Were the First Americans Europeans?

There has been a lot of discussion in the press this week regarding the first inhabitants of the New World. The standard view has long been that America was settled by newcomers from Siberia, traveling either by land or sea from Asia. There has been considerable controversy as to exactly when and how these journeys took place, but the direction of movement, from North Asia to the West coast of America has seldom been questioned. Now a new book  by Dennis Stanford and Bruce Bradley asserts that the first inhabitants came from Europe and settled the East Coast of North America about 20,000 years ago, during the last glacial maximum.

As a number of commentators have noted, there is nothing new here. Stanford has been making this argument for more than a decade and it has been rejected by nearly all specialists in the field. This is a technical controversy however, and press reports cannot do justice to the evidence. John Hawks, a reputable anthropologist with a specialization in genomic evidence, will be giving the book a close read and will report his reactions on his blog. For now, though, he recommends a number of recent books on the subject that, taken together, will provide readers with a good introduction to the paleoindian controversies that have roiled American anthropology in the past decade.

If you are interested, check out his post here.

New Directions in Evolutionary Studies -- Online

If you are interested in the subject of human evolution you should know that the entire field is currently being shaken up by new discoveries, the most important of which derive from the study of human genomics. It turns out that our evolutionary history is a lot more complicated than was assumed just a few years ago. One of the leading, perhaps the most important, figure among the traditionalists who are fighting to retain as much as possible of the old model is Christopher Stringer. At this site he talks at length about recent discoveries and their implications as he sees them. You can listen to his talk or read a transcript. Check it out and be informed.

Then go to this site. John Hawks is one of the young anthropologists, an expert on genomics, who is shaking up the field. He is placing the lectures in his introductory anthropology class at the University of Wisconsin [Anthropology 105] on line for anyone to view. It's one of the best introductions to the field you are going to find anywhere. Check it out.