August 21, 2020 • 41 mins
Did human beings first reach the continents we call North and South America by traversing a land bride across what's now known as the Bering Strait? That's been the most prominent theory about early human migration, and it's the one many children learn about in school -- but what if there's more to the story? Join the guys as they dive into the story of early human migration... as well as new evidence that may revolutionize every thing we thought we knew about humanity's journey to the Americas.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of I Heart Radio Welcome back to the show.
(00:25):
My name is Matt, my name is Noel. They call
me Ben. We are joined as always with our super producer,
Paul Mission controlled decond. Most importantly, you are you. You
are here, and that makes this stuff they don't want
you to know. We're diving into some hidden history today.
(00:45):
We're diving into as odd as the phrase may sound,
something new about history, because Faulkner was right. Of course,
the past isn't even the past yet. History is never over.
It's an ongoing conversation. Most people living on the continents
of North and South America are comparatively recent arrivals, right,
(01:09):
while many people living in both South and North America
have a long family history here. Uh. If you look
at the larger scheme of human migration across the planet,
human beings are kind of a new thing for these
two continents. We know roughly, we know ballpark. The story
(01:33):
of humanity. Ancestral primates evolved on the African continent and
from there our species spread around the globe. However, even today,
in on August seven, as we record this, our species
still gets bogged down in the details, especially when we
(01:55):
get to the timeline. So today's question, when did human
beings actually reach the American continents? Here are the facts
Most experts within the fields the various fields of science, anthropology,
and the like. They agree that the story of the
contents of South and North America, at least as we
(02:17):
understand them now, they didn't begin with humans on them,
or humans were not there very early. These landmasses were
home to a lot of creatures, a lot of animals,
a lot of flora and fauna well before human beings arrived.
And of course, if you're taking the really long look
at the Earth, there are millions and millions of years
(02:38):
where humans weren't here, but there were other creatures. But
the big question for today is how did humans specifically
get here onto North and South America. Well, the most
common theory is this idea that involves Clovis culture and
the Bearing Land Bridge. By about fourteen thousand years ago,
(03:00):
the first human beings to reach the America's came by
crossing the Bearing Strait, which was this land bridge between
the far northeastern part of Siberia and the western the
farthest most western part of Alaska. UM. This theory, known
as the Bearing land bridge theory, is the one many
(03:21):
of us grew up listen hearing about, you know, the school.
It actually makes a lot of sense. It's the closest
connection between Asia and North America and it only opens
when ice is locked up on land and then sea
level drops. Yeah, there is a logic here if we're
talking about early human migration that we're talking about people
(03:44):
basically walking right and probably following sources of food, maybe
other animals that they rely on for sustenance. So it
makes sense that they would be able to walk to
North America from literally the only walkable path, which is
(04:06):
this bearing land bridge across the street that you're describing. No,
and all of this is based on the idea that
early humans were unable to craft some kind of boat
or ship that would be able to traverse the Pacific
or Atlantic oceans in the way that we, you know,
began to be able to do as technology developed. Um
(04:28):
that they'll just remember that. That's why scientists always focus
on that land bridge because of the walkability as been said. Yeah, yeah,
that's a good point, Matt. And you know, let's get
in front of the obvious question that many of us
are going to immediately ask, which is, why can I
not walk across that bridge today? Why do I have
(04:49):
to take a boat or a flight, or why do
I have to go on a doomed mission to swim
the Pacific to reach Asia from the America's Well, it's
because we are living in a different time. Back when,
according to this theory, people walked from Asia to North America,
(05:10):
they were doing so during something called the last Glacial
Maximum or l g M. If this comes up so
often in conversation that you don't have time to say
the whole thing, also known as the previous ice age,
the most recent ice age, the most recent ice age, Yeah,
the one before the next one, which maybe we'll be
(05:31):
around to see. Who knows, Uh, it's I can't I
can't rule anything out at this point. So, back when
people were traversing the land in this way, much more
of Earth's water was existing in solid form in glaciers.
(05:51):
And now the difference between then and now is that
the sea levels have risen, so the bridge and the
land these people walked is underwater, meaning also that much
of the evidence of their migration is going to be
lost to time, as the conventional wisdom goes, by this time,
(06:17):
fourteen thousand, fifteen thousand years ago, humans had migrated across
the breadth of South and North America. You go up
to modern day Alaska, you've got humans. Go down to Chile,
you got humans. The West coast is riddled with them.
You go to northeastern Canada, you've got people everywhere. You
(06:38):
go down to Florida, boom, same thing, people plus gators
this time. So what we're telling you right now is
the official, most often told story. And I want to
pause here for you guys. Does this track with what
with Noel Matt? Does this track with what you learned
(06:58):
or were taught growing up about human migration? Basically? Yeah, yeah,
this is precisely what what I recall from world history
classes both in high school and in college. Essentially what
we what we've just described here, the Clovis theory, the
closed hunters, and the evidence that we have found of
(07:20):
their lives back in those days. And it was a
long time ago, but you know, when you look at
the span of what we know about humanity and the
evidence that we found it wasn't it wasn't that long ago. Yeah, yeah,
that's a good point. I think this story is going
to be familiar to many of us because you you
(07:41):
grow up in elementary school, middle school, high school, as
you said, Matt, you go to college and you'll still
hear some version of this. But the problem here is
pretty apparent. With every single nude discovery about the ancient
past and the story of humanity's migration from one place
(08:05):
to the next, well, we find the story gets less
and less clear cut. We don't have we we don't
have specific points of time and shifts of patterns. Right,
we don't have the origin story of humanity. And this
is something that has baffled us on this show since
(08:29):
before Oh gosh, we like we were doing this show
when science discovered new mix tapes of early humanity. Right,
Dennis Sylvans, what was the other Homo floriensis? Yeah. Uh.
The point I'm making here is that we have been
(08:53):
taught a story. We have been sold a narrative in
a very authority titive way, but everything we are learning
as a species indicates that story is not as accurate
as we are led to believe it is when we
(09:13):
are children in school. So that's the question, when did
human beings actually arrive in the America's Before we jump in, Ben,
I just want to dovetail off what you're saying there.
We have been sold this essentially and told this all
of our lives. Everyone listening right now, I would say,
(09:35):
just to make it a little more positive, because it's
the best it's the best picture we've been able to
paint with the information we've had up to this point, right.
And the the problem, I think, the biggest problem that
we're going to be tackling today that we have to address,
is that once that picture is painted, anytime new information,
(09:58):
these new discoveries that you're talking about, Ben, come through,
it becomes more and more difficult to convince the painters
of that picture that there needs to be some revisions,
right because especially if it's a single point or discovery
in one place or a discuss, you know, one person's
(10:18):
one team's discovery rather than three or four in an area.
That's kind of the biggest problem. I see what you're saying,
and it's important because we're we're talking about discovering single
points of information, right, single instances and what are single
instances or examples against a larger body of thoughts, you
(10:42):
know what I mean? Oh yeah, And I mean those
high school textbooks aren't like infinitely long. They gotta figure
out how to tell a version of the story that
is as close to the likely scenario as possible and
teaches you something about the history of you know, life.
But you're right, it is problematic. It can be, for sure,
because who you know, there's so much cantankerousness and science too.
(11:07):
If people making one discovery and then another crew making
something that conflicts with that narrative, and then there's this
kind of beef as to how it really happened. But
there's a lot of politics wrapped up in it and
all of that. So it's interesting for sure to see
the way these things kind of take on a life
of their own, especially like you said, once the Badgers
out of the bag was Ben would Sam. Yeah, that's
that's the issue here. We want to be very clear.
(11:30):
We're not accusing your history textbook publishers of purposely lying
to you, and we are certainly not accusing your favorite
history teachers from grade school of lying to you. Teachers
work incredibly hard Uh. They are some of the most
important people on the planet in my opinion. Uh. And
(11:54):
they're not out to beguile and deceive you, hopefully they're
they're not supposed to be. However, they're working with the
information they have, right, And when we look at the
realm of science and how science is communicated or disseminated
to the population, we see that to your point, met
(12:16):
sometimes people cling to a thing because it is the
established fact now that does that. That is indicative of
a lack of skepticism or a lack of critical thinking.
It's also a very human understandable things psychologically speaking. Right.
I don't want to, uh, I don't want to seem
(12:39):
as though we are being dismissive or derogatory towards the
many people who have spent their entire academic careers studying
various incredibly specific aspects of Clovis theory or the current
official story of human migration. But I will say in
(13:00):
the past, I am sure there are people who spent
decades researching one thing and published about it, and then
they're there, and then new evidence was discovered that disproved
or challenged their life's work, and so they just kind
of you know, played it to the left. What am
(13:21):
I gonna do after forty five years in the game
change my mind? Would be a better world if people
did that, but they often don't. Yeah, it's it's another
situation where once you have this established fact, you have
to go far and beyond to prove that you're that
that fact needs to be altered or negated, right you.
(13:44):
That's why it becomes so difficult, um to make these
big changes to two existing stories. And they are stories.
Don't don't don't kid yourself. These are stories that we
are constructing based on the things that we have found.
And as we tackle this big question today, when did
humans arrive in the America's we're going to realize that
(14:07):
this thing is much more complicated than we expected. And
we'll tell you all about it right after a word
from our sponsor. Here's where it gets crazy. You see,
the timeline is shifting on us. The things we treated
(14:29):
with such certitude turn out to be much less absolute
than we had imagined. And it again, it goes back
to the timeline. I think that's that's a big part
of what the three of us are talking about today. Yeah,
that's right. I mean, you may recall that we only
said human beings were spread across the continents by fourteen
(14:51):
to fifteen thousand years ago UM. For authors like Craig Childs,
this shows that humanity by this point was most likely
already pretty well spread throughout one or more areas of
the continents before this. And there's several major theories that
(15:12):
explain this. So let's start with a theory that we
sort of talked about at the top of the show, UH,
the Clovis first theory. This is the idea that the
first human migration happened after the last glacial maximum, which
is exactly what it sounds like UM, and this migration
later went into decline UM, only to be followed up
(15:33):
by you know, subsequent waves of humans from other parts
of the world. So this connects all of these first
inhabitants of the America's with the Clovis culture UM, which
is something called a prehistorica paleo American culture that's named
for the distinctive stone tools that were found in Clovis,
(15:53):
New Mexico in the twenties UM. This also rolls into
that bearing land straight idea, which we've talked about in
previous episodes and or at the top of this one.
So this is your I guess. In the UK they
would call it your bog standard explanation for how human
beings ended up on these continents. It's strange because this
(16:17):
concept existed for a very long time, despite the fact
that there were so many questions about it. If you
look at the Clovis culture, the Clovis people, you'll find
an historical mystery. It's as if they appeared out of
nowhere and then suddenly disappeared. Radio carbon dating tells us
(16:41):
that what we regard as the people of the Clovis
culture appeared in modern day America around nine thousand, two
hundred b C. And then five years later they vanished.
So the the important distinction there that that you're bringing
(17:02):
up now is the idea that these folks came over
after that glacial maximum, after that ice age, around the
decline of that ice age, they were able to traverse
the siege perilous of the Bearing Strait, and they were
from there able to spread throughout the continent. But of
(17:25):
course this theory did not exist in a vacuum. There
are many other theories about early humans arriving on these continents,
and for centuries, people have argued back and forth about
this even before they could find solid evidence. What I
mean by this is, even before we had scientific standards
(17:48):
for collecting, cataloging, and contextualizing evidence and information, we had many,
many beliefs in civilization about humanity's origin story. On this continent,
you will find numerous religions that argue some some version
(18:11):
of an original person springing out of whole cloth or
in some cases being created by a divine entity on
on these continents. And then you will also see further
research that's admittedly more secular, uh, that kind of forensically
(18:31):
traces what we know about people on the planet on
other continents, right like we this is let's just say
it coastal migration. Could people have gotten here by boats?
Because if you can build a boat, that seems at
least a little bit it seems a little bit easier
(18:52):
to travel to this new land via watercraft than to
walk through the frozen way lands of the bearing straight. Oh. Absolutely,
And note here that we're talking about coastal migration and
that sounds exactly like you imagine it to be. That is,
following along a coast at you know, some distance far
(19:16):
enough away from it, but essentially following the water along
a coast on a boat of some kind. That doesn't
mean going straight out into the ocean right the way
the way you can with larger ships and more reliable ships. Now, uh,
it's very different. So there are a lot of sources,
(19:39):
there are a lot of people institutions, and there's some
research that suggests that this may be a possibility coastal migration.
So we know for for sure that in places like
Japan and parts of Korea South Korea, there have been
amazing archaeological discoveries that have found that humans during the
(20:00):
Ice Age were able to navigate coastal waters even though
it was so frigid and there's ice in many places,
they were able to do that, and they were essentially
navigating the northern Pacific coasts of what is now modern
or what we would consider modern day Japan and Korea
(20:21):
and come chaka with with boats. So it's really no
stretch to imagine that humans at some point, perhaps we're
able to reach the America's by boat using coastal migration.
And here's why it makes sense, because you could right
at the end of the Ice Age there where we're
(20:42):
imagining that people were physically walking across that bearing straight.
Perhaps they were on boats just previous to the end
of that glacial maximum, or during the maximum, or even
after it, taking boats and following the coast, because you'd
end up in Alaska, you'd get to British Columbia, then
(21:05):
down south to Washington, to Oregon, all along the Pacific
coast of what is now the United States. And it's
pretty incredible that humanity, even during an ice age, was
able to both survive and prosper and even migraine. It's
strange to think about the world in in that way,
(21:28):
to imagine a contiguous coast. And I like the point
you're making that about the watercraft involved, because you know,
these aren't cargo ships. These aren't mega yachts or or
schooners or frigoteens or pontoons or I'm just naming boat
boat words. Now, does anybody else have a boat? Where?
(21:48):
What's up? One? You like? No frigate, frigate, yeah, frigging frigate.
These were none of those things. These were Yes, these
were not even tugboats. They were they were small coastal
craft right like brown water Navy kind of stuff. They
(22:08):
weren't meant to go into the open ocean. They were
just kind of tracing along the line of the coast,
but if that coast is never ending, so they're just
sort of following a thing, and it's like a video
game wherein there, you know there is a larger world
out there. You have a rough idea of the parts
(22:30):
of the map you've seen, but everything else is obscured,
you know what I mean. So so you may as
well imagine that you are just always on the same
coast of a thing you call the land. Who knows
if there's anything other than the land and then you
know the water. What is compelling about that to me
(22:52):
is what what spurred that movement? And you know, we
we discussed we discussed the migration of animals that were
used for hunting right for food for the populations, as
a possible reason to just continue down the coast if
fish populations, maybe because it's obvious that those boats were
(23:12):
would be used for fishing purposes, for catching food. Um,
you know, I wonder if there was something This is
completely just off the top of my head, but I
wonder what the thing was that spurred whichever group, however
large or small it was, to continue down that coast
(23:34):
and just to keep going to see what's what's next. Oh,
I wish I knew. I mean necessity, I would imagine,
but I wonder if it wasn't, I wouldn't wonder it
was a spiritual belief or or um something that's deep inside.
I think all of us to just find out, well,
there's something over there. Let's let's find out that's inspiring,
(23:57):
you know, especially now as the next big step in
space exploration may occur within our lifetimes. One one other
thing that may have happened just environmentally is people may
have just been following the recession of the ice. Depending
(24:18):
on where you put them in the timeline, people may
have just been going further along the coast because they
were able to see more of the coast. I'm not
being dismissive. I'm just saying, like it the environment appears
to change so slowly that you might not be fully
(24:38):
aware of how far you're migrating because you're you know,
your grandparents, we're miles away or kilometers away for the
rest of the world, and then you two generations later
still feel like you're by the edge of the ice.
But the ice itself has moved, So I think we're
(25:00):
gonna take one more quick break and then we're gonna
get into some new discoveries when we return. So um,
there have been some efforts recently, some research that's kinda
put this traditional narrative on its head a bit um,
(25:22):
And that includes some stuff very very recently published just
in the last month. In a paper known called the
Timing and Effect of the Earliest Human Arrivals in North America,
uh Lorena Bassara Valdiva and Thomas I am Um look
into a pretty awesome and bizarre discovery. What they found
(25:44):
was a piece of limestone from this very specific cave,
the Chiquahite Cave in north central Mexico, that could potentially
prove that humans actually first arrived on the continent much
much early here than that narrative would have us believe,
the one we know from school. Yes, uh, I've waited
(26:07):
for this, Okay. So, like many of our fellow listeners,
we grew up. I don't want to speak for everybody,
let me let me clarify. I grew up convinced that
there was hidden history everywhere, you know, and I was
I was certain, probably just because I was a jerk,
that human beings had all these ancient civilizations and that
(26:31):
they had a much longer time on these two continents specifically,
and without getting into the weeds on all the crazy
stuff that's out there, this is different because this is proof.
This is quantitative proof that the first people, if people
(26:56):
built these tools you're mentioning, all arrived on North and
South America, like thirty three thousand years ago. That's nuts
just to put, just to put in perspective how much
time that is. I hope no one gets mad at
me for bringing this up. Was forty years ago, right, So, like,
(27:21):
I think that's gonna hit people when you think about
thirty three thousand years. Yeah, I mean, let's just pretend
that humans live a hundred years, right, that's three hundred
and thirty human like human cycles iterations. Yeah. Yeah, it's
(27:41):
a it's a very it's very long story. And you know,
for quite a while, there would be various people propagating
what was essentially some narrative without proof. They would say,
you know, I have had a spiritual awakening and I
realized that the true story of insert usually specific brand
(28:03):
of people here is that they came to modern day
South or Central America or North America, uh like after
the Fall of Atlantis or the sinking of Lemuria or something.
And the problem is they didn't have proof. This is
different because this is not tinfoil hat territory. Archaeologists in
(28:27):
this cave discovered specifically three deliberately shaped pieces of limestone.
They discovered a pointing stone and two cutting flakes. Right now,
pending new discoveries, these are the oldest human made tools
(28:50):
discovered on these continents. They absolutely do not fit that
timeline we were all taught in school. They also they're
also just one of several discoveries in this cave. Because
this cave is like a an episode of Hoarders where
the hoarder is just collecting sediment. The archaeologists spent a
(29:11):
lot of arduous time digging carefully through various layers of sediment.
It's kind of like a time capsule time machine. And
these tools they found are in like the very back
of the cave, in the deepest layer of the random
rocks and pebbles and bits of sediment that have accumulated
(29:33):
there over time. This is important because when we know
the layer in which they were found, we have an
enormous head start on figuring out when they were left
in that layer, and these things were here way before
the last glacial maximum, way before the last ice age
(29:55):
that occurred, like what between twenty six thousand and nineteen
thousand years ago, which means before that, someone was in
this cave and they had made tools and they they
forgot them. So if you think about it, because somebody
did the equivalent of forgetting their keys at home, we
(30:15):
are upending the story of human history thousands of years later.
We truly are. And we're gonna tell you more about
how this discovery was occurred. But I want to jump
to another recent article from Nature that was published in
July of this year, and it is titled evidence of
human occupation in Mexico around the Last Glacial Maximum, and
(30:39):
I'm going to read a quick quote from the abstract
of it just to give you an understanding what's happening here.
It's pretty incredible because not only did they find those
limestone artifacts that we're talking about, there are those tools.
There was a lot more and there is a lot
more still being found right now. So from this article,
(31:00):
it states the site yielded about one thousand, nine hundred
stone artifacts within a three meter deep stratus stratified sequence,
revealing a previously unknownlithic industry that underwent only minor changes
over millennia. More than fifty radio carbon and luminescence dates
provide chronological control and genetic, paleo, environmental, and chemical data
(31:25):
that document the changing environments in which the occupants lived. Now,
that is when you're talking about finding proof, right that
you could be able to show to another scientist, to
fellow sciences and say, hey, look at all of this
data we've collected from these things. You're you're talking about
(31:45):
several different ways in which they are testing this stuff,
with luminescence testing, with radio carbon testing. Um. I mean,
it's pretty incredible stuff here, and it really does show
that humans were in that cave, as Ben said, way
before that ice age. And these researchers and scientists who
are there in that cave are continuing and they're gonna
(32:07):
keep digging and they're gonna keep looking and who knows
what else we're going to discover. But the reason why
it took so long to find this stuff, and it
will take a long time to probably find more, is
because of how difficult it is to reach this location.
This is this is kind of a sunk cost for
those poor archaeologists. Uh. The lead author of one of
(32:29):
those studies is very very clear about how much of
a pain in the key stre it is to get
to this cave at all. He said that once they
got there, Cypriot Arduently by the way, lead author of
that that's so you're mentioning, Mattuh, he said that once
they got there, they just had to live there. It
takes the whole day to get there from the nearest town,
(32:51):
and part of that day is a continuous five hour climb.
It called it a logistical nightmare. So it's one of
those things where have you ever been in a very
unusual place or a place that was very difficult to
get to, and you just thought, you know, while i'm here,
I'm gonna do everything I can. That's what they're doing
in this cave. They're saying, Okay, while we're here, let's
(33:15):
get all of the information that that we can find.
This is a logistical nightmare. But the nightmare has paid
off because it appears that this cave was not used
once is tremendously important distinction. This cave was not something
that Uh, an early human being accidentally happened to spend
(33:40):
the night in right and then left their tools and
went on their merry way. This cave was used over
thousands of years by various people. It was kind It
was like a trocoldtic version of a hotel. As use
trocolate dietic again last time. But what we mean here
(34:02):
is was a long It was a long standing known
temporary refuge for some sort of nomadic people, and they
must have communicated knowledge of this cave two later generations,
possibly via oral history. Maybe enough time passed that that
(34:22):
oral history became legend. You can imagine that it might
have been some kind of religious religious pilgrimage of some
sort or something. I mean again, that's me completely making
it up, but you can imagine that something like that
could be the scenario. Because of what they've been finding.
There could be a very special cave for one reason
or another that we just don't know yet. Yeah, we
(34:45):
don't know. That's the thing that the history is so
thin here because of all the time that has passed.
What we do know is that the conventional story many
people were taught needs some revision. It needs to be updated.
It's astonishing because most of North America was covered with
(35:06):
ice during that ice age. So if people were leaving
tools in this cave at this time, and if they
were migrating coastally right or however they got here, it
means that they got here before that ice age began,
or that means it's possible they did. So this means
(35:29):
that despite everything, a lot of people were taught in
grade school. It appears that at least very small numbers
of human beings lived in North America and possibly other
parts of these two continents, Central and South America during
and immediately after the last ice Age, And what we
thought was the first migration is actually a second or
(35:55):
subsequent wave. The human population grew larger after this pre
read of abrupt kind of global warming that started fourteen
to fifteen thousand years ago. So don't call it a
come back. They've always been here, right, It's strange. Oh yeah,
And I think that study also suggested that some people
had entered the America as before twenty nine thousand years ago,
(36:19):
and that's possibly along the Pacific coast. Um And one
final note, um anthropologist Matthew Delorius of California State UH
in San Bernardino raises a really important question to kind
of leave you with, Um, how could ancient people who
had been in the America's for more than twenty five
thousand years have remained quote archaeologically invisible for over ten
(36:41):
thousand years? Um? And and he had he has an answer,
he he does. But but his big question there is
raised from the fact that in other places like Australia,
in Japan, archaeologists have had no difficulty in finding evidence
of human occupation and from that same time period they've
(37:02):
been able to dig down and find Oh wow, yeah,
this is this is from twenty thousand years ago. Um,
why haven't American archaeologists found that, or you know, South
American North American archaeology, why haven't we found the same things?
And his statement to that idea is, quote, archaeologists in
the America's have either been doing things very wrong for
(37:25):
the last ninety years, or we have here an anomaly
that must be accounted for. It makes a lot of
sense to me. We it's it's an anomaly either way.
I would say, it feels like an anomaly that must
be accounted for. Right. And that's not the only big
discovery though there The this one I'm gonna mention here
(37:47):
isn't as recent. It goes back to the turn of
the millennium, back in two thousand and even before that.
There's a place in Brazil. It's a national park called
Sarah the Capivara. It's uh, there's there are several sites there.
I think there are four hundred or something archaeological dig
sites in this national park and in a few of
(38:10):
them there have been paintings, um these amazing cave paintings
as well as other evidence of human life in that area.
That appears to go back twenty two thousand years and
perhaps even further in Brazil. So again, that's humanity in
South America in Brazil a long time before the history
(38:34):
books would would say that we are. But that is
a whole different story for another day. That also, listeners
will note that's that's pretty far from the Pacific coast.
It is really is so both sides. It appears of
the continents where we're being visited by humans, at least visited,
(38:56):
if not lived upon. So what do you think, folks,
when did the first human beings actually reach the American continents?
Let us know we'd love to hear your thoughts. You
can find us all sorts of places on the Internet.
And also, do you think we've got anything wrong when
it comes to the history of humanity on the planet.
(39:17):
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From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of I Heart Radio Welcome back to the show.
(00:25):
My name is Matt, my name is Noel. They call
me Ben. We are joined as always with our super producer,
Paul Mission controlled decond. Most importantly, you are you. You
are here, and that makes this stuff they don't want
you to know. We're diving into some hidden history today.
(00:45):
We're diving into as odd as the phrase may sound,
something new about history, because Faulkner was right. Of course,
the past isn't even the past yet. History is never over.
It's an ongoing conversation. Most people living on the continents
of North and South America are comparatively recent arrivals, right,
(01:09):
while many people living in both South and North America
have a long family history here. Uh. If you look
at the larger scheme of human migration across the planet,
human beings are kind of a new thing for these
two continents. We know roughly, we know ballpark. The story
(01:33):
of humanity. Ancestral primates evolved on the African continent and
from there our species spread around the globe. However, even today,
in on August seven, as we record this, our species
still gets bogged down in the details, especially when we
(01:55):
get to the timeline. So today's question, when did human
beings actually reach the American continents? Here are the facts
Most experts within the fields the various fields of science, anthropology,
and the like. They agree that the story of the
contents of South and North America, at least as we
(02:17):
understand them now, they didn't begin with humans on them,
or humans were not there very early. These landmasses were
home to a lot of creatures, a lot of animals,
a lot of flora and fauna well before human beings arrived.
And of course, if you're taking the really long look
at the Earth, there are millions and millions of years
(02:38):
where humans weren't here, but there were other creatures. But
the big question for today is how did humans specifically
get here onto North and South America. Well, the most
common theory is this idea that involves Clovis culture and
the Bearing Land Bridge. By about fourteen thousand years ago,
(03:00):
the first human beings to reach the America's came by
crossing the Bearing Strait, which was this land bridge between
the far northeastern part of Siberia and the western the
farthest most western part of Alaska. UM. This theory, known
as the Bearing land bridge theory, is the one many
(03:21):
of us grew up listen hearing about, you know, the school.
It actually makes a lot of sense. It's the closest
connection between Asia and North America and it only opens
when ice is locked up on land and then sea
level drops. Yeah, there is a logic here if we're
talking about early human migration that we're talking about people
(03:44):
basically walking right and probably following sources of food, maybe
other animals that they rely on for sustenance. So it
makes sense that they would be able to walk to
North America from literally the only walkable path, which is
(04:06):
this bearing land bridge across the street that you're describing. No,
and all of this is based on the idea that
early humans were unable to craft some kind of boat
or ship that would be able to traverse the Pacific
or Atlantic oceans in the way that we, you know,
began to be able to do as technology developed. Um
(04:28):
that they'll just remember that. That's why scientists always focus
on that land bridge because of the walkability as been said. Yeah, yeah,
that's a good point, Matt. And you know, let's get
in front of the obvious question that many of us
are going to immediately ask, which is, why can I
not walk across that bridge today? Why do I have
(04:49):
to take a boat or a flight, or why do
I have to go on a doomed mission to swim
the Pacific to reach Asia from the America's Well, it's
because we are living in a different time. Back when,
according to this theory, people walked from Asia to North America,
(05:10):
they were doing so during something called the last Glacial
Maximum or l g M. If this comes up so
often in conversation that you don't have time to say
the whole thing, also known as the previous ice age,
the most recent ice age, the most recent ice age, Yeah,
the one before the next one, which maybe we'll be
(05:31):
around to see. Who knows, Uh, it's I can't I
can't rule anything out at this point. So, back when
people were traversing the land in this way, much more
of Earth's water was existing in solid form in glaciers.
(05:51):
And now the difference between then and now is that
the sea levels have risen, so the bridge and the
land these people walked is underwater, meaning also that much
of the evidence of their migration is going to be
lost to time, as the conventional wisdom goes, by this time,
(06:17):
fourteen thousand, fifteen thousand years ago, humans had migrated across
the breadth of South and North America. You go up
to modern day Alaska, you've got humans. Go down to Chile,
you got humans. The West coast is riddled with them.
You go to northeastern Canada, you've got people everywhere. You
(06:38):
go down to Florida, boom, same thing, people plus gators
this time. So what we're telling you right now is
the official, most often told story. And I want to
pause here for you guys. Does this track with what
with Noel Matt? Does this track with what you learned
(06:58):
or were taught growing up about human migration? Basically? Yeah, yeah,
this is precisely what what I recall from world history
classes both in high school and in college. Essentially what
we what we've just described here, the Clovis theory, the
closed hunters, and the evidence that we have found of
(07:20):
their lives back in those days. And it was a
long time ago, but you know, when you look at
the span of what we know about humanity and the
evidence that we found it wasn't it wasn't that long ago. Yeah, yeah,
that's a good point. I think this story is going
to be familiar to many of us because you you
(07:41):
grow up in elementary school, middle school, high school, as
you said, Matt, you go to college and you'll still
hear some version of this. But the problem here is
pretty apparent. With every single nude discovery about the ancient
past and the story of humanity's migration from one place
(08:05):
to the next, well, we find the story gets less
and less clear cut. We don't have we we don't
have specific points of time and shifts of patterns. Right,
we don't have the origin story of humanity. And this
is something that has baffled us on this show since
(08:29):
before Oh gosh, we like we were doing this show
when science discovered new mix tapes of early humanity. Right,
Dennis Sylvans, what was the other Homo floriensis? Yeah. Uh.
The point I'm making here is that we have been
(08:53):
taught a story. We have been sold a narrative in
a very authority titive way, but everything we are learning
as a species indicates that story is not as accurate
as we are led to believe it is when we
(09:13):
are children in school. So that's the question, when did
human beings actually arrive in the America's Before we jump in, Ben,
I just want to dovetail off what you're saying there.
We have been sold this essentially and told this all
of our lives. Everyone listening right now, I would say,
(09:35):
just to make it a little more positive, because it's
the best it's the best picture we've been able to
paint with the information we've had up to this point, right.
And the the problem, I think, the biggest problem that
we're going to be tackling today that we have to address,
is that once that picture is painted, anytime new information,
(09:58):
these new discoveries that you're talking about, Ben, come through,
it becomes more and more difficult to convince the painters
of that picture that there needs to be some revisions,
right because especially if it's a single point or discovery
in one place or a discuss, you know, one person's
(10:18):
one team's discovery rather than three or four in an area.
That's kind of the biggest problem. I see what you're saying,
and it's important because we're we're talking about discovering single
points of information, right, single instances and what are single
instances or examples against a larger body of thoughts, you
(10:42):
know what I mean? Oh yeah, And I mean those
high school textbooks aren't like infinitely long. They gotta figure
out how to tell a version of the story that
is as close to the likely scenario as possible and
teaches you something about the history of you know, life.
But you're right, it is problematic. It can be, for sure,
because who you know, there's so much cantankerousness and science too.
(11:07):
If people making one discovery and then another crew making
something that conflicts with that narrative, and then there's this
kind of beef as to how it really happened. But
there's a lot of politics wrapped up in it and
all of that. So it's interesting for sure to see
the way these things kind of take on a life
of their own, especially like you said, once the Badgers
out of the bag was Ben would Sam. Yeah, that's
that's the issue here. We want to be very clear.
(11:30):
We're not accusing your history textbook publishers of purposely lying
to you, and we are certainly not accusing your favorite
history teachers from grade school of lying to you. Teachers
work incredibly hard Uh. They are some of the most
important people on the planet in my opinion. Uh. And
(11:54):
they're not out to beguile and deceive you, hopefully they're
they're not supposed to be. However, they're working with the
information they have, right, And when we look at the
realm of science and how science is communicated or disseminated
to the population, we see that to your point, met
(12:16):
sometimes people cling to a thing because it is the
established fact now that does that. That is indicative of
a lack of skepticism or a lack of critical thinking.
It's also a very human understandable things psychologically speaking. Right.
I don't want to, uh, I don't want to seem
(12:39):
as though we are being dismissive or derogatory towards the
many people who have spent their entire academic careers studying
various incredibly specific aspects of Clovis theory or the current
official story of human migration. But I will say in
(13:00):
the past, I am sure there are people who spent
decades researching one thing and published about it, and then
they're there, and then new evidence was discovered that disproved
or challenged their life's work, and so they just kind
of you know, played it to the left. What am
(13:21):
I gonna do after forty five years in the game
change my mind? Would be a better world if people
did that, but they often don't. Yeah, it's it's another
situation where once you have this established fact, you have
to go far and beyond to prove that you're that
that fact needs to be altered or negated, right you.
(13:44):
That's why it becomes so difficult, um to make these
big changes to two existing stories. And they are stories.
Don't don't don't kid yourself. These are stories that we
are constructing based on the things that we have found.
And as we tackle this big question today, when did
humans arrive in the America's we're going to realize that
(14:07):
this thing is much more complicated than we expected. And
we'll tell you all about it right after a word
from our sponsor. Here's where it gets crazy. You see,
the timeline is shifting on us. The things we treated
(14:29):
with such certitude turn out to be much less absolute
than we had imagined. And it again, it goes back
to the timeline. I think that's that's a big part
of what the three of us are talking about today. Yeah,
that's right. I mean, you may recall that we only
said human beings were spread across the continents by fourteen
(14:51):
to fifteen thousand years ago UM. For authors like Craig Childs,
this shows that humanity by this point was most likely
already pretty well spread throughout one or more areas of
the continents before this. And there's several major theories that
(15:12):
explain this. So let's start with a theory that we
sort of talked about at the top of the show, UH,
the Clovis first theory. This is the idea that the
first human migration happened after the last glacial maximum, which
is exactly what it sounds like UM, and this migration
later went into decline UM, only to be followed up
(15:33):
by you know, subsequent waves of humans from other parts
of the world. So this connects all of these first
inhabitants of the America's with the Clovis culture UM, which
is something called a prehistorica paleo American culture that's named
for the distinctive stone tools that were found in Clovis,
(15:53):
New Mexico in the twenties UM. This also rolls into
that bearing land straight idea, which we've talked about in
previous episodes and or at the top of this one.
So this is your I guess. In the UK they
would call it your bog standard explanation for how human
beings ended up on these continents. It's strange because this
(16:17):
concept existed for a very long time, despite the fact
that there were so many questions about it. If you
look at the Clovis culture, the Clovis people, you'll find
an historical mystery. It's as if they appeared out of
nowhere and then suddenly disappeared. Radio carbon dating tells us
(16:41):
that what we regard as the people of the Clovis
culture appeared in modern day America around nine thousand, two
hundred b C. And then five years later they vanished.
So the the important distinction there that that you're bringing
(17:02):
up now is the idea that these folks came over
after that glacial maximum, after that ice age, around the
decline of that ice age, they were able to traverse
the siege perilous of the Bearing Strait, and they were
from there able to spread throughout the continent. But of
(17:25):
course this theory did not exist in a vacuum. There
are many other theories about early humans arriving on these continents,
and for centuries, people have argued back and forth about
this even before they could find solid evidence. What I
mean by this is, even before we had scientific standards
(17:48):
for collecting, cataloging, and contextualizing evidence and information, we had many,
many beliefs in civilization about humanity's origin story. On this continent,
you will find numerous religions that argue some some version
(18:11):
of an original person springing out of whole cloth or
in some cases being created by a divine entity on
on these continents. And then you will also see further
research that's admittedly more secular, uh, that kind of forensically
(18:31):
traces what we know about people on the planet on
other continents, right like we this is let's just say
it coastal migration. Could people have gotten here by boats?
Because if you can build a boat, that seems at
least a little bit it seems a little bit easier
(18:52):
to travel to this new land via watercraft than to
walk through the frozen way lands of the bearing straight. Oh. Absolutely,
And note here that we're talking about coastal migration and
that sounds exactly like you imagine it to be. That is,
following along a coast at you know, some distance far
(19:16):
enough away from it, but essentially following the water along
a coast on a boat of some kind. That doesn't
mean going straight out into the ocean right the way
the way you can with larger ships and more reliable ships. Now, uh,
it's very different. So there are a lot of sources,
(19:39):
there are a lot of people institutions, and there's some
research that suggests that this may be a possibility coastal migration.
So we know for for sure that in places like
Japan and parts of Korea South Korea, there have been
amazing archaeological discoveries that have found that humans during the
(20:00):
Ice Age were able to navigate coastal waters even though
it was so frigid and there's ice in many places,
they were able to do that, and they were essentially
navigating the northern Pacific coasts of what is now modern
or what we would consider modern day Japan and Korea
(20:21):
and come chaka with with boats. So it's really no
stretch to imagine that humans at some point, perhaps we're
able to reach the America's by boat using coastal migration.
And here's why it makes sense, because you could right
at the end of the Ice Age there where we're
(20:42):
imagining that people were physically walking across that bearing straight.
Perhaps they were on boats just previous to the end
of that glacial maximum, or during the maximum, or even
after it, taking boats and following the coast, because you'd
end up in Alaska, you'd get to British Columbia, then
(21:05):
down south to Washington, to Oregon, all along the Pacific
coast of what is now the United States. And it's
pretty incredible that humanity, even during an ice age, was
able to both survive and prosper and even migraine. It's
strange to think about the world in in that way,
(21:28):
to imagine a contiguous coast. And I like the point
you're making that about the watercraft involved, because you know,
these aren't cargo ships. These aren't mega yachts or or
schooners or frigoteens or pontoons or I'm just naming boat
boat words. Now, does anybody else have a boat? Where?
(21:48):
What's up? One? You like? No frigate, frigate, yeah, frigging frigate.
These were none of those things. These were Yes, these
were not even tugboats. They were they were small coastal
craft right like brown water Navy kind of stuff. They
(22:08):
weren't meant to go into the open ocean. They were
just kind of tracing along the line of the coast,
but if that coast is never ending, so they're just
sort of following a thing, and it's like a video
game wherein there, you know there is a larger world
out there. You have a rough idea of the parts
(22:30):
of the map you've seen, but everything else is obscured,
you know what I mean. So so you may as
well imagine that you are just always on the same
coast of a thing you call the land. Who knows
if there's anything other than the land and then you
know the water. What is compelling about that to me
(22:52):
is what what spurred that movement? And you know, we
we discussed we discussed the migration of animals that were
used for hunting right for food for the populations, as
a possible reason to just continue down the coast if
fish populations, maybe because it's obvious that those boats were
(23:12):
would be used for fishing purposes, for catching food. Um,
you know, I wonder if there was something This is
completely just off the top of my head, but I
wonder what the thing was that spurred whichever group, however
large or small it was, to continue down that coast
(23:34):
and just to keep going to see what's what's next. Oh,
I wish I knew. I mean necessity, I would imagine,
but I wonder if it wasn't, I wouldn't wonder it
was a spiritual belief or or um something that's deep inside.
I think all of us to just find out, well,
there's something over there. Let's let's find out that's inspiring,
(23:57):
you know, especially now as the next big step in
space exploration may occur within our lifetimes. One one other
thing that may have happened just environmentally is people may
have just been following the recession of the ice. Depending
(24:18):
on where you put them in the timeline, people may
have just been going further along the coast because they
were able to see more of the coast. I'm not
being dismissive. I'm just saying, like it the environment appears
to change so slowly that you might not be fully
(24:38):
aware of how far you're migrating because you're you know,
your grandparents, we're miles away or kilometers away for the
rest of the world, and then you two generations later
still feel like you're by the edge of the ice.
But the ice itself has moved, So I think we're
(25:00):
gonna take one more quick break and then we're gonna
get into some new discoveries when we return. So um,
there have been some efforts recently, some research that's kinda
put this traditional narrative on its head a bit um,
(25:22):
And that includes some stuff very very recently published just
in the last month. In a paper known called the
Timing and Effect of the Earliest Human Arrivals in North America,
uh Lorena Bassara Valdiva and Thomas I am Um look
into a pretty awesome and bizarre discovery. What they found
(25:44):
was a piece of limestone from this very specific cave,
the Chiquahite Cave in north central Mexico, that could potentially
prove that humans actually first arrived on the continent much
much early here than that narrative would have us believe,
the one we know from school. Yes, uh, I've waited
(26:07):
for this, Okay. So, like many of our fellow listeners,
we grew up. I don't want to speak for everybody,
let me let me clarify. I grew up convinced that
there was hidden history everywhere, you know, and I was
I was certain, probably just because I was a jerk,
that human beings had all these ancient civilizations and that
(26:31):
they had a much longer time on these two continents specifically,
and without getting into the weeds on all the crazy
stuff that's out there, this is different because this is proof.
This is quantitative proof that the first people, if people
(26:56):
built these tools you're mentioning, all arrived on North and
South America, like thirty three thousand years ago. That's nuts
just to put, just to put in perspective how much
time that is. I hope no one gets mad at
me for bringing this up. Was forty years ago, right, So, like,
(27:21):
I think that's gonna hit people when you think about
thirty three thousand years. Yeah, I mean, let's just pretend
that humans live a hundred years, right, that's three hundred
and thirty human like human cycles iterations. Yeah. Yeah, it's
(27:41):
a it's a very it's very long story. And you know,
for quite a while, there would be various people propagating
what was essentially some narrative without proof. They would say,
you know, I have had a spiritual awakening and I
realized that the true story of insert usually specific brand
(28:03):
of people here is that they came to modern day
South or Central America or North America, uh like after
the Fall of Atlantis or the sinking of Lemuria or something.
And the problem is they didn't have proof. This is
different because this is not tinfoil hat territory. Archaeologists in
(28:27):
this cave discovered specifically three deliberately shaped pieces of limestone.
They discovered a pointing stone and two cutting flakes. Right now,
pending new discoveries, these are the oldest human made tools
(28:50):
discovered on these continents. They absolutely do not fit that
timeline we were all taught in school. They also they're
also just one of several discoveries in this cave. Because
this cave is like a an episode of Hoarders where
the hoarder is just collecting sediment. The archaeologists spent a
(29:11):
lot of arduous time digging carefully through various layers of sediment.
It's kind of like a time capsule time machine. And
these tools they found are in like the very back
of the cave, in the deepest layer of the random
rocks and pebbles and bits of sediment that have accumulated
(29:33):
there over time. This is important because when we know
the layer in which they were found, we have an
enormous head start on figuring out when they were left
in that layer, and these things were here way before
the last glacial maximum, way before the last ice age
(29:55):
that occurred, like what between twenty six thousand and nineteen
thousand years ago, which means before that, someone was in
this cave and they had made tools and they they
forgot them. So if you think about it, because somebody
did the equivalent of forgetting their keys at home, we
(30:15):
are upending the story of human history thousands of years later.
We truly are. And we're gonna tell you more about
how this discovery was occurred. But I want to jump
to another recent article from Nature that was published in
July of this year, and it is titled evidence of
human occupation in Mexico around the Last Glacial Maximum, and
(30:39):
I'm going to read a quick quote from the abstract
of it just to give you an understanding what's happening here.
It's pretty incredible because not only did they find those
limestone artifacts that we're talking about, there are those tools.
There was a lot more and there is a lot
more still being found right now. So from this article,
(31:00):
it states the site yielded about one thousand, nine hundred
stone artifacts within a three meter deep stratus stratified sequence,
revealing a previously unknownlithic industry that underwent only minor changes
over millennia. More than fifty radio carbon and luminescence dates
provide chronological control and genetic, paleo, environmental, and chemical data
(31:25):
that document the changing environments in which the occupants lived. Now,
that is when you're talking about finding proof, right that
you could be able to show to another scientist, to
fellow sciences and say, hey, look at all of this
data we've collected from these things. You're you're talking about
(31:45):
several different ways in which they are testing this stuff,
with luminescence testing, with radio carbon testing. Um. I mean,
it's pretty incredible stuff here, and it really does show
that humans were in that cave, as Ben said, way
before that ice age. And these researchers and scientists who
are there in that cave are continuing and they're gonna
(32:07):
keep digging and they're gonna keep looking and who knows
what else we're going to discover. But the reason why
it took so long to find this stuff, and it
will take a long time to probably find more, is
because of how difficult it is to reach this location.
This is this is kind of a sunk cost for
those poor archaeologists. Uh. The lead author of one of
(32:29):
those studies is very very clear about how much of
a pain in the key stre it is to get
to this cave at all. He said that once they
got there, Cypriot Arduently by the way, lead author of
that that's so you're mentioning, Mattuh, he said that once
they got there, they just had to live there. It
takes the whole day to get there from the nearest town,
(32:51):
and part of that day is a continuous five hour climb.
It called it a logistical nightmare. So it's one of
those things where have you ever been in a very
unusual place or a place that was very difficult to
get to, and you just thought, you know, while i'm here,
I'm gonna do everything I can. That's what they're doing
in this cave. They're saying, Okay, while we're here, let's
(33:15):
get all of the information that that we can find.
This is a logistical nightmare. But the nightmare has paid
off because it appears that this cave was not used
once is tremendously important distinction. This cave was not something
that Uh, an early human being accidentally happened to spend
(33:40):
the night in right and then left their tools and
went on their merry way. This cave was used over
thousands of years by various people. It was kind It
was like a trocoldtic version of a hotel. As use
trocolate dietic again last time. But what we mean here
(34:02):
is was a long It was a long standing known
temporary refuge for some sort of nomadic people, and they
must have communicated knowledge of this cave two later generations,
possibly via oral history. Maybe enough time passed that that
(34:22):
oral history became legend. You can imagine that it might
have been some kind of religious religious pilgrimage of some
sort or something. I mean again, that's me completely making
it up, but you can imagine that something like that
could be the scenario. Because of what they've been finding.
There could be a very special cave for one reason
or another that we just don't know yet. Yeah, we
(34:45):
don't know. That's the thing that the history is so
thin here because of all the time that has passed.
What we do know is that the conventional story many
people were taught needs some revision. It needs to be updated.
It's astonishing because most of North America was covered with
(35:06):
ice during that ice age. So if people were leaving
tools in this cave at this time, and if they
were migrating coastally right or however they got here, it
means that they got here before that ice age began,
or that means it's possible they did. So this means
(35:29):
that despite everything, a lot of people were taught in
grade school. It appears that at least very small numbers
of human beings lived in North America and possibly other
parts of these two continents, Central and South America during
and immediately after the last ice Age, And what we
thought was the first migration is actually a second or
(35:55):
subsequent wave. The human population grew larger after this pre
read of abrupt kind of global warming that started fourteen
to fifteen thousand years ago. So don't call it a
come back. They've always been here, right, It's strange. Oh yeah,
And I think that study also suggested that some people
had entered the America as before twenty nine thousand years ago,
(36:19):
and that's possibly along the Pacific coast. Um And one
final note, um anthropologist Matthew Delorius of California State UH
in San Bernardino raises a really important question to kind
of leave you with, Um, how could ancient people who
had been in the America's for more than twenty five
thousand years have remained quote archaeologically invisible for over ten
(36:41):
thousand years? Um? And and he had he has an answer,
he he does. But but his big question there is
raised from the fact that in other places like Australia,
in Japan, archaeologists have had no difficulty in finding evidence
of human occupation and from that same time period they've
(37:02):
been able to dig down and find Oh wow, yeah,
this is this is from twenty thousand years ago. Um,
why haven't American archaeologists found that, or you know, South
American North American archaeology, why haven't we found the same things?
And his statement to that idea is, quote, archaeologists in
the America's have either been doing things very wrong for
(37:25):
the last ninety years, or we have here an anomaly
that must be accounted for. It makes a lot of
sense to me. We it's it's an anomaly either way.
I would say, it feels like an anomaly that must
be accounted for. Right. And that's not the only big
discovery though there The this one I'm gonna mention here
(37:47):
isn't as recent. It goes back to the turn of
the millennium, back in two thousand and even before that.
There's a place in Brazil. It's a national park called
Sarah the Capivara. It's uh, there's there are several sites there.
I think there are four hundred or something archaeological dig
sites in this national park and in a few of
(38:10):
them there have been paintings, um these amazing cave paintings
as well as other evidence of human life in that area.
That appears to go back twenty two thousand years and
perhaps even further in Brazil. So again, that's humanity in
South America in Brazil a long time before the history
(38:34):
books would would say that we are. But that is
a whole different story for another day. That also, listeners
will note that's that's pretty far from the Pacific coast.
It is really is so both sides. It appears of
the continents where we're being visited by humans, at least visited,
(38:56):
if not lived upon. So what do you think, folks,
when did the first human beings actually reach the American continents?
Let us know we'd love to hear your thoughts. You
can find us all sorts of places on the Internet.
And also, do you think we've got anything wrong when
it comes to the history of humanity on the planet.
(39:17):
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