ASB 238
archaeology of north america

I am interested in the fact that genetics links people of the Americas to Siberian (north Asian) ancestors.

What about the possible theory that the Ice Age could have

taken place over a short period of time, like 10-20 years?

A great change in temperature at such a fast pace could discourage

the Megafauna in quick adaptation. What about the possibility

of diseases among the Ice Age beasts? Perhaps there is more than

one possibility. It seems that man gets blamed for everything.

Unlike the geological record you cannot set a path or order of linguistic developement. Looking at pidgin languages we can see roots of new languages developing in first generations. On the other side we can see languages that have remained virtually unchanged for centuries in groups like the Basque of Europe. What would the rule be for countries like Papua New Guinea that have hundreds of different languages, where as China(possibly some hundred times larger than the fore mentioned) has basically one major language, Mandarin, which even envelops some of the smaller surrounding countries?

Iam writing more in hopes of gaining an answer than enlightening anyone on else on their topic. However from what I have seen and read about diseases it seems to be something that came as a side dish to sedentary living. We can see evidence of this going thousands of years back to places like Italy where forensic scientists have found cremains linking a malaria outbreak to a rapid rise of fatalities in a sedentary community, especially in the young. We can see it today in diseases like AIDs that once started can travel anywhere in an astounding short amount of time. Iam not sure how this translates to animals, more specifically the Megafauna mentioned above, but alot of the diseases I see in animals today are a direct or indirect result of Homo sapiens and their sedentary living. Maybe Iam wrong, but I find it hard to believe that disease alone could effect an entire species living in such an open environment.

Anybody with the knowlegde? Enquiring: any documented cases of a species going extinct by disease without the hand of man involved, any time period. Much Appreciated

What is Rhonda is right. Could it be as simple as a disease spreading amoung the animals and with the migration into Canada and North America, we just made the process speed up, killing the animals quicker? Perhaps that is why they crossed the land mass to begin with, following the animals that were becoming less and less. Perhaps one of Verb's pulses was happening in the environment at the time, which would explain why ALL magafauna seemed to die.

I find that the genetic and linguistic evidence supporting the migration of asiatic people over the land bridge is well founded. This supports the time-line created by archelogical evidence. But, sites in South America suggest that the americas may have been settled by people 30,000 years ago, predating the land bridge migration by 15,000 years. If these South American sites are the remains of human habitation then where is the collaborating archeological evidence. Did humans settle the American continent 30,000 years ago? If they did they must have returned to where they came or died out. Genetic research traces the ancestors of American Indians to the time of the land bridge migration and no further. Perhaps the people migrated down the west coast of the Americas and all archeological evidence was lost as the ocean rose.

I find that the genetic and linguistic evidence supporting the migration of asiatic people over the land bridge is well founded. This supports the time-line created by archelogical evidence. But, sites in South America suggest that the americas may have been settled by people 30,000 years ago, predating the land bridge migration by 15,000 years. If these South American sites are the remains of human habitation then where is the collaborating archeological evidence. Did humans settle the American continent 30,000 years ago? If they did they must have returned to where they came or died out. Genetic research traces the ancestors of American Indians to the time of the land bridge migration and no further. Perhaps the people migrated down the west coast of the Americas and all archeological evidence was lost as the ocean rose.

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