The Signposts Perspectives 8,000 BC- 1,600s AD
The Peopling of the AmericasApproximately 8,000 BC-6,000 BC: Human beings in many locations are constructing villages and developing agriculture and various handcrafts; brain surgery is being performed; the secrets of fire-starting are emerging and spreading
Humanity in southwest asia lives in villages and farms animals and grains. Pottery and weaving is in evidence.
-- page 789, "Stone Age", The Concise Columbia Encyclopedia, Second Edition, 1989, Columbia University Press
-- WHERE DID AGRICULTURE REALLY BEGIN? From Science Frontiers Digest of Scientific Anomalies ["
http://www.knowledge.co.uk/frontiers/"] #86, MAR-APR 1993 by William R. Corliss, citing Leigh Dayton; "Pacific Islanders Were World's First Farmers," New Scientist, p. 14, December 12, 1992
Head injuries can require holes cut into the skull to relieve pressure due to bleeding; a practice utilized in modern medicine circa 2000 AD. It appears similar surgeries were being performed possibly further back than 5000 BC in France. Some of the prehistoric treatments seemed to be of high quality.
-- Stone Age surgery ["
http://www.britannica.com/bcom/magazine/article/0,5744,17987,00.html"] Discover Magazine; September 1997; Section: Break throughs: ARCHEOLOGY STONE AGE SURGERY
Up to around 7,000 BC Humanity is forced to maintain/feed a fire nearby 24 hours a day, seven days a week or else be forced to trade with someone else for a living flame. The alternative of waiting for a natural fire such as one set by lightning can require years or decades, and is not really practical.
In substantial communities maintaining one or more continuous fires is likely a critically important function.
Finally, in approximately 7,000 BC, people in various regions begin to discover reliable ways to start fires from scratch-- though the process will remain difficult and inconvenient for centuries to come. Thus, the continually burning flames of community centers will continue to be important for many generations.
-- fire; Encyclopędia Britannica ["
http://www.britannica.com/bcom/eb/article/8/0,5716,34938+1,00.html"]
Note that global sea levels continue to rise, forcing a perpetual creeping movement inland and/or to higher elevations for most coastal, island, and riverside communities. This incessant creeping migration (and attendent unexpectedly severe damage and death tolls from sporadic storms and tidal waves which rising seas intensify) cannot help but sap the productive and innovative efforts of the populace overall, as many communities of fixed location are higher maintenance now than they will be after 4,000 BC to 3,000 BC.
Peopling of Americas 8,000 BC- 1,600s AD Contents
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Approximately 8,000 BC-3,000 BC: Fresh peoples continue to pour into the Americas from all over the world
Around 8,000 BC-4,000 BC the Amerind's mitochondrial DNA incorporated a particular mutation common to southeast Asian/Polynesian branches (this may signify the integration of the Polynesians in California and Mexico, and the Australians in South America, all of which had already been living in those areas for many millennia by then).
A wave of Na-Dene peoples (such as Navajos and Apaches) and Eskimo-Aleut arrived in North America around 8,000 BC-3,000 BC. The languages of the Na-Dene appear to place their sources as China and Tibet, northern europe, and the western parts of the Pyrenees mountains separating France and Spain. Again sea crossings of the Pacific and Atlantic are implied, as well as far north excursions between Europe and North America.
Note that the Chinese/Tibetans almost had to get to America by boat, as the Bering land bridge disappeared beneath the sea again around 8000 BC. An intriguing alternative however is that lucrative trade in **** and tobacco may have spurred Chinese/Tibetans to actually travel the length of Asia into Europe or Africa, then cross the Atlantic or take a near-Arctic route to get to the Americas. There is some evidence for such lengthy journeys in scientific findings, despite the incredible nature of such prehistoric commercialism.
The influx of europeans across the Atlantic continues the trend described earlier.
The Eskimo-Aleut language sources appear to include Japanese and Ainu, Korean, and others ranging from Europe to India. Again sea crossings of the Atlantic and Pacific are suggested, and virtually any other route as well (except for the Bering land bridge).
The next/second earliest group which settled in north central and north eastern North America apparently were originally Jomon from prehistoric Japan. This group came in two waves, the first forming the peoples leading to the modern Blackfeet, Iroquois, and related tribes spread over Michigan, Minnesota, Massachusetts, and Ontario, and the second becoming the Inuit. Other tribes of the eastern seaboard also share this heritage. Related peoples later became the Inuit. Other relatives of these appear to have migrated down to settle the entire eastern coast of North America.
This appears to be an anomaly in migration. Prehistoric Japanese crossing the Pacific and then an entire continent as well to settle in central and eastern North America? It may seem hard to believe, but that's what recent research describes.
Next came the Chinese, spreading through Alaska and into northwestern Canada, and south through Arizona and northern Mexico.
The languages of the Amerinds include a hodgepodge of terms seeming to originate from a broad array of peoples geographically: Europe, Asia, Africa, Polynesia, and Australia. These clues point to the Amerind migration involving sea-crossings of both the Pacific and Atlantic, as well as use of the Bering land bridge, and possibly island hopping and ice crossings in the far north between Europe and North America.
Peopling of Americas 8,000 BC- 1,600s AD Contents
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Approximately 7,911 BC-7,090 BC: During this period there are perhaps seven substantial volcanic eruptions in various spots around the globe
Given that volcanically active areas are typically fertile and inviting to plant and animal life alike, and make for near ideal locales for human habitation, foraging, agriculture, and hunting-- and that humanity has been rapidly spreading over most of the world for thousands of years now-- there's a good chance these eruptions destroy one or more significant human settlements or cities.
-- page 99, "Ice on the World", National Geographic magazine, October 1988
Peopling of Americas 8,000 BC- 1,600s AD Contents
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Approximately 7,000 BC: MAJOR CATASTROPHE: Massive earthquakes possibly stronger than magnitude 8 pulverize many sites of early human civilization in Europe and North America
Note that such quakes typically do little harm or injury to primitive peoples, but for those cases where they cause landslides, avalanches, or tsunamis to directly strike villages. True urban civilizations however, with multi-story, complex housing and earthworks, and various structures of a civil engineering nature (like dams and canals), are a different matter. These may easily be decimated or completely destroyed by strong quakes, by way of large numbers of fatalities and injured, as well as severe damage done to housing, irrigation works essential to agriculture, and defenses erected against animals and human enemies.
Monster earthquakes may be occuring in many places around the world as the glaciers disappear-- especially in Europe and North America. Scientists were shocked at the apparent severity of quakes taking place in geologically stable Scandinavia during this time (as large as magnitude 8.2). The finding suggests less stable areas may have been undergoing still worse shocks.
-- Demise of the ice age sparked great quakes by R. Monastersky, Science News Online, November 2, 1996,
http://www.sciencenews.org Note that here is another possible enormous wave of destruction for emerging civilizations and their works, spanning perhaps a quarter of the world.
The likelihood of massive tsunamis accompanying or being triggered by these quakes has not yet been addressed by scientists. But tsunamis may actually have done more damage to fledgling civilizations during this time than the quakes themselves.
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Approximately 7,000 BC: The substantial migrations of Eurasians into North America long ago expanded into South America-- with dire consequences for the Australians who had lived there for millennia
Basically, the Australians are outnumbered and outgunned (the Eurasians bring with them new diseases for which the Australians have no resistance). This leads to those Australians which don't die of contagions being massacred or virtually enslaved by the Eurasians. The sea-crossing to the Americas had by necessity kept the initial numbers of Australians arriving in South America to tiny quantities, while the Eurasians crossing the Bering land bridge and overcoming other obstacles more recently could come in strength, over many millennia. Another long term reproductive strike against the Australians may have been a severe shortage of women among the earliest groups to make landfall.
Thus, the new native South Americans may have suffered a much smaller starting population than the new native North Americans, as well as severely limited reproductive capacities in early generations-- which also explains why the Australians made no significant forays into the northern continent even during the millennia it remained uninhabited, or devastated the South American megafauna prior to the arrival of the Eurasians.
If this invasion and apparent 'ethnic cleansing' proceeds like many others throughout history, any and all historical records and other knowledge stores of the Australians are effectively destroyed by the invaders during this time or shortly thereafter-- resulting in potentially a catastrophic loss of human knowledge and history regarding possibly as much as three continents (Eurasia, Australia, and South America) and the islands of Polynesia in the Pacific as well.
-- "Aborigines were the first Americans" By Sarah Toyne, August 22 1999, THE SUNDAY TIMES: FOREIGN NEWS ["
http://www.sunday-times.co.uk/news/pages/sti/99/08/22/stifgnusa02003.html?99"], Times Newspapers Ltd.
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Approximately 6,200 BC-5,800 BC: The Northern Atlantic is cooled by 6 to 15 degrees due to collapsing ice dams in North America releasing enormous floods of icy water into the sea
-- "Catastrophic draining of huge lakes tied to ancient global cooling event", 21 JULY 1999, Contact: Don Barber,
barberdc@ucsub.colorado.edu, 303-492-7641, University of Colorado at Boulder
-- "Two Glacial Lakes Caused Ancient Freeze-Up -Study" Reuters;
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/ News Science Headlines, July 21 1999
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Approximately 6,000 BC - 1 AD: Sometime during this period the Earth, along with the rest of the Solar System, enters a vast cloud of interstellar gas
The cloud may be the residue of a super nova explosion in Scorpius-Centaurus around 250,000 years ago. Various effects upon the Earth could include climate and geomagnetic field changes around the time of entry.
-- THE EARTH HAS RECENTLY BEEN SWALLOWED BY A CLOUD OF INTER-STELLAR GAS From Science Frontiers Digest of Scientific Anomalies ["
http://www.knowledge.co.uk/frontiers/"] #98, MAR-APR 1995 by William R. Corliss, citing Priscella C. Frisch; "Morphology and Ionization of the Interstellar Cloud Surrounding the Solar System," Science, 265:1423, 1994, and I. Peterson; "Finding a Place for the Sun in a Cloud," Science News, 146:148, 1994
Seemingly excessive quantities of relatively short half-life aluminum-26 in interstellar space may indicate the solar system is moving through the debris cloud of a super nova explosion no older than 10,000 to a million years in age. Such a nearby explosion may have affected life on Earth when the blast first reached our vicinity, as well as the rest of the solar system (planetary interaction with the debris could be significant too).
-- THE MESSAGE OF ALUMINUM-26 From Science Frontiers Digest of Scientific Anomalies ["
http://www.knowledge.co.uk/frontiers/"] #39, MAY-JUN 1985 by William R. Corliss, citing "Are We inside a Supernova Remnant?" Sky and Telescope, 69:13, 1985
The solar system entered an expanding shell of gas several thousand years ago originating from the Scorpius-Centaurus Association. The density of material in this region could fluctuate greatly as we move through it. We might at some point find ourselves enshrouded in gas and dust thick enough to reduce the sunlight reaching the Earth-- perhaps to catastrophic levels. There's little indication of when we might encounter such conditions, or how long they might last when we did. But the possibility of such a dimming will exist for at least another 50,000 years beyond 1996.
-- "NOT WITH A BANG BUT A WHIMPER" From Science Frontiers Digest of Scientific Anomalies ["
http://www.knowledge.co.uk/frontiers/"] #107, SEP-OCT 1996 by William R. Corliss, citing Ray Jayawardhana; "Earth Menaced by Superbubble," New Scientist, p. 15, June 22, 1996
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