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Quiénes fueron los primeros pobladores de América · El futuro fue ayer con Juan Guillermo Martín

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The future was yesterday? It' s an archaeology podcast where ghosts, conspiracy
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theories and aliens have no place. I am Jua Guillermo Martín, archaeologist and
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university professor and with different specialists. It would be scientifically addressing our fascinating past,
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a past that offers us answers to face the future. Welcome to the
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podcast The future was yesterday? I' m Juan Guillermo Martín archaeologist. Today
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we are going to talk about a continental theme. This is the early American
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settlement. To talk about it I have a guest of light. This is
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Gustavo Politico, Gustavo Welcome. What' s up? What? Tal?
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Good afternoon to those who don' t know him. Gustavo Politic is an
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anthropologist and a doctor in natural sciences. From the University of La Plata,
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Senior Researcher of Conisset, Professor of the University of La Plata and the National
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University of the Center of the Province of Buenos Aires, Founder of the INCUAPA
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Institute, Visiting Professor at a dozen universities worldwide and, without a doubt,
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one of the most important references on the continental level on this subject, that
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of the first settlers of America. His record is recorded in more than 200
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scientific publications. That is to say, we are facing real authority. So
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it' s really nice to have you here. And the first question,
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of course, is how much I already know how much the first settlers came
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to the American continent. Well, the answer is not easy, because there
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are different models different ideas about when and how. There are some certainties that
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we already have. We know in principle that they came from Asia. Of
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that there is no doubt that this first settlement came from Asian populations of East
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Asia that at some time arrived to the northeast, to Siberia and that they
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remained in what is today the far northeast of Asia, that at that time,
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about thirty forty twenty zero years ago, the United States to America did
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not exist the Bering Strait, because there was a lower sea level in the
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last glacial, At the last glaciation, the sea level dropped approximately one hundred
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and twenty meters. So, that place, let' s say, was
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the origin of the populations that later arrived in America. That would be where
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they came from when they came. There' s a lot of discussion on
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the subject. I particularly endorse the idea that they arrived after the last maximum
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glacier. This last glacial maxim is a period that took place approximately between twenty
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- two thousand and eighteen thousand years before the present, where there was an
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increase in graces, an increase in ice, a very marked drop in temperatures
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that, among other things, caused the laurentic shield to say what I am
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Canada to say in some way, and the rocky mountains to unite in a
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great glacial that covered them and that was between three thousand and four zero meters
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thick in its maximum part. This formed a barrier between eighteen zero between twenty
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- two thousand and eighteen thousand years that prevented any hunting group, homo sapiens
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collector, from crossing into America. This began to melt, they began to
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see better conditions after the eighteen zero and the idea today, the hypothesis,
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the most likely model is that these human beings who were in Beringia, Asian
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descendants, passed after the sixteen thousand years south of what I am Canada and
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colonized the American plains and displaced to the southern end of America, reaching land
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of fire about thirteen zero years ago. All right, tell us a little
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bit, these first settlers, what characteristics they had always had as an idea
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that they were mega fauna hunters and what those characteristics of those first settlers are
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and what evidence we have in the archaeological record of their activity. Well,
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the first thing you have to say and that maybe it' s a little
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connected to connect the two questions Juan Guillermo, is that America was occupied by
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homo sapiens by anatomically modern beings with the same co n n n n n
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ns capabilities as us. This was the result of the expansion of Homeosapiens,
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which originated in Africa, but which about 100, 000 years ago left Africa.
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Now there are some findings in Greece that suggest that it would have come
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out about 100, 000 years earlier, but it stayed close to Africa,
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in the Near East in southern Europe and about sixty zero years ago it expanded
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through the rest of Asia and Europe until it reached America, as I said
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sixteen thousand years ago. What I mean by this was that the collectors who
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in Europe and Asia had already developed a culture, a rather complex technology,
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which is known as the upper paleolithic, people who already had a lot of
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ability to make stone tools that they already knew how to select. Which were
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the most suitable rocks to make these tools, some silicas that can be carved
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very well, because, for example, were people who worked the ivory bone.
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Remember that thirty- five thousand years ago there are already ivory statuettes made
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in caves that are assigned to the most modern Neanderthals, say, more modern
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and closer to Lomosapiens, there were Sapiens Mos, very early and already developed
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abstract thought and art. So these first human beings who came to America were
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we have Sapiens, who had developed a very elaborate technology, who had knowledge
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to work the bone and who, of course, had different economic strategies for
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the house, fishing and harvesting. There was no agriculture or horticulture at this
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time and only at moments very close to the conquest of America. Let'
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s say the colonization of America. They probably arrived with dogs, which would
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be the only domesticated animal that could have entered with these first settlers. This
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is a little in doubt. Domestic dogs are a domestication that was done in
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Europe and Asia of wolves, different from the canids that were here in America,
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which are more related to foxes, especially in South America. Then dogs
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were used as a household tool in some way, because they are very suitable
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animals, very adapted for hunting. So we know that they were human beings
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with cognitive abilities like ours, that they hunted, that they collected, that
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they fished, also that they probably had some kind of boat. That'
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s an argument we' re seeing. Why do I say this? There
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' s no physical evidence. No canoes or rafts dating back to sixteen thousand
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years have yet been found. But Australia was never united to the continent on
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which Asia was united and was colonized by homosapiens about fifty zero years ago,
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so they would have had to have had some way, some form of navigation
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to cross from the coasts of Southeast Asia to Australia. And about sixteen zero
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years ago, this ice cover covering what is now Canada and Alaska and part
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of Alaska and the north of the United States of America, had not yet
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been opened for people to pass, which was later called the ice- free
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corridor. Until about thirteen zero years ago it began to open and the graces
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of the small rocks began to retreat and those of Uréntico School also and left
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as a corridor that would be in what is today the west of Canada.
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But design zero years ago that corridor was not open and what was there were
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some parts of the peaceful coast of it is Canada that were bound with thread,
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but others were not. Others had dry land and were sure to serve
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as a bet for mammals, marines, seals, and were sure to nest
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birds where they laid eggs. They served so that if someone came in a
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canoe or raft and a storm ran away, there would be somewhere to dock.
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So this first colonization, as several Airlinson archaeologists have put it, is
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likely to have occurred at best with some kind of navigational element, following a
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coastal navigation along Canada' s peaceful coast. That is what you introduce there
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precisely from that other explanation that is now being put forward of population by coastline
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and that could also suggest a movement much faster than from the let' s
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say on foot, already has these first data or these not so recent,
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just as in channel islands where data are being obtained from a different model of
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people who are dedicated to the exploitation of marine resources. Probably many of those
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sites at this time are one hundred and twenty meters underwater and with the difficulty
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it has, of course, to identify them, Although there are already some
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exercises of palio- landscape studies to try to identify these sites and sample them.
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So, well, the matter there is still to be resolved. To
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say, I think there is still a lot to be done in that area.
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One. We talked about the last glaciation, you talked about what the
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conditions meant. Let' s say from the narrow of vering what exactly these
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conditions will be twenty, twenty- five zero years ago, in the last
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glaciation, what was the predominant fauna in the continent, the flora, what
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was that environment that lived and to which these first inhabitants were adapted. Well,
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between eighteen and twenty- two thousand years ago in the middle of glaciation,
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let' s say we didn' t think they had come here to
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us, although there is some evidence now that we went to comment that it
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could open a door to a pre- last glacial maximum settlement. Now,
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assuming that we are correct and that they arrived about sixteen thousand years ago,
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when glacial conditions still prevailed, the climate was colder, the climate probably drier
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according to the part of America than today. The sea level was still lower,
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the coasts were more retreated than we know today. The Gulf of Mexico
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was smaller because there was more continent. Patagonia was wider because it extended a
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few hundred kilometers above what is today the continental shelf and inside on this continent.
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In these conditions there was a very particular fauna that in North America was
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very similar to the Asian one. There were bison, there were mammoth,
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there were horses, fauna that is known as the holartic form, that is
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fauna that developed in the north, in the northern hemisphere. Now, in
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South America, South America had until it joined North America through the ITSMO of
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Panama had functioned as a species of island continent with its own evolutionary development of
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the faunatic species that there were of mammals. Above all, then there was
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a quantity of fauna that does not have as relatives in other parts of the
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world, such as the glyptodons, which are those giant armadillos. There was
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an important variety of giant terrestrial sloths or the megatery, the millet in the
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Stodon. They all vary from these lazy little boys we know now who are
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hanging from the trees and weighing a few kilos. Here were some animals weighing
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some sloths, weighing four tons and that we know because we have found it
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in various places in the Pampa region, which were married and consumed by humans.
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There were also in South America, American horses had deered to a lesser
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extent camelids such as Paleolama, a kind of extinct camelid. There were some
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very strange animals that have no living relatives, such as macrauquenia, which is
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from a family that is lithopterna that is extinct. There were also other toothed
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animals such as those that I am going by the name now, which were
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very similar to hippopotamus, although they were quite different in terms of their evolutionary
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line and were not adapted to those aquatic environments like hippopotamus. This South American
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fauna, when contact was made with North America, passed to North America,
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but it was more impoverished and some of this North American fauna also passed to
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South America, such as horses. Then it was a very rich fauna of
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herbivores, very large, with some carnivores. The one that stood out above
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all was the tiger of save teeth or the smilodo very frequent in the paleontological
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deposits of the pampa of Brazil, of the Patagonia And well, and this
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fauna was the one that was found the first human beings that arrived in America.
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Obviously, also at that time there would be cooler weather conditions, the
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Amazon rainforest was more shrinking and probably not a continuous tropical forest, but there
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would be like patches of tropical forest with some savannahs, as well as the
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ITSMO of Panama, as well as these jungle areas that now have continuous coverage,
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would be discontinued by this climate. But according to this, weather conditions
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were improving in terms of temperature, probably higher humidity. The American continent began
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to take the physiognomy similar to the current one, and this physiognomy, obviously
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with changes more or less close to the current one. It took place at
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the end of the pleistocene about twelve zero or thirteen zero years ago. There,
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what happens, there ends the process of glaciation. Coastal lines are stabilized,
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glaciers are stabilized, although there is now a peak, as we know,
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of global warming and there is a melting of glacials. Of course there
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was a peak in the middle of the middle Holocene, also known as the
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thermal ipse, where there was also a small ascent at sea level and a
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melting of the glacial masses and the poles. So this environment stabilizes about twelve,
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zero 13 thousand years ago approximately. And the fundamental change that happens and
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that brings transformations surely in these indigenous societies that were already inhabiting at that time
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almost the whole continent, is the extinction of these great animals somehow South America
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looked more like a savannah than it is now an African savannah. Or many
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animals do not yes, yes with so much anxiety, but with two species
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of horse, with many species of megaterio, with many armadillos, of one
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two three tons, great services that supported these extensive pastures that were in America.
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Then, with the extinction of this fauna, indigenous societies were left without
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a very important resource and had to adapt. Then they kidnapped themselves to the
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house of smaller animals. In North America the mammoth sexting, the ancient bison,
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the larger bison, became extinct. The horses, which were also home
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businesses, were extinct. But for the lucky ones, for the American groups,
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the bison, which is an animal of many hundreds of kilos. It
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survived the contemporary bison, the western and good bison and that was one of
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the main home companies for these groups during the Holocene of Heroes, the period
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of time from the end of the Pleistocene, about thirteen thousand years ago to
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the present. Not exactly what you mentioned now about the extinction of this mega
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fauna by basically human beings and its effectiveness, let' s say, in
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house activities. I imagine climate change is also contributing. The fact that the
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planet gets hotter, that it gets rainier, that the plant cover becomes denser
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is another of the ingredients, or we would be talking about being stuck exclusively
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to human activity. No, no, no, it' s clearly multicausal.
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There are several theories about this. Also the animal that I wanted to
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say was similar to the hippopotamus, is the toxon I' m remembering,
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it' s spinning in my head, the toxodontes. There is a big
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discussion about this for decades and in general, what is evident is that throughout
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the pleistocene there were glaciations and there were abrupt changes, as abrupt as these
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that we live in the last ten zero or twelve thousand years or twenty zero
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years, and that did not significantly affect the fauna. The fauna, let
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' s say, transformed, produces the process of speciation, that is,
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the species transform into others, do not become extinct, become bigger or more
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girls depending on the adaptation and the genetic mutations and so on, but the
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felogic line, the clade, so to speak, is not extinguished and this
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happened along the plestocene. Surely, climate change must have affected these species,
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but what appears as a new element that produces extinction is the human being.
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Let' s say it leads to extinction somehow. It' s not like
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that. There are people who extended the paleoclimatic point of view, another of
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the hunting strategy or all the genetic plasticity of the species. There' s
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a lot of them. There are even people who have thought that, perhaps,
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it was not human beings with their home activities that ended up extinguishing,
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but that the disruptions that human beings themselves produced the environment, for example,
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the burnings, could have produced extinction, because if we see the variety of
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fauna genera that are about forty days or so that became extinct and those we
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know that were actually married and consumed by human beings, there are very few.
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There are many, such as glyptods, for example. There are records
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throughout the Pampa region of a single site, for example, and there will
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be a couple more in the rest of America of hunting and consuming Gliptodonte and
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the gliptodons abounded. The amount of Gipto before there was in the Pampa region
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is impressive. And I say that because we, who were at this institute
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of archaeological and paleontological research in the center of the Pampa region. I don
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' t say every week, but every month someone comes to tell me they
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found a glyptodon. Then we already give ourselves what to do with so many
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glyptodons that appear in the Arroyo rivers. People are making a house and there
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' s a shell of a metre, a meter and a half high.
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So this would be one somehow, an answer to say no. Human beings
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cannot have extinguished the megafauna, because there is much wildlife that was not consumed.
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But, on the other hand, they may also have introduced diseases.
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It did not make some is some kind of bacteria or viruses that may have
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passed to the animals with the animals that they brought such as, for example,
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the dog, disruption of the environments, as I say the burns,
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there may have been side effects of the human presence that, beyond the hunting
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itself, could have made reproduction and the process of replacement by smaller genera more
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difficult. The truth is that in America, as in other parts of the
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world, except Africa, which is where human beings and these animal populations co
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- evolved for millions of years, there was no arrival of human beings,
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but it was a co- evolution from the first hominims six million years ago
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to the present day. The rest of the world homo Sapiens came to a
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place where in some cases there were hominimes, but it was not a co
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- evolutionary process of the temporal depth that happened in Africa. One of the
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most brutal cases, let' s say, was that of America, where
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hombmo sapiens arrived with appropriate technology, with surely quite elaborate house strategies, communal
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house, several hunters acting at the same time able to hunt, for example,
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mammoths in Siberia and be able to marry them perfectly in North America or
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Alaska. So I think that humans have had an influence along with climate changes,
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but exactly what was that influence that percentage of one and the other is
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still under discussion and whether this affected directly, either by the house or was
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an indirect affectation through the changes it produced in the environment. Now that you
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answer this question, taking into account the conditions of the last glacial maximum,
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the decrease of the sea level, why the possibility of because it was closed,
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the possibility of thinking of a step through the south, through Antarctica and
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land of Fire. You who have the experience in Patagonia and at some point
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even Antonio Méndez Correa had raised that idea and used ethnographic data to say that
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there are similarities between these Patagonian and Australian populations. Archeologically, that' s
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totally true, it' s difficult, totally difficult, but that' s
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not what I would bring. If I didn' t have to bet,
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I wouldn' t bring it very well. No. The truth is that
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there is no serious consideration of that. This does not exclude one thing that
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perhaps during the time that America was already populated and that was populated by Australia
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and the islands of Polynesia. There could have been a contact between Australia,
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Polynesia, the Pacific Islands and America, a contribution, but not having been
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contributing at the initial time of settlement, but a contribution by the later cinal.
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Anyway, I was sworn in by a Chilean archeologist who made her thesis
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at the University of Sydney Ballesteros, who made a review of all the evidence
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that has been proposed since the end of the 19th century. Practically about this
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transpacific contact was called between Australia, Polynesia and America. And even that gave
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rise to some adventures, such as the decent actor Heyert with which he made
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the da with Tiki, who tried to prove it through experimental archaeology. That
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is, well you can cross on a raft from Tahiti to the coasts of
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Peru, for example. Well, yes, you can. But that doesn
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' t mean this has happened. But in Ballesteros' review, the truth
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is that he found almost no solid evidence that could propose a transpacific contact.
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There was one of the few evidences because linguistic evidence had been proposed some kind
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of material, also found in Chile, northern Chile, in Peru, which
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resembled Polynesian artifacts. But this is the truth that didn' t happen.
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They are not some very general morphological similarities that may have been given by convergence.
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So, the only thing that remained and that lately they told me that
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even she is discarding herself was some bones, of some chickens, of some
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Polynesian chickens that had appeared on the coast of Chile and that they had a
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date a few centuries, a few years before the conquest and that could then
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have arrived before the conquerors, because, well, already at the time of
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the conquest they began to circulate and well we already know that in the sixteenth
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century they were coming to the coasts of the Pacific. Let' s say
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Asia and I came to America. There is a Spanish archeologist named Beatriz Fajardo,
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who had recently raised some possibility, also based on a fact that is
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true, but that is not an exprobatory, that there is a series of
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marine currents that if you pull a log in Australia you can end up hitting
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the fullino channels in the south of Patagonia. This has happened. They have
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found something, but they are journeys of thousands of kilometers that is very difficult,
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very difficult to survive in the conditions of navigability to have these people.
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On the other hand, there are two elements against this. Not one is
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that the settlement of the Polynesian islands is quite well known and there is a
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vector clearly from the west towards the east they are populated and they are coming
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to the last and populated. The easternmost was Easter Island, which had already
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been inhabited in Christian times, in the latter at the beginning of the Christian
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era, one hundred and three hundred years of the era, even later,
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raise some very late, and there are thousands of kilometers between Easter Island and
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the continent. That, on the one hand, and, on the other
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hand, we know now, Juan Guillermo, in recent years that through genetic
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information we have been able to address some issues that were previously more difficult.
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And while there are some genetic studies that have detected a slight signal in some
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contemporary indigenous groups in Brazil that could have an association with Australasic, Australian and
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Melanesian groups. Except for those two or three cases currently under discussion, all
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the rest of the genetic information strongly supports a single early initial population at first,
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although it has subsequently had subsequent contributions from Asian populations of Estripe Mongoloid.
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Let' s say this is what we' re thinking. There is no
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genetic contribution that could come from Australian or Melanesic populations. Of course, Paul
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Rivera had proposed that oceanic theory of that American settlement a little later, without
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ignoring it the Strait of Bring, also basically using ethnographic data and now recently
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I don' t know if you read it. There are genetic data that
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suggest otherwise. It is apparently mutations in the north of South America, particularly
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in the current Colombian territory, which are found in Polynesian populations, an issue
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that I still believe has a lot to discuss. Because, anyway, the
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distance is impressive. The Pacific Ocean is perhaps one of the most difficult to
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navigate, and several thousand years ago the technology probably did not give for that.
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Hegerdal was lucky and managed to arrive from that long journey in forty-
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seven, but well, I wouldn' t believe it went as a constant
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to explain the human precision on this continent. Finally, it is clear with
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the new data. I believe that the clois paradigm fell several decades ago.
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However, recently, for some years we have been finding a series of research
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publications that are being made in different places on the continent, in Mexico,
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Brazil, in Chile, that are giving us dates that come out so let
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' s say, of what you' re proposing of those sixteen, eighteen
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thousand years, How we manage that data, what you deserve and how they
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fit, let' s say, of the new models that are being posed
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about the American population. Of course it is a complex question to answer.
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Let' s say what I think is that the strongest, most solid contemporary
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evidence indicates an occupation of America, North America and South America before Clowis,
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that is, before thirteen zero years, but after the last glacial maxim,
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that is, after ten thousand years. In those three thousand years, for
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me, for many of us, the process took place, a process of
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expansion very fast, difficult to model. On the other hand, he also
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covered Americans. We have to explain. Well, it' s not easy
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to generate a population growth model that explains this rapid expansion, but today I
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think it' s the most solid hypothesis from there, from this base that
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not everyone agrees either. There are some who discuss these places. Between three
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and six thousand years there has been a kind of riviva when it comes to
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returning to Clovis as the first solid population in North America, and let'
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s say the populations that had the fish tail tips in South America, which
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would be as their counterpart, a little bit later or almost synchronously, but
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let' s say I believe that the established model, the most consolidated model
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through archaeology, biological anthropology and genetics. Ancient genetics would be these Asian populations
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stayed in Bering. There, in that area of Bering, they isolated themselves
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from their Asian ancestors and generated those applo groups, that is, a specific
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genetic conformation and when they were already isolated from their Asian ancestors, they had
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no contact. So, there was a flow gene, they didn' t
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mix. They went to America. Therefore, genetically they are different from their
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ancestors because they have aplo groups general structure recognizablely different. Well, now there
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are a series of works that have appeared in that is, that have appeared
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because ever since I studied that ever since decades, since the beginning of scientific
32:15
archaeology that has arisen a very high antiquity of the American settlement prior to Clovis
32:20
in the 1950s was alex Creer. Later, in the 1960s Alan Brian was
32:27
after somehow suggested by Dilley Hyde with Monteverde one, even here in Colombia.
32:37
The discovery of the puja site that arrived would be very fair. I wouldn
32:43
' t be in seventeen thousand years, very very much at the beginning of
32:46
everything running a watering. But in recent years some archaeological evidence that comes from
32:53
different places in America and that could support a pre- last glacial maximum population
33:00
pre twenty- two zero years to put it, so that people understand it
33:05
more clearly these. There are a group of sites in Brazil, in northeastern
33:10
Brazil, that are in the area of the Serra de aquí Vara, that
33:15
are boqueados of furada stone, a very related site called Valedo Pedra, that
33:19
is very close and touched half. Although it will be these three sites that
33:24
have cracked dates Fured Stone, Nied Gidon, which was an archeola that ended
33:29
it raises up to a hundred thousand years. More conservatively, some other researchers
33:34
pose forty- fifty- zero years and now a team of Erick Boeda who
33:40
excavated Valedo Pedra and headdressed half. More conservatively they pose twenty- five zero
33:45
thirty zero years, but always prior to the last maximum glacier. Then there
33:52
are other sites, such as Arroyo del Vizcaíno in Uruguay, an archaeologist,
33:58
a pal paleontologist, Richard Fariña, who, whenever we visit, we talk
34:05
about this site. I' m a skeptic. He is a convinced and
34:09
is working on this site intensely in the last ten years, which raises thirty
34:15
- zero- year dating to a site where they were killing and processing about
34:20
thirty les. All are these lazy giants of one or two tons, more
34:24
or less and more recently, an Argentine archaeologist, Carlos Asquero, is proposing
34:34
that a cave in the heights of the Argentine puna called kk one, has
34:38
evidence mixed with megaterian bosta, of very very weak human occupations, let'
34:46
s say, with little evidence, but for him, very forceful of about
34:51
forty zero years and then, well, the classic of Chiquihuite that about thirty
34:53
zero years, a cave that is in the highlands of Mexico. And lately,
35:00
well, these human footprints, the new Mexico called White Saund, dating
35:04
to about twenty- three zero twenty- four zero years, taking away Whitesund
35:08
' s dating, which is another kind of record. All the rest of
35:14
these sites have some specific problems that they would not initially manage. Let'
35:21
s say validate them as such. Validate them as a forceful test to run
35:24
the settlement and rethink the entire smoke expansion. Sapiens from an archaeological and genetic
35:30
point of view. I' m not saying we have to rule them out
35:35
or throw them out. I don' t even know about that. I
35:37
simply say that by weighing the evidence, still the evidence, from my point
35:44
of view, is more against a strong proof of American population than in favor
35:49
of that, for example, we could not be much extended by this podcast.
35:55
But, for example, in the case of the volcrar of Fured Pedra,
36:01
all the so- called lithic artifacts that appear in the lower layers,
36:07
say in the plestocénic layers before ten eleven thousand years, what is called the
36:12
Fured Pedra phase, what they called left and parent. Those who dug them
36:15
are made on rocks, on quartz and quartzite rollings that are on the roof
36:22
of the cave at the top, which are the rollings that are in the
36:24
sandstones and when this rain is raining heavily erosion to the sandstones and the rollings
36:30
fall in fact, to the sides of the cave. There are stacks like
36:35
chimneys. Where there are naturally fractured piles of rolling products from these falls,
36:42
then there is a discussion whether these artifacts are actually artifacts or are natural products
36:46
struck naturally by the fall of thirty- sixty meters in some cases. And
36:54
it has also been discovered now in recent years, that there are monkeys in
36:58
the region, the capuchin monkeys that fracture the basalt quartz rollings, beat them,
37:05
take them with both hands, beat them and what they do is filmed.
37:10
Moreover, this is not clear, because they do not use them as
37:15
artifacts, but they suck the dust that comes out of silica from this fracture
37:22
is how they are producing a silica powder. Maybe so sometimes there are in
37:25
these statements they have a roll, lue hit, they break it they drop
37:30
and go and look for the same roll and bring it back. In other
37:32
words, the same rolling, as is proven, has several percussion points,
37:37
several fractures. Then it opens a natural element, which is the fall.
37:43
From the ceiling there was a biological element. Let' s say also natural
37:45
that would be the artifacts that may have generated the Capuchin monkeys ancestors of today
37:52
' s Capuchin monkeys. Obviously, and then there are no associated bones at
37:59
these levels. Learn from a conservation problem that is not preserved in that cave.
38:04
There are some coal stains that might be interpreted by researchers who are in
38:09
charge of the site as stoves, but which could also be events that more
38:14
natural prays they are in the catinga. We know that forests and dry forests
38:17
are very, very feasible that there are natural inseños, natural inseños of great
38:24
proportions, especially by thunderstorms. So we can' t rule out that some
38:31
of these coals inside come from natural fires. But the more thing, from
38:37
my point of view, there are two things that are very intriguing that to
38:43
me very much tilt the balance against. Let' s say in favor of
38:47
not accepting these places. On the one hand, it is that from the
38:51
oldest levels we take some average fifty zero years to the most modern previous.
38:58
At the ocean until the hydrated phase, which is the most modern. There
39:01
are thirty, forty to fifty thousand years and the artifacts are all the same
39:07
and they are all absolutely all made with the raw material of the cave,
39:12
with quartz and quartzite rollings. It is that behavior of this technological stability for
39:22
tens of thousands of years in homo sapiens. Not to mention, in Homerectus
39:27
exists, because there are hundreds of thousands of years where they manufacture the same
39:30
artifacts, but not Mosapiens, not people descended from the European upper paleolithic who
39:37
have not changed the technology and who in no case brought a rock from outside.
39:43
This is strange, because these places were not permanently occupied people, as
39:46
we all know, hunted gatherers have a certain normalism, they moved, then
39:50
they would occupy the cave in a moment. If they were, then they
39:53
would go somewhere else and come back when they came back, they never brought
39:57
a rock from another side. This is even in quarry places, from places
40:01
where they are not roomy, where people are going to extract rock. We
40:05
' ve seen raw materials elsewhere. Why. Because people, when they come
40:08
back from rock, they have their own artifacts and in that place they do
40:13
some things, so they use and discard some of the artifacts they previously brought
40:16
in. Then. This is a very expectable behavior among married collectors and we
40:21
see it even in one of the earliest discovered sapiens, which threw about a
40:27
hundred zero years old Lomos Sapiens the case east, habrut in brown roses.
40:37
There are silicaes associated with these very good quality human remains that come from fifty
40:44
kilometers. They were selecting the raw material and these quartzis and these quartzites are
40:52
not macarity raw materials. They have their limitations on technique. In fact,
40:55
the artifacts are Choppers or Choppers stolen from us that have two three strokes and
41:00
not much more. Then I resist believing that there has been such an uncreative
41:06
population in this place, so fixed, so solid that for thousands of years
41:14
I have not made artifacts, I have not changed the way I make artifacts,
41:19
I have not introduced any technological innovation and I have not been able to
41:22
obtain any other rock from nearby to bring it to the place. This is
41:29
a point, I think it' s against. And the other point is
41:31
that in that region, as in much of Brazil, human remains have been
41:36
found and none of the human remains that has been found exceeds those of the
41:44
twelve thousand five hundred years, thirteen zero, when much then, what happened
41:49
to the people, with those people who lived fifty forty or thirty thousand years
41:53
ago, Where are the human remains of those people. They' re not,
41:59
there' s, there' s no one or and I don'
42:01
t think it' s a sampling problem that way. We have already found,
42:05
it has already been worked out that they were too many gabs and empty
42:08
to see, but there is already a fairly systematic sampling of different parts of
42:14
America and no human rest has given antiques greater than twelve, thirteen zero years.
42:17
That' s a point. And finally, let' s say if
42:21
we see what the expansion of Mosapiens was in Asia and we see that the
42:28
most northerly site that came before the last glaciation was Jana Ruinas' site are
42:32
Juan At the mouth of the River Llana up there in Siberia. That place
42:37
is 30, 000 years old. He was the first. They got there
42:39
thirty zero years ago, not before. How could they be here forty zero
42:44
years ago If we weren' t, Sapiens wasn' t occupying northeast Siberia.
42:50
Forty thousand years ago I hadn' t arrived yet. How we can
42:54
find them in a cave thirty zero years ago to three five hundred meters high
42:59
in the middle of or two thousand five hundred meters high in the middle of
43:05
Mexico or in the Argentina puna. A desert that' s good at the
43:09
time. That way I had maybe, a little more moisture and everything,
43:12
but it' s three thousand four hundred and five hundred meters one. He
43:16
imagines that in order to occupy such a complicated environment before he would have had
43:22
to have been occupied by other more favorable environments. Not to have time to
43:24
adapt in that do definitely, because you have to adapt biologically to occupy an
43:30
environment of four thousand three thousand eight hundred. To know the environment for sure,
43:35
yes, it takes time, of course, yes, yes, no,
43:38
no. No. They seem to me to be strong arguments. Of
43:43
course, some of these sites published in magazines will continue to be very important,
43:52
if they are influential. Above all, Chiquihuite is given important publicity.
43:55
I think in the middle of everything, also because it has a team with
44:00
powerful laboratories and powerful institutions behind it that surely give it weight. But it
44:07
' s still a place. Out there if Chi Huiste also one of the
44:10
characteristics that it has say is an extremely conservative technology. It didn' t
44:16
have said they had no variations in twenty thousand years and all the rock the
44:22
first matter is ninety- peak percent is from a type of recrystallized sandstone that
44:27
there is a discussion. It may or may not come from inside the outside
44:29
bucket and is a dark cube inside the bottom. There' s this material,
44:34
there' s no wildlife, there' s no human remains. Neither
44:35
is there any human adn. They' ve tried to find aden in the
44:38
sediments. Then it seems strange to me. It seems to force a lot.
44:44
I' m not saying we don' t have to keep working on
44:45
it much less. Not anyway, Juan Guillermo, there is a place that
44:49
is disturbing. Disturbing. Let' s say to this model, which is
44:53
the human footprints of white Son National Park, in downtown New Mexico. It
44:59
is a national park where there is a lake, an ancient lake called Lagotero,
45:04
which is dry and on the palio banks of this lake human footprints associated
45:09
with traces of extinct fauna have been found. These human bones contain in the
45:14
sediments where they were businesses. They' re clearly human and there' s
45:20
also traces. Let' s say it' s not an isolated huia,
45:23
but there are traces of 27 footprints in one case, for example, and
45:30
some seeds of a rupee reed of the rupee genus have been dated that is
45:35
included in these sediments. And these seeds gave twenty- three, twenty-
45:38
four zero years, i e, immediately preceding, at the beginning of the
45:46
last maximum glacier, i e, they would be suggesting the possibility of some
45:52
entry of people before the last glaciation that, perhaps, left no offspring.
45:53
A kind of failed colonization could do anyway. There are some criticisms with regard
46:00
to dating, because there would be like two problems that they have raised that
46:05
have arisen. One is that, in other words, the good ones are
46:08
human. There' s no doubt, I mean, there' s people
46:10
flat. There' s no argument about that. Other prints are doubtful.
46:15
Not these, but the blonde as she is, is drinking water from very
46:25
carbonated waters, from hard waters, as it is called, which have old
46:30
carbonates dissolved. It could be incorporating 14 ancient carbon reed tissue. Let'
46:39
s say, then the sample is aged by the incorporation of ancient carbonates.
46:45
This is an explanation. The other explanation is that, as this is on
46:50
a beach, let' s say, a kind of valley bottom and has
46:53
older sediments on the sides and dunes, and that' s a large pot
46:59
of flating where the traces that these rook seeds are deposited net appear. Thus,
47:05
ancient sediments have been deposited network, even re- deposited at the time
47:08
when human beings stepped on it makes, as Sevansheins puts it, a possibility
47:14
be that they are old because they are also associated with plestocene fauna. So,
47:19
maybe thirteen zero years ago, clois groups passed there and that this plastic
47:22
sediment that they stepped on, that allowed, that prints were printed and that
47:29
were preserved until today, they have already incorporated old seeds by deflation pots at
47:34
that time, because the seed could also fly. Let' s say it
47:40
' s not something that' s not a wood, for example, or
47:45
human bone or even a bone not that there isn' t and besides,
47:50
well what' s missing a little what they say, but that' s
47:52
something very common in places with footprints, that there are no other elements,
47:57
there are no lithic elements, there' s no carbon, there' s
48:00
no phobon, there' s no camp, where these people went. But
48:00
this often happens in the footprints, because in the places where the footprints are
48:06
impregnated they are usually edges of lagoons or places of passage where people will not
48:09
park there to inhabit it. Not then are they passing places or lagoon edges
48:15
When it has to have been humid, that has to have been of a
48:17
plastic state so that the footprint is impregned, that is, that people were
48:22
going through a puddle, something muddy near a lagoon, a stream, whatever.
48:30
But I still believe that this site is excavated, studied by Bennetts,
48:35
busts and collaborators. Let us say we must pay attention and perhaps, if
48:40
indeed, the human footprints were twenty- three, twenty- four thousand years
48:45
old. Maybe they' re representing an early or failed ingress before the last
48:52
peak. Clear glacial, of course, it' s probably a possibility,
48:58
but good. I imagine you' re thinking of expanding the research and trying
49:02
to give context to those footprints to find out where they came from, where
49:08
they were going, you start locating the sites that are related to those footprints.
49:14
Now, to finish, I like to assume, let' s say
49:21
that the presence of human beings on the continent is between thirteen thousand and sixteen
49:24
thousand years old. It is then worth continuing to study the subject. If
49:29
we already know that seniority is how long ago they arrived, we should continue
49:35
to work on this issue or we should consider investigating other topics. No,
49:37
we don' t have to go on. I mean first. For me
49:43
in my head, I have it as half- solved in terms of where
49:45
they came from and when they arrived, they came and came to antres,
49:51
three and you die a thousand years. That would be for me, say,
49:53
I could say, I' m not gonna get killed for that,
49:58
but let' s say I would defend. There' s this idea like
50:01
this in Jundia. But, just like they ask a lot of questions to
50:05
ask, for example, it' s not clear the characteristics of these people,
50:09
exactly because one of the problems we have to face is if this happened
50:13
like this, how these people did to colonize a continent in a few thousand
50:19
years, how did they get from Alaska almost to land of fire, what
50:24
was their reproduction rate, why did they have this spirit. Let' s
50:28
say colonizer. There are no different models that have been put forward. One
50:30
of the ones that I like the most to try to involve the process is
50:34
the one called the frog jump no or slight flow that is, instead of
50:37
going like a kind of wave of settlement, where the bands successively occupy new
50:43
territories and advancing occupying the whole territory. I imagine more a colonization where some
50:52
bands dislocate from the parental bands, from the band of stras and seek favorable
50:55
environments, but not contiguous, but much further, more withdrawn, trying to
51:01
always maintain some connection with the parental band or with other bands because it is
51:06
necessary for the formation of couples, but it goes as jumping from one environment
51:10
to another and thus reaching the south. We are also not quite clear on
51:17
the subject of technology. Not because we see that it appears about thirteen zero
51:22
years ago in South America also this type of fish tail tips, which could
51:27
be related to clois in some way, do not debrive from each other,
51:30
but both respond to the same technological phenomenon. This possibility of making very very
51:37
finite tips that maybe we are the projectile tip, but maybe that was also
51:40
accompanying with new home strategies. Perhaps the people who brought this technological innovation also
51:47
brought a different form of collective hunting or communal hunting, which allowed for an
51:53
increase. In fact, we see in carbon radio dating that might somehow reflect
51:58
more people. We like to believe that in the curves that are made of
52:05
calibration we see that after the appearance of the fish tail tips, there is
52:07
like a peak and then a decrease in growth. Prates and Pérez have raised
52:13
this. It could be because of the extinction of the prestocene fauna. That
52:15
is, the fish tail tips and the home strategies probably associated, could have
52:20
given more efficiency to the hunt and this would have made a greater predatory over
52:25
these populations of pleistocene fauna of large animals that were already in a state a
52:30
little weakened by climate changes. But once these people became extinct, they were
52:36
left without an important resource. Then there would have been a population growth.
52:42
Try to study this phenomenon. Human beings were able to extinguish a pleistocinic fauna
52:45
that had evolved in Latin America millions of years ago, extinguishing it in a
52:51
few thousand years, two thousand three, thousand years. It' s a
52:54
fascinating question. They were able to do that or not or there' s
52:59
just another phenomenon that they' re after too. The other thing Juan Guillermo,
53:02
which is important is to understand which places were first populated and which places
53:07
were populated afterwards, because there we can see what these first settlers were looking
53:10
for. Not everything, no, all of America was populated at the same
53:14
time. There are places that were later populated. Then it would have to
53:19
be seen why they came to Tierra del Fuego so early that it took him
53:22
to cross Patagonia and reach the island of Tierra del Fuego that at that time
53:25
was part of the continent, but it was at the southern end of Patagonia.
53:30
One thing that has been raised was that tropical forests had not been favorable
53:35
environments for these early human beings. Now, with the research being done here
53:40
in Colombia, on the sites of the Guaviare, with which they have also
53:45
been done in the Brazilian Amazon, it has been seen that there is evidence
53:52
of restacenic occupations also of ten or eleven thousand years, twelve thousand years,
53:57
which refutes a little this idea of tropical classes were not favorable for these occupations
54:02
of hunters gatherers. There are many questions about genetics. This is this Australian
54:10
Melanesian sign, which appears in some current groups and now appears in a group
54:19
in an ancient skeleton. The work appeared this week is by Thiago Ferras and
54:24
a lot of authors with cocimo post that is proposing that this austromelanesic signal,
54:31
very weak, that appears in the genetic structure some populations that appear different places
54:37
and at different times, could be a remnant of the ancestral populations before they
54:44
separated from the Asians, not product of an austro Melanesian wave, but a
54:51
remnant in the genetic structure produced from the origin of the populations that at some
54:58
time were similar, that is, the same parent population of origin to the
55:04
Asian populations that later gave origin to the American and Australian populations, that is,
55:07
at one point, all of them come from the same common trunk.
55:12
These are us. Sapiens who sixty thousand years ago, seventy thousand years began
55:16
their expansion through Asia and Europe and then arrived in Australia first, and America
55:23
later. And finally, to close also one thing that always seems important to
55:29
me to emphasize, is that of these first settlers who arrived here, of
55:34
these few thousand probably Asian inhabitants who adapted and who were the first Americans,
55:39
let' s say later they diversified and formed the variety of indigenous populations that
55:45
Europeans found when they arrived here America and found populations that had a technological,
55:53
road, symbolic, religious development very important, not only the great idescis,
56:00
the jungle groups, also everyone had adapted to their environment and knew it and
56:06
knew how to exploit it and respected it and symbolized it and graced it and
56:12
everything else. But also, the descendants of these were the ones who invented,
56:19
Invented crops that changed humanity, invents, they created the pope, they
56:22
domesticated the potato of some small tubers, wild, corn, tomato, aji
56:30
imagine what the world would be like. Without these American inventions they changed the
56:42
food of the world. So it seems to me that there is like a
56:47
kind of we have to have a little tribute to these first settlers, because
56:53
thanks to them and their descendants, our civilization, our culture, has managed
57:00
to improve the diet significantly, not substantially. No. The Pope in Europe
57:06
was a very important food in times of famine, because the cold and so
57:10
on were chosen very well. The Russians made vodka when it was distilled by
57:15
the martinez, pasta and pomodora sauce. The pomodoro sauce exactly today fights chocolate.
57:22
Sure, imagine what the world would be without these American inventions, without
57:27
chocolate, which is the other good tobacco. It' s not a disgrace.
57:30
Tobacco, of course, unfortunately, but it was also an American domestication.
57:37
So nothing. I think there' s a lot to see, although
57:40
I think we already have some certainties. I think we cannot think of an
57:44
Australian population, I think we cannot raise a very old population and I think
57:51
some issues that I think are more or less resolved. But the questions and
57:58
fields of research still asked, there are still many, and there are still
58:01
many, many questions unsolved. Gustavo thank you so much for the time,
58:07
for the disposition for this conversation. It has indeed been an honor, a
58:13
privilege, for to be at the head of an authority on the subject really.
58:19
I also want to thank an inorte femesterio for the loan of the recording
58:23
booth. We will continue to produce this podcast of scientific content. The future
58:29
was yesterday. Thank you very much, thank you, Micha.