Expert: John Shea - 9/23/2005

Question
Thank you for your quick reply.  I'm not sure if this is why some in the archaeological community are so heated about this issue, but I know why a lot of Native Americans are.  The archaeological theories do not coincide with most Native American creation stories.  More importantly, they do not coincide with a lot of different Native American oral traditions.  I'm wondering if there are any archaelogists that have offered evidence that there was no migration at all, or that humans on this continent were here long before the time period proposed by the dominant theories.  Also, if you know of any reasonable refutation of the dominant theories, or any reasonable challenges to the interpretation of the physical evidence we have thus far, I would be interested in that.  Thanks again for your help, I appreciate it very much.
Sincerely,
Derrick Braaten

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Followup To
Question -
 I have a read a few articles lately regarding the Bering Straight migration.  I was an anthropology student in undergrad, and I am currently working as a law clerk in American Indian Law and attending Law School.  I mention this because it has been causing me some conflict as I really do not know what to think of what is often termed the "controversy" regarding the Bering Straight migration.  Until recently, I was not aware of any theory arguing against the migration using physical evidence (or refuting such evidence).  I just read a synopsis of a book by Vine Deloria, and though it was brief, it did seem to raise some interesting questions.  One thing I do remember from studying physical anthropology is that there were some significant "adjustments" made to the theories, and also a lot of disagreement among the most prominent anthropologists.  If you have the time, could you please give me your quick take on the issue, and point me to some sources so that I can look into the issue further (either objective sources or at least balanced on both sides of the issue)?  I appreciate any help or information you can give me.
Thank you,
Derrick Braaten
Answer -
Dear Derrick,
Until recently the archaeological consensus was that humans migrated from Asia to the New World via a "land bridge" (really just coastal shelf exposed by lower sea level) linking easternmost Siberia and western Alaska and via an ice-free corridor running through western Canada.  Recently, there have been several proposed alternative routes.
One proposes a coastal migration down the Pacific Coast of Canada to what is now the Pacific Coast of the US and Mexico, followed by a later dispersal inland.  Most archaeologists regard this as a plausible hypothesis, one for which some evidence is supportive (chiefly early dates for sites near coasts in South America and Mexico).
The other proposed a migration from western Europe following the coast of the ice packs that covered the north Atlantic.  The inspiration for this hypothesis is supposed similarities between the stone tools made by paleoindians and stone tools made by Upper Paleolithic Europeans.  This hypothesis is not supported by many archaeologists.  Some researchers have argued that cranial (skull shape) differences between modern Native Americans and the most ancient human fossils in the New World (which are said to look more like ancient Europeans) may support this hypothesis.  My own take on this is that skull shapes are very plastic, biologically (subjec to many influences other than simply descent) and that we have to be very skeptical of an hypothesis that rests solely on this kind of evidence.
In my opinon, the best recent overview of this issue is Gary Haynes book, (2002) The Early Settlement of North America: The Clovis Era.
For reasons beyond my ability to fathom, this issue excites intense passions among various archaeological factions.  It will be hard for you to find a "fair and balanced" treatment, but Haynes does an excellent job, in my opinion, of putting the evidence in perspective.
Please feel free to follow up if there are things I have left unanswered.
Cheers,
John Shea

Answer
Dear Derrick,
One reason why the archaeological debate is so heated is that it involves battles about who has the oldest evidence for human settlement.  Debates about the relative antiquity of things (agriculture, human origins, first cities, etc.) are usually a lot more rancorous than debates about behavioral variability (why one group raised rice and another wheat, for example) because the former translate easlly into publicity in popular media.
I do not know of any scientific account that refutes the archaeological consensus that humans dispersed into the New World from Asia via the Bering Strait some time after 15,000 years ago.  There are many claims for alternative scenarios (an earlier migration, a trans-pacific migration, a trans-atlantic migration).  Speaking as a scientist who knows this literature, but who has no particular "stake" in the debate, I have to say the Bering Strait model is the most strongly supported.  Some of the other ones are plausible but not proven.  About the only hypothesis that one can conclusively rule out is one (I have forgotten it's proponent's name) that claimed a separate evolutionary origin for Native Americans from New World primates.  Virtually everything that has been discovered about primate evolution argues against this.
If you would like to read the primary documents about the principal challenges to the Bering Strait route, my first suggestion would be to use Google Scholar to find papers by Dennis Stanford and Bruce Bradley (trans-atlantic hypothesis).
Something to keep in mind as you read, though, is that even if one can show proof of a trans-atlantic or trans-pacific contact between the Old and New Worlds near the end of the Pleistocene, doing so does not refute the enormous body of evidence from physical anthropology, genetics, linguistics, and archaeology that shows the overwhelming majority of Native Americans alive today are descended from populations who dispersed to the Americas from Asia.

FWIW: I don't think the Native Americans have any particular reason to be aggrieved by the various migration hypotheses for the peopling of the Americas.  They are in the same situation as every other group of people whose beliefs about their origins is not supported by scientific findngs (that is to say, every human population on the planet).  First off, these are hypotheses, -that is, they can be proven wrong with evidence.  Secondly, nobody in the scientific community is actively trying to persuade people to abandon their cultural origin stories.  (Usually it's the other way around, with ethnic or religious groups trying to get their cultural tradition treated as if it were the equivalent of a proven scientific theory merely because it has been believed for a long time.)  Thirdly, one would think that the scientific evidence about the peopling of the Americas would potentially do a lot of good for Native Americans, in land claims for example, because scientific evidence for a particular group's having chronological priority in a particular part of the country stands up a lot better to challenges in court than an oral tradition of their having done so.
Sincerely,
John Shea