Yeah, right. The more that is found, the less we actually know. A three thousand plus year old parking lot???
Wisconsin officials recently announced the discovery of a trove of ancient canoes in an underwater “parking lot” of sorts — including one that predates the Pyramids of Giza.
The Wisconsin Historical Society (WHS) announced this month that its experts have identified 14 canoes in Madison’s Lake Mendota so far, six of which were found this spring. The WHS worked with the First Nations of Wisconsin during the research process, a release noted.
The WHS also recovered a 1,200-year-old dugout canoe in 2021 and retrieved another 3,000-year-old one in 2022.
Full article, HERE from Fox News.
So, this kinda puts paid to the how long people have been in North America… again…
There is also the whole issue of travel and trade that now need to be reviewed for possible new revelations and research.
Who did it, WHY there, and why over thousands of years? What did our forebears know that we don’t know today? Was there a trading area, a town, a city near there? What did the land form look like 3000 years ago?
I have no idea, but I know that there are professionals who are now scratching their heads and the mental gymnastics must be rather interesting…
Anybody got in ideas???
Kennewick Man was discovered in 1996 and was determined to have lived about 8,400 to 8,690 years ago. Native Americans claimed the remains for burial rites. Some scientists believed the remains were not Native American but more closely related to Southeast Asians. This challenged the whole migration of people across the Bearing Land Bridge theory of populating the Americas. The courts determined the remains were Native American, mainly because the law assumed all ancient remains found in North America were ancestors of Native Americans. Science be damned.
Human occupation of the Americas goes back 25-30,000 years. (There is some new evidence suggesting 35,000 years.) The first humans in what is now the USA were seafarers from Europe; with some heading south down the east coast and others west along the St. Lawrence through the Great Lakes. (Or at least, where they would be after the glaciers receded.) Then multiple waves of migration from Asia/Alaska began about 20,000 years ago. The Asians mostly traveled by foot, and came in larger numbers in at least 5 distinct waves. There was apparently a bottleneck in Alaska for several thousand years that resulted in an interesting mixture of peoples.
As best we can tell (from very scattered, fragmented, and frankly somewhat questionable sources), the last large European-heritage tribes were finally exterminated around 700 AD. But there is one small, pale-skinned tribe in northern Minnesota whose origin story tells of following the setting sun across the great waters to the promised land…
Copper was mined from the UP for a very long time. It was available in large chunks just laying on the surface. There was a sophisticated trade network along the Mississippi, trading copper for shells, etc. (See, for example, Cahokia.) The real mystery is why they stopped.
I did NOT inherit it, and have no idea where it wound up, but Pa had a fairly substantial piece of native copper he found on the Lake Superior shore (before anyone gets in a huff, this was collected before laws about not touching anything of any interest…) and by substantial, I mean likely larger than your hand.
Cahokia was an amazing culture, and its ‘demise’ is certainly a mystery (as is the ‘demise’ of the Anasazi in northern NM). One of my favorite tidbits about Cahokia archaeology is that chemical analysis of soil samples showed that there were preferred sides of the bigger mounds for urination based on urea concentrations.
McChuck – serious non-judgmental question – What references are you using for the first humans coming from Europe and the first occupations being as long ago as 35,000 years? I know there was a hypothesis to that effect a while back, but I thought it had been disproved by genetic studies, which still tend to point to the earliest humans in N American being North Siberians and East Asians coming across a land bridge approx. 20-25,000 years ago. Similar genetic studies then point to South Americas first humans arriving 10-13,000 years ago. But if there is newer evidence to the contrary, I’m all ears.
I don’t keep track of everything I hear and read. I just see things and it all goes into the memory heap. (See George Carlin’s “boxes” sketch for reference.)
The 30-35,000 YA mark was just set by a new study this year that is not without controversy. The 25-30,000 YA mark was settled science a couple years ago with carbon and pollen dating of remains. The European thing comes from artifacts and burial mounds all along the east coast and great lakes area. (Academia consistently tries to suppress these sorts of reports, because they don’t match the accepted narrative. But the artifacts keep showing up. The newest were literally trawled up a few miles off shore. The seas were much lower way back when.)
There was an interesting study about the land bridge leading to a “pocket” in central Alaska due to glaciation on this end, leading to thousands of years of genetic and cultural mixing. The Asian tribes weren’t sea faring peoples, and the number who continued east and south in small boats until they found land again were negligible. When the glaciers finally melted away sufficiently, the mass migration continued and the land grab was on.
I learned in college in the 70s that science is never settled. Now it seems to the Left and the people getting money science is settled, which tells you they are corrupt.
Since science is most often run by colleges do not send you children to college. Find a good Trade School and spend less time and money for you child to learn a career that will give them a 6 figure salary in 5 years and will not go away.
JG Sayeth: “I learned in college in the 70s that science is never settled. ”
YES! I learned it in HS in the 80’s, but yes, Yes, YES!!!!
The whole point to science, is that what you think you know is true, is never, EVER settled. We still test the speed of light in a vacuum, and for damned good reasons!!
This notion that was shoved on the average population was a huge ‘tell’, that the Covid-fraud was a farce. Anyone in science, knows it is never settled. That they promoted, supported, and acquiesced to such a statement, is testament to their (lack of) spinal fortitude.
My best guess is that the site is close to where the Wisconsin River and the Yahara/Fox drainages come within 8 miles of each other. It was an overland shortcut for trade.
Waterways are very attractive for settlement due to abundant food resources (clams, crawdads, migratory fish, ducks, wild rice) and trade. The more, different ecosystems in close proximity, the more types of resources. The site has two major river basins, a lake, marshes and uplands in close proximity.
One last guess: Spawning river sturgeon would have been irresistible to people of that era. Lake Mendota is the highest lake in the chain.
Freshwater Drum, Bigmouth Buffalo and suckers would be other desirable fish species.
All I know is that it takes only one verifiable fact to dispel any theory. And the great line from “The Core”, “That’s all science is, is best guess.” (and the response: “My guess is that you don’t know”).
Funny coincidence but I am reading The Frontiersmen by Allan W Eckert.
Both Indian and white explorers sunk their canoes to hide them or to keep them from being stolen. The canoes were dugouts, not the lightweight birch bark vessels. Too heavy to drag far, just fill them with water, add some rocks and presto they were out of view.
Remove the rocks, dump the water and your back in business.
Excellent book on the settlement of Kentucky and Ohio.
“Everybody remember where we parked.” — Kirk.
Also dugouts can and will crack if allowed to dry out,
There are challenges to “settled science” everywhere. A favorite are Nordic runes found along the Black Mesa Plateau. On the North side is the Piñon Canyon Maneuver Site, closed to the public, that has several places where oddities can be found. A son trained there and described what he saw. Picture Canyon WSW of Springfield, CO has native american petroglyphs. Mixed in are what appear to be runes.
During a trip to New Mexico, I wandered through petroglyphs created by people without any written history, except for what is still available scratched onto rocks in the desert. There are theories, but no facts to prove the theories. Today, that area is inhospitable, but when the petroglyphs were made, there is no telling what resources were available to the people that scratched tens of thousands of their thoughts on the rocks.
The speed and force with which the tribes claim any ancient corpse for burial and deny any attempt to do DNA testing has often made me wonder if there’s something they’re trying to hide from science about whom used to live where they’re living now.
Sure hope they didn’t use “Carbon Dating” I remember back in the 8’s, some guy sent in a freshly killed walrus bone for carbon testing and it was 1000’s of years off. Way, way out to lunch. I mean it was fresh killed!
Any way, when confronted with the fact it was fresh killed, the scientist claimed/cried, they needed to know ahead of time when the bone was obtained. ??? So don’t go pinning your beliefs on the scientific process.
Sorry eighties.
Because you need to use different types of dating techniques on items of different ages. Carbon dating doesn’t work well on anything under 500 years old. For under that there are different methods for determining approximate age.
Otherwise it’s like trying to math out how much paint you need to redo your living room, going to the hardware store and telling the guy that you need enough teaspoons of paint to cover 0.0000080349 square miles worth the walls.
It can be done, you can get an amount of paint, but there are better methods for getting exact amount of paint that you want.
I have no idea what the political leanings of the website and the founder are, although from a quick read of the “about us” page, it sounds like they would choose plant based meat over actual meat, but I could be wrong. Anyway, the link validates everyone’s comments, we don’t know a lot of what ancient history actually is, some of it is just guessing.
https://www.earth.com/news/115000-year-old-human-footprints-found-alathar-lake-arabian-peninsula/
With dugout canoes, you sink them in Fall right before the freezes start as the canoe lasts longer when kept wet. If you survive the winter, pull the canoe up out of the water, drain, let dry a tad and now you can canoe to your heart’s content.
Same if you’re moving from place to place. Bury caches of heavy stuff, like canoes and such, and come back next time.
If you remember where they are, that is.
It is the way of the hunter-gatherer culture. Stay in one place and eat it till there’s nothing left to eat, move on, repeat.
They’ve found similar collections of watercraft in Europe.
With dugout canoes, you sink them in Fall right before the freezes start as the canoe lasts longer when kept wet. If you survive the winter, pull the canoe up out of the water, drain, let dry a tad and now you can canoe to your heart’s content.
Same if you’re moving from place to place. Bury caches of heavy stuff, like canoes and such, and come back next time.
If you remember where they are, that is.
It is the way of the hunter-gatherer culture. Stay in one place and eat it till there’s nothing left to eat, move on, repeat.
They’ve found similar collections of watercraft in Europe.
All- Thanks for the comments, and yes, many, many ‘interesting’ theories out there!
Yeah, I don’t think I have any ideas.
Not my field.
Relying on archeology to supply a legitimating narrative for your society, or to provide casus belli for your desired wars is put a strongly corrupt and perverse incentive on what is inherently a field with sparse and perhaps extremely noisy data.
There are other better ways to have evidence in favor of that sort of thing.
Strange stone chambers in New England (https://www.reddit.com/r/newengland/comments/1jjijwp/what_is_up_with_those_random_stone_chambers_and/)
Norse runes in Minnesota (Real! Fake! Flip a coin)
Egyptian hieroglyphics in Texas (Publicity stunt for a book release)
Genetic “anomalies” in South American tribes. (Polynesian?)
More anomalies in maritime Canadian tribes (seasonal fishermen/whalers from Bristol, England, Normandy, and Basque were in the area before Columbus).
Until facts take precedence over politics … well, we’ve been there.
Columbus was the first to discover the New World, then *go back and tell everybody about it*. Most of the previous discoverers were looking for resources to privately exploit without competition.
Bob- Me neither… but it is interesting!