Episodes 84-88 - The Shadow Over Innsmouth

[old book]

Yes, that's completely conceivable. When I wrote "colonisation" I didn't mean in the modern sense of back-and-forth communication; I think whoever landed, at various times, in North and South America probably didn't maintain much contact if any with the Old Country up till 1492 or so. Some of the more recent scholarship is marked by a certain Afro-centric suspension of disbelief, according to which Africans were coming and going and "forgetting Kevin." I don't necessarily buy into that, but I think some did come out of Africa to the Americas. The "Negroid" head sculptures in themselves are not convincing evidence of much at all, but taken in the broader context of evidence I think they are germaine.

I'm not really very familiar with newer genetic studies. I'm perfectly willing to dismiss the Kensington rune-stone and the Maine penny and the Stone Mill and a lot of other artifacts, but I still think overall there was input from Europe, Asia and Africa.

An interesting idea I came across recently in some of the journals was that there were ice-free areas on the west coast of North America which served as havens for possible canoers from East Asia, including the Olympic Peninsula in Washington state, shortening the vast distances required to sustain colonisation/settlement during the last Ice Age.

Well, I'd sure like to say a lot more, but I've had a few beers already, and maybe it's better if I stop now, because I might come up with some real bullshit I won't be able to defend later in any way.

[old book]

It's called "gurning", people hold competitions for it. It's an English thing 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gurn

I favor this contestant from the new Greenlandic youth magazine Toornara:

[Konrad Hartmann]

 The problem with history as we currently understand it, is that our perception of human culture is shaped by Victorian historians who assumed that everyone in the past basically lived like Medieval Europeans - staying put or at least not roaming far.  In fact, now, we know that's not true - not even in the Medieval time period.  Kennewick Man and some other finds indicate that humans wandered from Western Europe, across Asia, and into North America in the space of a SINGLE life time.  Hunter-gatherers followed food and they were clearly looking for places on the planet where population pressures hadn't dwindled the good eats.

At a much later period, we also have the Tarim basin mummies to also illustrate the propensity for travel.

To me the likeliest scenario for a very early East Coast incursion is that a large population of Europeans, due to climate pressures, began migrating East following heards of animals.  Within a period of, say, ten years (not long enough for their technology to drift) they migrated until they hit an unpassable ocean - which is the Atlantic on the Eastern Coast of North America.  When they attempted to return, immediately, they found that other groups had migrated in behind them and now they're limited by warefare, etc as a means of getting back to their point of origin, so there is a general American diaspora.  This would explain why Clovis culture could have migrated from the East Coast of the USA to the West, without having to add in the problems of an Atlantic or Arctic crossing. 

That seems like the most parsimonious explanation, but could it really be done in a mere ten years?

[old book]

I think the mystery of the Tarim/Turfan/Tocharian mummies isn't really genetic, it's that they represent a remnant of an earlier civilisation that was genetically heterogenous and culturally advanced and interested in education and preserving wisdom across cultures and time. The Uighur Kingdom's embrace of Manichean gnosticism and Manichean inroads into China and the adoption of a Syriac script are probably later extensions of this, and Lao Tsu's legendary retreat to the west, to the land of the philosophers, is probably a somewhat earlier expression of this fact.

On the parsimoniousness of that other explanation, I got lost somewhere. The Europeans travelled EAST to the Atlantic and then found their regress blocked by newcomers? Sorry, I got lost somewhere.

[Yojimbo]

Kennewick Man and some other finds indicate that humans wandered from Western Europe, across Asia, and into North America in the space of a SINGLE life time.

No. Kennewick Man's skull shows Caucasoid features, but that's a long way from saying he was Caucasian. The only thing the courts proved was that he couldn't be connected to any living, federally recognized Native American tribes. Kennewick Man was most likely of Asian descent (see also the Ainu for Asians with physical similarities to Caucasians) and born in the Americas.

[Konrad Hartmann]

I think the mystery of the Tarim/Turfan/Tocharian mummies isn't really genetic, it's that they represent a remnant of an earlier civilisation that was genetically heterogeneous and culturally advanced and interested in education and preserving wisdom across cultures and time. The Uighur Kingdom's embrace of Manichean gnosticism and Manichean inroads into China and the adoption of a Syriac script are probably later extensions of this, and Lao Tsu's legendary retreat to the west, to the land of the philosophers, is probably a somewhat earlier expression of this fact.

I stand corrected:http://www.biomedcentral.com/1741-7007/8/15#IDAH0OBH

By the way, the exhibit that China permitted to be shown in the U.S. required that the exhibiting museum (I saw it at Penn Museum in Philadelphia) use the text written by the Chinese government. The government descriptions were so sparse as to be laughable, like, "Red hat made of felt."

[old book]

Konrad:-- there seems to be a bit of a war among Turfan mummie scholars over their genetic origins that I wasn't completely aware of. Joseph Farrell's giz death star website has some of it in the comments under his posting about a Russian academic paper rejecting the Out of Africa genesis of modern humans. Most of it is racist claptrap, but it does sound as if there is a real dispute in the background over the actual genetic affinities of the mummies.

[Konrad Hartmann]

I wish that I had a better understanding of genetics in order to make sense of the argument. As far as I can tell, MattB seems to be making the best argument, and claims them to be West Asian with a variety of genetics included.

The wooden structures, the poles, surrounding the site also interested me. They appear (at least superficially) similar to the arrangement found at Celtic sites such as Glauberg in Germany.

[Inner Prop]

Down with Clovis, up with Paisley.  Just listened to the podcast at The Archaeology Channel and they mentioned this.

BTW, I highly recommend that podcast for non-fiction listening.  My only complaint about it is that it's too short.

[old book]

Down with Clovis, up with Paisley.  Just listened to the podcast at The Archaeology Channel and they mentioned this.

BTW, I highly recommend that podcast for non-fiction listening.  My only complaint about it is that it's too short.

Where is your doggerland now??? jk

Apparently there is a European haplo-group well attested in a group of Native Americans around the Great Lakes (Ojibway/Chippewa I think) and throughout North America in a vague substrate sort of way. Someone (above? not sure) mentioned the wild-hair Asian Y group that's all over the map, and recently I heard someone make the case this was actually the work of Ghengis Khan personally. idk.

[Bob Lovecraft]

Yeah, Ghengis seemed to love the ladies. That's a lot of DNA out in the world.

Bob

[Konrad Hartmann]

Down with Clovis, up with Paisley.  Just listened to the podcast at The Archaeology Channel and they mentioned this.

BTW, I highly recommend that podcast for non-fiction listening.  My only complaint about it is that it's too short.

I just listened to this today and enjoyed it very much. Coprolites, eh? I was wondering why someone would have left that inside the cave instead of going outside, but, at least in arctic climates where caloric expenditures are critical, it may be common to do it even inside igloos.

[Bob Lovecraft]

This may be a case of Ocam's (sp) Razor: bad weather means you poop in the cave.

Bob

[Graf von Altenberg Ehrenstein]

And don `t forget that age-old saying of any good Inuto mother to their kids: Don `t eat the yellow snow!

[old book]

FWIW according to the old accounts the Inuit in Greenland traditionally had a pisspot in the corner of their turf-and-rock dwellings (with contorted entrance corridor to keep out the cold). The urine was collected and used for treating seal pelts iirc. There was an ingenious soap-stone dish used to hold marine mammal oil with some sort of wick set in the center, and this low flame provided the heat and light for the long winter. From what I remember reading, the smell of the seal oil combined with several months worth of urine overpowered genteel European noses who weren't accustomed to the Greenlandic olfactory experience, so sleep-overs weren't all that common if possibly avoided.

I think the old maxim, "don't shit in the nest," however, applied.

Anyway, if Paisley Caves is what I think it is, I remember hearing that habitation site was covered over by a collapsing mountain or something, so what are caves now might have been ditches before? Just a thought.