The Solutrean Hypothesis: Retracing Ancient Footsteps Across Atlantic Ice ft. Ancient Americas

Why doesn't ancient kurgan culture in America make it a Solutream fact?? I mean, that is what these mounds are- kurgans.. It's not just the kurgans, it's their genetics, which have never been found on the "northern route". They were a copper wares kurgan culture, and we think we don't know who they were?! Nonsense! Obfuscating nonsense. Clearly, the mere idea is outside the scope of The Overton Window. "The eyes of that species of extinct giants whose bones fill the Mounds of America, have gazed on Niagara as ours do now." - Lincoln.

Loved being a part of this ! Thank you!

Looking forward to this! Two of my favourite channels on a crazy hypothesis 🔥

As an archaeologist myself, and as someone who has handled a lot of fluted points, and been immersed in the literature for several decades, it is important to recognize that while "pre-Clovis" components were "obvious" to some of us, others flatly rejected the notion, and when Stanford and Bradley published their book, there were many North American archaeologists who still insisted Clovis was the earliest occupation, reflecting the actual colonization of the Americas. This was despite the inherent logical problems and evidential issues the Clovis First hypothesis, which had been regarded by many as a proven fact. Recently (2022) work has been published by the National Academy of Science that demonstrated that the Ice Free Corridor was not open soon enough or long enough for people from the arctic to populate the lower latitudes. Most American archaeologists were still supposing that while pre-Clovis had to be a thing, that the time depth of their entry could not be too much earlier than the appearance of Clovis. Bradley and Stanford were adhering to that. If you add an additional 5,000 years to earliest Clovis, then you are still looking at an entry not much earlier than Meadowcroft. ca. 18 kya. There are still problems, because scattered older dates must mean the continent was largely explored by that time. If you add dates from South America even that 18 kya estimate begins to look too recent. The White Sands footprints, and osteoderm beads in Brazil push the problem back immensely farther. Currently there are no working hypotheses that handles the available evidence efficiently. The one fact we can draw is that Clovis hunters did not emerge from the Ice Free Corridor, and eat every mammoth on the continent, along with every horse, camel, giant ground sloth and short-faced bear. As concerns the size of Clovis populations, the distribution of a technology may correlate with a people, but it may also reflect the spread of an idea through many peoples. The spread of the use of the bow and arrow in North and South America is an example. Clovis technology, the manufacturing and weapon construction ideas may well have spread widely through word of mouth or example rather than colonization. In fact, entire technological, material culture and ritual complexes can spread through adjacent populations, independent of colonization. The late prehistoric archaeology of California, or the Northwest Coast both exhibit this. In California much of the northern state reflects a broadly uniform material and ritual culture which multiple linguistic populations p[articipated in prior to historic contact. The Northwest Coast shows a similar spread of material culture reachin from southern Alaska, south along the Pacific Coast to Northwestern California, with dentalium shell used as a medium of exchange throughout that range. So, a technological distribution is not at all necessary evidence of a single population. The real take away, IMHO, that despite what looks like an immense amount of data, 1) it is not that much data when you are trying tunderstand around 20,000 years or more of prehistory, and 2) we don't know much at all when you accept the reality of the immense canyons of missing information. Unlike the science of archaeology, prehistory is mainly story telling, based on tiny glimpses of what might have happened once upon a time.

I keep reading the title as The Soultrain Hypothesis.

Two of my favorite archaeology channels teaming up! Great video!

This video made me hungrier than I would have anticipated 😂

Being a scientist by training and profession, and having long been interested ancient American culture (and, incidentally, living about 1.6 km from the Anzick site) what I find particularly interest is that the Solutrean hpothesis was actually presented as a testable hypothesis. That meant it could be tested, with some rigor, and either either falsified or accepted (but never actually proven, of course). And, then, how the subsequent studies actually did support an alternative hypothesis. Your treatment and presentation was informative, balanced, and well-done. Actually, the whole resultant body of work generated by the Spolutrean hypothesis is one the best really clear-cut discrete examples of archaeology being truly a science, I have seen. This joint presentation was really good, playing off both narrator's strong points. Nicely done, gentlemen!!! Thanks!

When you talked about the clovis cache and the variety of finished pieces and unfinished ones all the way to raw chirt, it made me wonder if these were a way of teaching other people how to do it. A early power point kinda of deal.

Great collaboration of the two of you! Thanks!

Two of my favorite channels teaming up!! Fascinating subject, glad you two cleared some of that up.

Great Collaboration!! Would love to see more of these. Very interesting!!!

I appreciate that you have approached this with respect for all involved. It pained me to see the ad home I'm attacks that Stanford was subject to. Thank you.

Great content y'all. Appreciate the commitment to proper analysis. Nice collaboration from two of my fav creators.

Great presentations. You two really worked well together!!! Here is another hypothesis - Maybe the Solutrean did make it to North America 5000 years earlier but then abandoned their sites or migrated south during a cold period. It was only later that an early indigenous archeologist found a Solutrean cache of projectile points and said "Wow these are really neat and so much better than what we have. Lets learn how to make them".

Excellent work you two! I appreciate the framing that this hypothesis isn't as totally wild or racist as it seems on its face, but also the discussion about why it doesn't make sense after it drove so much good research.

Awesome collaboration! Thank you both.

Thank you both for sharing the results of your research.

Oh wow! I love Ancient Americas stuff. Great to see you guys working together

Great to see you two working together!