China was the first in the New World! New PBS Documentary Says So!, page 1

Whoa. Well I wrote a long response, then it disappeared

I did the same damn thing...I think I clicked on new topic instead of new link....I had a friggin load of stuff too - lemme see if I can remember everything...I'll save it this time

I took a course at FSU with underwater archaeologist Dr. Michael K. Faught, and although my major was Anthro, I was not too big into archaeology at the time (although my love for it has grown), but I do remember a lot of fascinating stuff...

Faught's primary research involved Pre-Clovis research on the continental shelves of FL (he has found Clovis there), where most of FLs oldest sites still remain burried under the sand - here are some interesting quotes from a couple of his publications and research:

Third, if fluted points are indeed evidence for initial human settlement, the clustered distribution of these artifacts suggests that colonization more likely proceeded in a leapfrog, rather than wave-of-advance pattern (cf., Anderson a nd Gillam 1997, Dincauze 1993, and Faught and Anderson 1996 with Martin's (1973) and Martin and Mosimann�s (1975) wave of advance colonization model). The recent dating of Monte Verde to well before the era when fluted points appeared, however, suggests f luted points are not markers of the first colonists, but instead the remains of a later and quite obviously wildly successful and archaeologically highly visible adaptation. It is this adaptation, the data suggest, that spread in a leap-frog pattern. The fluted point adaptation may have moved among pre-existing populations, although this possibility seems unlikely across the board, given the lack of unequivocal evidence for pre-Clovis cultures in the areas of greatest fluted point frequency. The nature of the fluted point adaptation may, in fact, have prompted the first movement of peoples into many of the areas where concentrations are observed. The technological organization and hunting preferences of fluted point peoples, in fact, would have likely cau sed them to gravitate into areas where large game animals and high quality stone could both be found in quantity.
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And then there are the issues that Faught raised in his dissertation in 1996. If Clovis hunters came from Asia then why hasn't anyone reported finding fluted points in northeast Asia, and why are significantly more found east of the Mississippi than west of it? Is it possible that the first people to reach Florida did not come by land?
condition.fsu.edu...

But of recent, there's been a spur in the Clovis research...If Clovis was the earliest form of mankind in North America (11,500 BP), then how come dates from Monte Verde in Chile are consistantly at 12,500 BP? - This challenges the Beringia model as it suggests that South America was inhabited before what should logically have been North America...here's a quote from a related source:

Dr. Carol Mandryk, a Harvard University archeologist who has studied the American paleoenvironment, said the concept of an ice-free corridor as the migration route emerged in the 1930s, but her research shows that even after the ice sheets began to open a path, there was not enough vegetation there to support the large animals migrating people would have had to depend on for food.

"It's very clear people couldn't have used this corridor until after 13,000 years ago," Mandryk said. "They came down the coast. I don't understand why people see the coast as an odd way. The early people didn't have to be interior big-game hunters, they could have been maritime adapted people." No archeologists seriously considers the possibility that the first Americans came by sea and landed first in South America, a hypothesis made popular in the 1960s by the Norwegian explorer Thor Heyerdahl. There is no evidence of people's occupying Polynesia that long ago. All linguistic, genetic and geological evidence points to the Bering Strait as the point of entry, especially in the ice age, when lower sea levels created a wide land bridge there between Siberia and Alaska.

Although several other potential pre-Clovis sites have been reported, none has yet to satisfy all archeologists in the way Monte Verde has just done. But archeologists expected the verification of Monte Verde would hasten the search for even older places of early human occupation in the Americas.
www.unl.edu...

The Native American Indians were already here and it's heavily documented that they traded with black peoples from the ocean thousand of years ago.

Illmatic67 - I don't know if the evidence for this trade is as "heavy" as you've suggested - maybe some articles can help boost my memory - but I do recall that there is more clear evidence of the further advanced South American tribes trading with African Americans closer to the apex of Native American civilization (Hopewell, Cahokia, Etowah) whereby the South American tribes would then trade the goods with Native American tribes...but there's also those who believe that certain items could have simply floated over on occasion, and I believe this was actually documented by Cortez...

As far as the arguement that Native Americans were "already here" is a bit far-fetched - are you suggesting they evolved seperatly from other human species? There is clear skeletal evidence that suggests that Native Americans were of Asian descent, which is kind of difficult to question on a forensic and bilogical level, including shoveled incisors and smaller frames...

But it's obvious that The Vagabond said earlier, theories abound as to the possibilites - I know my professors are working very hard at trying to work together with many other academic sources to discover the origins of New World inhabitation

Luckly, my office is right next door to the SEAC, which heads up all the major digs in the SE...If I walk past their sifting zone outside one day and hear mass hysteria and celebration, I'll be sure to join in for a few moments then add something here

Sorry that's a little long winded, but I hope my basic understanding of some this will add to the debate, and I look forward to comments and/or answers

[edit on 7/7/2004 by EnronOutrunHomerun]