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Mesoamerica = Mexico and Central America
Pre-Columbian = Before Christopher Columbus
Amerindian = Indigenous Indians of North and South America
The discovery of a bird-like dinosaur in South America has paleontologists rethinking when, where and how one group of raptors evolved. The rooster-sized dinosaur is called Buitreraptor (bwee-tree-rap-tor) gonzalezorum. It has a long head and long tail and wing-like forelimbs. Its serrated teeth, like steak knives, suggest it was a carnivore. Buitreraptor is related to Velociraptor, the presumed cunning killer made famous by Hollywood.
Both belong to a class of birdlike dinosaurs that ran swiftly on two legs and are called dromaeosaurs. The new find suggests such raptors go back much further in time than previously thought.
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Until recently, dromaeosaurs had been found only in Asia and North America and only in the Cretaceous period, which ran from 145 million to 65 million years ago. Evidence that they existed in the Southern Hemisphere has been mounting. Today's announcement of a well-preserved fossil represents the first definitive evidence that dromaeosaurs roamed South America as well. Here's why that's important: About 200 million years ago, Earth had just one giant land mass called Pangea. Toward the end of the Jurassic period, it split in two. What we call Laurasia eventually became North America, Asia and Europe. The other chunk Gondwana, developed into the continents of the Southern Hemisphere and India. Since dromaeosaurs had only been found in places that used to be part of Laurasia, scientists figured that the beasts evolved into being after Pangea split.
But the Buitreraptor fossil in South America, which dates back 90 million years and closely resembles fossils from the North, means one of two things: Either dromaeosaurs existed when Pangea was intact; or the newfound Buitreraptor and its northern look-alikes evolved separately yet with remarkably similar results. Odds being against such striking parallel evolution, paleontologists speculate that dromaeosaurs more likely originated more than 180 million years ago, before Pangaea broke apart. The newly discovered fossil also shows that the creatures developed slightly different characteristics after they split up.
"Buitreraptor is one of those special fossils that tells a bigger story about the Earth's history and the timing of evolutionary events," said Peter Makovicky, curator of dinosaurs at The Field Museum. "It not only provides definitive evidence for a more global distribution and a longer history for dromaeosaurs than was previously known, but also suggests that dromaeosaurs on northern and southern continents took different evolutionary routes after the landmasses that they had occupied, drifted apart." The Buitreraptor fossil was found in northwestern Patagonia (the southern end of the South America continent) about 700 miles southwest of Buenos Aires.
Those wishing to pursue a more General understanding of the Human Journey, and Specifics of the ancient East African migrations, which led to Modern Man's colonization of the entire world; please visit the National Geographic – Genographic Project – Atlas of the Human Journey. https://www3.nationalgeographic.com/genographic/atlas.html
As with dromaeosaurs, new discoveries are forcing scientist to re-consider their earlier theories of Human presence in the American hemisphere as well. The time of the first peopling of Mesoamerica remains a puzzle, as it does for that of the Americas in general. It has been widely accepted that groups of peoples entered the American hemisphere from northeastern Siberia, perhaps by a land bridge across the Bering straits of Alaska that might have existed then, (This at some time in the Late Pleistocene, or Ice Age).
There is already abundant evidence that by 11,000 B.C, hunting peoples had occupied most of North America, south of the glacial ice cap covering the northern part of North America. These men hunted such large grazing mammals as mammoth, mastodon, horse, and camel. They were armed with spears, which were tipped with finely made, bifacial chipped points of stone.
Now however, new discoveries and new data from the old sites are changing our understanding of the peopling of the Americas. For decades the consensus thinking was that the first Americans were big-game hunters (the Clovis) who traveled from Asia across the Bering Land Bridge near the end of the Ice Age, about 12,000 years ago. (Named for an occupation site in Clovis, N.M.). These earliest people, called Paleo-Indians, are known for their fluted spear points.
The Clovis people were thought to have settled in the interior plains of North America between 11,500 and 11,000 years ago. From there, they colonized the Western Hemisphere, following the diminishing game through the upland plains of Central America and the Andes, avoiding the coasts and tropical forests and reaching the tip of South America by 10,000 years ago, (the end of the glacial period).
This Clovis migration theory however, developed early in the history of radiocarbon dating, and before much was known of regions outside the Clovis heartland of the U.S.A.
Now abundant new data from several of those areas cast doubt on the theory. According to these findings, Clovis was not settled early enough to be the ancestor of Central and South American Paleo-Indians. Several well-documented sites south of the U.S.A. border are much older than Clovis. In addition, few Ice Age cultures on either side of the land bridge had fluted spear points or hunted big game.
There are other problems with the old Clovis theory: The Ice Age Glaciers at this time covered ALL of Canada, except for a few small pockets and some offshore Pacific Islands. This would still have allowed for “Island Hopping” down to the United States – but that’s very iffy.
The oldest Human remains found in North America – Kennewick Man – which was found in Washington State, is NOT of Mongolian Asian racial type – as are American Indians, but rather, of South-Asian Polynesian racial type.
Kennewick ManThe remains, estimated to be about 9,300 years old according to earlier radiocarbon dating, most closely resembles Asian people, particularly the Ainu (see below) of northern Japan, and also Polynesians from the South Pacific, the scientists said. Both groups are descendants of people from southern Asia.
The findings are likely to hurt the case of American Indians seeking to control the bones under a federal law that requires native skeletal remains to be returned to people who can show affiliation with them. But the conclusions also put a damper on claims of some scientists and pagan religious groups that Kennewick Man came from Europe.
At left: Clay mock-up of what Kennewick man may have looked like. (Done before genetic information was available). Therefore the mindset was of a different people.
The Ainu, are the first settlers of northern Japan. They are thought to have migrated there by 13,000 B.C. They are an ethnic group indigenous to Hokkaido, the northern part of Honshu in Northern Japan, the Kuril Islands, much of Sakhalin, and the southernmost third of the Kamchatka peninsula. The word "Ainu" means "human" in the Ainu language; There are over 150,000 Ainu today, however the exact figure is not known as many Ainu hide their origins to protect against racism or in many cases are not even aware of them because of ancient cross-breeding. Official discrimination was outlawed in 1997.
The origins of the Ainu are uncertain, they are likely a branch of the proto-Japanese Jomon stock (the original inhabitants of Japan), that migrated from Africa some 70-60 thousand years ago and occupied most of Asia before the Mongol expansion from China, (the current Japanese people – about 400 B.C.). Various other Asian aborigine populations, from Okinawa to Taiwan, and as far away as Australia, are also thought to be related to them.
{It should be remembered that these pictures reflect a people who have lived among the Japanese for over 2,000 years. Crossbreeding naturally did take place.}
Observations by Marshall Everett - stated that an Ainu chieftain had attended the Anthropology Exhibits at the 1904 World's Fair in St Louise, this allowed such close examinations as follow: "They [Ainu} are dark-skinned, and slow-witted, and their old men, with their long beards, look like patriarchs. They are almost the same height as the Japanese, but are heavier, and they haven't the almond eye... The Ainu have wavy hair, often curly. Black is the predominant color. The hair of the children is lighter, and often auburn. All Ainu hair is coarse and strong... They are light reddish-brown in color, and have none of the sallow yellowness of the Mongolian. They have expressive eyes, and almost every Ainu's eyes are light brown in color. Black eyes are rare among them... Their foreheads are narrow, and slope gently backward. Their noses are slightly hooked, flat and broad, with wide nostrils. They have large mouths and firm, thick lips. They have exceptionally long ear lobes.
These people of the Andaman Islands (off the east coast of Burma) have been determined to be of the same “genetic” lineage as the Ainu of Japan. Perhaps they will give you some indication of what the Ainu originally looked like before crossbreeding.
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Findings of Human remains in Central and South America: The oldest of these are of the Australoid racial type, the next oldest are of South-Asian Polynesian racial type, these are much older than anything in North America. This indicates that the migration pattern of the first settlers of the Americas was NOT from North America going south – but rather, from South America TO North America.
Then of course there are the Olmec – the people who brought civilization to the Americas with their Technology, Art and culture. When all the new information is compiled it is clear that there was not ONE peopling of the Americas, but rather, there was at least FIVE.
For more than 100 years, researchers have claimed that there were very early human sites in the tropical forests of eastern South America. By the end of 1998, ten excavated sites had produced remains with beginning dates of 11,000 years ago or slightly earlier. A few produced dates as early as 50,000 years ago, and one was claimed to be hundreds of thousands of years old. The earliest reliable site of these is Pedra Furada, this large sandstone rock-shelter located in the thorn forest of northeastern Brazil has been at the center of a controversy for many years.
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Site investigators found stone tools and charcoal hearths at the earliest levels, and radiocarbon dates suggested the site might have been occupied as early as 40,000 – 50,000 years B.C. Unlike Clovis sites, those in Brazil include painted caves and rock shelters. Food remains include nuts, legumes, fish, shellfish, and small game animals. Among the artifacts are triangular, sometimes stemmed points but no fluted points, (points referrers to spear and arrow tips). The newly dated sites include Caverna da Pedra Pintada, Santana de Riacho, and Boquete in Brazil.
Contrary to some climate theories, east Brazilian forests were denser than today, according to the patterns of ancient species and their carbon isotope ratios.
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At Taima Taima, an oil field site in northern Venezuela, fragmentary tools were found with cut mastodon bones in a spring where cultural and natural materials had become mixed. One tool is a bi-pointed style point. The ancient habitat was swampy, wooded, and subtropical. The radiocarbon dates range too widely for comfort - from about 41,000 to 12,000 B.P. Late Pleistocene people may have killed mastodon there, but exactly when is not certain.
In nearby Colombia, early pre-pottery sites have also been found, notably at El Jobo in Falcón, that date to about 14,920 B.C. There carved stone was used for such objects as small pendants: shell and bone are also known to have been used. Some of these sites contain triangular points, while others have ground-stone tools. Food remains are tropical forest fruits and nuts.
In the Andes highlands of Peru, early work had uncovered possible big-game kill sites dating to as early as 20,000 years ago, but these had no clear association with humans. Sites with triangular and sometimes stemmed points and diverse modern fauna and flora, date to between 11,500 and 8,500 years ago.
The first secure evidence of early Paleo-indians on the Pacific coast was from two south Peruvian sites with beginning dates between 11,100 and 10,700 years ago. At the sites Quebrada and Jaguay, the ancient hearths contained carbonized fragments of stone tools and remains of shellfish, small fish, and birds, but no large game.
Above: A skull belonging to a roughly 20 year old Australoid woman, that was unearthed in Brazil by the French archaeologist Annette Amperaire in 1971, nicknamed “Luzia”.
Since Luzia's discovery, at least 50 similarly un-mongoloid Palaeoamerican remains have been found in the Lagoa Santa area near where "Luzia" herself was found. They all seem to have been buried within a small area that may have been a cemetery. This raises the intriguing question of whether the Lagoa Santa population at this early time, was perhaps already settled in a specific area and perhaps were even no longer just hunter-gatherers.
Monte Verde, Chile: is a boggy stream-bed in which mastodon bones and wet preserved plant remains were found with a few stone tools, including three bi-pointed points and a crude bi-face. Earlier regarded as a questionable site, some researchers have changed their minds. Judged by the standards applied to other sites however, Monte Verde remains questionable. Dates were run on possibly worked wood and bone, but these are equivocal, since fossil bone and wood occur naturally in the region's waterways.
The only obvious cultural remains were the four tools, most of which were from the surface, and a few non-local plant food remains, which were not dated. The dates at the site range from 14,000 to 12,000--too wide a span for a single occupation. Since postglacial people lived nearby, the points and food remains could be intrusions. Only further work will clarify the situation
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Two roughly contemporary early Paleo-indian cultures have been identified in far southern South America. The Fell culture of Patagonian, (southern end of south America), whose caves and rock shelters have long been known, along with their distinctive Fishtail points. Fell artifacts were once quated with Clovis points but now are known to have been made and shaped differently.
Although extinct horse and sloth remains were found at a few sites, most animals hunted were smaller game, such as guanaco and local birds. The existing 12-radiocarbon dates range between about 11,000 and 10,000 years ago. Farther north and west was the Los Toldos culture, whose sites contain rock paintings, stemmed points, triangular points and evidence of foraging for many kinds of food.
Analysis of available data suggests that the chronology of migration to the Americas goes something like this:
While all the new evidence establishes that Australoids and Polynesians were the first inhabitants of the Americas, it does NOT explain how they got here! The Northern route across the Bering straits somehow doesn’t seem to work for them. This is a more logical theory of their migration. Below: The Clovis migration route.
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In the Clovis theory, it is said that man was able to cross over into this hemisphere from Asia, because the “Ice Age” glaciers had “sucked up” so much of the Worlds water, thus exposing a Land Bridge across the Bering Straits. Well, if that were true in the Arctic, shouldn’t it ALSO be true around the Antarctic! If so, then perhaps ancient man might have taken the path indicated in RED below.
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