Comments on: Origin of Native America

By: Richard Parker

Richard Parker — Thu, 29 Nov 2007 18:22:29 +0000

Putting a bit of perspective on boat use and voyaging:(I would hope people at the other end of the Pacific could have done the same).Manus Island is 270km north of New Guinea – no land bridgesPamwak Cave remains dated at – 20,900BPA minimum voyaging distance of 60-90 km out of sight of land is necessary to reach the island.Buka Island, Solomons remains dated at 28740+/-280 BP. Buka Island is 180km from the nearest land to the west.Yombon – West New Britain – 35,570+/-480 BP – 30km open sea crossing(And, of course, Australia – about 45000BP)Sources:1) The Need for Lapita: Explaining Change in the Late HolocenePacific – Archaeological Record – Anita Smith -World Archaeology, Vol. 26, No. 3, Colonization of Islands. (Feb.1995), pp. 366-379.2) The Pre-Austronesian Settlement of Island Melanesia: Implications for Lapita Archaeology – Jim AllenTransactions of the American Philosophical Society, New Ser., Vol.86, No. 5, Prehistoric Settlement of the Pacific. (1996), pp. 11-27.

By: Greg Laden

Greg Laden — Thu, 29 Nov 2007 08:21:25 +0000

Markk: You are right, of course. Still, I don’t think it is a proper approach to historical problems. There are “facts” that can’t be compared with respect to simplicity, and there are contingencies that are usually more than minimally complex.I prefer to state it this way: Parsimony is a method by which one can develop an explanatory model for which will be wrong in the minimum number of possible ways in which it can be wrong.

By: Markk

Markk — Thu, 29 Nov 2007 08:12:38 +0000

Actually Occam’s razor is that the simplest explanation that fits the facts is the best. I hate it when people leave off the “that fits the facts” part, which seems to be occurring a lot lately. In this case a whole bunch of “the facts” are unknown. so there are a lot of fits.

By: Greg Laden

Greg Laden — Thu, 29 Nov 2007 06:59:35 +0000

Alan: I dunno, the term “Native American” just came to me, I’d never heard it before. Why, do you think it has a pre-existing meaning or something? We could check the dictionary….Lassi: The Law of Parsimony is Occam’s Razor said in a slightly more complicated way…

By: Lassi Hippeläinen

Lassi Hippeläinen — Thu, 29 Nov 2007 04:48:58 +0000

What land bridge? Are these pundits all living in Florida? There is an ice bridge across the Bering Sea every year. Even today the Aleuts have kayaks that can be used in water and on ice. They don’t need any materials that weren’t available 10’000 years ago.The migration could have been a constant dribble. It could have flowed in both directions. Anyone who has spent even one day trekking in nature knows that you want to be able to return to familiar ground.About the Law of Parsimony – I’ve never before heard about it, but I’m aware of Occam’s Razor. But then we engineers tend to think in terms of tools…

By: Alan Kellogg

Alan Kellogg — Thu, 29 Nov 2007 00:43:13 +0000

The fact my ancestors came to this land from the east across an ocean complicates matters in this regard. Or were you restricting “Native American” to a small segment of the Native American population? And can you justify such a restrictive use of the term?