1. JANUARY 2005. Burning by Australian Aboriginals
It is more sophisticated than I describe in the book. On Earth magazine, 2005. The brief story: most Australian landscapes burn anyway: from lightning storms, mainly. What the Aboriginals learned to do over tens of thousands of years was to set many small fires that then prevent the huge catastrophic ones that occur today. This does not alter the fact that Aboriginals altered the Australian ecology with their firesticks: it does emphasize that they were (and are) very good at fire management in a dry continent.
NOTES AND WEB LINKS FOR CHAPTER 21.
There were bizarre consequences of ice-sheet melting, more than one of which may have altered human history: here is one recently discovered example:
South America
The Yana site in the Siberian Arctic. A report in January 2004 documented humans in the delta of the Yana River, on the shore of the Arctic Ocean in Siberia, about 135° E longitude. But the DATE is 30,000 radiocarbon years ago, more than that in calendar years, in glacial times. This is VERY far north for Homo sapiens at such a date, in such a cold climate. There was abundant large-mammal and bird game, but even so, this is extraordinary. It also puts cold-adapted humans within striking distance of the Bering Strait before the last Glacial Maximum at around 20,000 years. Are these the ancestors of the Clovis invaders of North America, or the mysterious fisher folk that might have been pre-Clovis. We do not know yet. The paper was in Science 303: 52-56, and comment, p. 33. National Geographic News
Pre-Clovis Arrival and the Coast Route
Evidence from linguistics:
The Monte Verde site, in Chile
New evidence of pre-Clovis people at Cactus Hill, Virginia:
Kennewick Man. On a separate page.
Pre-Clovis people in Mexico? Some very old human skulls from Mexico have been radiocarbon dated at 13,000 years old, older than Clovis, and their skulls have a shape different from those of standard "native Americans". This article jumps to a lot of conclusions and assertions, but the skulls have no "provenance": we know nothing about their excavation site. There's a lot more to be done... as usual. BBC News OnLine, December 3, 2002.
Australians as the first Americans?!? Luzia, from Brazil, an early American who looks uncannily like someone from Australasia or Polynesia. Story from the New York Times, October 26, 1999. This is not a new claim (that was earlier in 1999), but this is the most comprehensive summary so far. There is no scientific paper yet. Luzia is named half-humorously after Lucy, the australopithecine who has been so important in redefining our concepts of the earliest hominids.
Europeans as the First Americans? This is mainly the work of Dennis Stanford of the Smithsonian. It's fair to say most people do not believe it. Here is his suggestion
Native Americans as ecological stewards of the land? You have probably got the message from my chapter that this is a self-serving though politically astute myth. See this 1999 book review in the New York Times of The Ecological Indian, by Shepard Krech, and the first chapter of the book, which describes the North American extinctions.
Large North American Animals
Megaherbivores and Medium-Sized Animals
Survivors
The dodo
Cuba
Polynesia
New Zealand
Pleistocene Mammals in Russia, at the Russian Paleontological Institution
The most important local extinctions in the Old World took place in habitats that modern humans were invading in strength for the first time. The large mammals were hunted out of the optimum part of their range, and then the last survivors hung on in the inhospitable (usually northern) parts of their range until newly invading humans or climatic fluctuations killed them off. For example, woolly mammoths, woolly rhinoceroses, and giant deer , along with horses, elk, and reindeer, reinvaded Britain from Europe after the ice sheets began to retreat and birch woodland and parkland spread northward. Mammoths flourished in Britain until 12,800 BP at least, but then human artifacts appeared at 12,000 BP, and the largest animals of the tundra fauna quickly disappeared.
The giant deer called the Irish elk (not Irish, not an elk) survived until about 7700 years ago, in Siberia.
Neanderthals and CroMagnons in SW France. Press release, September 23, 2003. This study shows that there were practically no differences in hunting practices between Neanderthals and CroMagnons. The data deal with prey species found in caves that were occupied first by Neanderthals and then by CroMagnons.
And what about those "Venus figurines"? Were they sex objects made for the titillation of Gravettian males? A newer and well-argued suggestion is that they were charms used by pregnant women as magic to ward off difficult childbirth [RC, find new news story].
And if you liked these last few items, you will LOVE this one! From the New York Times, December 14, 1999.
Ice Age fashions, and the origin of weaving.
Olga Soffer has a fantastic publicity machine. Here are three stories, and the research hasn't been published yet. (This comment is admiration, not criticism, because her story is really neat, and probably very important.)
Soffer argues that evidence of woven textiles revises our view of Cromagnons and their contemporaries in Eastern Europe. And she's probably right: for example, is this the long-sought secret weapon of CroMagnons in competition with Neanderthals?
My wife says that weaving doesn't mean looms, as the newest story suggests, but that's a minor point. Kids begin weaving without looms, and graduate to them.
Here is a profile of the eclectic Olga Soffer: from Scientific American, 2000. Don't you wish you could take one of her courses? [They took it off free access.]
Gila Indians and diabetes: the grim view from the National Institutes of Health:
But the Polynesians (stone-age navigators) were surely not as advanced as we are today. Surely we are doing a better job of looking after our environment. Well, there are hundreds of Web pages that deal with that question. Here are a few links that you should only check if you are feeling strong.
Wrecking the world's ecosystems
The reference list for Chapter 21, 4th Edition, with associated Web links
Page last updated December 6, 2006.
Most links checked October 6, 2005.
[For Chapter 20, click here ]
[Return to UC Davis Geology Department Home Page]
