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Chasing the Beringia Land Bridge Myth: and Finding Solutrean Boats
An archeological Investigattive White Paper presented to the Pennsylvania Society for Archeology annual conference in April, 2014.
“Where are the boats?” is the trump card used by traditional archeologists and anthropologists who seek to preserve the status quo and their reputations in the highly competitive world of academia.
Since the 1930s, the Clovis First mantra has taken root and become such an accepted gospel that many scientists seeking Paleo-Indian traces ceased digging for evidence once such stone tools were found. After all, alleged knowledgeable researchers had established the Beringia Land Bridge crossing occurred 10,000 years ago. Then, scientific exploration of other fields began pushing back the Beringia Land Bridge time to 13,000 years and even beyond. The effort to prevent erosion of academians’ previous timeline assertions eventually resulted in the recent claim that Asian migrants sat at the crossing point from Siberia for 10,000 years waiting for a pathway to melt so they could head south through Alaska and Canada to eventually reach North America. Unexplained is how they could accomplish that without shelter, food or water.
All that began to change when some researchers refused to sit still and began to dig below Clovis levels. The first such find was at the Meadowcroft Rock Shelter in Pennsylvania where pre-Clovis tools and projectile points were found that resembled those from the Upper Paleolithic era of SouthWestern Europe. But, the Solutrean Civilization that spawned them had vanished during the Last Glacial Maximum (Ice Age) in Europe, some 20,000 years ago. Soon archeologists were following the Meadowcroft lead and digging deeper. Pre-Clovis points began to crop up from various sites stretching all the way to Florida.
Larry Moniz, a multiple-award winning investigative journalist and author became fascinated with the topic. He put another project about Northeastern Woodland Indians on hold to investigate. Expecting a project that could take years, if ever, to come to fruition, Moniz, himself an amateur archeologist and member of the Society for Pennsylvania Archeology began his own research. In a matter of months his research revealed the Beringia Land Bridge Gospel was apparently a fraud perpetrated hundreds of years ago. In addition, he found evidence that suggests the first humans to arrive in North America did so by boat and they were Solutreans from the Iberian Penninsula.
His resulting paper demonstrates, with photographs from historical sources and Museums in France and Spain, that the Solutreans were apparently a seagoing people who fled the ice age and potential starvation and fled across the sea in the world’s first flotilla of ocean-going passenger vessels. While Moniz recognizes that his research will be challenged by the entrenched academics who have built their reputations on the Beringia Land Bridge Myth and Clovis First, he’s confident they will be hard pressed to refute his premise that those researchers now truly know where the boats were and where replicas
“Where are the boats?” is the trump card used by traditional archeologists and anthropologists who seek to preserve the status quo and their reputations in the highly competitive world of academia.
Since the 1930s, the Clovis First mantra has taken root and become such an accepted gospel that many scientists seeking Paleo-Indian traces ceased digging for evidence once such stone tools were found. After all, alleged knowledgeable researchers had established the Beringia Land Bridge crossing occurred 10,000 years ago. Then, scientific exploration of other fields began pushing back the Beringia Land Bridge time to 13,000 years and even beyond. The effort to prevent erosion of academians’ previous timeline assertions eventually resulted in the recent claim that Asian migrants sat at the crossing point from Siberia for 10,000 years waiting for a pathway to melt so they could head south through Alaska and Canada to eventually reach North America. Unexplained is how they could accomplish that without shelter, food or water.
All that began to change when some researchers refused to sit still and began to dig below Clovis levels. The first such find was at the Meadowcroft Rock Shelter in Pennsylvania where pre-Clovis tools and projectile points were found that resembled those from the Upper Paleolithic era of SouthWestern Europe. But, the Solutrean Civilization that spawned them had vanished during the Last Glacial Maximum (Ice Age) in Europe, some 20,000 years ago. Soon archeologists were following the Meadowcroft lead and digging deeper. Pre-Clovis points began to crop up from various sites stretching all the way to Florida.
Larry Moniz, a multiple-award winning investigative journalist and author became fascinated with the topic. He put another project about Northeastern Woodland Indians on hold to investigate. Expecting a project that could take years, if ever, to come to fruition, Moniz, himself an amateur archeologist and member of the Society for Pennsylvania Archeology began his own research. In a matter of months his research revealed the Beringia Land Bridge Gospel was apparently a fraud perpetrated hundreds of years ago. In addition, he found evidence that suggests the first humans to arrive in North America did so by boat and they were Solutreans from the Iberian Penninsula.
His resulting paper demonstrates, with photographs from historical sources and Museums in France and Spain, that the Solutreans were apparently a seagoing people who fled the ice age and potential starvation and fled across the sea in the world’s first flotilla of ocean-going passenger vessels. While Moniz recognizes that his research will be challenged by the entrenched academics who have built their reputations on the Beringia Land Bridge Myth and Clovis First, he’s confident they will be hard pressed to refute his premise that those researchers now truly know where the boats were and where replicas
55 pages, Kindle Edition
First published April 2, 2014
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April 12, 2014Ahh, the "Prestige Wars" have again risen and charged into the fray. It's unfortunate that academians and other researchers are so intent on building and maintaining their reputations. When anyone has different findings the result could be likened to a coven of contentious witches.
Why the fights?
Sometimes it's for legitimate disagreement with the results or an error in the data. However, it frequently is simply a battle to keep their jobs in an ever-increasing pool of qualified college instructors. Let's face it, often an instructor rises to be a leading professor in his department's specialty based on early career work. Later, with no significant new research by that professor, his/her magnificent educated guess begins to crumble.
A prime example is the Beringia Land Bridge "Theory" As I wrote in a recent paper presented at the Pennsylvania Society for Archeology, The Beringia claims should more properly be called a "myth" that appears to have been created by a religious order for political gains. I discovered that although the "theory" was allegedly promulgated about 1590, it predates the actual exploration of the Bering Strait by Vitus Bering by some 138 years.
As the author was seeking Indian converts in South America for 15 years just before publication of his work in which he allegedly wrote about his theory, research by him would have been impossible.
Today, the major contention revolved around that theory. When it first came to prominence, the deduction was that Asians crossed to Alaska 10,000 years ago. As other contradictory data has been developed, A segment of otherwise distinguished researchers have tenaciously clung to the Beringia assertion, changing the migration dates to fit the emerging evidence. It became more than a little absurd, then the Shakespeare-like farce set in. The latest claim is that the migration halted somewhere in barren Beringia and waited 10,000 years for the massive North America ice sheets to melt. Of course, there appears to be a total lack of information as to how a party of any size KNEW the ice would melt and a passage develop, nor is there any data on how a party of any size could have survived the intense cold for 10 millenia without food, water and substantial shelters.
Absurd? Of course, yet it's happened more than once as scientists fought to retain, possibly undeserved reputations they garnered decades ago. My previous career was as an newspaper editor and investigative journalist (with numerous awards) rather than in the ivory towers of education, but it seems, to me, that there's a flaw somewhere in a peer review system that allows such practices to continue. Just my personal observations for whatever they're worth.
Why the fights?
Sometimes it's for legitimate disagreement with the results or an error in the data. However, it frequently is simply a battle to keep their jobs in an ever-increasing pool of qualified college instructors. Let's face it, often an instructor rises to be a leading professor in his department's specialty based on early career work. Later, with no significant new research by that professor, his/her magnificent educated guess begins to crumble.
A prime example is the Beringia Land Bridge "Theory" As I wrote in a recent paper presented at the Pennsylvania Society for Archeology, The Beringia claims should more properly be called a "myth" that appears to have been created by a religious order for political gains. I discovered that although the "theory" was allegedly promulgated about 1590, it predates the actual exploration of the Bering Strait by Vitus Bering by some 138 years.
As the author was seeking Indian converts in South America for 15 years just before publication of his work in which he allegedly wrote about his theory, research by him would have been impossible.
Today, the major contention revolved around that theory. When it first came to prominence, the deduction was that Asians crossed to Alaska 10,000 years ago. As other contradictory data has been developed, A segment of otherwise distinguished researchers have tenaciously clung to the Beringia assertion, changing the migration dates to fit the emerging evidence. It became more than a little absurd, then the Shakespeare-like farce set in. The latest claim is that the migration halted somewhere in barren Beringia and waited 10,000 years for the massive North America ice sheets to melt. Of course, there appears to be a total lack of information as to how a party of any size KNEW the ice would melt and a passage develop, nor is there any data on how a party of any size could have survived the intense cold for 10 millenia without food, water and substantial shelters.
Absurd? Of course, yet it's happened more than once as scientists fought to retain, possibly undeserved reputations they garnered decades ago. My previous career was as an newspaper editor and investigative journalist (with numerous awards) rather than in the ivory towers of education, but it seems, to me, that there's a flaw somewhere in a peer review system that allows such practices to continue. Just my personal observations for whatever they're worth.
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