It’s the standing belief among most archaeologists that North America remained unpopulated until about 15,000 years ago, when Siberian people traveling over an Asian land-bridge traveled into Alaska and then moved down the West Coast. But in recent years, a series of surprising archeological finds at five sites along the Delaware, Maryland and Virginia coast offered evidence of a different possibility. Prehistoric blades found on the Eastern Shore of Virginia and in Tilghman Island, Maryland, appear to closely match those used by stone age Europeans known as the Solutreans.
Dennis Stanford is an anthropologist at the Smithsonian Institute, uses this evidence to put forward a radical new theory: That the first Americans didn’t come from Asia — they came from Europe.
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Daniel Ellsberg Discusses Snowden N.S.A. Leak
The show is a co-production of WNYC Radio and Public Radio International, in collaboration with New York Times Radio and WGBH Boston.
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Comments [2]
Was it a need to explore or was it that same old story of a person wanting peace and not finding peaceful coexistance possible with their neighbours that caused some people to turn around and walk away, run away or sail away from their families and neighbours?
Isn't this still happening today? What about people who have nowhere to go? What about women with young children to care for and no food to feed their children and no money to buy food or clothe and safely shelter their children? Will these children grow up in an environment that encourages them to turn their backs on violence? And if they want to get away where will they go?
It is easy to romanticize the explorers of the past ... But what is the real truth?
Too much is made of who came here first. Humans came here first is sufficient. The first humans came out of Africa and diverged east and west towards Asia and Europe. The African Hominids coming out of Africa interbred with Neanderthals. The Asians intermarried with another hominid group. The story of the exploration of the world by humans is the one that intrigues me most. How did the black humans get to Australia. The fact that humans had a need to explore their world from the start suggests this is encoded in our very genes. For a scientist to to take time to relate this story to the public would do a world of good. This would aid us in becoming both more tolerant of one another. It would make us more concerned about inspires us rather than what divides us.
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