[Aztlan] Paleo: Old World/New World Lithic Technologies

[Katherine Reece]

If you get the chance to look at these blades and the complex techniques for 
manufactuirng them you may come away with a different perspective. The 
similarity of the technology is uncanny. Granted the cleaving properties of 
chert/flint are restrictive to what you get when you shape the stone (you're 
not going to get gemstone facets...) but there are little hints that lead 
many to believe that these are definitely related technologies.

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I am no lithics expert (far from it!).  However I was impressed with Straus' 
paper "Solutrean settlement of North America? A review of reality." 
American Antiquity 2000, vol. 65, no2, pp. 219-226 (2 p.)

Abstract:
The Solutrean techno-complex of southern France and the Iberian Peninsula is 
an impossible candidate as the source for either pre-Clovis or Clovis 
traditions in North America. Primarily this is because the Solutrean ended 
ca. 16,500-18,000 B.P. (at least 5,000 years before Clovis appeared) and was 
separated from the U.S. eastern seaboard by 5,000 km of ocean, In addition, 
there are major differences between the Solutrean and Clovis (and even more 
between it and pre-Clovis) in terms of the composition of lithic and osseous 
technologies and with regard to evidence of artistic activity. Nor is there 
any evidence that Solutrean people had navigation, deep-sea fishing, or 
marine mammal hunting capacities which could have made a transatlantic 
crossing even conceivable. Furthermore, there is no evidence that people 
lived above about 48° N latitude in western Europe during the Last Glacial 
Maximum, making a jumping-off point from the (then largely glaciated) area 
of the current British Isles unlikely. The peopling of the Americas, even if 
the result of several migrations, was from Asia.

Also the Straus, Meltzer, Goebel paper "Ice Age Atlantis? Exploring the 
Solutrean-Clovis `connection'" in World Archaeology, Volume 37, Number 4, 
December 2005 , pp. 507-532(26)

Abstract:
Bradley and Stanford (2004) have raised now, in several instances, the claim 
that European Upper Paleolithic Solutrean peoples colonized North America, 
and gave rise to the archaeological complex known as Clovis. They do so in 
the face of some obvious challenges - notably the several thousand miles of 
ocean and the 5000 radiocarbon years that separate the two. And yet they 
argue in their recent paper that the archaeological evidence in support of a 
historical connection is `overwhelming'. We are profoundly skeptical of this 
claim; we believe that the many differences between Solutrean and Clovis are 
far more significant than the few similarities, the latter being readily 
explained by the well-known phenomenon of technological convergence or 
parallelism. The origin and arrival time of the first Americans remain 
uncertain, but not so uncertain that we need to look elsewhere other than 
north-east Asia.





Kat Reece
Founder / Director
In the Hall of Ma'at
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Amun Owner / Moderator
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Contributing author to the book "Archaeological Fantasies:
How pseudoarchaeology misrepresents the past and misleads the public"
http://www.hallofmaat.com/modules.php?name=Articles&file=article&sid=97
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