise of the Natuf culture in the Middle East and the emergence of pottery in East Asia. Here I see the answer to the question posed at the beginning of the review. Although the Clovisans did not make pottery or harvest barley, “the early Paleo-Indian cultures of North America exhibit the full range of cultural achievements characteristic of the Upper Paleolithic of Eurasia. These include advanced technology processing of stone, bone and tusk, the presence of traces of house-building, treasures of tools, the use of ocher, decorations, ornaments, the practice of burials. In other words, the people who settled America had behind them long way development, marked by many discoveries and achievements. Under the new conditions, their culture continued to change, and their social organization continued to become more complex, which by the middle of the 2nd millennium BC. led to the emergence of medium-sized societies in the New World, and by the turn of the new era - states. America is not separate world, which initially developed independently, but a relatively late offshoot of the Eurasian world.
As it was said, the oldest Alaskan tradition of nenana dates back to 11-12 thousand years ago, which is half a thousand years earlier than Clovis. Therefore, it is likely that the people who lived in central Alaska are Nenan or, as suggested above, have not yet been discovered. common ancestors Clovis and the Northern Paleo-Indian Tradition traveled up the Yukon Valley and then migrated south along the so-called "Mackenzie Corridor" between the Laurentian and Cordillera ice sheets. There they created the clovis culture. The absence of human traces within the Mackenzie Corridor earlier than 10.5 thousand years ago prevents us from accepting this hypothesis as final. In addition, the Nenana industry does not have the technique of grooved chipping, which is so characteristic of the Clovis industry.
Concerning the issue of pre-Clovis colonization, Vasiliev does not deny its possibility, but rightly emphasizes that the list of sites on which this hypothesis is based has been changing for half a century as the age or reliability of some sites is refuted and new ones are discovered. Indirect considerations also indicate that the creators of the Clovis culture, wherever they came from, developed previously uninhabited territories. Being unfamiliar with local conditions, they transported raw materials for many hundreds of kilometers (without resorting to closer sources of flint) and almost did not use rocky shelters convenient for habitation (but also probably unknown to them). The latter, however, may be due to cultural tradition, because in Siberia people of the end of the Pleistocene also only temporarily visited rock shelters, “which contrasts sharply with the data on the Paleolithic of Europe and the Near East” (p. 118). Given the diversity of languages and appearance of the Indians, geneticists and linguists have always tended to the hypothesis of the initial settlement of America before the peak of the last glaciation3. However, the assessments of these specialists concern only the estimated time of divergence between populations, but not the place where this divergence occurred, therefore, the corresponding arguments do not have heavy weight(Already the very first groups of people who reached the regions of the New World located south of the glaciers could speak unrelated languages and be racially diverse).
Vasiliev does not consider materials on the Paleolithic of Latin America, but only mentions the recognition by most archaeologists of the authenticity of the Monte Verde site in southern Chile with dates of about 15.5 - 14.5 thousand years ago. It should be noted that the expressed doubts about the synchronism of the images of coal, mastodon bones and artifacts discovered in Monte Verde are so serious4 that they do not allow us to see in this monument an indisputable proof of the appearance of man in America as early as the 14th millennium BC. It is likely that the personal ambitions of the researchers gave the discussion an unnecessary edge,5 but this does not change the essence of the matter. At the same time, an early dating of Monte Verde is not beyond the realm of possibility if the first people to enter the New World traveled by boat along southern Alaska and further spread along the coasts.
Relying primarily on the reader-archaeologist, Vasiliev, both in the course of his work and especially in the final chapter 8, proceeds to generalizations of a higher level, allowing also non-specialists to visualize the features of the life of the population of Siberia and North America at the end of the Paleolithic. Typical was a seasonal change of habitat depending on the movement of herds of ungulates and resettlement for the summer on sandy shores rec. As for the manufacture of stone tools, in Southern Siberia people were more likely to engage in such activities in settlements, and in the south Far East in special workshops at the exit of raw materials (p. 118).
The shortcomings of Vasiliev's book are minor and purely technical. The author follows the phonetic transcription of English names, which sometimes differs sharply from the graphic one. If parkhill and denali are quite transparent, then in the case of Mesa or Agate Basin, it would be desirable to put English in brackets next to the Russian version. The maps showing the distribution of the monuments are made with too little resolution in relation to their linear dimensions, leaving the impression of some negligence, especially in comparison with the well-detailed plans of individual sites.
1 Clark D.W., Clark A.M. Batza Tyna: Trail to obsidian. Hull (Quebec): Canadian Museum of Civilization, 1993; Kunz M., Bever M., Adkins C. The Mesa Site” Paleoindians above the Arctic Circle. Anchorage: U.S. Department of the Interior, 2003. P. 56.
2 Kunz M., Bever M., Adkins. Op. cit, p. 62.
3 For recent work, see Oppenheimer S. The Real Eve. Modern Man's Journey Out of Africa. N.Y.: Carrol & Graf, 2003. P. 284-300. Justifying the probability of pre-Clovis migration, Oppenheimer, like many of his predecessors, relies on the early dating of the Meadowcroft site, but Vasiliev convincingly shows that this dating is erroneous.
4 Special Report: Monte Verde Revisited. Scientific American Discovery Archaeology. 1999 Vol. 1. No. 6.
5 Oppenheimer S. Op.cit., p. 287-290.
New data from genetics and archeology shed light on the history of the settlement of America
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Science news printable version
New data from genetics and archeology shed light on the history of the settlement of America
18.03.08 | Anthropology, Genetics, Archeology, Paleontology, Alexander Markov | comment
Excavation of one of the "mammoth kill sites" where the bones of killed mammoths and mastodons are found in association with numerous stone tools of the Clovis culture (Colby, central Wyoming). Photo from lithiccastinglab.com
The first people settled on the northeastern outskirts of the North American continent between 22 and 16 thousand years ago. The latest genetic and archaeological data indicate that the inhabitants of Alaska managed to penetrate south and quickly populate both Americas about 15 thousand years ago, when a passage opened in the ice sheet that covered most North America. The Clovis culture, which made a significant contribution to the extermination of the American megafauna, originated about 13.1 thousand years ago, almost two millennia after the settlement of both Americas.
As you know, the first people entered America from Asia, using the land bridge - Beringia, which during the glaciation period connected Chukotka with Alaska. Until recently, it was believed that about 13.5 thousand years ago, settlers first passed through a narrow corridor between glaciers in western Canada and very quickly - in just a few centuries - settled throughout the New World up to southern tip South America. They soon invented an extremely effective hunting weapon(Clovis culture; see also Clovis culture) and killed most of the megafauna (large animals) on both continents (see: mass extinction large animals at the end of the Pleistocene).
However, new facts obtained by geneticists and archaeologists show that in reality the history of the settlement of America was somewhat more complex. Consideration of these facts is devoted to a review article by American anthropologists, published in the journal Science.
genetic data. The Asian origin of the Native Americans is now beyond doubt. Five variants (haplotypes) of mitochondrial DNA (A, B, C, D, X) are common in America, and all of them are also characteristic of the indigenous population of Southern Siberia from Altai to the Amur (see: I. A. Zakharov. Central Asian origin of the ancestors of the first Americans). Mitochondrial DNA extracted from the bones of ancient Americans is also clearly Asian in origin. This contradicts the recently expressed assumption about the connection of the Paleo-Indians with the Western European Paleolithic Solutrean culture (see also: Solutrean hypothesis).
Attempts to establish, based on the analysis of mtDNA and Y-chromosome haplotypes, the time of divergence (separation) of Asian and American populations so far give rather contradictory results (the resulting dates vary from 25 to 15 thousand years). Estimates of the time of the beginning of the settlement of the Paleo-Indians south of the ice sheet are considered somewhat more reliable: 16.6–11.2 thousand years. These estimates are based on the analysis of three clades, or evolutionary lines, of the C1 subhaplogroup, widely distributed among the Indians, but not found in Asia. Apparently, these mtDNA variants arose already in the New World. Moreover, an analysis of the geographic distribution of various mtDNA haplotypes among modern Indians showed that the observed pattern is much easier to explain based on the assumption that the settlement began closer to the beginning, and not to the end of the specified time interval (i.e., rather 15–16, rather than 11– 12 thousand years ago).
Some anthropologists have suggested "two waves" of American settlement. This hypothesis was based on the fact that the oldest human skulls found in the New World (including the skull of the Kennewick Man, see links below) differ markedly in a number of dimensional indicators from the skulls of modern Indians. But the genetic data does not support the idea of "two waves". On the contrary, the observed distribution of genetic variations strongly suggests that the entire genetic diversity of Native Americans comes from a single ancestral Asian gene pool, and that there was only one widespread human settlement in the Americas. So, in all studied populations of Indians from Alaska to Brazil, the same allele (variant) of one of the microsatellite loci (see: Microsatellite) is found, which is not found anywhere outside the New World, with the exception of the Chukchi and Koryaks (this indicates that that all Indians descended from a single ancestral population). The ancient Americans, judging by the data of paleogenomics, had the same haplogroups as the modern Indians.
archeological data. Already 32 thousand years ago, people - carriers of the Upper Paleolithic culture - settled in Northeast Asia up to the coast of the North Arctic Ocean. This is evidenced, in particular, by archaeological finds made in the lower reaches of the Yana River, where items made of mammoth bone and woolly rhinoceros horns were found. The settlement of the Arctic occurred during a period of relatively warm climate before the onset of the last glacial maximum. It is possible that already in this distant era, the inhabitants of the Asian northeast penetrated into Alaska. Several mammoth bones were found there, about 28 thousand years old, possibly processed. However, the artificial origin of these objects is debatable, and no stone tools or other clear signs of human presence have been found in the vicinity.
The oldest indisputable traces of human presence in Alaska - stone tools, very similar to those produced by the Upper Paleolithic population of Siberia - are 14 thousand years old. The subsequent archaeological history of Alaska is quite complex. Many sites aged 12–13 thousand years with different types of stone industry have been found here. This may be indicative of adaptation. local population to a rapidly changing climate, but may also reflect tribal migrations.
40 thousand years ago, most of North America was covered with an ice sheet, which blocked the path from Alaska to the south. Alaska itself was not covered with ice. During periods of warming, two corridors opened in the ice sheet - along the Pacific coast and east of the Rocky Mountains - through which the ancient inhabitants of Alaska could pass to the south. The corridors were opened 32 thousand years ago, when people appeared in the lower reaches of the Yana, but 24 thousand years ago they closed again. People, apparently, did not have time to use them.
The coastal corridor reopened about 15 thousand years ago, and the eastern one somewhat later, 13–13.5 thousand years ago. However, the ancient hunters could theoretically bypass the obstacle by sea. On the island of Santa Rosa (Santa Rosa) off the coast of California, traces of the presence of a person aged 13.0-13.1 thousand years were found. This means that the population of America at that time already knew well what a boat or raft was.
The well-documented archaeological history of the Americas south of the glacier begins with the Clovis culture. The heyday of this culture of big game hunters was swift and transient. According to the latest updated radiocarbon dates, the oldest material traces of the Clovis culture are 13.2–13.1 thousand years old, and the youngest are 12.9–12.8 thousand years old. The Clovis culture spread so quickly across vast areas of North America that archaeologists cannot yet determine the area in which it first appeared: the accuracy of dating methods is insufficient for this. Just 2-4 centuries after its appearance, the Clovis culture disappeared just as rapidly.
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Typical tools of the Clovis culture and the stages of their manufacture: A - points, B - blades. Image from the article in question in Science
Typical tools of the Clovis culture and the stages of their manufacture: A - points, B - blades. Image from the article in question in Science
Typical tools of the Clovis culture and the stages of their manufacture: A - points, B - blades. Image from the article in question in Science
The Clovis people were traditionally thought to have been nomadic hunter-gatherers capable of moving quickly over long distances. Their stone and bone tools were very perfect, multifunctional, made using original techniques and highly valued by their owners. Stone tools were made from high-quality flint and obsidian - materials that are far from being found everywhere, so people took care of them and carried them with them, sometimes taking them hundreds of kilometers from the place of manufacture. Clovis culture sites are small temporary camps where people did not live long, but stopped only to eat the next killed large animal, most often a mammoth or mastodon. In addition, huge accumulations of Clovis artifacts have been found in the southeastern United States and Texas - up to 650,000 pieces in one place. Basically it is a waste of the stone industry. It is possible that the Clovis people had their main "stone quarries" and "weapons workshops" here.
Apparently, the favorite prey of the Clovis people were proboscis - mammoths and mastodons. There are at least 12 undisputed Clovis proboscidean kill and butchery sites found in North America. This is a lot, given the short duration of the existence of the Clovis culture. For comparison, in all Upper Paleolithic Eurasia (corresponding to a time period of approximately 30,000 years) found only six such sites. It is possible that the Clovis people contributed in no small way to the extinction of the American proboscis. They did not disdain even smaller prey: bison, deer, hares, and even reptiles and amphibians.
6.
"Fish-shaped" tip found in Belize. Photo from lithiccastinglab.com
The Clovis culture penetrated into Central and South America, but here it did not become as widespread as in North (only a small number of typical Clovis artifacts were found). On the other hand, Paleolithic sites with other types of stone tools have been found in South America, including those with characteristic tips resembling fish in shape (“fishtail points”). Some of these South American sites overlap in age with those of Clovis. It used to be thought that the culture of "fish" points originated from Clovis, but recent clarification of dating has shown that it is possible that both cultures are descended from some common and as yet undiscovered "ancestor".
Bones of an extinct wild horse were found at one of the South American sites. This means that the first settlers of South America probably also contributed to the extermination of large animals.
7.
The white color indicates the ice sheet during the period of its greatest distribution 24 thousand years ago, the dotted line outlines the edge of the glacier during the period of warming 15–12.5 thousand years ago, when two “corridors” opened from Alaska to the south. The red dots show the sites of the most important archaeological finds, including those mentioned in the note: 12 - a site in the lower reaches of the Yana (32 thousand years); 19 - mammoth bones with possible traces of processing (28 thousand years); 20 - Kennewick; 28 is the largest "workshop" of the Clovis culture in Texas (650,000 artifacts); 29- ancient finds in the state of Wisconsin (14.2–14.8 thousand years); 39 - South American site with horse bones (13.1 thousand years); 40 - Monte Verde (14.6 thousand years); 41, 43 - “fish-shaped” arrowheads were found here, the age of which (12.9–13.1 thousand years) coincides with the time of the existence of the Clovis culture. Rice. from the article in question in Science
During the second half of the 20th century, archaeologists repeatedly reported finds of more ancient traces of human presence in America than the sites of the Clovis culture. Most of these finds, after careful checks, turned out to be younger. However, for several sites, the “Pre-Clovisian” age is now recognized by most experts. In South America, this is the Monte Verde site in Chile, whose age is 14.6 thousand years. In the state of Wisconsin, at the very edge of the ice sheet that existed at that time, two sites of ancient mammoth lovers were discovered - either hunters or scavengers. The age of the sites is from 14.2 to 14.8 thousand years. In the same area, bones of mammoth legs were found with scratches from stone tools; the age of the bones is 16 thousand years, though the tools themselves were never found nearby. Several more finds have been made in Pennsylvania, Florida, Oregon, and other parts of the United States, with varying degrees reliability indicating the presence of people in these places 14-15 thousand years ago. A few finds, the age of which was determined as even more ancient (over 15 thousand years), cause great doubts among specialists.
Subtotals. Today it is considered firmly established that America was inhabited kind of Homo sapiens. There have never been any Pithecanthropes, Neanderthals, Australopithecus and other ancient hominids in America (for a refutation of one of these theories, see the interview with Alexander Kuznetsov: part 1 and part 2). Although some Paleo-Indian skulls differ from modern ones, genetic analysis has shown that the entire indigenous population of America - both ancient and modern - descended from the same population of immigrants from southern Siberia. The first people appeared on the northeastern edge of the North American continent no earlier than 30 and no later than 13 thousand years ago, most likely between 22 and 16 thousand years ago. Judging by molecular genetic data, the settlement from Beringia to the south began no earlier than 16.6 thousand years ago, and the size of the “founders” population, from which the entire population of both Americas south of the glacier originated, did not exceed 5000 people. The theory of multiple waves of settlement was not confirmed (with the exception of the Eskimos and Aleuts, who came from Asia much later, but settled only in the extreme north of the American continent). The theory of the participation of Europeans in ancient colonization America.
One of the most important achievements recent years, according to the authors of the article, is that the Clovis people can no longer be considered the first settlers of both Americas south of the glacier. This theory (“Clovis-First model”) assumes that all the more ancient archaeological finds should be recognized as erroneous, and today it is impossible to agree with this. Moreover, this theory is not supported by data on geographical distribution genetic variations among the Indian population, which testify to an earlier and less rapid settlement of the Americas.
The authors of the article propose the following model of the settlement of the New World, which, from their point of view, best explains the totality of the available facts - both genetic and archaeological. Both Americas were settled about 15 thousand years ago - almost immediately after the coastal "corridor" opened, allowing the inhabitants of Alaska to penetrate south by land. Finds in Wisconsin and Chile show that both Americas were already inhabited 14.6 thousand years ago. The first Americans probably had boats, which could have contributed to their rapid settlement along the Pacific coast. The second suggested route of early migrations is westward along the southern edge of the ice sheet to Wisconsin and beyond. There could be especially many mammoths near the glacier, which were followed by ancient hunters.
The emergence of the Clovis culture was the result of two thousand years of development of ancient American mankind. Perhaps the center of origin of this culture was the south of the United States, because it was here that their main "working workshops" were found.
Another option is not excluded. The Clovis culture could have been created by the second wave of migrants from Alaska, who passed through the eastern “corridor” that opened 13–13.5 thousand years ago. However, if this hypothetical "second wave" did take place, it is extremely difficult to identify it by genetic methods, since the source of both "waves" was the same ancestral population that lived in Alaska.
So school years everyone knows that America was settled by the inhabitants of Asia, who moved there in small groups through the Bering Isthmus (at the site of the current strait). They settled in the New World after a huge glacier began to melt 14-15 thousand years ago. However, recent discoveries by archaeologists and geneticists have shaken this coherent theory. It turns out that America was settled more than once, it was done by some strange peoples, related almost to the Australians, and besides, it is not clear on what transport the first "Indians" reached the extreme south of the New World. Lenta.ru tried to figure out the mysteries of the settlement of America.
First went
Until the end of the 20th century, the “Clovis first” hypothesis dominated American anthropology, according to which it was this culture of ancient mammoth hunters that appeared 12.5-13.5 thousand years ago that was the most ancient in the New World. According to this hypothesis, people who got to Alaska could survive on ice-free land, because there was quite a bit of snow, but then the path to the south was blocked by glaciers until a period of 14-16 thousand years ago, due to which settlement in the Americas began only after the end of the last glaciation.
The hypothesis was coherent and logical, but in the second half of the 20th century some discoveries were made that were incompatible with it. In the 1980s, Tom Dillehay, during excavations in Monte Verde (southern Chile), found that people had been there at least 14.5 thousand years ago. This caused a strong reaction from the scientific community: it turned out that the discovered culture was 1.5 thousand years older than Clovis in North America.
Most American anthropologists simply denied the scientific credibility of the find. Already during the excavations, Delai faced a powerful attack on his professional reputation, it came to the closure of funding for excavations and attempts to declare Monte Verde a phenomenon not related to archeology. Only in 1997 did he manage to confirm the dating at 14,000 years, which caused a deep crisis in understanding the ways of settling America. At that time, there were no places of such ancient settlement in North America, which raised the question of where exactly people could get to Chile.
Recently, the Chileans suggested that Delea continue excavations. Influenced by the sad experience of twenty years of excuses, he initially refused. "I was fed up" - explained his position as a scientist. However, in the end he agreed and found tools at the MVI site, undoubtedly man-made, whose antiquity was 14.5-19 thousand years.
History repeated itself: archaeologist Michael Waters immediately questioned the findings. In his opinion, the finds can be simple stones, remotely similar to tools, which means that the traditional chronology of the settlement of America is still out of danger.
Photo: Tom Dillehay / Department of Anthropology, Vanderbilt University
Seaside nomads
To understand how justified the criticism of the new work, we turned to the anthropologist Stanislav Drobyshevsky (Moscow State University). According to him, the tools found are indeed very primitive (processed on one side), but made from materials that are not found in Monte Verde. Quartz for a significant part of them had to be brought from afar, that is, such items cannot be of natural origin.
The scientist noted that the systematic criticism of discoveries of this kind is quite understandable: "When you teach in school and university that America was inhabited in a certain way, it is not so easy to give up this point of view."
Image: Yukon Beringia Interpretive Center
The conservatism of American researchers is also understandable: in North America, the recognized finds date back thousands of years after the period indicated by Delea. And what about the theory that before the melting of the glacier, the ancestors of the Indians blocked by it could not settle south?
However, Drobyshevsky notes, there is nothing supernatural in the more ancient dates of the Chilean sites. The islands along Canada's present-day Pacific coast were not glaciated, and bear remains from the Ice Age have been found there. This means that people could well spread along the coast, swimming across in boats and not going deep into the then inhospitable North America.
Australian footprint
However, the fact that the first reliable finds of the ancestors of the Indians were made in Chile does not end with the oddities of the settlement of America. Not so long ago, it turned out that the genes of the Aleuts and groups of Brazilian Indians have features characteristic of the genes of the Papuans and Australian Aborigines. As the Russian anthropologist emphasizes, the data of geneticists are well combined with the results of the analysis of skulls previously found in South America and having features close to Australian ones. In his opinion, most likely, the Australian trace in South America is associated with a common ancestral group, part of which moved to Australia tens of thousands of years ago, while the other migrated along the coast of Asia to the north, up to Beringia, and from there reached the South American continent. .
As if that wasn't enough, 2013 genetic studies showed that the Brazilian Botakudo Indians are close in mitochondrial DNA to the Polynesians and part of the inhabitants of Madagascar. Unlike the Australoids, the Polynesians could well have reached South America by sea. At the same time, traces of their genes in eastern Brazil, and not on the Pacific coast, are not so easy to explain. It turns out that a small group of Polynesian navigators, for some reason, did not return after landing, but overcame the Andean highlands, which were unusual for them, in order to settle in Brazil. One can only guess about the motives for such a long and difficult overland journey for typical sailors.
So, a small part of the American natives have traces of genes that are very far from the genome of the rest of the Indians, which contradicts the idea of a single group of ancestors from Beringia.
good old
However, there are more radical deviations from the idea of settling America in one wave and only after the melting of the glacier. In the 1970s, the Brazilian archaeologist Nieda Guidon discovered the Pedra Furada cave site (Brazil), where, in addition to primitive tools, there were many bonfires, the age of which was shown by radiocarbon analysis to be from 30 to 48 thousand years. It is easy to understand that such figures caused great rejection by North American anthropologists. The same Deley criticized radiocarbon dating, noting that traces could remain after a fire of natural origin. Gidon reacted sharply to such opinions of her colleagues from the United States in Latin American: “Fire of natural origin cannot arise deep in a cave. American archaeologists need to write less and dig more.”
Drobyshevsky emphasizes that although no one has yet been able to challenge the dating of the Brazilians, the doubts of the Americans are quite understandable. If people were in Brazil 40 thousand years ago, then where did they go then and where are the traces of their stay in other parts of the New World?
Image: USGS Hawaiian Volcano Observatory
The history of mankind knows cases when the first colonizers of new lands almost completely died out, leaving no significant traces. This is what happened to Homo sapiens who settled in Asia. Their first traces there date back to the period up to 125 thousand years ago, however, genetic data say that all of humanity came from a population that left Africa much later - only 60 thousand years ago. There is a hypothesis that the reason for this could be the extinction of the then Asian part as a result of the eruption of the Toba volcano 70 thousand years ago. The energy of this event is considered to exceed the combined yield of all the combined nuclear weapons ever created by mankind.
However, even an event more powerful than a nuclear war is difficult to explain the disappearance of significant human populations. Some researchers note that neither Neanderthals, nor Denisovans, nor even Homo floresiensis, who lived relatively close to Toba, died out from the explosion. And judging by individual finds in South India, local Homo sapiens did not die out at that time, traces of which are not observed in the genes of modern people for some reason. Thus, the question of where the people who settled 40 thousand years ago in South America could have gone remains open and to some extent casts doubt on the most ancient finds of the Pedra Furada type.
Genetics vs genetics
Not only archaeological data often come into conflict, but also such seemingly reliable evidence as genetic markers. This summer, the Maanasa Raghavan group from the Natural History Museum in Copenhagen announced that the data of genetic analysis refute the idea that more than one wave of ancient settlers participated in the settlement of America. According to them, genes close to Australians and Papuans appeared in the New World later than 9,000 years ago, when America was already inhabited by immigrants from Asia.
It is believed that the foot of the first European set foot on the land of the New World on Friday, October 12, 1492, when Spanish sailors landed on one of the Bahamas, which they called San Salvador. It is possible that even before this date, some brave European sailors crossed the Atlantic Ocean: the Icelandic sagas mention sea trips Leif Erickson, who allegedly reached the shores of North America around the year 1000, naming modern Labrador Helluland ("land of flat stones"), Nova Scotia- Marland ("land of forests"), and the territory of Massachusetts - Vinland ("land of grapes"). Increasingly, the opinion is expressed that in the New World, more precisely, on east coast South America was regularly visited by templar knights, members of the knightly order of the Templars, who probably exported American silver from there to Europe - it is no coincidence that this metal, previously quite rare, became so widespread in Western Europe precisely during the heyday of this order *. (* In a recently published study, the Italian historian Ruggiero Marino, referring to documents he discovered, claims that Columbus discovered America during a secret expedition in 1485, equipped on the instructions of the Pope Innocent VIII, and in 1492 he already knew for sure which shores he was heading towards).
Long before the arrival of the pale-faced, both Americas were inhabited by people with a reddish tint to the skin. About 20 thousand years ago, before the formation of the Bering Strait, which divided Asia and America, Alaska and Siberia were connected by a strip of land. Through this isthmus, ancient tribes from Northeast Asia crossed to America, the first immigrants from the Old World, who did not suspect that they had the honor of discovering a new continent. Natives of Asia rushed further and further south, settling across the territory of both Americas. Perhaps the settlement of America took place in several waves, since by the time Europeans arrived, the New World was inhabited by hundreds of aboriginal tribes, which differed from each other and in their way of life (the inhabitants of the forests built wigwams from birch bark, the inhabitants of the plains used animal skins instead, some tribes lived in " longhouses, while others built "tenement" pueblos from stones and clay), and customs, and, of course, language. The names of some tribes remained immortalized on the map of America: place names Illinois, Northern and South Dakota, Massachusetts, Iowa, Alabama, Kansas and many others are of Indian origin. Some Indian languages have also survived. As recently as during the Second World War signalmen in american army the Navajo Indians served, who spoke on the radio on their mother tongue. Usage rare language made it possible to keep military secrets intact - enemy intelligence did not manage to decode the information transmitted in this way.
Before the arrival of the Europeans Central America the powerful Indian states of the Aztecs (on the territory of modern Mexico) and the Incas (in Peru) managed to take shape, and even earlier on the Yucatan Peninsula and on the territory of modern Guatemala flourished mysterious civilization Maya, who mysteriously disappeared around 900 AD. e. However, on the territory now occupied by the United States, there were no Indian states, and the natives were at the stage of the primitive communal system. Most north American Indians They hunted, fished and collected the gifts of nature. The tribes living in the Ohio and Mississippi river valleys were engaged in agriculture. They were at the level that the civilization of the Old World had in 1500 BC. e., i.e., in their cultural development they lagged behind Europe by about three millennia.
