A Matter Of Opinion

Monday’s Loose Thread

Posted by Gary

Oct. 12, 2009 10:59 a.m. • 38 comments

Columbus sailed the ocean blue in 1492, and thus started the male tradition of never asking for directions.

Thoughts on this chilly day?

38 comments on this post so far. Add yours!

Arch_Druid on October 12 at 11:28 a.m.
Actually, he went out to discover a new trade route to India. A “short cut” if you will. And ended up discovering a new continent instead. Which is why, without question, Columbus had trouble with his crew and went back in shackles.
MatthewRoot on October 12 at 11:37 a.m.
Arch, a small correction. Columbus didn’t actually discover anything. Millions of people already lived in North America in 1492, so it was hardly “discovered.”
Leif Erikson established a settlement in what is now Newfoundland by about A.D. 1000 (now called L’Anse aux Meadows), just a bit before Columbus sailed to what he called the West Indies.
Arch_Druid on October 12 at 11:43 a.m.
That is correcto mundo as far as it goes. Columbus however is the first European since Erickson to as I put it, to have come upon a totally new geographical area not then known by MOST of Europe in the 15th century. And all he was doing was seeking a new trade route.
MatthewRoot on October 12 at 11:50 a.m.
Hope I didn’t offend. Just a pet peeve of mine – discovering something already known to millions.
garyc on October 12 at 11:50 a.m.
It wasn’t news until it was covered by the European MSM. :)
Arch_Druid on October 12 at 11:55 a.m.
Absolutely not, Chip Jones did you ever offend. You might want to check out the Huckleberries online poll. The now called “West Indies” being filled with indigenous folks who’d already discovered and settled down in an area not really known by Europeans. Who then became the people whom Columbus and others who followed after him exploited. You could either vote or comment there.
Rifleman__Dodd on October 12 at 3:40 p.m.
Columbus also discovered the BVD Islands. Those are located in the West Undies.
richard on October 12 at 3:56 p.m.
Since we are being politically correct about the sensitive issue of who, what and when; there is some very glaring evidence that “Europeans” made the journey to the new world some 13 to 15 thousand years ago, which predated most of those coming across the land bridge (or ice bridge) connecting N. America and Asia.

A very distinctive form of arrow head, cutting tool, or knife called the Clovis Point, has been found in mostly the east coast of areas of N. America (and a few as far west as New Mexico and San Clemente California) which predate other forms of cutting tools.

The most interesting aspect of the Clovis Point is that it is a completely different and distinct technology than has ever been discovered in Asia. However, there have been several finds in southern France which very closely resemble, and use the same technology as, the Clovis Point found in the”new” world.

It is known that much of the north Atlantic was covered in ice, thus making a bridge. We know that those living in the area of southern France at that point in time used “cutout” floating vessels to follow the seals along the edge of the ice sheet into the north Atlantic. This is known because of cave drawings of seals and the “cutout” vessels in that portion of southern France.

It is further speculated that groups of seal hunters could have followed the edge of the ice hunting seals and and thus “discoverd” the New World prior to the mass migrations from Asia.
MatthewRoot on October 12 at 5:24 p.m.
Richard, the whole Clovis-from-Europe hypothesis has been pretty well disproved in several major publications over the last couple of years (in particular see the publications of David Meltzer and Lawrence Straus, who are experts in Clovis and Solutrean). I know this idea gained some popularity in the press and on the History Channel, but as of today, there is no real evidence to support this hypothesis.
There was never any real supporting evidence for it to begin with. The technological relationship of Clovis to the Siberian technologies in Northeast Asia of 13,000 years ago is much closer than it is to the Solutrean technologies in Iberia that you mention. (The similarities of Clovis to Solutrean are pretty superficial.) There is also the fact that the European technologies to which you refer date 5,000 years before Clovis, and there are no technologies in Europe that are similar to Clovis in those 5,000 years. A 5,000 year gap is a big problem
Most Clovis points are in fact found in the west, not the east (again, much published info on this in journals, for example see American Antiquity vol. 65:43-46.). The earliest sites in North America date before Clovis; there is ever increasing evidence that the people that made Clovis points were not the first people in North America.
The ice “bridge” that you reference was the continental glacier during the last glacial maximum, and contained no animals or plants to support migrating people for a journey of that distance. Therefore, it is not really a “bridge” in the same sense that Beringia formed a land “bridge.” There is no evidence at all in Iberia or western Europe for the use of boats this early in time, and none of those groups that you refer to used any deep-sea maritime resources that would indicate use of boats (they did get fish and shellfish from rivers and tidal areas). The whole seal hunters using umiak-type boats idea never had any evidence to support it. There are no drawings of boats on cave walls that date to this period in Europe (or if there are, perhaps you could provide a reference – this is kind of a hobby of mine, as you can tell).
Genetic markers indicate that American Indians are most closely related to east Asians and Polynesians, not Europeans (the mtDNA type X is found in east Asia, and not just Europe, and the original work on type X has been revised).
The first people in North America were the ancestors of American Indians and all evidence points to an entry from northeast Asia. There is really little doubt about this.
richard on October 12 at 6:21 p.m.
Thanks Chip, my post was mainly a tongue-in-cheek poke at the sometimes over the top political correctness about Columbus.

Although I am aware that the theory I posted is not well accepted, I don’t think the book has been closed on that topic.

There are still undeniable siilarities between NA Clovis and European clovis to say with any certainty that this technology could not have found its way from Europe.

As far as travelling along the edge of the ice to land in N. America, th 20th century is full of discoveries of early, early man making navigations it was earlier thought impossible or highly unlikely.

I didn’t offrer the theory as a “political” statement - other than the fun-poking which I decided against fully developing - but because it is an interesting theory which, with further discovery, could alter our perceptions of the habitation of N. America.
spokelooneh on October 12 at 6:47 p.m.
Shirley, you jest, Chip. Only the superior white race could have braved the seas and invented superior arrowheads to take down the Sabre-toothed tigers and ferocious woolly mammoths on the north american continent back then.

“Solutrean spearheads have been found in Virgina, the Eastern Shore of Maryland, Clovis in New Mexico and up in Idaho. Kennewick Man was a latter-day Solutrean. Professor Bradley of The University of Exeter, England and Dennis Stanford, PhD of the Smithsonian in Washington are coming out with a powerful new book in 2008 PROVING that white Europeans settled North America thousands of years before any Asiatic Indians. We whites ARE the native Americans, and the Red Man killed us — just with superior numbers — wherever he could.
…
And we saw photos also of murals on temple walls where Mayan priests in Mexico sacrificed – ripped the hearts out of — naked blond, white prisoners, our doomed white brothers, in AD 600! This was many centuries before Columbus.

The astonishment gave way to the conviction that we are indeed a sea-going, adventuring, Promethean race, and everywhere that we have set up cultures dark races have outbred us by being prolific, tried to overthrow and kill us — and then their own progress has ended. When the Spanish came to Peru and to Mexico around 1500, the Indios said “Ah, the white gods have returned!”

I spoke a clear vision that as the Jewnited Snakes goes down, and even the possibility of a second Great Depression looms, we European-Americans must become a separate people, create a white Noah’s Ark organization, develop a new and feisty “white tribe” in North America, and give birth to “the Modern Solutreans.” If need be, we whites will survive and prosper, as Mormons and Jews do, for centuries, even as a minority in the land that once was all ours – the land that white Solutreans settled in 17,000 B.C., five thousand years before long before the Red Indians came and began massacring our people. I and Stanley Hess (seen on my” JohndeNugent” YouTube site) taught how Red Indians ADMIT killing the whites all over North and South America thousands of years before Columbus — the people who brought advanced technologies.”

http://johndenugent.com/blog/the-eternal-solutreans/
MatthewRoot on October 12 at 6:53 p.m.
Richard, thanks for the clarification
MatthewRoot on October 12 at 7:05 p.m.
Holy Cow!! Thanks Spoke.
That link is the one of the most horrible examples of the misuse of science I have seen. I went to a talk by Dennis Stanford in Twin Falls where he presented his hypothesis, and I bet that he would be appalled by such racist garbage.
garfnagn on October 12 at 7:34 p.m.
Chip pwned Richard. Richard says I was just kidding!

Chip that was one of the most impressive schoolings of anyone I’ve seen on a S-R blog in 5 years. Nice work. Wikipedia still runs the old Clovis Point speculations (which may be where Richard did his research).

I must say, in the post-Bush era,for a conservative to actually support a theory in which the French discovered America even before Siberians is a huge sign of a positive change. Sadly, for the Euro-Centrics, it’s just not true.
spokelooneh on October 12 at 7:36 p.m.
“That link is the one of the most horrible examples of the misuse of science I have seen.”

I found it the usual way, Googling “Solutreans”, which yields nearly 16,000 hits.

The one I linked to above is on the very first page, number 9.
MatthewRoot on October 12 at 8:42 p.m.
Garfnagn, I am a dork who likes reads about that stuff, and I don’t expect most people would read all the original sources that I do. I was surprised to even see the topic surface here. If you just get information from the History Channel or Discovery Channel, it would be easy to think that the Clovis-from-Europe idea is well-accepted. Stanford and Bradley have published the hypothesis in well-respected journals, so the idea is out there. It’s just depressing to see it misused, like in the link Spoke posted.

I take Richard’s comment at face value. I was impressed that he knew about Clovis.

Spoke, guess I should get on the google more often and stop reading books and scientific journals. It just shows what a lot of garbage is out there on the intra-webs - especially things with “blog” in the address - except here, of course (insert emoticon thing of choice here).
richard on October 12 at 9:02 p.m.
Loone, May i ask why you made a point to illustrate that particular blog on this subject?

I have wracked my brain and I can’t see any purpose in highlighting a blog such as that … other than to somehow try to link that thinking to me and my post, and to conservatives in general.

Do you realize how disengenuous you are being when you do that kind of stunt?

And i am speaking for everyone on this blog when i say that you MUST introduce us to “Shirley.” She seems to be mentioned in many of your recent postings and we are more than a bit curious.

thanks
richard on October 12 at 9:12 p.m.
Chip …I studied archeaology in school; and although I certainly did not continue that study following graduation, I still have a passing interest in it.

And I am afraid that Loone and Garf only see an opportunity to score cheap political points when a topic like this comes up.

Some people are totally blinded to their politics and they can find no other interest if there isn’t a political angle to it.

Although they are certainly not alone; I would really be curious how much of the opposition to this theory in academia is motivated by the same kind of politically correctess, perhaps sometimes even to the detriment of the science itself.

I know first hand that this phenomena is alive in many universities.
spokelooneh on October 12 at 9:13 p.m.
Shirley speaks for herself, Richard.

BTW, there’s a regional connection to the link I posted. The author, one white supremacist John de Nugent (wonder if Ted nutcase Nugent is any relation?) mentions on that page one Stanley Hess, a “notorious” white supremacist out of northern Idaho, where he ran for the board of North Idaho college a couple of years ago.
garfnagn on October 12 at 9:48 p.m.
Oh Richard, please don’t insult our intelligence with such disingenuousness. Establishing that Northern Europeans were the original settlers of this great nation is a glittering Holy Grail for teabaggers and wingnuts and white supremacists (distinctions sometimes without differences). Your belief in a discredited misinterpretation of the Clovis Points is fueled by either:

a) failure to stay current with modern theories of the Clovis people
b) eurocentricism

Either way = Fail

I bet you think the Kennewick Man looks exactly like Jean-Luc Picard.
spokelooneh on October 12 at 10:06 p.m.
Well said, Garf. LMAO.

Certainly Kennewick Man looks nothing like this:

http://images.google.com/images?hl=en&source=hp&q=kennewick+man&gbv=2&aq=0&oq=kennewick&aqi=g5g-m2

Little did I know…
gmorton on October 12 at 10:14 p.m.
Good post, Chip. You might also have mentioned the ties between N American languages and Asian languages.

There are a number of sites which predate the Clovis culture. The evidence for their age is shaky in some cases, but reasonably good in others. Likely story: some migrations predated the Clovis people, but never became well-established. All likely originated in Asia, however.
MatthewRoot on October 13 at 9:36 a.m.
Richard, in my reading the critiques of the Solutrean-Clovis connection hypothesis, they are based totally on the empirical evidence. It has nothing to do with political correctness (it is really not a theory in the sense of scientific theories, just a hypothesis). Meltzer mentions the need to seriously evaluate all new ideas, and not dismiss them just because they seem bizarre at first glance - a good point that you made as well, Richard. (If you get the chance, read Patterns of Discovery by Norwood Russell Hanson – great book on scientific discovery, and the biases that are part of all human endeavors).

The original news releases on the Kennewick Dude were based on first impressions, not complete scientific study. Check out the book “The First Americans” edited by N. Jablonski (U of California Press) for a thorough analysis of the Kennewick skeleton. The conclusion: he was an ancestor of modern American Indians, no scientific doubt about it.

All people are related with a common origin in Africa. Differences such as skin pigment between regional populations arose only a few tens of thousands of years ago. So, political correctness really doesn’t figure into the scientific equation here. Unfortunately, some people have always misused science to advance political and social agendas.

And I am very surprised that so many people have an interest in this stuff on this blog, and are so well read on the subject – very cool.

I am glad that Spoke posted the link, because I had no idea that the hypothesis was being used to support such racist rants. It made me nauseous when I began to read that blog, and I had to hit the close button before I finished reading it.
Arch_Druid on October 13 at 10:45 a.m.
Got a clue for “Richard,” the modern English language and its American derivative came from the Germanic tribe the Anglos. Angle-ish. English. There is nothing Asiatic about it.
richard on October 13 at 1:03 p.m.
Chip, thanks for the further info. As I said earlier, I studied a bit of archaeology in school and a whole lot more of anthropology, so I really am quite well versed in the origins of man, language, skin types, etc. I have read many of the foundation works of anthropology, but I have to admit I haven’t kept up with as much in the recent decade or more.
richard on October 13 at 2:19 p.m.
Garf –

you are really just a very repugnant and disgusting individual. I won’t get caught up in your self-loathing and your obsessive guilt-driven rituals. If you feel you must “cleanse” yourself, please do it somewhere else, or at the very least, don’t involve me with it and don’t address me ever again.
Arch_Druid on October 14 at 9:26 p.m.
I was watching the History Channel HD this morning and came upon something interesting. Seems that the Knights Templar during the Medieval ages having run into considerable trouble with the Roman Catholic church over the Templars (excuse me) heretical ways of worship and managed to slaughter quite a few of them with the eager to help (and quite debt ridden to the Templars as a matter of fact) King Phillip of France. The survivors some of whom went to Scotland, and others? Took exploratory trips to the U.S. of A. in the mid to late 14th century. And it all started when a Swedish immigrant uprooted a tree and found a stone possibly created by the Templars themselves caught up in its roots…

Which got the archaeologists frothing and screaming, “Fake!”—as was later to be disclosed—even before a thorough investigation began. Well, with the thorough investigation, is the Kensington stone of Mass a “fake?” Many experts who studied it hold the opinion that it actually is not.

This nation apparently did have white settlers, but they were probably the now infamous Knights Templar who sought a new world to create a new Jerusalem.

What I found just as interesting, the Book of Revelations mentions the Queen of Heaven. So, the Knights Templar ardently worship what is found in scripture and slaughtered for what they believe as Christians. By fellow Christians. Says a lot about “faith.”
richard on October 15 at 11:05 a.m.
Actually it doesn’t say anything about “faith,” it says something, however, about people and their excesses, be it for religion, for politics, for love, or even for who will win the Super Bowl.
Arch_Druid on October 15 at 10:52 p.m.
Just how many people “Richard,” kill in the hundreds or thousands if their team loses at the Super Bowl? Haven’t heard it to date. But yeah, when excesses become justified through “faith,” then what does it say about faith?
richard on October 16 at 7:00 p.m.
It says nothing about faith! Absolutely nothing!

Faith is merely a state of consciousnes; it is PEOPLE who do bad acts in the name of their religion (which is not faith).

You are conflating “faith” with religion. Faith is a state of mind that something will turn out as you expect. Do you not have “faith” that the sun will rise in the east tomorrow? of course you do.

You are on the wrong track with your statements and views of “faith.”
richard on October 16 at 7:00 p.m.
It says nothing about faith! Absolutely nothing!

Faith is merely a state of consciousnes; it is PEOPLE who do bad acts in the name of their religion (which is not faith).

You are conflating “faith” with religion. Faith is a state of mind that something will turn out as you expect. Do you not have “faith” that the sun will rise in the east tomorrow? of course you do.

You are on the wrong track with your statements and views of “faith.”
Arch_Druid on October 22 at 9:20 p.m.
I don’t need “faith” “Richard” to know that the sun will rise in the east tomorrow because the earth circles the sun on a 12 month basis and rotates as it does so. Scientific fact doesn’t require faith.

On the other hand, the bible allowed some pretty brutal things. Such as Deut 3:6. If you were of the WRONG faith, didn’t believe in God, God would allow a thorough massacre down to the last child.

I guess the bible itself justifies some particularly bad things, huh?
richard on October 25 at 8:59 p.m.
You have “faith” that the sun will rise tomorrow - there are many things - though remote - that could alter that fact. You plan tomorrow’s events based on your “faith” that none of those things will occur that would disrupt the sun rising.

you can call it what you want, but at a human level, it is nothing but “faith” that allows you to plan future events - not science!

Faith does not mean “religion!” And it doesn’t have to be religious faith for you to have faith in future events - but it is faith nonetheless.
MatthewRoot on October 26 at 8:49 a.m.
Richard, I suggest that you go to your dictionary and read all of the definitions of “faith.” Words have meanings, and you can not simply make up new meanings for words.
Your statement is just simply wrong, and shows a misunderstanding of the epistemological basis of science.
Arch_Druid on October 26 at 10:50 a.m.
Unless the sun explodes tomorrow morning, Chip and becomes a black hole that swallows up what remains of the solar system, the sun will “rise in the east” because of how the Earth rotates as it circles the sun. I don’t need “faith” for that, regardless of how creatively “Richard” wishes to reinterpret it. And I don’t plan my events based on when the sun rises in the east. I plan my events such as I get to them.
MatthewRoot on October 26 at 11:39 a.m.
yup, it’s a conclusion deduced from empirical observation, principles of astronomy, and little things like gravitational theory (but it’s just a theory).
garyc on October 26 at 11:42 a.m.
It’s time we taught competing gravitational theory in schools. Teach the controversy!
Arch_Druid on October 28 at 9:31 a.m.
For that, Gary C. LOL! those who don’t believe in gravity will float away on their own? Good luck with that!