Origins of native North and South Americans

Hey Bram, mainland Australia was reached by "continent hoppers" about 30, 000 years ago (if my memory is correct, i return later). Of course everybody had to come from mainland Eurasia since Africa was not close to Australia or North America.

The people "who we now call natives" started the ocean between south China sea and settled on the Indonesian islands and the phillipines, and eventually made it all the way to Australia.

Of course i cant give anything like it is in the book, there is about 10 pages of solid info about what actually happened.

Etruscia, thanks, you are so informative. I've got lots to catch up, I see. But I am really interested by all this, and will search for some more stuff on the Internet (2,000 hits!), when I have the chance. At least, I know from where to start.

Oh, I can't wait to read the book.

Guys, you are gems.!!

Human settlement in Australia is more likely in the order of 50-60,000 BP (with a confirmed dating of 40,000 BP). It also appears that there may have been at least two 'waves' of settlers. At these times massive global glaciation had exposed much of the areas now covered by sea and moving from SE Asia through the Indonesian/Papuan regions would have been much easier than today.

Wow, thanks, Mr Stillwater. Yeah, global glaciation, indeed, what a good idea for travelling without an airplane or a boat. :wink:

What does BP mean, by the way?

BP = Before Present

It is used for dates that can't be quantified and are too old for a B.C. 'date' to be meaningful.

Ahhh. I was wondering the same thing, Mr. S. So saying 25,000 BP is the same as saying 25,000 years ago with no reference to 'eras', right?

Yes. It's a convention that relates to radiocarbon dates as they will refer to a given range of dates, rather than the antiquity of an event or object (which can be fixed with some accuracy if there is a known calendar). So you can say such and such happened in 1,200 B.C. when there is good reason to date it to that point - but you wouldn't say it was 3,200 BP.

Curiously enough the "present" in BP is in fact the base year 1950, after that year the aerial testing of atomic bombs made the system useless by skewing the C12/C14 ratios for living biotic material.

you refer to Monte Verde and Tom Dillehay work I assume
http://www.archaeology.org/online/features/clovis/rose1.html

the theory that shallow water sailing was a much older and well established means of migration worldwide than normally credited
bumping up and down coastal areas is gaining some ground

consider the human population of Australia around 40,000BCE

genetic evidence linking the Northwestern Indian tribes with the Ainu of Hokkaido

the problem with this theory is the lack of widespread archaeological evidence
consider the 300 ft rise in sea level from that period to this one
flooding most all potential sites

the coastal interaction zone worldwide is a hugely under appreciated substistance zone in most models of human migration
the fishing technologies and protien rich diet potentials of shellfish ect
(consider the complette lack of tools require to build a simple tidal weir)

widely under represented in the archeaolgical record, thus this model has suffered from the backlash of the history of archaeology itself, where the flights of fancy that represented the Victorian era where replaced with very stringent scientific evidence only thesis and peer reviews
abandoning common sense and valuable deductive reasoning

luckily these have again been somewhat restored as tool, a starting point and along with the "new" disciplines such a paleoclimatology, dendrology, radiocarbon dating, linguistics, recreative technology experiments, environmental sociology and most exciting genetic evidence are starting to peice together some of the large movements of mankind through prehistory