Solutrean hypothesis

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

The Solutrean hypothesis proposes that stone tool technology of the Solutrean culture in prehistoric Europe may have later influenced the development of the Clovis tool-making culture in the Americas, and that peoples from Europe may have been among the earliest settlers in the Americas. 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.

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, pressure-flaked points. Traces of the Solutrean tool-making industry disappear completely from Europe around 15,000 years ago, when it was replaced by the less complex stone tools of the Magdalenian culture.

Clovis tools are typified by a distinctive rock spear point, known as the Clovis point. Solutrean and Clovis points share common characteristics: points are thin and bifacial, they share so-called "overshot" flaking characteristics that yield wide, flat blades.

The Clovis blade differs from its predecessor in that it has bi-facial fluting (a long depression that occurs on a point, which is caused by knapping at the basal end of the point; the purpose was to fit the point onto a spear foreshaft). Clovis tool-making technology seems to appear in the archaeological record in 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.

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.

MtDNA Haplogroup X

Mitochondrial DNA analysis lends conditional support to the idea insofar as the fact that some members of some native North American tribes share a common yet distant maternal ancestry with some present-day individuals in Europe identified by mtDNA Haplogroup X. It is possible that Haplogroup X came to the Americas via Northeastern Asia or Siberia, but unlike other Native American mtDNA Haplogroups A, B, C and D, Haplogroup X is presently absent from the region, although occurrence of Haplogroup X2 of more recent origin (i.e. more recently than 5000 BC) has been identified in the Altai Republic.

The New World haplogroup X DNA (now called subgroup X2a) is as different from any of the Old World X2 lineages as they are from each other, indicating a very ancient origin. Although haplogroup X occurs only at a frequency of about 3% for the total current indigenous population of the Americas, it is a major haplogroup in northeastern North America, where among the Algonquian peoples of the Great Lakes Region it allegedly comprises up to 25% of mtDNA types. It has been suggested that its relative concentration in northeastern North America indicates an early North Atlantic route for bearers of this haplotype, although it is found in smaller percentages in other regions, among the Sioux, Nuu-Chah-Nulth, and Yakama in western North America as well as the Yanomamö in Brazil.

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. Others have pointed to a lack of evidence of Solutrean seafaring. Proponents point out that evidence of Solutrean-era seafaring may have been obliterated or buried underwater, as much of the coastlines of western Europe and eastern North America that existed during the Last Glacial Maximum are now submerged. 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.

Other challenges to the hypothesis include a lack of Solutrean-style artwork (like that found at Altamira in Spain and Lascaux in France) among the Clovis people. In response, proponents point out that this style of art disappears in Europe by the time of Clovis, and that the Solutreans introduced a tool-making innovation and not necessarily cultural or artistic practices.

See also

• Kennewick Man
• Models of migration to the New World
• Haplogroup X (mtDNA)
• Pre-Siberian American Aborigines

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," Oklahoma University 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 63: 7-20.

• 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)