8 // COASTWEEKEND.COM
Theories about
human settlement
in the Americas
still in flux
By NANCY McCARTHY
FOR COAST WEEKEND
F
or a while, Paisley,
Oregon, was No. 1
among archaeologists
searching for evidence of
the oldest inhabitants of the
Americas.
Human DNA discovered
in five caves in the south-
eastern Oregon location was
determined to be 14,200
years old.
But, ultimately, Pais-
ley became No. 3, behind
Monte Verde, Chile, where
evidence of human activity
dated to 14,300 BP (before
present) and, finally, to But-
termilk Creek, Texas, and
15,300 BP.
However, the search for
more evidence doesn’t stop,
and questions remain, said
Cameron Smith, a Portland
State University anthropol-
ogy professor, who recently
spoke at the Cannon Beach
History Center.
Knowledge about the
earliest inhabitants of North,
Central and South Americas,
their origin and their reason
for coming is always in flux.
“We’re always getting new
information,” Smith told
an audience that packed the
center’s small education
room.
“We’re always accumu-
lating new information, and
we’re always writing new
textbooks; that’s the way it
should be,” Smith said.
“What do we know about
the settlement of the Amer-
icas that we didn’t know a
century ago? In some ways
we have a lot better idea,
COURTESY PORTLAND STATE UNIVERSITY
‘Atlas of Human Prehistory,’ by Cameron Smith
COURTESY PORTLAND STATE UNIVERSITY
Cameron Smith, an anthropology professor at Portland State University, came to Cannon Beach
to discuss migration of the first people to the Americas.
and in some ways we hav-
en’t moved forward much
at all.”
When it comes to tracing
the first inhabitants of the
Americas, archaeologists
have a good knowledge
of historical events and
chronology — assisted by
radiocarbon dating — “but
why these events happened,
that is the harder thing to
explain,” Smith said.
“For instance, we know
when cave art starts, and
it’s really obvious when and
where that first happens,
but what are the cognitive
mechanisms — what pro-
duced that? Oh, that’s really
tough — the evolution of
cognition.”
Eventually, Smith said,
scientists will develop a
process and will know why
cave dwellers drew on the
sides of their shelters.
Strait talk
Before the 16th century,
Europeans looked to the
Old Testament for answers
about new discoveries.
Native Americans, for
instance were thought to
originate from the lost tribes
of Israel, Smith said. But in
the 1550s, Jesuit missionary
Jose de Acosta noted that
their language had no hint of
Hebrew, their burial cus-
toms differed and “nothing
matched.” He suggested
that the native people, based
on skin coloration and the
shape of their eyes, were of
Northeast Asian descent.
The discovery of the
Americas was a “big part of
the abandonment of the Old
Testament” by the Europe-
ans for scientific explana-
tions, Smith said.
“Today the evidence
is clear: de Acosta was
correct,” Smith added. Three
lines of evidence — genetic,
linguistic and archaeological
— prove there’s a link from
Northeast Asia.
They apparently traveled
on ice sheets thousands of
feet thick from Siberia to
what is now Alaska on a
land bridge across the Ber-
ing Strait. The bridge was
about 50 miles long and over
600 miles wide. At the time,
sea levels dropped, which
made for a somewhat “dry”
crossing. The northwest
shorelines also could have
been 10 miles beyond what
they are now, allowing for
more settlement. Smith said
archaeologists are seeking
artifacts in what might have
been campsites along the
Beringia route.
A woolly mammoth was
discovered in the ice in
the Beringia region, which
is called the “mammoth
steppe.”
“You have marshes, you
have dry land. it’s a low
topography, and it supports
big herds of big herbivores.
So on the great plains of
the Americas, there were
mastodons at one point, but
later on there were bison,”
Smith said.
Along the way came
snow lions from northern
Asia, and, at the Paisley
site, an archaeologist in the
1930s found camel bones.
Archaeologists, however,
are debating the dates that
the ice sheets began to melt.
DNA evidence of a brown
bear in an Alaskan cave
dates to 17,000 years ago,
which means humans might
have made an even earlier
appearance than originally
estimated.
“If that environment
could support brown bears,
who are big omnivores
like us … if they could get
enough calories to live, it
means there’s enough food,
there’s enough vegetation
and other animals; pre-
sumably people could live
there, too,” Smith said. “It
probably wasn’t covered in
a sheet of ice.”
Why did human beings
move? While foraging and
hunting for food, as well
as environmental changes
may have been primary
reasons for the earliest in-
habitants to venture across
a land bridge, down the
Pacific Coast and into the
Great Plains and beyond to
Central and South America,
there may have been other
reasons, according to Smith.
“Spiritual survival was
as important as cultural
survival,” he said. For oth-
ers, who searched for new
lands, their intent may have
been “conscious explora-
tion.” CW