Solutrean hypothesis

Examples of Clovis and other Paleoindian point forms, markers of archaeological cultures in northeastern North America.

The Solutrean hypothesis is a controversial proposal that peoples from Europe may have been among the earliest settlers in the Americas, as evidenced by similarities in stone tool technology of the Solutrean culture from prehistoric Europe to that of the later Clovis tool-making culture found in the Americas. It was first proposed in 1998. Its key proponents include Dennis Stanford, of the Smithsonian Institution, and Bruce Bradley, of the University of Exeter.

In this hypothesis, peoples associated with the Solutrean culture migrated from Ice Age Europe to North America, bringing their methods of making stone tools with them and providing the basis for later Clovis technology found throughout North America. The hypothesis rests upon particular similarities in Solutrean and Clovis technology that have no known counterparts in Eastern Asia, Siberia or Beringia, areas from which or through which early Americans are known to have migrated.

The hypothesis has been challenged by archaeologists and oceanographers. A recent DNA study challenges a genetic argument often made in favor of the hypothesis. The study argues against the apparently anomalous mtDNA Haplogroup X2A having migrated to the Americas via an Atlantic route.

Characteristics

Solutrean culture was dominant in present-day France and Spain from roughly 21,000 to 17,000 years ago. It was known for its distinctive toolmaking characterized by bifacial, percussion and pressure-flaked points. Traces of the Solutrean tool-making industry disappear almost completely from Europe around 15,000 years ago, when it was replaced by the stone tools of the Magdalenian culture.

Clovis tools are typified by a distinctive type of spear point, known as the Clovis point. Solutrean and Clovis points share common characteristics: points are thin and bifacial, and they share the intentional use of the overshot flaking technique, which quickly reduces the thickness of a biface without reducing the width.

The Clovis blade differs from the Solutrean in that some of the former have bi-facial fluting (a long depression that occurs on a point, struck from the basal end of the point; the purpose was to better fit the point onto a spear foreshaft). Clovis tool-making technology seems to appear in the archaeological record in eastern North America roughly 13,500 years ago, and similar predecessors in Asia or Alaska, if they exist, have not been discovered.

Atlantic crossing

Water temperatures during the last glacial maximum, according to CLIMAP.

The hypothesis proposes that Ice Age Europeans could have crossed the North Atlantic along the edge of the pack ice that extended from the Atlantic coast of France to North America during the last glacial maximum. The model envisions these people making the crossing in small watercraft, using skills similar to those of the modern Inuit people, hauling out on ice floes at night, getting fresh water by melting iceberg ice or the first-frozen parts of sea ice, getting food by catching seals and fish, and using seal blubber as heating fuel. Among other evidence backing up this hypothesis is the discovery among the Solutrean toolkit of bone needles, very similar to those traditionally used by the modern-day Inuit. As well as enabling the manufacture of waterproof clothing from animal skins, the technology could, in theory, have been used to construct kayaks from the same animal skins. However, a 2008 study (see below) argues that the conditions were not favorable for such a crossing.

Transitional styles

Supporters of the hypothesis suggest that stone tools found at Cactus Hill (an early American site in Virginia) indicate a transitional style between the Clovis and Solutrean cultures. Artifacts from this site are estimated to date from 17,000 to 15,000 years ago, although some researchers dispute their definitive age. Other sites that may indicate transitional, pre-Clovis occupation include the Page-Ladson site in Florida and the Meadowcroft rockshelter in Pennsylvania.

Recent genetic research

An article in the American Journal of Human Genetics by researchers in Brazil argued against the Solutrean hypothesis. "Our results strongly support the hypothesis that haplogroup X, together with the other four main mtDNA haplogroups, was part of the gene pool of a single Native American founding population; therefore they do not support models that propose haplogroup-independent migrations, such as the migration from Europe posed by the Solutrean hypothesis."

In a 2011 article in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology Italian researchers reported that "Our findings have also a second important implication. Taking into account that C4c is deeply rooted in the Asian portion of the mtDNA phylogeny and is indubitably of Asian origin, a scenario in which C4c and X2a are characterized by parallel genetic histories definitively dismisses the controversial Solutrean hypothesis of an Atlantic glacial entry route into North America for X2a (Stanford and Bradley, 2004; Straus et al., 2005)."

Archaeological and oceanographic challenges to the Solutrean hypothesis

Arthur J. Jelinek, an anthropologist who noted similarities between Solutrean and Clovis styles in a 1971 study, noted that the great geographical and temporal separation of the two cultures made a direct connection unlikely. He also noted that crossing the Atlantic with the technology of the time would have been difficult if not impossible, an observation repeated by Lawrence G. Straus, who wrote that " there are no representations of boats and no evidence whatsoever either of seafaring or of the ability to make a living mainly or solely from the ocean during the Solutrean." However, Straus excavated Solutrean artifacts along what is now a coastline in Cantabria, which was not coastal at the time of Solutreans, finding seashells and estuarine fish at the sites, but no evidence of exploiting deep sea resources. In addition, the dates of the proposed transitional sites and the Solutrean period in Europe only overlap at the extremes.

Another challenge to the hypothesis involves the apparent lack of cultural or artistic practices being passed on from Solutrean culture to Clovis culture, for instance the style of Solutrean artwork found at Altamira in Spain and Lascaux in France. In response, Bradley and Stanford contend that it was "a very specific subset of the Solutrean who formed the parent group that adapted to a maritime environment and eventually made it across the north Atlantic ice-front to colonize the east coast of the Americas" and that this group may not have shared all Solutrean cultural traits. A carved piece of bone depicting a mammoth found near the Vero man site in Florida has been dated to 13,000 to 20,000 years ago. It is described as possibly being the oldest art object yet found in the Americas, and may provide support for the Solutrean hypothesis. Art historian Barbara Olins has compared the Vero mammoth carving to "Franco-Cantabrian" drawings and engravings of mammoths. She notes that the San of southern Africa developed a realistic style of depicting animals similar to the "Franco-Cantabrian" style, indicating that an independent development of such a style in North America is possible.

In a 2008 study of relevant oceanographic data from the time-period in question, Kieran Westley and Justin Dix concluded that "it is clear from the paleoceanographic and paleo-environmental data that the LGM North Atlantic does not fit the descriptions provided by the proponents of the Solutrean Atlantic Hypothesis. Although ice use and sea mammal hunting may have been important in other contexts, in this instance, the conditions militate against an ice-edge-following, maritime-adapted European population reaching the Americas."; taking the position that according to their analysis of the evidence they examined (primarily the believed location of the ice shelf at the time in question.), they do not believe the Solutrean culture or elements of it could have undertaken any transoceanic crossing into North America utilizing the glacial ice-sheets.

See also

• Models of migration to the New World
• Haplogroup X (mtDNA)

References

• Brown M.D., Hosseini S.H., Torroni A., Bandelt H.J., Allen J.C., Schurr T.G., Scozzari R., Cruciani F., Wallace D.C.. "mtDNA haplogroup X: An ancient link between Europe/Western Asia and North America?" American Journal of Human Genetics, 1998 Dec;63(6): 1852–61.

• Greenman, E.F. 1963. "The Upper Palaeolithic and the New World", Current Anthropology, 4: 41–66.

• Hibben, Frank C., "Prehistoric Man in Europe," University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, 1958.

• Jablonski, Nina G., "The First Americans: The Pleistocene Colonization of the New World," University of California Press, 2002

• Reidla, Maere et al., "Origin and Diffusion of mtDNA Haplogroup X", Am J Hum Genet. 2003 November; 73(5): 1178–1190. Published online 2003 October 20.

• Stanford, Dennis, and Bruce Bradley. 2002. "Ocean Trails and Prairie Paths? Thoughts About Clovis Origins." In The First Americans: The Pleistocene Colonization of the New World, Nina G. Jablonski (ed.), pp. 255–271. San Francisco: Memoirs of the California Academy of Sciences, No. 27.

• Stanford, Dennis, and Bruce Bradley. 2004. "The North Atlantic ice-edge corridor: a possible Palaeolithic route to the New World." World Archaeology, 36(4): 459–478.

• Stanford, Dennis, and Bruce Bradley. 2006. "The Solutrean-Clovis connection: reply to Straus, Meltzer and Goebel." World Archaeology, 38(4): 704–714.

• Straus, Lawrence G. 2000. "Solutrean Settlement of North America? A Review of Reality". American Antiquity 65 Nr. 2: 219–226.

• Strauss, Larence G et all 1990, 'The LGM in Cantabrian : Spain: the Solutrean', in Soffer and Gamble (eds.) The world at 18,000 bp: high latitudes, pp. 89–108. Unwin Hyman.

External links

• Stone Age sailors 'beat Columbus to America' (The Guardian, 1999)
• Coming into America: Tracing the Genes (PBS, 2004)
• Stone Age Columbus (BBC 2002)
• Ice Age Columbus: Who Were the First Americans? (Discovery Channel 2005)