Ideas: A History from Fire to Freud

The evidence for a migration across the strait falls into what we may call the geological, the zoological, the biological or medical, the archaeological, and the linguistic. On both sides of the present strait there are identical features, such as raised beaches now some miles inland, showing that the two continents share a similar geological history. Zoologically, it has long been observed that the tropical animals and plants of the Old World and the New have very little in common, but that the nearer the strait one gets, the greater the similarities. Biologically, native Americans are closest to the Mongoloid people of Asia. This shows in the visible physical characteristics they share, from their coarse, straight black hair, relatively hairless faces and bodies, brown eyes and a similar brown shading to the skin, high cheek bones and a high frequency of shovel-shaped incisor teeth. Such people are known to biologists as sinodonts (meaning their teeth have Chinese characteristics, which separates them from sundadonts, who do not). Teeth found in the skulls of ancient man from western Asia and Europe do not display sinodonty (which is mainly a hollowing out of the incisors, developed for the dentally demanding vegetation in northern Asia).²² All native Americans show sinodonty. Finally, on the biological front, it has been found by physical anthropologists that the blood proteins of native Americans and Asians are very close. In fact, we can go further and say that native American blood proteins, as well as sharing similarities with Asians, fall into three dominant groups. These correspond to the palaeo-Indians of north, central and southern America, the Eskimo-Aleut populations, and the Athabaskans (Apache and Navaho Indians, situated in New Mexico). This, according to some scholars, may underlie other evidence, from linguistics and DNA studies, which indicate not one but three and even four migrations of early man into the New World. Some scholars argue that there was an ‘early arrival’ of the Amerinds (perhaps as early as 34,000–26,000 BP), a later arrival (12,000–10,000 BP) of the Amerinds, and a third wave (10,000–7000 BP) of the Eskimos and the Na-Dene speakers. But the awkward fact remains that there is no direct archaeological evidence to support these earlier dates. The remains of only thirty-seven individuals had been found in America by AD 2000 which dated to earlier than 11,000 BP.²³

The archaeological evidence for early man in the Americas suffers further because there are no securely dated sites in Alaska earlier than the Bluefish caves in the eastern Yukon Territory, which date to between 15,000 and 12,000 years ago.²⁴ Nevertheless, there is little doubt that there are many features common to both sides of the Beringia area. One element is the ‘Northwest Microblade’ tradition, a particular type of microblade, which was wedge-shaped and made from a distinctive core, found all over Beringia.²⁵ These cores have been associated with one site in particular, Denali, which, according to F. Hadleigh West, is the eastern outpost of Dyukhtai culture, with at least twenty locations in Alaska. (Denali is situated in and around Tangle Lakes in Alaska.) Dyukhtai culture is no older than 18,000 years ago and Denali was gone by 8000 BP.²⁶ That early man crossed the Bering land bridge between 18,000 and 12,000 years ago is also supported by details from the Meadowcroft rock shelter in western Pennsylvania, where remains have been calculated, on eight separate occasions, to between 17,000 and 11,000 BC. And by the fact that the presence of early man at Tierra del Fuego, ‘the end of the road’ at the southern tip of South America, has been dated to about 9000 BC. However, there are still doubts about the dating of Meadowcroft, where the remains are corrupted by the presence of coal, which may make it seem older than it is.

Early man’s discovery of the New World may not seem, on the face of it, to fall into the category of ‘ideas’. But there are three reasons for including it. One is because the conquest of cold was a major advance in early humans’ capabilities. Second, in being cut off for so long, and from such an early date (say 15,000 BP to AD 1492, 14,500 years, and ignoring the possibility of Norse contacts, which were abortive) the parallel development of the Old World and the New provides a neat natural experiment, to compare how and in what order different ideas developed. Third, as we shall now see, this separation throws crucial light on the development of language.