Paleolithic Europeans didn't settle America first, study says

Brett Smith for redOrbit.com – @ParkstBrett

Many archeologists subscribe to the theory that North America was first populated by humans coming across a land bridge connecting modern day Alaska and Russia.

However, a conflicting theory touted in the ’90s claimed that Paleolithic Europeans crossing a Greenland ice bridge settled North America much earlier.

Based on the discovery of a stone tool, that less popular theory is largely being refuted by a new study recently published in the Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports.

The new study refutes the very basis for the alternative theory, the discovery of an ancient stone blade with pieces of a mastodon skeleton at the bottom of Chesapeake Bay in the early 1970s. The discovery was made when a scallop-trawling vessel called the Cinmar hit a snag off the coast of Virginia.

Scientists couldn’t sufficiently date the ancient blade because it is made of stone, but they were able to date the mastodon remains to about 22,000 years ago.

“For more than two decades, proponents of the ice bridge theory have pointed to similarities between North American stone blades such as the one allegedly dredged from the Chesapeake and blades left by Solutrean foragers in western Europe,” said study author Michael J. O’Brien, a professor of anthropology at the University of Missouri. “We know, however, that Solutrean culture began around 22,000 to 17,000 years ago, which is later than North American dates pointed to by ice bridge theorists as proof that Solutrean people populated North America. That includes the date from the Cinmar mastodon.”

Inconsistencies, inaccuracies, no corroborations

In the study, researchers indicated the lack of first-person accounts from the ship’s crew. All released accounts were first published by advocates of the alternate theory, the study author found. In phone interview with the ship’s captain, he said he “took particular note of the water depth” and “plotted the area on his navigation charts,” the researchers wrote.

“While the interview indicates that the Cinmar captain took detailed notes, researchers never indicated that they actually observed the charts,” O’Brien said. “In fact, captains keep ‘hang logs’ in which they record readings when they hit obstructions on the ocean floor. We reviewed countless snag reports from the Bay and the time frame when the snag should’ve occurred and didn’t find anything to corroborate the story. One of the most famous snags of all time – when the crew pulled up a mastodon – and it’s just not reported.”

In addition, the study team also found inconsistent fact about the actual ship itself, including what it looked like.

“Until inaccuracies are cleared up, there really is no reason to accept the find as evidence of anything connected with the early peopling of North America,” O’Brien said.

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