Thinking Sideways: Who settled the New World first?

not realize how much debate there is around it. And it's it's a story that is who are the first people to settle the new world and to colonize it? Yeah, hot off the heels of our October sleigh fast, just like taking a little bit of I think you know my next episode is going to be a little weird, too different, not full of stabbing, And there is very little stabbing in this so yeah, very little of it. Uh So why don't we just go ahead and hop right into it? So as everybody knows Columbus sale the

ocean blue. Actually that's not where we're going. We're going much farther back in time. We're gonna travel at least eleven to twenty some odd thousand years before today, somewhere in that rage and uh, and of course, you know, like we're gonna get in all of this, but who knows humans might have arrived on this on this continent fifty years ago. It's it's hard to say. And and

and that's a that's a good point to bring up, Joe. Normally, as anybody's listening to the show before knows, we always kind of try to tell the story and then we talk about the theories and then we kind of hash them out. But in this case, it's not really a story all theories. So this is entirely the theory section. And be prepared for a lot of science, you guys, Yeah, there's there's a lot of science. I did a lot of googling to figure out what words meant, specific words.

I've never even heard that word. Yeah, oh, thank you Google. We're not going to get too heavily into the boring details of DNA analysis and stuff. Now. We're gonna keep this at a high level because if we tried to go into this, this would be an eight hour discussion if we really broke down into series archaeological nerd um, which we just because yeah, but let's just say when when Columbus arrived here, there were indigenous people and maybe not all of you knew this, but there were indigenous

people here. Uh yeah, when I was a kid, actually there was like you know, it's like a Columbus arrived here and made friends with the Indians and took some of them back to Spain with them for Spain. You know. It's of course, I guess he really took him back as slaves. But yeah, well, the Columbus himself is a whole another story, and it's kind of a funny thing is there's a little bit of debate about what Columbus

was doing and where he was going. And that's how I came across this as I was doing some research on Columbus and then I started discovering a bunch of this prehistory and that's where this whole story has has germinated from. Yeah, well, as a just a quick aside if you guys wanted to read a good book, and that's not just YouTube but our listeners to I can't remember the author, but the name of the book is the Last Voyage of Columbus, because because he came to

the New World four times, it was a four. I thought was three. It was four times, yeah, and Joe would know he was there. And anyways, the so they went to some amazing, harrowing adventures, including having to sink their ship almost sank from underneath them. They had to beach it on a desert island in the Caribbean, and they were marooned for a year, and they went to a lot more harrowing things than that. You just got

to read the book, but it was amazing. All the tribulations they want to Oh, no, I know Columbus is an interesting guy, and there may be at some point if I can get enough information on what I was going after, we may do something on Columbus. But let's get back to the topic at hand of settled the New World. First, So what we're gonna do here is we're gonna start with our first theory, which I think is the basis for what most people know, and it is, uh,

the Baryngia. I believe it's how you say it, Barringian theory because it's the bearing straight I a on the end, so I said it's Berenga. Brengia was like, I guess the area include the land bridge plus parts of Alaska and the northeast Asia. Yeah, yeah, something like that. You're

a little ahead, but that's fine. What Joe is getting at is that sometime during the last ice Age, which is this is an approximate number, about seventeen thousand years ago, the ice sheets across the planet had swollen, an advanced anston sucked up all the sea water, so of course the sea levels dropped, and the first people were able to go from the European continent on where it is now modern day Russia. The old U s SR travel a spit of land to the continental US via Alaska,

and that that is called Eurasia. That chunker ground is called Eurasia, which is now underneath the burying straight. Yeah. Actually I think Eurasia is is Europe and Asia. Right, Oh, you're right. I'm sorry. They went from Eurasia across. That would be why it's bury in Ngia, which I'm not going to keep saying, you know, I'm screwing it up. I've got to say that. But that's aside that there

must have been a hardy, hearty souls. I was about to say hearty mother, but I was heard they must have been very hearty soul and we're gonna get into some of the stuff about that. So you're gonna we're gonna talk about that some. Uh So here's here's what

the theory goes. And this is again it's probably the one that we've all learned in school, is that it was nomadic hunters who were chasing game herds that were in Siberia and they chased it across that land bridge and got into Alaska, and then eventually they spread south through Canada and then into what is now the United States, and that eventually would make their way into South America. They made their way through a gap in the glaciers that ran through I want to see it through Alberta,

but I might be wrong. I might have that wrong. But there was basically a giant split between the two icebergs and there was dry land that was probably what we call the Rocky Mountains. It might have been, I'm not positive, but you know that that allows plant life to grow, which then attracts the animals, which then of course the humans would follow, and then that would dump out them out into the plains of the central United States.

So this is where they're supposed to go. So this is also called in this is the easier name the land Bridge theory, which I think is what I'm gonna use. The idea of first came into existence in fifteen ninety h and it's from a Jesuit scholar in his name is Jose de Acosta, and he he postulated that this is how people would have made it to what they

had deemed the New World. And now scientific research has gone on and they figure that these big game hunters would have crossed the Bearing Street something sometime between twelve to eleven thousand years ago, somewhere in that range is when they would have done it. Yeah, or they or they could have done it sometime in the in the far more in the more distant past too, apparently apparently crossing it there was a there was a couple of different windows in which to class and yeah, I mean

it's swelled sets. And that's that's some of the theories farther on. But you know, let's let's keep running with the the the most common one, and actually the large scale migration of of humans into North America coin size with what the mass extinction of like the wooly mammoth. Yeah, the big massive immigration probably did take place at about

that time, and there is evidence to that. But there's also some climate things that were going on, you know, the suddenly the icebergers starting to melt, global temperatures coming up. Mascodons who are big, hairy, hairy creatures are in warmer environments, they're not going to live as long. But that's that's

a whole another rabbit hole that we could go down. Yeah, but the point is is that you know, they would have crossed on foot and they would have been walking across that that land bridge to make it to that gap in the icebergs and then get dumped out onto the western plains. So that is that is, in a nutshell, a little very simplified version, how that theory works and how everybody thinks that people first came to this continent and then would have eventually migrated their way down to

South America. Well, that's what they taught me in elementary school. So obviously it's right. Everything they teach you in elementary school is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing about the truth. Absolutely, that is absolutely. Are you about to tell me that that's not true? Possibly possibly true? The thing is is, yeah, nobody knows. I mean he was ancient man, was a widely a widely persistent creature. Persistent creature.

I suspect that that North and South America were being bombarded by humans like for fifty thousand years in the past. And I mean it could be. Well, let's let's move on from the land Bridge and this kind of this next one, which is the Clovis culture, dovetails into that. Yeah, it doesn't. It doesn't exclude the land Bridge. No, no, no, no, but this this is so here's here's what the Clovis

culture is. Let's just kind of start there. The clothes Ca culture is a basically we said they followed big games, mastodons or the old camels, because camels were in this on this American continent as well. They were following all those they were big game hunters. Well, this people has been identified only through stone remains that have been left behind. Why are they Why are they called the Clovis culture? Sorry, And and that's that's actually that's a very good question.

It is because of the fact that this was in two in Clovis, New Mexico. They were doing an excavation and they started discovering old bones like mastodon bones that kind of old big bones and finding all these stone points in in there, stuck in bone or buried with them. And so it's good for the clothes people. They were found somewhere like these things weren't found like in Deadwood, South Dakota. Yeah, the Deadwood people. Terrible name, Terrible Vegas,

Las Vegas. Well, the Clovis culture is believed to have ranged over the majority of North and South America. And like I said, because they were found in Clovis, New Mexico, that that's the name that's appeared applied to them. And that follows in suits. Remember I said that there were there were spear points, Well they're called Clovis points based on the people that use them. Are there going to be a photographs of these these things on our website?

We might have some, but I know the links that we're gonna share are going to have many, many, many different images because there is tons and tons of photos of these things. But let me try and describe a Clovis point because this is going to be kind of

important for everybody to track with. Actually, it might be helpful for our listeners at this point to pause a podcast and go out to Wikipedia and then yeah, We'll go to the website and grab one of the links and you'll see some of this, and or just google Clovis point and it will come up. But here's here's what a Clovis point is. It's a flaked flint spear point. It's got a notched flute which is inserted into a wooden or bone shaft, and it's got then a flat

bottom on it. And I know that probably makes no sense to you right now, which is why I think I need to stop and explain a little bit of this stone working technology, because there's some terms here that are going to get thrown around, and to help them make sense, I'm gonna try and you know, make some analogies to him and describe them as best I can. I said the word napping, well, stone napping is the process of breaking stone into a shape that you want

to use. So if you were if you've ever just been hitting a rock with a hammer or something or another rock, you break it into a shape that you want to use for whatever purpose. That's called napping stone napping. Um, you'll hear the term used notched. If the easiest way to think about this is if you ever watch the Old movies where there's Indians and they're firing narrows and I being old movies is in like the nineteens seventies, back American Indians had stone arrow heads and it was

kind of a triangle. It tapered in with kind of a C shape, so they could onto an arrow head. Or if you've ever been to the American Southwest, they sell the fake kind like by the millions. I always thought that those were actually a better design than the Clovis points personally, Well, it depends on the application, but that that that that section at the bottom, those kind of scalloped out C shapes, that's what's referred to as

the notch. You've got the term fluted uh. And this is a stone tool of some kind, can be for any use that's got a groove running from its base to its tip down its center. So if you think about an arrowhead, but you were to stretch it out and elongate it and then bevel out on both sides, kind of a little shallow valley. Because again this is if you've ever watched a caveman movie where caveman has stick and he throws stick at beast and the stone

is wedged in the tip. I would say it's similar to like the very basic outlet of like a broadsword. They have that like groove down the middle. It doesn't go all the way to the tip. That's kind of the reference I would make. Obviously it's not a sword, it's just like the tip of it. Yeah, I don't know if that served. But this with what that flute, yeah, yeah,

you're sayings. Actually those are called bloodlines. And this was This was for sticks, right, You would split a stick down the middle and stick that or maybe or something like a handle. It was a way to hold that piece of stone using tension mostly right. And you know, there's theories that they were tied in or maybe they're loose. I'm guessing they were tied in somehow. But again that's this is just the real basic overview of what these

terms mean. Uh. Flaking is another term that you're gonna you here, and that is to describe the actual breaking of the stone, very specifically and usually with a pressure. So if you took um, you'ven't seen obsidian how that breaks. If you were to take that obsidian and put it against something else, it's hard and intentionally put pressure just to pull a thin sheet off of it, so you're slowly working it down into it. That's that's what the flakes are. Were flaking. The pieces that are left over

called flakes. That's flaking. And then the last one that you'll see in some of this and you may hear is called by face. And this one took me a while to figure out. We've all seen pocket knives that flip open that's got a single sharp face to it. Yeah, by face has two sharp edges. So more like what you see you say, a butterfly knife or or a dagger, Yeah, something like that, that's gonna be. Yeah, that's what biface means. It's got a sharp cutting edge on both sides. So

that's that's some of the terminology. Now the clothes people, as we said, they are believed to have ranged all over and they're believed to be the first culture in this country. Uh And and dating their remnants has only been possible when those points are found with bone of

some kind. And because you can't date rock right because it's rock, as as I vehmly argued before, uh So when they do the carbon dating, that's how they're getting the idea of when those those things are from and some of those these points were originally evidently quote unquote dated, but they've been reevaluated based on carbon dating of the bones that were found, and that carbon dating is saying that they are somewhere between eleven thousand fifty years to

ten thousand, eight hundred years before the present, So BP before present or BP s now the new term before BC. Yeah, BC B thank you, This is BP. This is BP before present. Yeah. So that would actually put them, if they're that at that age, that would put them here after the because my understanding is that the mass migration over the bearing of the bridge took place at about

eleven to eleven eleven BC. Well. See, this is this is what makes us so a little bit convoluted, is that there are multiple dating systems being used, and I have done my best to try and clean some of these up and reconcile them. But some people use the BC, the B C E, the radio carbon date BP, so it gets a little difficult. And so I'm just say years old, so I've I've kind of tried to sell some of that out, and in what we're reading here today, the three of us, it's not always clear because I

couldn't ever get a clear answer. Well, unlet's also keep in mind that these are artifacts that were found in like New Mexico, which it was first Yeah, contact, I would imagine it took hundreds of years meander down. But yeah, I mean, you know, so it's a little it's a little iffy. That's one of the things right about this whole story is like there's just so many different little bits. It's just it's it's unknown until a little later on the episode when we solve the mystery. There's a lot

of theories out there. Yeah. Well, and and let's move forward. So we talked some about the Clovis people. Now let's talk about some of the evidence it supports that maybe they were the first in And bear with me because there's a bunch of science terms and this one sense alone that I will then exp lane. The tuzzable d N a of a twelve thousand, five hundred plus year old infant from Montana was sequenced, So they think the

oldest infant in the world. Yeah, okay, so the infant. Right, So here's here's a here's a kind of an explanation some of that. So a Tuzmle DNA is any of the chromosomes other than sex determining chromosomes, which are the X and the Y or the genes of those chromosomes.

So these are these are not sex genes. These are just kind of genes in in the in there that they're discovering to be able to date it with that particular infant is referred to as anzick one um, and it was found near several Clovis artifacts, so there's they're they're postulating from that that the two must be tied together, which kind of makes sense. Uh. They then did DNA testing and comparisons from Siberian sites, and these will be sites that had um, you know, these pre human or

not pre human, but prehistoric. They had all the human samples and they ruled out that there were any European and by that I mean Western European affinities in the DNA. So it showed that then all. And then they did more they're more testing, and they showed that currently existing native populations of this country, which we the Native Americans, their DNA was related to it and I'm looking for

the one um. They said that it was really derived from an ancient population that lived in Siberia in the upper paleolithic multi population multi sound right, it's when they put a postury fees in the middle of a word like it always in other words malta and I don't know, you might be right, but they did. They then took that in sequencing and they showed that South American and Central American Native American populations were directly related to that DNA.

So in other words, they were running that chain of events. And this they say, and this will come in, this will make sense a little bit later, but they say that proves that the Clovis culture was here and it couldn't have interbred with a culture that had come from Europe to the what is now the America's And and I have to say that when I say that is I what I mean is if they did encounter other people,

because it will be important in a little bit. If the encounter other people basically means they didn't breed with them, they killed them, or they did something. But no, no interbreeding happened on any big scale. So that's an important

thing to remember for later on. So this would suggests then that if this club is this baby who was more closely related to Central and South American Indians, then to North American Indians that populationally have The day was to suggest that the Clubs people maybe didn't so much die out, its just move south and maybe a new, well, more aggressive population. They are related to the Indian cultures, the American Indian cultures that were in the eastern seaborn

and the northeastern seaboard. But what it what it seems to indicate. I've seen some some graphs of the or some apps of this. It seems to indicate, to simplify it, that they headed south. They hit what I would guess was somewhere around Texas to Mexico, and one group kept heading south and the other group headed east and then they and then they went east, hit the sea and then began to head north again. So there's a divergence in the gene pool because of that. Now, again this

is very theoretical. I don't understand the gene sequencing and how all of that works. You don't, That's what I understand it to me. I mean, it's pretty freaking cool, but that they can figure out that they must have diverged somewhere like that, but farther than that, the science is a bit beyond me. Yeah, I think it's a beyond everybody because the problem with that is is that you're working there, even if you're a super expert on

this stuff, you're still working with very fragmentary evidence. Yeah. Well, and and here this will actually bring us into the next thing that we've got for the of his theory, which is problems with it because if we think that whatever people it was came across the land bridge around twelve thousand years ago, that means that in a thousand years they had managed to hit had all the way south, populate that whole area, and then spread east into the

eastern seaboard of the continental US and then go up, which is a really fast migration in my mind. Well, yeah, because although there there are there are answers that they're theories that explain that too. Right, Well, there there are some theories that there is. But here's here's another issue with the clothes first theory or the clothes people theory, is in there was a bunch of authorities, I'm assuming these archaeological authorities. I'm not exactly sure who those authorities were,

but they inspected Monte Verde, which is in Chili. It's a site in Chili, and that site had signs of human settlement and it was dated at fourteen thousand, eight hundred years ago, which is an issue because if these people came across the land bridge somewhere between thirteen to eleven thousand years ago, then how the heck did they get all the way south two thousand years earlier? So

there's a big issue with that, I get. I mean, I guess part of the problem here is this whole like we can only rely on radio carbon dating so much. We've talked about this on other episodes, and I mean, you know, it's not it's not that it's a really flawed, but our ability to date things has to get better sometimes.

And the problem with it is it's got a plus minus and minus can be yeah, and it's just you know, so it's hard to tell what these sort of things where you know, you say, well this one was four hundred years ago, and they wouldn't like that pre dates these other people by a thousand, like a couple of thousand, a couple of thousand years, But like, what's the plus or minus on it? You know, do they is there

a sizeable overlap? There? Is It a little shocking to think that like people could have you know, settled that much area in that amount of time. Sure, but like they were prolific, like our ancestors were prolific, and they would have been mobile, they would have been having there was a lot of stuff, right, I mean, like there

was a lot of stuff for them to eat. That was a lot of new stuff for them to hunt and explore, and a lot of game that wasn't used to human beings and that they could kill quite easily. They had an area out they'd move on and so and who knows, maybe they arrived twenty thousand years ago and they had another five thousand, a whole five thousand years to migrate all the way to the southern theory.

But I just want to like mention as a reminder this whole like radiocarbon dating thing is like we rely on it a lot with stories like this, but it's not necessary. It's not the end all be all. And here's here's another another wrench to throw in the works when it comes to using radiocarbon dating. Is there is there's a place that's called the Topper. It's an archaeological site that's uh, it's on the Savannah River near Allendale,

South Carolina and there's an archaeologist. His archaeologist his name is Dr Albert Goodyear. I don't believe he's related to the tire company. But he found charcoal material that is supposedly in relation to human artifacts, and that charcoal material was dated at fifty thousand years before the president. I just like that's something is like rocks, right, Charcoal is like you know, it's created by burning woods. So I knows it could have maybe people burn the campfire there

or maybe that was just a forest fire. Sorry, And that's what a lot of people say. And that's why this guy's his claim isn't really really considered valid. He does live in South Carolina. No offense to all of our South Carolina. Well, let's let's bring it back to a little bit of a little bit in our area. This was two thousand two and two thousand three human copper lights I believe I'm saying that correct, which is fossilized feces. Uh. It was foul along with hunting tools.

It was found in Paisley Caves, which is in southern central Oregon, which is kind of a desert region. Found in those caves and it was dated to be as much as twelve d years before the clothes should have even been in or on this continent. So again, problems, there's problems with this which and I bring the clothes first because they followed directly in line with the land bridge. There, go ahead. Now, let's just go ahead and go through

other stuff talking about the fast migration now, aren't we. Well, we're gonna talk about other migrations. Uh, here's our next one, which is uh it's called Pacific coastal models. Okay, let me So there's a lot of words on this page, but let me just go ahead and see if I can sum this up in simple language, because this is

a lot of science talk. Basically, what this theory says is that during the recession of the glaciers, people actually knew how to make boats of some kind, and they use those boats to travel down the coastlines of the continent. So they didn't go necessarily across the land bridge, but maybe they skirted it in boats hunting and getting any um, any vegetation that they could eat, and then they would be able to make their way down. That would make

it much faster because you're always heading south. Yeah, And the thing about it is is that it gets you around obstructions and things like that. It's not all solid, but you don't have to climb a mountain. Yeah, you can just float around it. You're you've got access to you know, let's say sea turtles, and then there sweeds on the on the banks and then you hunt a couple of deer or masked dawn or whatever there tigers

to take you out in the process exactly. Yeah, you're floating on the water and everybody saber tooth, tighter boat boat boat, but of course, and they could have had dugouts, they could have had like skin both made out of skins or whatever. Um. And then nice thing about skirting the coast is it's it's like nice and directed and the heavy weather sets in, you can just high tail out to the shore or pull your boats up exactly so.

And that explains this whole thing, helps explain how these people could have made it so far south so fast, which is really kind of one of the issues with the Clovis theory. And again they're they're able to use the ecosystems that are both marine and land based. And it also you know, explains how they got so far south from the burying straight to what would be places like I talked. We talked about a little bit which

is Monteverde, which is in southern Chile. And there's another location which is in western Venezuela, which I believe is tim A Timer. I might be incorrectly pronouncing that, but both of those places have stuff that's there that's been dated, as we said before, at about fourteen thousand years before the present there. And this is stuff that's like the remains of seaweed that was collected from out in the water,

and then there's human habitation remains. There's evidently another layer there that has been dated at thirty three thousand years ago. Now that thirty three thousand years bit that hasn't been widely accepted, but somebody has put that out again. I got to bring it up because it it makes you wonder if they could have come earlier, because said it's

getting the glaciers didn't just expand and sit. They expanded and they contracted back and forth, so it could have been exposing bits of land to let people get down and make their landings upon. Uh. And and there's there's a guy he's from is it the University of Oregon or Oregon State. Right. Well, you know the problem is, I don't I don't remember which one. His name is John Arenson, Thank you, Joe, and he described it as

the Kelp highway hypothesis. And the short version of that is that there's kelp on the coast and then as the bearing straight becomes available, kelp is able to grow there. And these people are using kelp because that's a habitat that if you look at kelp today, fish, things like otters and seals live in it. So we've got the

prehistory version of those in them this game. Yeah, So there's all this food material for people to get through, and once they had made it into the I believe the phrases degalaciated areas of British Columbia and the America's, they could then just high tail itself. And he actually says that that may have happened somewhere around sixteen thousand

years ago. Now, there's some stuff about why people don't like this theory, and this actually falls into a couple of other theories that we're going to go into, but I just want to briefly touch on it. People don't buy into these theories because what is the one thing that we have not found boats. We haven't found a single boat. Okay, well, there's there's two reasons for that.

In my mind. Is either one their boats that are made out of hide the long sense to cecate, they have long since disintegrated, or if they are wooden boats and they fell apart after use at sea or on the banks. We need to remember that when the ice receded, the sea levels rose a couple of hundred meters, anywhere from one to two. So now we're looking at sites that were coastal sites that are several hundred feet underwater. And it would be so cool. I think it's actually

map the sea bottom. You could actually probably trace, you know, roughly where the coastline was way back then. Yeah, and I just send down powerful machinery to just rip everything out of the seafloor and see what you get anything. That's a great idea. Yeah. Actually, but actually we'll talk about this later. Of course, there is there is one powerful machine that's just that, and it brought up some archaeological evidence. We're talking that you are nothing but a tease.

This episode, I've noticed he just keeps dropping things like that. I well, I was gonna just say that. Like, you know, if you as a culture, you've been a boat culture for a while, right, and you like make land and you're like, all right, we're moving inland. This looks like a great place. We're going to stay here. What do you take your boat and you reuse it? Yeah, it doesn't because we haven't found a boat, like one single

canoe or whatever it was. That doesn't mean that they didn't exist, because I mean, you know, if you've got a really well tanned hide that's like survived for a really long time, super waterproof, you're not going to just like leave it. You're gonna take it with you. Is like, I mean, if you decide to go inland and you decided just to band your boat, Well, what happens that at the ocean a sea coast, is that things deteriorate

more rapidly than in inland. Well, let's also take a look at boats that wooden boats and I mean by full on wooden hulled boats that have sunk that we have found hundreds of years later. They're barely there. Sometimes, you know, even in the best of cases, it's not perfectly there. Now we're talking about thousands of years, So no wonder that we can't find that record. So I'm

not bothered by the fact that we haven't found boats. Absolutely. Uh. So we've got we've got kind of a related theory here, and it's uh. I believe the way they've got it's titled from all the research that it did is it's the the Paleo Indians of the coast from the Asia's Okay, Okay, And this is again, this is another boat theory. Okay. This says that people from the coastline of the Creel Islands. I believe I'm pronouncing that right. Again, this is full

of words. I don't know. But these islands are on Southeast Asia and Japan. Uh. And then they extend north across the Asian continent, and eventually, if that bearing strait happened to be exposed, they would then run all the way into Alaska and down to the coast. So they were basically again skirting that area. That kind of actually is an extension of the previous theory. Yeah, it really is the thing about this is and Joe, I don't know if you can pronounce this better than I. Is

it the Hyda or Hayda nation. I have no idea I'm gonna go with I'm gonna go with Hyda Nation. Yeah, it is a coin flip for us unfortunately. Uh. These are the people's of the Queen Charlotte Islands, which are at Bridge in Britdige, Columbia. Uh. And they believe eve

that they may have originated from Asian mariner cultures. And they have said that they believe they may have been there from anywhere from twenty five to twelve thousand years ago, which if you look at some of the their their navigation, and if it's that long ago, that would explain why we see human habitation in places in South America. We've got a place called pick A Machai Cave is pick A Machi I'm gonna go with, which is in Peru

Um and then again Monteverde and pick A Macha. I I don't know why I said that a third time, but evidently that's supposedly twenty thousand years ago. Uh So, I mean it's it's quite possible that they just as we said before, we're just skirting the coast and heading south. And again, I think we talked about this a little bit, but I just can't see people walking that far in groups over the course of a thousand years just seems

really far to live. Your people's living their life on the go to have made it through all that territory, and and a thousand years, I don't know, A thousand years is a long time. Most people are not going to keep walking and walking and walking. They've gotta find a really good spot and they're gonna settle there, right, And so they may be migratory people's that move around, but they have a range. So that's why I have a problem with It's not as if they just said

we're always going this direction. So that's that's my difficulty with it. Well, it could have been, it could have been to that if there were, it depends on how many people were crossing the land ridge and vibrating over because as you know, and this is kind of I think typical as Stone Age people, they formed tribes, and of course every tribe hates the other tribe and does everything I can't do murder the other tribe at that other tribe like crosses into its hunting territory. So there's

a lot of disputes. So if you have a bigger and more aggressive try pushing it behind you. You You might want to have some you might have some pressure to migrate south. On the other hand, if you're just new that you know, fresh out, fresh out the boat, and you're and and there's this big hostile tribe, you might want to skirt them, go around them, and migrate further south so that slows everybody down getting it. So, I mean,

think about trying people. People walk across this country, and they walk on highways, and it's still not an easy process. Now think about a tribe of fifty sixty people packing their gear and there's no roads. That's not an easy trek, and you're looking for food the whole time. I gotta tell you, I And one reason I liked the boat theory is I've seen not just the coastline I've been. I've been all up and down the coast of the

western United States and also a bit of Canada. And the coast in Canada, for example, is basically mountains plunging straight into the ocean. Um, you know, in the absence of roads. You know, I can't imagine what that what that would be like to try to traverse that, but it'll be it'll be hideous. Well, and I think a thousand years isn't as long as we think it is, right, I mean, you know, in the scope of our human

time span on Earth. Yeah, it is a long time, but it is a thousand years really long enough for enough tribes to be dissatisfied enough to like at least well populate an area that is to the south tip of South America. It seems like it seems to me like they weren't that many people pouring into the country that there wasn't lots and lots of room. Just remember the land bridge overflowed with water again, so it was a very limited time span for people to continually pour it.

But yeah, and I think, I mean boats were kind of like beating this, yeah, a little bit. But you know, boats make sense also just in terms of like being able to say, let's keep going. I don't know, this place is kind of nice, but let's keep going. And then like it starts to get bad again and you're like, oh, I guess we'll just stay here. Yeah. Yeah, it's not that you could look at but absolutely, let's let's move on. Yes, we have another one. And this is the atlant Coastal model,

is what it's referred to. And this it's the sal you tree in people's is what tree. I actually had to do a bunch of research to make sure how to say this. This is the one word I figured out how to say. Yeah. So there's two archaeologists. There's a guy by the name of Dennis Stanford and his cohort is Bruce bag Badgeley bradleyogists walk into a box Bradley uh. And they've really been advocating this Atlantic Route theory. And and by the way, I am still in the

process of reading their book. The book is called Across Atlantic Ice. I really highly recommend it for anybody who's into this kind of prehistory. It's it lays out some good arguments and it's really interesting. It's a very academic book, so it take me a while to get through, and I think I might have a late feed the library version of this book. I'm afraid not. So here's how it goes. The Salutrian hypothesis. This is based on evidence

that comes from the clothes people. But what they're doing is instead of tracing the Clovis tool making style to the Siberian region, they're actually linking it to an area in the what it was the Ice Age Western Europe that is the Salutrean culture. Okay, so they have a very similar way of working stone. So they're napping stone, they're flaking it, they're making by face stones. But the difference is is that where the Clovis kind of had the bottom of the point was flattened off, the Salutrians

had it more of a tapered point. If you think of almost like a diamond elongated. It's like if you think of a dagger blade, it's like it's they look kind of like a double ended dagger blade, exact two points to it. Yeah, that's a that's a good way to to to describe, which is one of the things I was I was wondering about it because when I look at the slight tree and slight tree and flint's points,

they don't look that similar to the clubs points. To me, I agree with that actually looking looking at them right

now in fact on my phone. Here's here's what's what's so hard about this when they look at the napping style, the stone napping style that is done and the flaking and again I'm gonna do my best to explain this without pictures, but there's a way that you can take a piece of stone, and you can put it against another one and push, and instead of just making a shard come off the side, you can actually crack it and roll it in a circular fashion so that remember

the by face, it goes from one face, rolls and makes a rounded shape and then pops off the other side. And that that that way of making these tools was very indicative for a long time of the Clovis people. But they've seen that same style in the Solutrean people's stones. I just I guess I feel like and nobody else was doing that. Yeah, okay, maybe I don't know. It's just like, uh, to think that only one culture of people's could ever develop this technology on their own, independent

of each other. It is kind of like a little bit of hubris, right well, And that's one of the things that I I had put in my notes is I wonder if synchronicity is that the word that I think of, But there's another word where two or three people all come up with the same idea right around the same time. I mean, you know, it's this whole like the argument that agient ufologists use, like for the whole alien thing, right is, oh, well, all these pyramids

started cropping up at the same time. It's like, well, yeah, because like people were evolving at the same time, and like people are people, and yeah, we have different ideas about things sometimes, but like culturally you kind of just evolved these ideas and you make pyramids and they look a little different and you have like slightly different techniques. But it's the thing that a culture develops because we

are all humans and we are are very similar. Despite you know, what you were told as a child that you're like a unique snowflake. You're not. You're a human being, and like you have the same thoughts that everybody else does and you go through the same things. And so for me, it's that sort of thing where it's just like, Okay, yes, on the one hand, it is a little odd, but on the other hand, it's not that weird because because actually, when you think about it too, there's only so many

ways to make an arrowhead a spirace. Yeah, so and I think we've exhausted them all. Yeah, And and that's the thing that that the one weird thing is that there is such a huge distance gap because that style is seen in the Clovis and it's seen in the Salutrian, but it is not seen in anywhere in Asia or the Siberia regions around the same time. So it's it's independent on a continental scale, which is what they're pointing out. Now,

I understand that. I just want to bring that out because there are some things that that kind of shoot some holes in this theory. Well, I guess I'll just like point out again that if it is in fact even a continental thing, right, is that, Well, then maybe that has more to do with the way that the stone in the United States or the like continent of America breaks than the stone and your I mean, I believe is the general name of the stone wrong on

that that stone does come up in different areas. It's naturally occurring. Yeah, So I don't know it. Yeah, it's very hard to say. Detractors of this theory they point out at well, there's about a five thousand year gap between the two cultures. That's a bit of a problem saying that. So they documented the salute in people in Europe, and they were exactly when they were about five thousand

years different, and I believe it's before the Clovis. Yeah, and now I might have that the I might have that flip flopped, and it might be that the Clovis were first and the Solutreans were second, but I don't believe that would have led this theory to come out. So I've got to say that the Solutreans were first

and they were in Europe. So this theory. The way this theory is going is just to kind of before we get into the detraction side of it is it's kind of the same as people coming from the Asian

continent through Siberia. Is there instead saying well, these guys came up and they went they floated along on the ice sheets, and they went through what would be Greenland in Iceland and then got into Canada and work their way south into the American continent, hunting and finding whatever they could in those areas because there's gonna be critters that are still going to live in those marine ecosystems. People have said, well, you know what, it would be

freezing cold and it's very wet. If you're a marines culture, you've got a maritime culture, you've got to be able to waterproof yourself, and we don't see any evidence of that, which we've talked about with the boats. The same thing I think that evidence would have disappeared by this time. But yeah, the thing about this, the people that put this seri forth basically said that they skirted the edge of the ice sheet during the ice Age, and the way I see it, before the ice age, they could

have actually made their migration. I don't know, if you've looked at a map of the North, it's quite possible. They're saying, they're kind of playing in a gray air. You can hop from like say, say Britain to Iceland, or say Scandinavia to Iceland. It's not that far apart, and then from there to Greenland is not. No, you're absolutely You're absolutely right. And I'm not saying that they

were literally paddling alongside a glacier. Yeah, but you're looking for a put that for the fourth and yeah, and I think they probably did it under you know, probably earlier in time. And that's one of the things people bash on this theory about. They also go back to that DNA evidence, which shows that, as they've talked about before, there's no European UH signs in that DNA from it's

the mitochondrial DNA. And there's a term that they throw around which is called and this is going to be important if everybody wants to go out and do the reading, because this will help you a lot, because it took me a long time to figure it out. Is they will use the term apple group, happ group group. I cannot say words today that are scientific. Basically, what that means is that is people who descend from a common ancestor. This is what they do the testing for these days.

When you like say, oh, the son of a son is going to like do the mouth swab and then people attracted. That's that's basically yes, in a very simplified version. Yes, over thousands of crazy science. The only way I can even like mildly comprehend it is by like simplifying it to the lowest common the same thing. Yeah. So here's now, remember I talked about Stanford and Bradley. They came right back with a bunch of issues to throw at the

land Bridge theory that we talked about in the beginning culture. Yeah, and there's actually some really good points that they bring up. The first of which is the in the middle of what I say, it's just going to be a frigging coal Yeah. So you're in the northern Hemisphere. Why would you be in the north and at the high summers it's like sixty degrees. Uh. Second of all, what do we see in terms of light cycles in the northern hemisphere? We go from days of dark to two days of

light and then back. I don't know of a culture moving through there that would be able to stand that just freshly coming into that. Do you see where I'm heading? Shock? I mean, I guess, like if if we're going to just for argument's sake, like if they were living in Siberia, they were pretty freaking used to yeah, you know, like they were used to the freezing cold, they were used to the weird light cycles. And people currently in this entire like in this day and age, live in areas

like that. That's very true, you know, granted, like we have better technology, but it's not like they moved there after the technology existed. They've lived there forever. And so I guess to play a little bit. No, no, no, I appreciate Devil's advocate on that. But here's the other thing that they bring up that I really had never thought of, which is when the land bridge emerge from the water, it was gonna be mud. It was gonna be mucky. Grant, it wasn't gonna be hard packed that

was easy to walk on. It's gonna be marshy. It's gonna be boggy. And how in the world are you gonna walk through that chasing game? Game aren't gonna go through that easily. It's gonna take a long for that to dry out. Well, not just dry out, but actually a game aren't gonna go there because there's nothing for them to eat. Plants start growing there and that's gonna

take a while. Yeah. And and then there's the other thing, another thing they brought up, which is in that region, it's gonna be the first thing that comes in those marshy environments is the insects, which are like no sums and mosquitoes and that kind. Yeah. So, I mean, it's just, again, it doesn't seem like a place that I would say, hey, family, let's go truck through that bog and see what's on

the other side. Hopefully we make out again. I understand I'm simplifying, but these are things that I see that I'm like, yeah, true, you know, I would think that the thing that would cause that is not the great old spirit of exploration, but pressures either from competitive tribes that want to slaughter you number one or two. You've killed off all the game in your area, you need to migrate to go find somewhere else to hunt. Well, but as you said, like, it's not super likely that

that's how things are migrating to the America's anyways. I mean, you know, it's not like a bunch of wooly mammoths are going to be like, oh yeah, mud, Yeah, we're going to lumber through that. There's no food, this is where we're going. Well, that's not gonna happen. I don't know. A movie Hey Suley or whatever his name was. Yeah, they're not going to do that. They're not. I mean, if there's not food there, they're not going to go there. And there's not food there, so why I mean there

would be food there in a relatively quick time. I think that probably, but not heard. Yeah, I guess not definitely not enough to sustain a herd large enough to warrant following. Yeah, I don't think it would have taken like a thousand years, but even a couple of hundred, like they would take a while. That puts a ding in the timeline. Yeah, it does. I mean, that's a very good point that they make, though. Yeah, ears one of the pieces of evidence that really sparked the whole

solutrey in people hypothesis. This happened in ninety four. There's guys fishing, and I believe they were drag netting, and they were outside of Chesapeake Bay. There were ways off shore there are a couple of hundred feet they're dragging a couple hundred feet down and they hit something really big and heavy and they hauled it up and it turned out to be a mastodon skull. Very cool, but it was too big and heavy for them to actually

log all the way back to shore. So what they did is they cut off parts of the tusk and parts of the teeth and gave them everybody on the boat as souvenirs, and then they chucked it back over board. Wasn't there like a stone tool in it or something that was stuck in part of the I believe it was the tusk and was stuck and they took it, and they took it. The people was stuck at it. They didn't know what the hell, but they could have just chucked it back into Eventually, the people who had

it donated it, and that's how people figured out. Okay, can I just say one thing, these guys were bone heads because even yeah, even if you don't have room on your boat and you can't handle the way to the skull, what you do is you're in a couple hundred feet of water. You tie a rope a couple of hundred feet long with a buoy on the other end of it to the skull so you can come

back and get it. Hello. If they realize what they dick it back in the net and drag it behind you, like not super deep and you're fine, skull you're going to throw it back in. No, No, I'm not an idiot. Yeah there, Yeah, well anyway, but yeah, and and this is an interesting thing because a couple hundred feet down that's about where the ancient coastline used to be. Yea, And now, yeah, that's exactly the point is that, as I said, yeah, we could start exploring that ancient coastline

down there. And even it's not just one coastline that I mean, I mean the sea level has been rising for thousands of years. So anywhere between a couple hundred feet down and shoreline, you're going to find artifacts. Yeah, but those are hard to find now because they're under sentiment and mud and mud and feet down and yeah, obviously you know, we can't go down and just ripping up the sea floor. I mean it, but it probably wouldn't be good for the sea life. Yeah, you know.

And we're going to move on from the Salutrians. I mean, there's there's been other evidence that have that have shown that maybe people were doing these marine lifestyles, the mariners so to speak. Yeah, I mean there's there's things that are outside of the Channel Islands in californ Warnia that are showing evidence of artifacts that are from like ten thousand BC. There's all these things, and people keep saying

that there could have been possible failed colonization. And that's that's kind of what I want to get into because that that kind of comes into my final thoughts about this whole thing, well, actually a bit the whole offer a second. The Salutrians the one word I can say tonight. Yeah, it's actually a few people believed that they migrate it here, and a lot of other scientists believe that no, they

never ever did right. Correct, correct. People couldn't see me shaking my head I had to say something, Yes, okay, it's not like that. But but again, this mastodon skull was pulled up with the saw essentially kind of a slutree and spear point, and it was dated at twenty two years Yeah, exactly. So that so, you know, the little credence to the theory, Uh, it really does. And here, but I guess that's also like fair to say that neither none of these theories necessitate mutual exclusivity. Yeah, I

think we're sorry, am I jumping ahead? No? No, no, no, I was just gonna say, is that I think we've said, is that the problem is all these dates we're working with are soft. Yeah, they're really soft, and it's hard to say. I mean it's hard to say, like, yeah, it's totally possible that like the Salutrians came over and tried to colonize and we have like all of the information they like survived for a couple hud couple of thousand years and then just died out. Love. His culture

was more robust. They were going down the you know, sailing down the whole shore, and they colonized and they were way more and they are actually kind of what the true natives are now, you know, I think it's there's just so many different like well, it could be a mix of this and this and this, given that, given that what what things were back in those days.

I think if the Salutrians came over and then said the closed people showed up and wanted and they would have exterminated the Slutrians too, And this always a possibility. That's and that's one of my things I was gonna get it is, yeah, war they could have literally wiped them out and or enslaved them. And my enslavement, I mean truly did not breed. Again, I talked about this before. There was no interbreeding, almost no interbreeding enough that that

that gene pool can't be detected. There's also the possibility that and this is out there and I know I'm completely making this up, but I'm just you know, my

brain was spinning on this story. It's possible that these cultures met and as we said, we've got the master slave relationship, or we could have the god and worshiper relationship, where one culture shows up and they are so dominant and they somehow key into a culture that that other culture is subservient and therefore they just never stay in the gene pool. It's also possible that, I mean, nobody's ever talked about this. What if what are these cultures

practiced some form of cremation. We've we've never seen that. That's what I was thinking, is like they haven't found remains. There's there's a couple of things. I mean, the silu Trians. We've never found any DNA evidence that they are we're actually here because there's no European d But what you're what you're talking about is absolutely correct. I mean a lot of cultures, like say India, for example, they burned corpses. But there's another thing there, and I have two words.

There's two words here. Kennewick Man. Have you heard You've heard of Ken? Yeah, so kenne wic Man found just very recently along the shores of the Columbia River, not that far away and Kennawick near Kennewick, Washington is apparently from the shape of the skull and the facial features and everything, anthropologists have decided that he was not at

all related to any any American Indians. He was probably most likely from a Polynesian island, and so that would that would evidence to me indications of a migration not just from eastern Siberia, but also from Polynesia or from perhaps the people who went on to populate Polynesia, because of course Polynesia was populated by people from the Eurasian land mass. So you're so Kenotic man, let me finished, knic Man was obviously completely different from the great majority

of the Native Americans that we have found here. It is virtually impossible that he migrated all the way from by himself. In other words, in other words, it's very likely there was a mass migration of his people, his not just his tiny tribe, but a whole bunch of people from that area to North America, and they eventually died out. And of all that population, how many skeletons have we found exactly one? Exactly one, And so yeah, that's that supports to me. That's how your theory a

little bit, I think. I also think there's a lot too like percentages, right if like of the DNA pool is Clovis and one percent or ten per is salt salt. I'm having a hard time because there's a doctor who raised called salt salt tarans. I'm having a very hard time.

I'm trying really hard to keep it together. Sorry, but I mean, you know, if if you've got your like smaller group relatively of people who have colonized the East coast, the Clovis culture finally makes over there, they realize like, okay, maybe they like slaughter most of the people or not all of them. But even if you start breeding, if there's only like ten percent of the population over like, however many number of generations, which would be a high

number of generations. If you're mostly breeding with Clovis culture, people that like that DNA is essentially going to disappear. It doesn't like substain itself. I mean, there's no way our DNA testing is not so advanced that we could be like, yeah, oh yeah, and there's this one percent that's unidentified. We don't know. It doesn't matter, I mean, and that also would help what you're talking about is saying that the solid trains were there and then there

was some interbreeding. That would help explain why the people's of the eastern seaboard of the America's of the of the United States kind of funny compared to the words. They are on a genetic level slightly different than the people's from the western coast. But the people from the western coast are very very similar to the people of the South America. So that tells you that there's a divergence somewhere and there's gotta been some introduction of something different, right,

That's that's so I I totally agree with that. I totally agree with Joe that it just cracks me up that all the academics are fighting fighting over it is this one people. When I think Joe hit the nail on the head that it is very possible multiple cultures coming in at multiple times. And I think the reason that this so intrigued me is that it shot so many holes into what we all learned as kids, which was caveman walked across the land bridge, chasing mass to dog.

I think that's all probably the only theory that we can like pretty securely discount, I mean, right, like the sole source of the people. It's possible that at the end the land bridge may have been solid enough for people to just make that solid trek. But I personally think that what I don't care which side, whether it be the lant Take or the Pacific, I think that people's had to have come here by boat in some form.

It's the only way they could have traveled fast enough availables likely, you know, And I don't think it's gonna happen that. I think it would be really fascinating to actually go down I mean that that stuff, the land bridge is still there. It's underwater, it's underwater. It would be really cool to go down there and just troll around.

I mean, for one thing, I'm actualted to find out how long it was above and if it was above the waterline long enough for actual forests to develop on it, which case there should be archaeological ormates of forests in there. There should be a thousand or two thousand years. But I don't know how long. I don't know how high above sea level it was, Yeah, I mean, I don't know how high above sea level you've got to be before the ground actually starts drying out significantly. Yeah, exactly.

And but it would be fascinating to go down there and do a little underwater archaeology. And I realized that that that kind of thing is difficult next out to do, but I can't even but that would be the real test, would be to go down there and and map it. Pick a spot that looked like it would be a likely spot for humans to settle, at least temporarily, and then start digging. Let's see what you come up with.

And and and there's there's the possibility that some of that might have hardened and filled in, so there might be I mean, there's there's so many prehistoric tracts of dinosaurs that have become stones. You might see that kind of stuff, but it's so hard to see because it's been back underwater and now you've got you know, liquid forces are roadingism. Yeah, yeah, it's it's it's it would be hard. But there's got to be If that was a landage, there's got to be some evidence down there.

There's got to be something. Yeah. Well, I mean that's unfortunately where we have to leave this. Got to solve it it okay, now now okay, I'm about to non sue the murder areas. But then the lights are going to go out. There will be a screen and it's sound of a body getting the floor. You're in the wrong month, man, Okay, Ah, Well that is where we're leaving it, because that's that's where the evidence leaves us. And I think we've all kind of beat this enough.

Is the which direction we're thinking it's going. But if you want to read any of the research on this, that's going to be available on our website. The website is Thinking Sideways podcast dot com. We will also have at this episode in any past episode is there, so you can listen to them directly on the site. Uh. If you want to download the show on a regular basis, you want to subscribe, you can do it through the site, or of course you could just go to iTunes where

I think most people are still going on iTunes. If you're there, take the time to leave us a comment and a rating. We do appreciate that and that that gets us out to the wider world of people to help find us, especially prefer this well you know all prs PR or something like that. Oh it isn't Oh ignore that last statement. Uh. Now, if you want to listen to an episode and you haven't had a chance to download it, but you you used stitcher, you can go ahead and just stream us through any more ready

device right there. We are of course on Facebook, so we have the group and we have the Facebook page. Been some good good stuff going through both of us. Yeah, and people have joined lately. We get a couple of conversations going, so followers and jos and of course we have our emails. If you have thoughts, comments, something you want to share, suggestions, Uh, the email is Thinking Sideways podcast at gmail dot com. I know, of course this week alone, I left town and left Devon. I told Devon,

don't worry, we won't get much. And then Devin just got in andto an emails els it's like or something, there's like there, don't worry, we won't get that many emails. And then like I was like, oh man, I need to check those because like it's been a couple of days. And I checked and they were like twenty email. Oh I forgot to tell you I check him on my phone all the time. So I kind of just deal with him on a running basis. No, it was a lot,

it was. It was incredible. So I got to talk to a couple of people and kind of I don't know how you feel those I am awful at it. No, No, you did great, did good, and and everybody seemed to appreciate it. We got we got some thoughts, we got some ideas for topics, we got good stuff on there. Reminder that actually eight bit color is sixty four color. I mean it was four bit color. This was actually I was going to bring this email up because because I screwed up, and I will admit this right now.

This is a correction. When we talked about Gary McKinnon, we said that he looked at one of his images in four bit color and I don't know it was four colors. One of us said, oh, well that for colors, when it's actually sixteen colors. That's been embarrassing. Sorry about that little incorrect but thank you for correcting. Yes, absolutely appreciate the correction, so that those are the kind of emails where I'm a little embarrassed, but I'm glad to

get up. Sound like when somebody listens to the catalog later on speak you know. Yeah, obviously tonight I did a lot of that ye or mispronunciations. I think I did a bunch of those. Two lots of stuff, Yeah, lots of good stuff. This is basically a failure. Yeah, massive scale. This one will never get released, all right, ladies and gentlemen. Well that having been said, we're going to go ahead and close this one out. And I guess, well, yeah, we'll be talking you next week probably by the way,

I'm voting for the Sutrians. I didn't realize we're voting for things. Yeah, and goodbye three