Who were the first Americans?

every once in a while. We consider it mixed. Thanks. Um. I will as a matter of fact from this point forward, Chuck um quick who discovered America? Christopher Columbus. Yeah, even if you qualify it by saying what European discovered America? Uh, Columbus was beaten by a good five years by the Norse right who found who were in Newfoundland. That's not what we were taught in history. Definitely, there's no Norse day, No no leaf ericson day. I don't think there is

not in the US. Um. And there's also evidence that the Norse were beaten by a good five hundred years by an Irish monk who used a rowboat to make it from Ireland over to North America and he wrote about it, and um, the tenacious monk was at his name, that's what I would call him. Yeah, well, yeah, at the very least, or if not the completely insane monk. He came back and wrote about it and draw or drew some maps. I believe he drawed some maps and um there, so there is some sort of evidence that

that he made contact with these people. Apparently the Norse described meeting people who, um were dressed like monks that they had met, So this guy might have come over and been like, you guys are dressed all wrong here, we need to church you up. They didn't pillagees well as the Europeans did, though in Columbus and the game single Irish Monk. Yeah, I'm pretty sure he felt outnumbered. Yeah yeah, Um so if you qualify who what European

discovered America, there's debate right there. Um, there's evidence that the Chinese beat Columbus by seventy years, I should say there's some evidence that's highly questionable. And also, by the way, you can read an article I wrote on the Irish Monk and an article I wrote on the Chinese beating Columbus wondering you know, all this stuff. Ye did you ever hear the Luis cave it on Indian giving? Do

you want to hear it? It's awesome he's talking about Basically, the Indian giving is probably the most offensive thing you can say on Earth because it implies that we like, they gave us the land and that or we get and that we wanted it back and they wouldn't give it back. And uh, he's he's talking about the the settlers coming over and saying, can we have everything in the Indians said, well, we don't really have We just use it and enjoy it and share it. And then

we started killing everybody and that's like a thing. And the Indian says, dude, if this is what have is, can we not do that? It's really good. I love that guy. He's great. And because Chuck just paraphrased everything that's not copyright infringement, no, I don't think so okay, So Chuck, we' we've we've clearly ruled out. Christopher Columbus is the discoverer of North America? Right, um, who did discover North America? Though you have to ask this question.

Let's say Columbus comes over, he thinks he's in India and he shows up and he's like, hey, you guys are Indians, but you look a little crazy, you know, and finally comes to realize that he's not in India, that he's just discovered this new place. But that immediately begs another question that I'm sure it took a little while for people to come up with, because they were so excited that they just discovered this whole new land

mass an awesome land mask. Yeah, the best land mass, um, But the question had to eventually come up, like, wait a minute, where did these people come from? How did they get there? How did they get there? For millennia, there was a theory, a widely accepted theory in both the public and scientific lives, um of spontaneous generation. Right Like just if you put left meat out too long and it started to rot, uh, flies showed up, So rotting meat gave rise to flies. The same with moldy grain,

uh giving life to um mice. Generally, people thought that there was a life force that could spontaneously produce life, and that some some inanimate objects were associated with giving rise to certain animate objects. Right, And that was the case in North America. They I don't know that, right, but in eighteen sixty four Louis Pasteur definitively proved that there was no life force that gave rise to um life, that if you put a if you sterilized a broth and put it in a flask and kept it sterile,

life didn't spontaneously originate there. So he definitively disproved it. So if people did think that the Native Americans in North and South America and Central America did spontaneously generate, Pasteur approved that that wouldn't have happened. So there's last the question where in the name of God did these people come from? How long had they been there? That's an awesome question. I love this article. I thought it

was really really interesting. Thanks the Clovis. Well, yes, that was the first theory that uh, well, not the first, but it was widely held for quite a while. Yeah. Um, actually in the couple first couple of decades. Actually in nineteen o six, I believe nineteen o eight, there's a terrible flood in southern New Mexico, and uh it killed a lot of people, a lot of cattle, which in nineteen o eight and southern New Mexico cattle and people

were on par um. And it also washed up a bunch of weird artifacts, a lot of weird um clear clearly Indian spearheads, arrowheads, that kind of thing. Was this in Clovis. It was near Clovise, Falsome, I believe was the first sight that they found. UM. So people started, you know, kind of collecting these things, and we're got out that you could find inexplicable or uncommon spearheads, Mexican spearheads, as it turns out, Yeah, the Clovis Point. Yes, that's

that's not what it was called. Yet people were just like, look at this crazy thing. That's what I think they called it, right. Um. And then over the course of the next couple of decades, more and more um archaeological research was done. A guy named um Ridge Whitman. Yeah, and then es name Now he was just a dude in Mexico. Um, he found uh, one of these very characteristic spearheads in the bones of a bison. All right,

So things are starting to come together. The the the tipping point is reached, as Malcolm Gladwell will put it, would put it in two. When the state of New Mexico was digging a highway and they started excavating near um Clovis and just found a whole trove of stuff, bones, spearheads, the whole, the whole shebang. Yeah, it really gave us a lot of info. And a guy who was excavating nearby, Dr Edgar Edgar B. Howard, he was excavating for mammoth bones in a cave nearby. We'll see the guy that

was all mad because they moved the spear points. That was a different guy that had happened about ten years earlier. You tell them about that because that's significant, kind of like it demonstrates the mentality that's going on at the time. Yeah, they found some spear points and I guess they picked it up or something, which is like a crime scene. You're not supposed touch anything, evidently, and he came up on the scene and he started, you know, he pitched

hissy fit. Because it's out of context now, it doesn't really tell us that much. It was and and pretty much the guy who ruled on whether or not um archaeological evidence was archaeological evidence. I can't remember his name, but he worked for this Smithsonian as a physical anthropologist. He said, sorry, they touched it. I didn't see it. It could have been placed there. I'm not accepting it, but they found something later and left it intact right

right years later? Yeah, then this is this is when all of it starts to take off in nineteen thirty two, right. So, all of a sudden they figure out that this, these spear points have never been seen before anywhere else. They have no idea where these things came from. They just knew they were very, very old because like the bison bones that they were found within, it was an extinct bison and had been an extinct about some thousand years.

All of a sudden, it's becoming clear that these people pre date any settlement that we'd been aware of or known as Native American or Paleo Indians. Look at you, Yeah, well I have a minor in anthropology, of course. Um. And so all of a sudden people are saying, okay, well, these Clovis were the first Americans. And in the fifties when radio radiocarbon dating came about, that that proved definitively that these people were old as old as you would think.

Eleven thousand two years ago is what they dated at. Yeah, and how do you do that? Chuck with radiocarbon dating. All right, Well, what they do is they actually take

soil samples, right, and the soil strategy. Right, they measured that the age of the carbon isotopes sea fort teen carbon isotopes present in the soil around the artifact, right, And the artifacts have to be laid out in a certain way, like there can't be evidence that it was buried humans when we make a camp or when we did twelve thousand and ten thousand years ago, when we made a camp and just left it, they were very telltale signs, right, So things weren't buried, they're just kind

of laid about what was going on there when they were extinct or whatever. So if there, if that's how this site is presented, then you can measure the soil and say, okay, well the carbon isotopes in the soil are eleven thousand years old. That means that this site was above ground and just left eleven thousand years ago. Right. So that proved that the Clovis were around eleven thousand two years ago, right, yes, which is old and definitely

pre Native American. So how did they get here? Well, the Clovis first camp, which was it sounds to me like they're a very angry bunch of people. They eventually, at least they came to be called the Clovis Police. Ye like that name, yea? Or what was the I wonder if the Clovis, New Mexico Police like it, but they're like, that's us or the Clovis Barrier. They created

this Clovis Barrier. Basically, anybody who had any other competing theory or idea was an idiot, and they had lockdown on on the academic view of the origin of life in North America. So, getting back to your question, where did they come from and how did they get there? The general theory was that they basically walked during the middle of the ice Age, which I can't imagine living

during an ice age? Could you imagine? Like crossing the Bearing was it called the Bearing Straight Bridge, the Bearing Land Bridge, the Bearing Land Bridge? How they got here supposedly, which is only about a mile wide and is now beneath the ocean of the Bearing Straight and that that's how they migrated from Siberia to I guess what would be like Canada in Alaska in Alaska and then found their way down to eventually the southeastern United States and

because of that um, so they walked here. There was actually a very very brief as far as the timeline of history goes, there's a very brief moment in history where the bearing Land Bridge was exposed and where the Laurentide ice sheet that covers like northern Canada and Alaska did at the time was receided enough to to allow passage between it and a nearby glacier. Can you imagine how scary that was? Though? I imagine it was kind of scary, but it was only a mile wide. Though,

it's not like it wasn't a pleasure walk. It wasn't a stroll. No. But and and you raise a good question like why would you do that? Why? Food? Food, Mastodon baby, your favorite band, the cloth mastodon and the wooly mammoth. That was the theory is that they were dependent and on these animals as they're one of their soul sources of meat. I guess right. It was very clear based just on their spear points in their arrowheads. The clothes were extremely advanced big game hunters. Yeah, they

were hafted, which I had to look that up. It's actually when they attach um something to a handle. So it's either attached to a bow or a spear shaft, axe handle, and that means you can throw it, yes, or shoot it, which is how you need to kill a mammoth. You can't just walk up to it and stab it. You also need a lot of coordination, planning, cooperation to take down a mammoth, the mastodon, or one

of these extinct bison. And also I read um the point was made like they were definitely big game hunters, but they they would take small game two or medium sized game like deer, antelope or whatever. That's what I wondered, because they've made a big point about the fact that one of the reasons they may have become extinct was that the mammoth and masodon were over overhunted. Chuck, you

have just brought everything to the four the Pleistocene overkill hypothesis. Yes, Chuck, what this is and this is one of the reasons why the Clovis barrier was so supported and so able to just lock down academia. Um, it was because it it was a cautionary tale about ecological collapse. Right, But I just I don't get that not every animal. They couldn't have overhunted every animal just because they overhunted the masodon in the mammoth, why not skip down to the

lower smaller animals. That's that's an excellent point. That's something that that's that's a quite and that hasn't been satisfied by or wasn't satisfied by the Clovis police. They basically were saying, the Clovis came down from they came across the land bridge from Siberia down through North America, got to the Great Plains, over hunted the masted on the bison, and followed them around and um kill them off and eventually that led to the the extinction of their own kind.

Because the what's really interesting and curious about the Clovis is they appear out of nowhere in North America and actually like South and eastern North America and clearly New Mexico. And over the period of five years, they pop up out of nowhere and they disappear into the ether. They just show up and they're gone. There's no evidence of any technology leading up to them, like you can't see a progression of fluted spearheads that show like these people

are figuring out how to make the Clovis point. And then you don't see any refining of it or continuation of it after this five year period. So these people like if you're if you're looking at it just on the timeline of history and archaeologically, they pop up in the middle of North America out of nowhere and then just disappear. Pretty cool. Yeah, I mean maybe they were alien. It's entirely possible. There was another theory though about why

they may have vanished, the Clovis comment theory. It's also called the Younger Driest impact event. And this is just a few years old. Um. Some people theorized that a comet exploded above the Earth's atmosphere around the Great Lakes and basically caught most of North America on fire, sweet and not only killed the mastodon in the Mammoth, but the Clovis. And there's a little bit of evidence of this.

They found a charred, carbon rich layer of soil at fifty different Clovis age sites, and it contained a bunch of unusual stuff in it that they interpreted as like an impact event. Is that the scientific term for that stuff? And unusual materials? Yeah, like like what unusual materials? Don't ask me that? Like stuff that you would find in a comet. Uh, stuff that would indicate there was an impact event. I guess, like a meteor impact landing stuff

like that. That's awesome, but that's been refuted to Like, you know, that's why I love all this stuff. There's all these theories that makes sense, and then some other person comes along and pokes holes in it, and then you're back at square one. All right. So, but that's

not how it went with the Clovis barrier. Like it was fact, as far as anybody was concerned, you had radio carbon dating, you had um no other evidence of of any earlier settlement in North in the America's at all, um, and any anybody who put forth a hypothesis other than

that with pooh pooed. And they were very successful at controlling the origin of life in North America or in the America's for several decades, and then they gave it up and became scientologists, right yeah, um, until that was the beginning of the end of the Clovis first the Yeah, sadly, maybe maybe not, because really the whole reason that you're looking, the whole reason you're spending decades excavating a single site, is to find out the truth like, we have to

know who is first, We have to know See I'm not I'm not in that camp. I know you made a point your article. That's not really that important. Who was first? Is that? It wasn't that just like such a hippie end liked it though. It's like afterwards, yeah, we should respect the Clovis man just because they weren't first. They gave us the halted fluted spear. Yeah. I was listening to uh hands across America the whole time I was writing this. So are we going to down south?

Let's go down south, chuck to Monte Bade. Yeah, yeah, that wasn't well. One of the early theories of the Clovis is that they migrated from south to north. No, north to south. They came down originally, but didn't didn't. They later go on to say, but wait, it looks like they went from south to north. That's what Monte Verity did. There was a University of Kentucky arch ologist named Tom Delahey who dedicated uh twenty five years of his life to a single settlement in Chili outside of

Monteverde Chili. What a loser, But this guy managed to quietly and methodically destroy the Clovis first theory. And even better, he brought the Clovis police down to Chili after he presented his final findings and said, yeah they were. That was a sad day for the Clovist police, I think it was. And to turn in their badges and their uniforms and their little billy clubs. They all retired and went fishing in Florida. So what happened, Chuck? What did

what did de la Haye find in monte Verda. Well, he found, uh, he found he found that predated him. Irrefutable evidence is another way to put it. Well, that's the non cursing way to put it. So you want to know what they found? Yes, they found hers of wood with knotted strings attached, which was no accident. It meant that a human being uh tied some string around it. Well, not only that, they also found um left over, masted

on flesh preserved. This is what mont Inverty is just so, this is how archaeology advances by leaps and bounds by accident. Mont Inverty um the site is a bog um, and it actually preserved. This would string masted on flesh preserved it beautifully. Um because it's an oxygen depleted environment and it was twelve thousand, five years old. That's what radiocarbon dating showed. So first of all, you have the fact that, um, it's clearly these hearts, these um, the nodded string, all

this stuff. It was clearly presented in a way that this was a settlement. It was a camp. They estimated it housed like people. Um, even like the tent pegs are left in the ground. That's pretty cool. So it wasn't buried, right, it was just left. And then when the radiocarbon dating proved that, yeah, it was twelve years old, so they had a good millennium on the Clovis. It still doesn't answer how they got there. No, it doesn't.

As a matter of fact, it raises even more questions because what what the Clovis police said was well, okay, that's fine, that's fine, we'll give you monte verity jerk. Here here's the This is one thing that was never addressed with the Clovis by the Clovis police is why weren't there any evidence of Clovis settlements along the way from uh Siberia to Canada Alaska the Great Planes. There

aren't any because if you come across. If you come down Alaska and Canada into North America, you had the Great Plains and brother, there was really good hunting around there ten thousand years ago. You're gonna have campsites, You're going to have some evidence. There was nothing like we said that. It is totally possible. I think that's how the Clovis first theory was able to stand for so long, is because maybe we just haven't found it yet. Whatever.

But this monte verity theory turns it on its ear because instead of from north to south, it suggests they went from south to north and it was years older. Yes, but I like your theory of how they got here. It's not a theory. It's not my theory. It's a it's a hypothesis that other people have suggested as well. Because the same thing happened uh in Australia, right, yeah, well possibly, Uh think about it. Australia has been a continent,

unattached continent for fifty million years. Uh. They believe archaeologists anthropologists believe that um, the Aborigines in Australia got there about sixty thousand years ago, which means they would have had to have parachuted in or come by boat or swam. Yeah. I think boats there most plausible, and islands along the way that you could stage and uh, you can island hop over there. I mean, there's some pretty horrible journeys

along the way, but it's entirely possible. And the theory is that that could have the same thing could have happened to the the folks in mont ver day it's true or the other. The other way to look at it is there's a lot of people who still believe that they came from the north to south migration pattern, but that they just came a lot earlier, so they went north to south and then back up. Okay, that

makes sense, it does. Um. The fly in that ointment is this there's another site found at Monte Verity that is being excavated. Now I'm pretty sure delah Haye was like, I'm out, I'm out, I did my thing where you guys take this over. Yeah, but they found another camp nearby or evidence of more human activity nearby that's dated to about thirty thirty three thousand years ago, which turns this on it here. Yes, so does that hold to the theory of the waves of migration that you were

talking about in the article. Um, I don't know. I don't know. I think that I've also heard there's a lot of um archaeological sites that are under water right now. They're sure because you know, once the ice ages ended, the water levels rose, and who knows, what's you know underwater along our coasts and there could be definitive evidence

that they came by boat. We have no idea. Ultimately, we just know that the Clovis weren't the first people here, although they and how they they left, why why they vanished, still don't know. It's it's very interesting, but there there was. It looks like people in Chile thirty three thousand years ago. Wow, which goes to prove Columbus did not discover America. Full circle. What does this all have to do with me and you living here in Atlanta today? Nothing on Clovis ground. Yeah,

it has nothing to do with us. That where they in Georgia? They said Southeast and and Carolina. So we're just a couple of slobs here in two thousand nine. Ah. Yeah, And you ask, really there other than the pursuit of knowledge, other than the pursuit of definitive truth, it really doesn't apply to us. But it is fascinating, and there's not to say that it's not. I think you could argue that all of archaeology is I'm not saying pointless, but

because I think it's fascinating. But what are you doing besides trying to find the truth? And there's value in that. Sure, there's definite value in it. But it's not like they're gonna find some ancient cure for cancer. Or will they. I don't know. We'll find out. They'll keep digging into the meantime, because I gotta tell you, Chuck, most archaeologists could care less what you and I think about their field. No,

I'm sure we'll get some emails about this. Well, since I just said most archaeologs just could care less, that means it's time, Chuck for Oh yeah, if you want to read this article, you can type Clovis into the handy search bart how stuff worst dot com, which now means it's time for listener mail. So Josh, before we have listener mail, Okay, we want to talk about something we're excited about. I'm excited about a lot of stuff. You're gonna have to specify. Don't switch off your podcast.

Your people, this is really good. H you were call during the micro lending episode. Sure, we talk about an awesome website Kiva dot org k I v A and that is where you can donate money twenty five dollar minimum to satisfy these micro loans for needy people all over the world, needy entrepreneurs, needy entrepreneurs. Yes, it's not yet, it's not. It's not a charity like you're you're going to fund their enterprises. So if you haven't listened to that episode, give it a listen. And we found out

through Kiva you could start a team. And then we started searching around and found out the mark as a team to mark as a team, A lot of corporations, being in bisexuals have a team. Sure, who else, Well, the Colbert Nation, Stephen Colbert has a team. Oh that's right. And we saw that and we thought, hey, they're lame. They're not raising much money. No, there's like a hundred members last time I checked, and they've raised like sixth grade, which I guess is pretty good for a hundred members.

But I think we can top that. We could definitely top that. And we have people that right in and talk about the fact this is a free podcast, and they wish there was something they could do. Well. Now you can go to Kiva dot org join the Stuff you Should Know team under a community. Uh, sign up and join the team and start donating, and we can start satisfying some of these loans. I love satisfying things.

And we'll we'll keep up with this through the blog and kind of let people know and how many loans we've satisfied. And we're gonna keep our eye out for Colbert. Yeah, this is not gonna be some throwaway poo poo idea that, like you know, we came up with and forgot about, Like Colbert, We're in this for the long run. Boom. We're gonna put it on the blog and uh, we want the Stuff you Should Know Team to to satisfy these loans. And you can get paid back. That's a

cool thing. You can give fifty bucks and if you want, you can Once a loan is repaid, you can get that money back. Yeah. You can take it and run or buy some donuts with it, or you can reinvest it, or you can just donate it to the Kiva Foundation as a whole. Either way, you're helping people in the developing world again fund their own enterprises, uh in a in an effort to become self sufficient for a lousy bucks. Plus, you're like a hair's breadth away from Mohammed Junius, right,

I mean, he's right there next to you. So go to Keeva dot org check out the stuff he should know, team and join up and we're gonna keep up with it on the blog and through the podcast, and we will shame you if you haven't joined. Chuck, this is a great idea. Thank you. It was a really good idea, man. All right. So now listener, mail, I'm gonna just do this one since we're short on time. This you ask people to write in UM after the Bhutan Gross National Happiness. Yeah,

we've gotten a lot of good responses from that. Everybody. Everyone who's written in has this nice, mellow, even keeled to me. Nobody has been like help me, especially this guy. I like Chris. Chris says h in answer to your request for someone who has left the rat race of the American money Chase, I think I qualify. I live on a commune, he says, in a commune. I also thought it was on. He lives in a commune and files taxes under the I R S Code five O one D, which I don't even know what that is.

I've only heard of five on three. It sounds like some sort of a hippie thing. Yeah, I've lived in this commune with my wife for close to fifteen years. Before moving in, I grew up in another commune whose income was solely based on donations. So all in all, you could say I've always lived with a yearly salary under ten thousand dollars. Am I happy? I'd say yes. I find lots of ways to have fun and live hand to mouth. You never really know what you can

live without until you read Your Life of Stuff. When I host visitors at our place, it pretty much blows people's minds. My wife and I take up three rooms in our building. We try to make the most of our space and not hang onto extra books, clothes, et cetera.

For too long. Your Show and Happiness and Money, Your show on Happiness of Money asked some good questions my regular listener, and and he signed off, Peace Chris, Chris, So you left out as Michelle's Shock quote, he has a quote from singer songwriter Michelle Shock, who apparently once said, if you ever want to if you ever want an adventure, live without cash? So true, that is an adventure. Yeah, well,

thanks for it in Chris dirty Hippie. Thank you to everybody who took time to write in about dropping out of there at race or just never joining in some cases. Um and uh, let's see, Chuck, do you want to hear about anything specific from people for this week? Now? I want people to go to kiva dot org and join our team. Yeah, how about that? Why don't you right in and let us know if you've joined, if you see anybody that you think, uh, we should focus

our attention on. Let's let's do all things Kiva this week. Send it in an email to me and Chuck and Jerry at stuff podcast at how stuff works dot com for more on this and thousands of other topics, is it how stuff works dot com. Want more how stuff works, check out our blogs on the house. Stuff works dot com home page. Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera. It's ready, are you