The Solutrean culture flourished during the Upper Paleolithic (about 25,000 years ago) in what is now France and Spain. It was these Solutrean people who were likely responsible for the beautiful and sophisticated cave art found at such celebrated sites as Altamira and Lascaux. They also manufactured distinctive stone tools through a process called "pressure flaking." It was mainly the look of these tools that caused a handful of researchers — beginning with Frank Hibben in the 1930s and continuing with Dennis Stanford in the late 20th century — to theorize that the Solutrean people may have been the first humans to arrive in the Americas.
Clovis Culture and the First Americans
The overriding consensus among paleoanthropologists and others who study prehistoric peoples is that the Americas were first colonized by a band of large game hunters traveling from eastern Siberia over a land bridge in the Bering Strait during the last Ice Age; this likely occurred somewhere in the neighborhood of 14,000 years ago. The descendents of these people spread across North and South America over the next few millennia, and were the ancestors of modern Native Americans. Genetic evidence has bolstered this theory immensely, as the most common haplogroups among Native Americans are clearly associated with Asian populations.
But Hibben, Stanford and others have pointed out that the stone tools these early settlers made — called Clovis points, after the site in Clovis, New Mexico where the first examples were found — are very similar in appearance to the stone tools made by members of the European Solutrean culture. Both tool types are pressure-flaked, both are bifacial (worked on both sides), and both are tall and thin with concave bases. While it is true that Clovis points are generally fluted while Solutrean points are not, the similarity was sufficient for Stanford, in 1999, to put forward a radical hypothesis.
Prehistoric Spaniards Discover America?
According to Solutrean theory, ancient Europeans somehow crossed the Atlantic sometime around 20,000 years ago, either by boat or on foot, mostly skirting the edge of the pack ice that might have connected France with North America at the time. These people supposedly brought their distinctive stone tools with them, and when the Siberian travelers arrived much later, they simply adopted the technology of the already present Europeans.
Kennewick Man and Haplogroup X
Proponents of the Solutrean hypothesis point to a few archaeological sites — such as Meadowcroft Rock Shelter in Pennsylvania and Monte Verde in Chile — that seem to suggest an earlier occupation than that agreed upon for the Clovis people. They were also quick to trumpet the discovery of Kennewick Man in 1996, a skeleton found in Washington State that appeared to be an ancient Caucasian. Finally, they argue, the presence of mitochondrial haplogroup X in Asians but not Native Americans or Europeans was suggestive of a link between the latter two populations rather than the former two.
Criticisms of Solutrean Theory
Critics of the hypothesis, citing further research and discoveries as well as logical inconsistencies, have clarified and refuted many of the points put forth by Solutrean proponents. Most of the supposedly pre-Clovis sites, for example, have been found on deeper investigation to be less ancient than initially thought. In addition, Kennewick Man has not been definitively identified as Caucasian; he may have been Native American, and in any case his skeleton is only 7,500-9,000 years old, too recent to support the Solutrean-first hypothesis.
Better genetic research, further, has turned up examples of haplogroup X in Native Americans, strengthening the already well-supported link between Asia and the Americas. Researchers have also pointed out that conditions were likely not favorable for an Atlantic crossing at the time of the supposed Solutrean migration; it is uncertain whether an extensive ice pack existed between the continents, and no evidence of boats or human habitation have so far been found along the route.
Finally, even though Clovis and Solutrean points are similar in design and manufacture, most critics dismiss this as mere coincidence, since there are only so many ways of making stone tools, and further state that art like that found in European caves has never been discovered in the Americas; it seems unlikely that the Solutrean people would have brought their tools but not their art to the New World.
Sources:
Colavito, Jason. "Who Really Discovered America?" Skeptic. Vol 12 No 3 2006: 50-55.
Parfit, Michael. "Hunt for the First Americans." National Geographic. Dec 2000: 40-67.
Stang, John. "Kennewick Man's secrets still mostly secret." Seattle Post-Intelligencer. July 13 2009. Accessed Feb 12 2010. seattlepi.com
Jenny Ashford - Jenny Ashford is a writer and graphic artist from central Florida. Her main area of interest in her Suite 101 articles is science, with a ...
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