Environmental factors in circum-Pacific migrations

A new study examines the environmental factors that impacted human migrations in the circum-Pacific region.

This study covers the period of Sundaland flooding that started during the present inter-glacial period known as the Holocene. Some of the migrations would coincide also with the Nusantao movements throughout much of the circum-Pacific and the earlier Austric dispersions in Southeast Asia.

Warming temperatures caused ice sheets to melt and sea levels to rise but these eventually leveled off. Recently, human-driven global warming has caused sea levels to be begin rising again.

Contact: Davina Quarterman
davina.quarterman@oxon.blackwellpublishing.com
01-865-476-307
Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

Environmental setting of human migrations in the circum-Pacific Region

A new study by Kevin Pope of Geo Eco Arc Research and John Terrell of The Field Museum adds insight into the migration of anatomically modern humans out of Africa and into Asia less than 100,000 years before present (BP). The comprehensive review of human genetic, environmental, and archaeological data from the circum-Pacific region supports the hypothesis, originally based largely on genetic evidence, that modern humans migrated into eastern Asia via a southern coastal route. The expansion of modern human populations into the circum-Pacific region occurred in at least four pulses, in part controlled by climate and sea level changes in the Late Pleistocene and Holocene epochs. The initial “out of Africa” migration was thwarted by dramatic changes in both sea level and climate and extreme drought in the coastal zone. A period of stable climate and sea level 45,000-40,000 years BP gave rise to the first major pulse of migration, when modern humans spread from India, throughout much of coastal southeast Asia, Australia, and Melanesia, extending northward to eastern Russia and Japan by 37,000 years BP.

The northward push of modern humans along the eastern coast of Asia stalled north of 43° N latitude, probably due to the inability of the populations to adjust to cold waters and tundra/steppe vegetation. The ensuing cold and dry Last Glacial period, ~33,000-16,000 year BP, once again brought dramatic changes in sea level and climate, which caused abandonment of many coastal sites. After 16,000 years BP, climates began to warm, but sea level was still 100 m below modern levels, creating conditions amenable for a second pulse of human migration into North America across an ice-free coastal plain now covered by the Bering Sea.

The stabilization of climate and sea level in the early Holocene (8,000-6,000 years BP) supported the expansion of coastal wetlands, lagoons, and coral reefs, which in turn gave rise to a third pulse of coastal settlement, filling in most of the circum-Pacific region. A slight drop in sea level in the western Pacific in the mid-Holocene (~6,000-4,000 year BP), caused a reduction in productive coastal habitats, leading to a brief disruption in human subsistence along the then densely settled coast. This disruption may have helped initiate the last major pulse of human migration in the circum-Pacific region, that of the migration to Oceania, which began about 3,500 years BP and culminated in the settlement of Hawaii and Easter Island by 2000-1000 years BP.

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Regards,
Paul Kekai Manansala
Sacramento

Pacific seafarers reach America 16,000 years ago?

New evidence further supports the theory that the Americas were settled by Pacific seafarers who may have arrived as early as 16,000 years ago.

These early mariners may have used the Kuroshio (Japan) Current, which flows off the east coast of Japan toward the Aleutian Islands and then southward were it merges with the California Current. The latter current flows down to the tip of Baja California where one can either proceed West toward Hawai'i or further south to the western coasts of Central and South America.

Regards,
Paul Kekai Manansala
Sacramento

Were seafarers living here 16,000 years ago?

Site off Queen Charlottes could revolutionize our understanding of New World colonization

Randy Boswell, CanWest News Service

Published: Tuesday, August 21, 2007

In a Canadian archeological project that could revolutionize understanding of when and how humans first reached the New World, federal researchers in B.C. have begun probing an underwater site off the Queen Charlotte Islands for traces of a possible prehistoric camp on the shores of an ancient lake long since submerged by the Pacific Ocean.

The landmark investigation, led by Parks Canada scientist Daryl Fedje, is seeking evidence to support a contentious new theory about the peopling of the Americas that is gradually gaining support in scholarly circles. It holds that ancient Asian seafarers, drawn on by food-rich kelp beds ringing the Pacific coasts of present-day Russia, Alaska and British Columbia, began populating this hemisphere thousands of years before the migration of Siberian big-game hunters -- who are known to have travelled across the dried up Bering Strait and down an ice-free corridor east of the Rockies as the last glaciers began retreating about 13,000 years ago.

The earlier maritime migrants are thought to have plied the coastal waters of the North Pacific in sealskin boats, moving in small groups over many generations from their traditional homelands in the Japanese islands or elsewhere along Asia's eastern seaboard.

Interest in the theory -- which is profiled in the latest edition of New Scientist magazine by Canadian science writer Heather Pringle -- has been stoked by recent DNA studies in the U.S. showing tell-tale links between a 10,000-year-old skeleton found in an Alaskan cave and genetic traits identified in modern Japanese and Tibetan populations, as well as in aboriginal groups along the west coasts of North and South America.

The rise of the "coastal migration" theory has also been spurred by a sprinkling of other ancient archeological finds throughout the Americas -- several of them, including the 14,850-year-old Chilean site of Monte Verde, too old to fit the traditional theory of an overland migration by the "first Americans" that didn't begin for another millennium or two.

Proponents of coastal migration argue that Ice Age migrants in boats might have island-hopped southward along North America's west coast as early as 16,000 years ago, taking advantage of small refuges of land that had escaped envelopment by glaciers.

The difficulty is that nearly all of the land that might contain traces of human settlement or activity -- the critical proof for archeologists -- is now under water.

Several significant finds have been made in raised caves along the B.C. coast that were not inundated by the rising Pacific in post-glacial Canada.

In 2003, Simon Fraser University scientists reported the discovery of 16,000-year-old mountain goat bones in a cave near Port Eliza on Vancouver Island, and similar finds of prehistoric bear bones pre-dating the glacial retreat have been held up as proof of a shoreline ecosystem that could have sustained large mammals, as well as human hunters.

The new Parks Canada target is at a site in the Gwaii Haanas National Park Reserve just north of Burnaby Island, near the southern end of the Queen Charlottes.

Read rest of article...

Back to the Northern Seas

James Hornell, one of the leading experts on the history of seafaring in the 20th century suggested that a "South Seas" culture had managed to migrate throughout much of the Arctic and sub-Arctic regions during what he calls the "Maritime Phase" starting around 4,000 BC.

At this time, the weather was much warmer in the far northern regions than it is today. Hornell identified this culture based on the following similarities:

Ship construction with tongue and groove method, no nails (at least by Neolithic).

Ships had dual bifid ends and a double dugout and plank-built construction (Bronze Age possibly Mesolithic/Neolithic transition.

Vessels had high upturned ends (Bronze Age)

Hook-shaped thole pins were used instead of oar-ports (historical period)

The use of the "Oceanic" bailer (historical period)

The practice of ship burial (Bronze Age)

Funerary sacrifice rituals (Bronze Age)

The primary release bow and arrow (historical period)

Similar totemic prow design (Bronze Age)

The "ship of the dead" and serpent motifs (Bronze Age)

In some areas, the lashing of the frame to the hull with flexible cleats (possibly Mesolithic-Neolithic transition, Bronze Age)

The raising of megaliths (Neolithic, Bronze Age)

As can be seen, not all this evidence found by Hornell can necessarily be dated all the way back to 4,000 BC. Some other important links can be added this list to include:

Shellfish collection and building of shell mounds (Mesolithic-Neolithic transition)

Use of tattoos (Neolithic)

Long bow (Neolithic)

Composite, circular fish hooks, composite bows (from horn bow), Neolithic

Toggling harpoons, sometimes of a very specific morphology

Communal longhouses

Semi-subterranean dwellings

Sea mammal hunting

Quadrangular stone adzes

Use of jade and/or nephrite

Similar motifs, myths and folklore

In some areas particularly in northern Europe, evidence suggesting linguistic contact

Some of the earliest examples of this south to north transition, as we have already discussed, may date back to pre-Austronesian Jomon times. There is evidence though that these contacts did not vanish after the warm Maritime Phase mentioned by Hornell. Enough knowledge was retained of the northern areas within the Nusantao network to maintain links, and for periodic waves of contact or migration in both directions.

We will discuss some elements of this northern maritime culture in detail starting with the bow and arrow.

In the Churning of the Milky Ocean myth, one of the products of the sea is the Dhanu, or long bow. This becomes in particular the weapon of the god Visnu.

In China, the "Yi" part of the ethnonym "Dong Yi" has been suggested to consist of a combination of the script signs ? meaning "large" or "great" and ? meaning "bow." Thus, 'Eastern people of the great bow."

The long bow is particularly popular among forest or maritime people. Most bows in Southeast Asia and the Pacific are long bows. One of the most famous long bows is the Yumi of Japan, a composite wooden bow more than 2 meters (6 feet) long.

There are some interesting similarities between bows in Southeast Asia and the Pacific with those of Japan, the Arctic and the Pacific Northwest. Some of these similarities may relate directly to developments of the pure horn bow.

Pure horn bows occur infrequently in Asia but were rather regular on the island of Java. Horn bows are generally cut from water buffalo horn because of their length and compressibility. The pure horn bow may have given rise both to the reflex bow and the composite bow.

The horn bow is always strung in the opposite direction of the natural curve as this is the only way to create sufficient tension. A bow strung like this is called a reflex bow. Although wooden and composite bows do not require this type of construction, a number of such reflex bows are found including those found among the Pacific Northwest Indians and the Andaman Islanders. Archery historican C.J. Longman thinks this may be a survival of a practice used previously in making pure horn bows.

Longman also believes the pure horn bow led to the eventual development of the composite bow. Because of the difficulty in stringing bows using the reverse curve, they tend to be strung continuously leading to quick wear-and-tear. He believed the archer would try to mend the bows artifically:

He would then restore them to their natural shape by running a thong along the back of the bow (the concave side when it is unstrung), which would be secured by being seized tightly at intervals along the bow, with transverse lashings. His thong would probably be made of animal sinew, and he would now find his bow restored to its former power, or perhaps something more. This picture of the actual course of events in the evolution of the composite bow is, of course, imaginary, and no doubt the ultimate result was, in fact, arrived at after many experiments and failures. Here, however, we have the groundwork of the weapon and the lines which are followed, in all the best types, the three main factors being:--

(1) Horn, being a compressible material for the belly.
(2) Wood as a stiffener, especially for the centre, and (as we shall see subsequently) for the ears.
(3) Sinews, an elastic stretchable material for the back.

No doubt it was a bow roughly made of these materials which ousted the primitive wooden bow throughout Asia, and spread through the lands of the Tschutshis of Eastern Siberia to the Eskimo of North America.

Another morphological pecularity of the long bow that might give an indication of common origin is the widespread occurence of a groove at the end of the bow. In the vast majority of cases, the groove serves no practical purpose and even weakens the weapon.

However, Longman mentions that Tongans and South American Indians bind an arrow in the groove -- a practical usage.

The long bow tends to be used by peoples who still use the primary release. This type of release is the most natural one in which one holds the arrow between the thumb and the forefinger. One can often distinguish primary release arrows as they tend to have bulbous or scored ends that make griping easier. Primary release arrows are rather the rule in the Pacific and much of Southeast Asia.

The arrows of this region are also distinguished by the composite use of bamboo shafts and hardwood foreshafts.

The maritime cultures of the north probably used the bow often during sea hunting expeditions. Toggling harpoon arrowheads were used for this purpose attached to a retrieving line.

Knobbed primary release arrows, Pacific Northwest Indian

New Hebrides long bow

Japanese long bow


Philippine projectile weapons from Krieger, including 1) Ayta single-piece long bow, polished palmwood, Sambali, 2) Ayta single-piece, grooved heavy long bow, palmwood, Bisaya, 3) Bagobo palmwood bow bound in rattan, 4) Moro palmwood bow with cord of bamboo splint.

Regards,
Paul Kekai Manansala
Sacramento


References

Krieger, Herbert W., "The Collection of Primitive Weapons and Armor of the Philippine Islands in the United States National Museum," Smithsonian Institution; United States National Museum, Bulletin 137 (1926).

Longman, C.J. and Col. H. Walrond, Badminton Library of Sports: Archery. New York, F. Ungar Pub. Co., 1967.