The Cambridge History of the Native Peoples of the Americas Volume I, II, and III

Earliest South American Lifeways 191
had run their course. Even Richard Morlan, a sometimes protagonist for
pre-Clovis occupation, thinks that all the possibly earlier sites fall short
of proving the case. He admits, "In fact, I am increasingly impressed by
the contrast between the paucity and plethora of data before and after
11,500 years ago." 2
A few years ago, when I reviewed the North American literature for
human skeletal material that could be older than 12,000 years, there
remained only two possibilities: the poorly documented remains from
Warm Mineral Springs, Florida, and Natchez, Mississippi. The latter
now has been sensibly evaluated and directly dated by radiocarbon to
5,580 ± 80 years ago (AA-4051). 3 As for cultural remains, there is no
compelling evidence of human occupation before the Paleoindian or
Clovis stage. Those who accept an earlier, usually "pre-projectile-point,"
stage have been fooled over and over by mixed and misdated sites, and
they often have been forced to posit extremely simple, even stagnant,
peoples who knew not the use of fire, burial customs, hunting technology,
or stone artifacts elaborate enough to signal their identities to us or
their contemporaries. To most of us, the best models of Paleoindian
behavior, society, technological development, and resource use suggest
that Paleoindians flourished in a previously unpopulated America. Likewise,
the patterns of dental morphology, immunoglobulin allotypes, and
linguistic diversification point to a colonization through eastern Siberia
only 12,000 to 15,000 radiocarbon years ago. That chronology would
allow the tentative inclusion of the three most popular of proto-
Paleoindian sites to have survived close inspection — Bluefish Caves,
Meadowcroft, and Fort Rock Cave — although all have detractors and
none is entirely convincing. 4
Just as the human colonization of North America would appear to set
limits for the colonization of South America, the human occupation of
eastern Siberia is a limiting factor, to most archaeologists, for human
Richard E. Morlan, "Pre-Clovis people: Early discoveries of America," in Americans Before Columbus:
Ice-Age Origins, Ronald C. Carlisle, ed. (Pittsburgh, 1988), 38.
Thomas F. Lynch, "Glacial-age man in South America? A critical review," American Antiquity 55
(1990), 13; John L. Cotter, "Update on Natchez man," American Antiquity 56 (1991), 36-39.
For example, C. Vance Haynes, Jr., "More on Meadowcroft radiocarbon chronology," Review of
Anthropoloy 12 (1991), No. 1, 8-14; Kenneth B. Tankersley and Cheryl A. Munson, "Comments
on the Meadowcroft Rockshelter radiocarbon chronology and the recognition of coal contaminants,"
American Antiquity 57 (1992), 321—326, but see also James M. Adovasio, Jack Donahue,
and Robert Stuckenrath, "Never say never again: Some thoughts on could haves and might have
beens," American Antiquity 57 (1992), 327—331.
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