A really ancient trip across an ice covered Atlantic

An old theory is being resurrected. In the stone age as long as 20K years ago, Europeans may have walked across a frozen Atlantic ocean to beat the Asians that crossed the Bering straights by thousands of years ago. During the height of the Ice Age, ice covered some three million square miles of the North Atlantic, providing a solid bridge between the two continents. Plentiful numbers of seal, penguins, seabirds and the now extinct great auk on the edge of the ice shelf could have provided the stone-age nomads with enough food to sustain them on their 1,500-mile walk.

A striking resemblance is being found the way the primitive American tools found in the Northeast were made to European ones dating from the same period. In particular a fresh analysis of stone knife unearthed in the US in 1971 that revealed it was made of French flint.


The giant Olmec heads discovered in Mexico that predate the Mayans and the Zapotecs were discovered in the 19th century. The scientists at the time believed that they were evidence of an African voyage in antiquity (but not as old as the stone age) to the shores of southern Mexico. Generally the theory today is that some of the groups from Asia that crossed the Bearing Straight just happened to have facial features that we associate with the present day African continent.

I'm also reading that evidence is mounting that
there were far more Native Americans here in
15th and 16th centuries than previously thought.
Millions more, mostly on the east coast from FL
to Maine. They were 90% wiped out in just a
few decades by diseases carried by sailors from
EU. So by the time the real settlers arrived, they
only saw a fraction of what had been here just
a hundred years before.

The genetic history, if you want to call it that, of the Americas really generate a lot of controversy and a lot of unsure scientists.

For peoples, yes, as we can see. This extends also into the faunal record. That the new humans, as hunters, wiped out the megafauna, like the mammoths IIRC, is not 100% accepted. Horses were American to being with, then vanished, then were re-introduced by Europeans IIRC. How do you hunt horses to extinction?

When considering tools, there are three things to keep in mind:

Shape. This can vary a lot, but only within certain parameters. A flint knife or ax from one culture will differ from that of another, and within a culture as well, but only so much. Sometimes similarities can be illusory.

Technique. How a tool is made and/or used , when that can be determined, can also be indicative of origin. But this is even more given to interpretation than shape.

Material. If a tool is made of a material not readily available at the site where it's found, that means it was carried from elsewhere. This can be quite precisely determined, if the general composition of the rocks and minerals of a place is known.

Quote: Evenbob

I'm also reading that evidence is mounting that there were far more Native Americans here in 15th and 16th centuries than previously thought.

Wikipedia says:
While it is difficult to determine exactly how many Natives lived in Northern America before Columbus, estimates range from a low of 2.1 million (Ubelaker 1976) to 7 million people (Russell Thornton) to a high of 18 million (Dobyns 1983). The Aboriginal population of Canada during the late 15th century is estimated to have been between 200,000 and two million, with a figure of 500,000 currently accepted by Canada's Royal Commission on Aboriginal Health.

Although nothing is absolutely certain, the general model for immigration via Beringia, the land bridge across what is now the Bering Strait, took place at least 13,500 years ago. Generally, we are looking at a world population of less than 4 million. If Europeans did walk across the frozen Atlantic Ocean nearly20,000 years ago, then it is possible they all died out before breeding with the people who crossed Berengia.

I've read 20 million just on the east coast alone.
In officers diaries in the 15th century, they report
unending campfires at night up and down the
entire eastern seaboard. Food from the forests
and the ocean would have been extremely
plentiful at that time. In Boston in the late 1600's
and into the 1700's, they ate so many oysters
that their shells were crushed and used to pave
the city streets.