The Solutrean Hypothesis Meets Mainstream Science: A False Response to a Real Problem vs. A Real Response to a False Problem
World Archaeology 46, no. 5 (2014): 752-774. DOI: 10.1080/00438243.2014.966273
Solutrean Hypothesis: Genetics, the Mammoth in the Room
Stephen Oppenheimer, Bruce Bradley, and Dennis Stanford.
Abstract
The Solutrean hypothesis for the origin of the Clovis archaeological culture contends that people came from south-western Europe to North America during the Last Glacial Maximum. This hypothesis has received numerous critiques, but little objective testing, either of cultural or genetic evidence. We contest the assertion that there is NO genetic evidence to support this hypothesis, and detail the published evidence, consistent with a pre-Columbian western Eurasian origin for some founding genetic markers, specifically mtDNA X2a, and some autosomal influence, found in ancient and modern Native American populations. The possibility that the inferred pre-Columbian western autosomal influence came more directly than through Siberia is not even considered in such studies. The mtDNA X2a evidence is more consistent with the Atlantic route and dates suggested by the Solutrean hypothesis and is more parsimonious than the assumption of a single Beringian entry, that assumes retrograde extinction of X in East Eurasia.
The emergence in the past 15 years of the Solutrean hypothesis for the origin of Clovis is somewhat an oddity. Advocated by two well institutionalized archaeologists, Dennis Stanford and Bruce Bradley, it shares the belief in the recent (either Clovis-First-recent or just-a-few-thousand-years-pre-Clovis-recent) extra-American origin of New World populations with its intellectual adversary, the mainstream Bering Strait tradition. But it argues that the earliest pan-American archaeological signature, namely the Clovis-like foliate points, was of West European, and specifically Solutrean, origin. This contention based on formal similarities between Clovis and Solutrean points is accompanied by a scenario whereby the bearers of Solutrean technologies did not walk across Eurasia but instead ventured “directly” across the Atlantic Ocean. A theory postulating a migration by land from West Eurasia to America would have been a sufficient challenge to the academic mainstream but Stanford and Bradley had to throw in a maritime Atlantic route for this migration to make sure a major controversy ensues.
After having presented in a number of publications, most importantly in the monograph entitled Across Atlantic Ice (2013), the archaeological evidence for the Solutrean hypothesis, Stanford and Bradley now discuss genetic evidence for the Solutrean migration. Their goal is to rally against the dismissive attitude shown to the Solutrean hypothesis by population geneticists. Being archaeologists and not geneticists, they co-opted into their team a popular interpreter of population-genetic evidence and a guru of coastal and maritime colonization models, Stephen Oppenheimer. Once a proponent of an ill-supported “beachcomber” migration out of Africa, Oppenheimer has now re-emerged as an advocate for a major trans-Atlantic migration from Europe to North America.
What we learn from these academic dissenters is that
“The Solutrean hypothesis (SH) currently offers an archaeological explanation for the origins of the majority of pre-Clovis cultural assemblages and their in situ evolution into Clovis; no such credible cultural-evolutionary sequence has been offered for Palaeolithic East Eurasia as their cultural source.”
What this means is that there is no archaeological evidence for an East Eurasian origin of Amerindians. And this revelation comes some 100 years after archaeologists have convinced everybody (and most recently population geneticists) that they have overwhelming evidence that Amerindians derive from East Asia.
But then Oppenheimer, Bradley and Stanford (2014, 758) accept geneticists’ conclusion that the 4 out of 5 founding New World mtDNA lineages (A, B, C and D) have a “clear” East Eurasian origin and are not found in West Eurasia. (Those are the geneticists who initially accepted archaeologists’ claim that Amerindians came from East Asia – a claim that Stanford and Bradley believe does not really have the material evidence behind it.)
But while 4 out of 5 pan-American mtDNA clades are apparently derived from Asia, the earliest pan-American lithic tradition is not, according to Oppenheimer, Bradley and Stanford (2014). It is derived from the fifth, low-frequency lineage, namely mtDNA X2, which is restricted to North America. So, the Solutrean hypothesis paints a picture in which the vast majority of Amerindian mtDNA lineages stem from a founding population that left no “credible cultural-evolutionary sequence” between land-linked East Asia and America, while a small minority of North Amerindian mtDNA lineages derive from a founding population that easily maintained technological continuity with its source lithic tradition in southwestern Europe despite all the vicissitudes of a trans-Atlantic crossing and, in the New World, spawned a lithic signature that’s recognizably the same from the Mesa Complex in Alaska to the so-called “fish-tail” points in South America. In any other part of the world, such an adventurous, non-parsimonious and ad hoc hypothesis would not even have emerged among judicious academics, but the prehistory of the New World is a special case! Stanford and Bradley are grappling with and thus putting under a microscope a real problem ignored by mainstream science, so it does not really matter that their solution is a false and hopeless one.
Indeed, mainstream science has no good explanation for mtDNA hg X2, which is found in West Asia, North Africa and all over western and central Europe at low frequencies, and then again in North America at somewhat higher frequencies that reach 30% in Algonquin-speaking Ojibwe. Oppenheimer, Bradley and Stanford (2014, 765) criticize mainstream science for not providing any evidence for the presence of hg X in East Eurasia and for finding comfort in the belief that it was simply lost there.
“In spite of such theoretical claims, long-distance uniparental lineage migration nearly always leaves, not only a trail, but progressive, geographically-defined mutational branch markers. One of the best examples of such trail-persistence, can be found in the progression of B4a1a from SE Asia through the Melanesian islands to Eastern Polynesia in the Pacific. In spite of serial founding
effects and drift a progressive genetic trail can be traced along the island chain evolving through B4a1a1, to B4a1a1a to B4a1a1a1. In spite of evident drift, nowhere is the trail actually lost en route (Fig. S1 in Soares et al. 2011). If a phylogeographically specific genetic trail can be left across the Pacific Islands in spite of serial founder effects, it is more likely, than not, to be left somewhere in the landmass of East Eurasia or at least have left specific traces.”
In their passionate critique of mainstream inertia Oppenheimer, Bradley and Stanford, however, forget that the Solutrean hypothesis can offer neither a “progressive genetic trail” that runs across the Atlantic, not even the “islands” to hop over. It does not offer a better solution to the X2 puzzle; it only makes the conundrum starker. Moreover, they conveniently ignore the fact that hg B shares with hg X the pattern of not being found among Siberian populations, and hg B is not a West Eurasian lineage.
Recent whole-genome and ancient DNA studies have affirmed the reality of a West Eurasian-Amerindian connection (to the exclusion of East Eurasians) but Oppenheimer, Bradley and Stanford (2014), who are clearly enamored with mtDNA hg X2, are strangely taciturn about them. Their treatment of “autosomal evidence for pre-Columbian West Eurasian admixture” is just 1.5 pages long! This reticence to delve deep into what has emerged as the strongest genetic evidence for non-East Eurasian affinities of New World populations can be explained by the mere novelty of the whole-genome data and the complex statistics behind it. But most likely Oppenheimer, Bradley and Stanford (2014) glanced over the growing body of studies simply because they know that they disprove the sexiest parts of the Solutrean hypothesis, namely the trans-Atlantic crossing and the unique link between southwest Europe and North America.
The two ancient DNA samples pose the strongest challenge and provide the germs of the strongest alternative to the Solutrean hypothesis. These samples are Mal’ta (24,000 YBP) and Anzick (11,500 YBP). As Fig. 1 (from Raghavan et al. 2013) and Fig. 3 (from Rasmussen et al. 2014) (see below) show, Mal’ta and Anzick show a very similar pattern of shared genetic drift with other human populations. Anzick (right) is just more divergent from Old World populations than Mal’ta (left), which displays medium-strong affinities with Northern Europeans.
Mal’ta DNA comes from an archaeological site located in South Siberia (and not in Western Europe) – a region that many mainstream science publications postulated as a likely ultimate source for New World populations. But its link to modern Amerindians is surprisingly strong considering the pre-LGM date. A somewhat weaker Amerindian signal is showed by Paleolithic central (Kostenki), Mesolithic southeastern (La Brana) and modern northern Europeans. Importantly, Mal’ta DNA, while located within the putative geographic source area for Amerindians, does not show any East Eurasian influence whatsoever, to the dismay of mainstream science. But it does not belong to mtDNA hg X either. Its mtDNA falls under hg U, which is a likely signature of Upper Paleolithic West Eurasians and it is not found among Amerindians. It’s rather closely related to Amerindian hg B, which, as Oppenheimer, Bradley and Stanford agree, has East Eurasian affinities.
Ancient Anzick DNA, which is derived from the only available physical specimen associated with Clovis tools, belongs to mtDNA hg D4h3, which Oppenheimer, Bradley and Stanford would agree is an East Eurasian signature in the New World mitochondrial gene pool. And Anzick DNA clustered with Central and South American Indians to the exclusion of North American Indians, which geneticists attributed to “undocumented stream of gene flow” into Northern Amerindians. In order to salvage the Solutrean hypothesis from a barrage of new facts, Oppenheimer, Bradley and Stanford had to appeal to the growing archaeological evidence that there were people in the New World before Clovis. They (2014, 767) found a truly intriguing tension in geneticists’ data:
“Testing the model of ‘undocumented stream of gene flow’, they looked for and found ‘no evidence for Siberian gene flow into the Northern Amerinds’ (Rasmussen et al. 2014, SI Sect. 15.4, 27).”
And they quickly tried to hijack it to bolster the Solutrean hypothesis:
“But, again they did not explore the alternative explanatory possibility of an earlier trans-Atlantic stream of gene flow which, by virtue of geography, would influence the NA in East Canada to a greater extent than the SA populations, in this context.”
But whole-genome data shows that Northern Amerindians are more shifted toward East Asians than are Central and Southern Amerindians. And geneticists’ models have West Eurasian gene flow enter ancestral Amerindians after their separation from East Asians, not before, as Oppenheimer, Bradley and Stanford (2014) would like to have it.
The Solutrean hypothesis is trapped on all sides (technological parallels between Clovis and Solutrean are overstated, a trans-Atlantic crossing is hard to fathom or prove, Clovis mtDNA has East Eurasian affinities, Clovis autosomal DNA has South American affinities, pre-LGM South Siberian DNA has West Eurasian affinities making a “direct” maritime link with North America in post-LGM times theoretically superfluous, etc.) and is doomed to fail. It’s disappointing that the authors demand a “fair hearing” for their ideas from geneticists (“[I]t is presumed in all these analyses that the inferred pre-Columbian west Eurasian admixture into Native Americans arrived via Beringia and there was no mention of the possibility that this pre-Columbian west-Eurasian admixture could, alternatively, have come across the Atlantic. There was nothing in the analysis, which formally or explicitly determined the geographic direction of inferred, shared West Eurasian population ancestry, from Siberia or from the Atlantic”) instead of learning from recent genetic research and adapting their hypothesis to the new realities, which mainstream science, too, cannot explain. Just like mainstream scientists with their shiny “Beringian Standstill,” “Coastal Migration,” “American Indians Came from South Siberia” ideas, Stanford and Bradley seem to be firmly wedded to the fancy and media-worthy side of their thinking (“Solutreans in America,” “trans-Atlantic crossing,” etc.) and not to the analysis of the actual interdisciplinary and multitemporal data that’s now growing exponentially.
Mainstream science is right in dismissing the Solutrean hypothesis on both archaeological and genetic grounds. But, while hopeless, the Solutrean hypothesis will take its mainstream alternatives with it into the grave. Just like there’s no “credible cultural-evolutionary sequence” between Pleistocene East Eurasian technologies and Clovis, Oppenheimer, Bradley and Stanford (2014, 754) confirm that
“there is no established Western Eurasian archaeological trail east of Mal’ta, and into Alaska (as implicit in the archaeo-genetic Upper Palaeolithic route claim in the Mal’ta paper), early enough or archaeologically congruent enough to be ancestral to the older-than-Clovis cultural remains in eastern North America (Collins et al. 2013). The other site mentioned (Afontova Gora) is even further west than Mal’ta and Soviet researchers interpreted that if anything the directionality indicated by Mal’ta to Afontova Gora is to the northwest not toward Beringia.”
The ultimate weakness of the Solutrean hypothesis is not its formal archaeological, geographical or genetic merits but the untested assumptions and false problems it shares with the mainstream models of the “peopling of the Americas” regarding the derived nature of Amerindian culture and genetics and the recent timeframes for the “peopling of the Americas.” The strength of the Solutrean hypothesis is its sober assessment of the actual archaeological content behind the claim of East Eurasian origins of Amerindians (from both an East Asian and Mal’ta-like sources) and its contention that “genetics should not be used, as in the past, to find support for the current most influential archaeological paradigm; rather it should objectively test all testable migration-models” (Oppenheimer, Bradley and Stanford 2014, 755). I can only hope that the out-of-America hypothesis will receive an objective test as well some day.
German,
Sorry for the false start,
Stanford and Bradley have taken a lot of heat for their theory, and some of it doesn’t stand up to scrutiny either.
One of the most prevalent critiques is that the solutreans werent a maritime society, that has been shown to not be the case as there is a Solutrean presence at Gorhams cave on Gibraltar, and bb seal bones have been found at solutrean sites, they used limpets as packable food when they went upland to hunt terrestrial game.
Their theory isn’t based solely on physical similarities in points, but also on several points of physical culture, such as the nearly identical camp layouts and the Mfg of bas relief carved “plaques”.
Other facets of “Clovis” culture aslo led them to their idea, such as the fact that Clovis certainly spreads from the SE to the north west.
As I see it, the biggest flaw in their theory is the direction of influence. It wasn’t Solutreans that came to the new world, it was Paleoindians that moved across the a Atlantic to influence the proto Solutreans.
If I’ve read the available lit. correctly, not much is available in English, the points that Stanford and Bradley, ( the cinmar bipoint and others ) point to as showing a connection, predate the appearance of the laurel/willow leaf in France , by a couple of thousand years.
So I actually see thier work as reinforcing an Out of America scenario.
Thanks Cevin. It’s an interesting perspective and I haven’t considered the possibility to interpret the Solutrean-Clovis parallels in a reverse, out-of-America fashion because of the dates (Solutrean being a good 10,000 years older than Clovis). But in this case I would still favor a land route across the Bering Strait and Eurasia. I just don’t think a trans-Atlantic crossing is a falsifiable theory one way or the other. Plus I think that Algonquins migrated east ultimately from an area west of the Rockies (the Ritwans in California seem to validate this theory), so X used to be a largely western marker in North America as early as mid-Holocene.
The Establishment has established the trail of migration backwards. That is why they deny and dismiss the ancient sites that disprove their false claims.
One such site is The Arkfeld Site (44FK731)in the Shenandoah Valley of Va. with C14 dates that exceed 43,500 bp. and numerous old world artifacts. Overwhelming proof of an ancient N. American culture is here and I invite the scientific community to prove me wrong.
Adam Arkfeld
German,
“Plus I think that Algonquins migrated east ultimately from an area west of the Rockies (the Ritwans in California seem to validate this theory), so X used to be a largely western marker in North America as early as mid-Holocene.”
Thanks for that tidbit of info.
I noticed in my reading about the Wiyot and Yurok, that they have a distinctive body type compared to their neighbors, and their mythology is also very different.
I have wondered about the timing of the arriva lof the algic speakers in california, in relation to the other language families.
One idea that has rattled around in my head is that clovis and solutrean represent divergent arms of a common earlier group, ie ancient west eurasians maybe?
“Ancient Anzick DNA, which is derived from the only available physical specimen associated with Clovis tools, belongs to mtDNA hg D4h3, which Oppenheimer, Bradley and Stanford would agree is an East Eurasian signature in the New World mitochondrial gene pool. And Anzick DNA clustered with Central and South American Indians to the exclusion of North American Indians, which geneticists attributed to “undocumented stream of gene flow” into Northern Amerindians.”
There is an archeologist working for the BLM, in Alaska, that is making a case for there being at least two distinct culture in the new world at this time period, thick bodied lanceolate points as exampled by the mesa complex and hasket, and thin bodied as represented by clovis, solutrean and cactus hill. He is drawing a link between Monte Verde El Jobo points in SA and Mesa/Hasket points in NW NA, via Tiama-Tiama in northern Venezuala, with the older points being further south.
I can see this as being supportive of a movement of people from SA into central america and the us NW, thereby bringin anzick’s SA leaning genome to the NW.
Here is a link to a presentation he did a couple of years ago, its very informative.
With respect to Anzick and clovis, would it not be premature to make sweeping generalizations of continent wide populations based on one individual?
IMO clovis, out side of its core range, likley represents a technological complex more than a cultural one. A superior cutting tech that supplanted older less efficient ones as different groups came into contact and traded goodds and ideas. An ancient quarry in idaho show that different cultural groups used the same quarry during the same time, some maybe only days apart. Also the distances some some lithic materials traveled rule out the idea they were moved by a single entity, but had to have been passed off through trade. The best example is the chert from baffin island that shows up in southern pennsylvania.
sorry forgot the link
http://www.ele.net/kunz/mesamonte.htm
German, as an outsider I must tell you I’m a bit puzzled by the vehemence with which you reject the Solutrean hypothesis. You seem to be doing your bit of misrepresentation of the ‘enemy’-viewpoint. I think you’re well aware of this, so I’ll not substantiate here (don’t want to be too boring). It’s just not the academic spirit as I have always understood this … But I’m a European, and when I was a student I was told that scholars want to arrive at the truth together by welcoming the counter-arguments (admittedy by people who’d cut each other’s throats given half the chance …). Counter-arguments help, we need conflicting theories in order to go ahead. So we must cherish them, and never misrepresent them. I understand there’s a history here, and that racists yahoos and creationists and cashflow-considerations muddle up the issue, but somehow I cannot cast you in that league. So I’m puzzled. And here I should stop.
Still (Can’t help it!):
1. Clovis points go from south to north, right? As you said somewhere: it’s a Texas thing, and not a Beringia thing.
2. The Anzick boy is ‘identified’ with Clovis, but he isn’t Clovis, is he? The bones and the points were dug up by a machine, so they were in a heap together. And thus they were ‘associated’. What this means is vague, even if not totally unclear. Most likely (?) the points were grave-goods at the boy’s funeral. Or the points were below the bones (much worse!). Dating efforts suggest 200 years after Clovis, right?
3. So let’s face it: no Solutrean ancestry to the Amerindians that we can show. Maybe there is some trace left, but we just don’t see it at this point.
4. The Solutreans had no boats?? In Altamira Caves you’ll find curraghs with whittaker sails!
The way I take the Solutrean hypothesis is this: there seems to be a connection between Clovis- and Solutrean technology. Has there been contact? One way or another? And when? A hypothesis is a question! It is not a claim to the truth! So could this have been the case? Could we fit the info to this idea? How far can we take this?
Well, obviously (?) they did not leave their genes (no way to be certain, but even here your falsifiability-criterion can’t apply). They either left or were obliterated. But let’s go softly! We want to know if there was contact! Disrupted afterwards, maybe, possibly, probably, necessarily … The Amerindians could have kajaked to Europe, couldn’t they? Mwa …
Two centuries of Clovis. Poof! they were there! Poof! they were gone … As our knowledge now stands … It’s intriguing: what happened there. And to me it’s perfectly feasible that a group of ‘Solutreans’ landed in America, did some spectacular mammoth-hunting there, traded their points with the locals (who’d have been there for millennia!!, but that’s an entirely different issue …), left no genetic mark (this is the weakness of the whole thing: it’s so unlikely!), and went home again or perished. But there are other scenarios part of which work vice versa. And – this is a methodological question – there might be alternatives that we haven’t thought of (or even cannot think of!), and that simply have no way of suggesting themselves.
But all ideas cropping up here are all falsifiable! They can all potentially be proved wrong! Falsifiability is a fundamental criterion, not a practical one!
Thanks Jaap. Could you elaborate on where I misrepresent the Solutrean hypothesis? I accept the critique of the archaeological underpinnings of the Bering Strait theory launched by Stanford and Bradley. I just reject the alternative that they offer. I don’t feel like I’m particularly vehement toward the Solutrean hypothesis since I accept the lead-up to it.
“What we learn from these academic dissenters is that
“The Solutrean hypothesis (SH) currently offers an archaeological explanation for the origins of the majority of pre-Clovis cultural assemblages and their in situ evolution into Clovis; no such credible cultural-evolutionary sequence has been offered for Palaeolithic East Eurasia as their cultural source.”
What this means is that there is no archaeological evidence for an East Eurasian origin of Amerindians. And this revelation comes some 100 years after archaeologists have convinced everybody (and most recently population geneticists) that they have overwhelming evidence that Amerindians derive from East Asia.” (end of quote)
This seems to me to be rather glaring. The key-word in the Bradley-quote is ‘sequence’, as you later demonstrate you quite understand (and obviously even agree with!).
But thanks German. That’s all I’m asking for! Leave it on the table until we know more. If you think the Solutrean Hypothesis is suggesting the Solutreans as a founder-population, then no problem: nice try. but disproved (for the time being!). But this hypothesis greatly helped in dismembering the Beringia-certainty.
It’s such a fascinating subject, and as yet we’re nowhere near getting the complete picture. Frankly I think the South-Americans are ahead of the US there!
PS Don’t underestimate the boating capacities of unknown cultures! Cf recent finding at the Inner Hebrides: it would seem they ‘boated’ from Doggerland around Scotland, and still knew where they were going!??
It seems like the BACHO KIRO Cave people are the oldest Europeans found to date, and they are NOT the ancestors of Modern Europeans now populating Europe, because they came way later in the Early Bronze age. At 45,000-47,000 BP they are ancestral to ancient and modern day Native Americans, Also the Red Deer Cave People at 11,000 ybp are also related to Native Americans. It seems that all ancient remains so far in Eurasia are genetically linked somehow to Native Americans . Now it looks like Native Americans were the first Europeans and the first Asians and are ancients. It also looks like Europeans and East Asians didn’t exist in the lands they now claim as their own. Europeans cannot of come to the Americas as Solutreans because they didn’t exist.