Coming February 6, 2024 . . .
MURDER, POLITICS, AND THE END OF THE JAZZ AGE
by Michael Wolraich
Pre-order at Barnes & Noble / Amazon / Books-A-Million / Bookshop
Coming February 6, 2024 . . . MURDER, POLITICS, AND THE END OF THE JAZZ AGE by Michael Wolraich Pre-order at Barnes & Noble / Amazon / Books-A-Million / Bookshop |
It's widely assumed that as the glaciers of the land bridge thawed, humans were able to pass through an ice-free corridor that opened up into what is now western Alaska.
The new paper, titled Postglacial viability and colonization in North America's ice-free corridor, offers a powerful counterfactual to that prevailing theory.
The original paper from Nature is available in its entirety if you are a subscriber. If you are not it will cost $32 for a PFD copy. Not exactly in my budget. The link will take you to a preview of the article and it's full of fancy words and phrases like " boreal forest approximately 10 cal. kyr bp " and stuff like that. It also has some graphs that are too small to see, but hey, it's the thought that counts, right?
Fortunately, the Popular Mechanics article covers the basics well enough for folks like me.
This is a recurring non-political topic at this here dag site, is it not?
Comments
Interesting article.
It suggests that the people who were willing to carry their boats as circumstances required got over the bridge before the crowd who relied on campgrounds and game that leapt into the cooking pot.
by moat on Sun, 08/14/2016 - 3:42pm
The land bridge got bogged down in cost overruns and ended up being mockingly referred to as "The Bridge to Nowhere", though on a clear day you could see Alaska from there. The planned interstate never got built since all available money was diverted to North Shelf pipeline development, local corruption plus Native American support resources for the soon-to-exist Inuit. So the coastal route was the best bet, even though in parts the fisheries had been definitely impacted by oil spills, so travellers had to live on berries, the occasional elk, and for those with enough money, sandwiches and coffee at Subway (plus MREs from the grunts among them) - hardly the optimum diet for that climate. In the end, the migration lasted much longer than expected due to those who were in no hurry to join the lower 48, a large percentage of stoners & survivalists, and the beginnings of what would become a full-bore snowmobile craze.
by PeraclesPlease on Sun, 08/14/2016 - 4:21pm
Your explanation for the cost overruns involved with this project makes sense in detail as change orders but does not actually explain why the delays required millennia more time than the proposal to populate the other hemisphere with humans had first specified.
by moat on Sun, 08/14/2016 - 4:26pm
I never fell for the land-bridge theory. I know for a fact that they all rode on friendly swimming dinosaurs. The above comments do make me wonder though -- does Pericles know the difference between an Elk (chewy and gamey tasting) and Caribou (so delicious that it is the complete diet of some Inuits)? Never mind. I'm sure he does.
by CVille Dem on Sun, 08/14/2016 - 4:42pm
Don't go anachronistic on me - they didn't get the Caribou chain until long after Starbucks' success. Yes, indigenous people had to deal with gamey (though they may have thought of chewy as a plus). Watch the Revenant - it was no picnic - and those folks had a few guns. Siberiads? not so many - 2nd Amendment guarantees woefully lacking where they came from.
by PeraclesPlease on Sun, 08/14/2016 - 4:59pm
Speaking of anachronisms: Starbucks came WAY after Dunkin' Donuts -- maybe THAT is how they crossed!
by CVille Dem on Sun, 08/14/2016 - 5:38pm
Certainly fots the coast theory over landbridge. Were they always with a hole in the middle? Free coffee?
by PeraclesPlease on Sun, 08/14/2016 - 7:00pm