WEBVTT - Ep. 178: Hunting Mammoths 0:00:08.960 --> 0:00:13.320 This is me eat podcast coming at you shirtless, severely 0:00:13.440 --> 0:00:18.320 bug bitten in my case, underwear listening un podcast. You 0:00:18.360 --> 0:00:22.600 can't predict anything presented by on X. Hunt creators are 0:00:22.600 --> 0:00:26.160 the most comprehensive digital mapping system for hunters. Download the 0:00:26.239 --> 0:00:29.440 Hunt app from the iTunes or Google play store. Nor 0:00:29.440 --> 0:00:37.519 where you stand with on X David J. Meltzer. You 0:00:37.560 --> 0:00:39.880 know it's the writer named David Meltzer. That's gonna be disappointing. 0:00:40.360 --> 0:00:43.240 There's a poem named David Meltzer. There's a medical doctor 0:00:43.320 --> 0:00:47.400 named David Meltzers. If someone goes to if you go 0:00:47.640 --> 0:00:52.800 into Google and you write David Meltzer a auto phills 0:00:53.320 --> 0:00:58.680 David Meltzer anthropologist. Okay, so not David Meltzer, the wrestling writer. No, 0:00:59.360 --> 0:01:03.440 a victory from me. Uh, this is gonna this is 0:01:03.440 --> 0:01:06.640 gonna break some people's some dear friends of mine's hearts. 0:01:06.680 --> 0:01:09.840 But you're the favorite. Yeah, we haven't even started yet. 0:01:09.920 --> 0:01:12.680 You're the favorite guests that I've ever had on this show. 0:01:13.640 --> 0:01:16.720 We can stop right now. I'm good you haven't started. 0:01:17.000 --> 0:01:21.600 I uh um, I'm gonna flatter you a little bit. 0:01:21.920 --> 0:01:24.320 You know how people will have in a in a home. 0:01:24.400 --> 0:01:27.200 You'll have a coffee table right in your sign up 0:01:27.200 --> 0:01:32.200 your living room, and people will position books there which 0:01:32.560 --> 0:01:35.959 are a combination of what the person likes and how 0:01:36.000 --> 0:01:41.600 the person likes to be perceived. I keep I rotate. Well, 0:01:41.640 --> 0:01:44.119 there's there's a couple that aren't yours. I'm a little 0:01:44.160 --> 0:01:46.400 sorry to hear that. We go ahead. Well it's the 0:01:46.440 --> 0:01:53.200 photographer Um Hoffman. So I rotate Hoffman's book of photography 0:01:53.480 --> 0:01:57.320 with I sage people in a New World with your 0:01:57.320 --> 0:02:00.440 fulsome book. I rotate them and I and I put 0:02:00.480 --> 0:02:03.280 them there, and it's meant to be like this is 0:02:03.320 --> 0:02:06.360 my my this is like mikes. You know. My expression 0:02:06.360 --> 0:02:11.000 of myself is that that I value David J. Melzer's books. 0:02:11.040 --> 0:02:12.800 All I can say is, you've just earned yourself the 0:02:12.840 --> 0:02:16.200 next two books. Really, sure you get them on the 0:02:16.240 --> 0:02:17.880 house now, if they're gonna be, if they're gonna be 0:02:17.880 --> 0:02:20.119 on the table, you got them. I almost brought them 0:02:20.160 --> 0:02:22.239 to have you sign them. But they're but they're big 0:02:22.280 --> 0:02:25.000 sons of bitching books. Yeah, I do tend to, right, 0:02:25.080 --> 0:02:27.520 don't I know? Just they're they're they're they're full of 0:02:27.800 --> 0:02:31.040 maps and color, imagery, everything you could want from everything. 0:02:31.040 --> 0:02:32.840 I know when I finished with a book, I know nothing. 0:02:32.880 --> 0:02:36.000 It's all just poured out onto the page, nothing left. No, 0:02:36.160 --> 0:02:38.560 they're yeah, they're amazing, and you do. Um, we'll get 0:02:38.560 --> 0:02:40.840 into what you're working. We haven't. We're telling people all this, 0:02:41.040 --> 0:02:45.000 all them knowing what you do. But UM, a wonderful 0:02:45.120 --> 0:02:52.959 job of of explaining really complicated things in a way 0:02:53.000 --> 0:02:56.839 that don't They don't feel remotely dumbed down, but they're 0:02:56.840 --> 0:03:00.160 still accessible and you still feel like you have like 0:03:00.160 --> 0:03:04.000 you're getting a very scholarly understanding of something that would 0:03:04.040 --> 0:03:08.040 be easy to trivialize. All of us in the business 0:03:08.040 --> 0:03:13.120 have an obligation to speak to the public that both 0:03:13.600 --> 0:03:17.000 pays for people like me and is interested in the 0:03:17.080 --> 0:03:20.040 kinds of things that I'm lucky enough to do, and 0:03:20.080 --> 0:03:23.440 so I really feel that obligation strongly. Uh to write 0:03:23.760 --> 0:03:29.160 in good American that people can understand, which actually is 0:03:29.240 --> 0:03:31.519 a hell of a lot harder than writing for my colleagues. 0:03:32.000 --> 0:03:33.760 It's a whole lot easier just to use jargon because 0:03:33.760 --> 0:03:36.000 I know everybody knows what that is. And then when 0:03:36.000 --> 0:03:39.680 I have to explain something, especially in regard to some 0:03:39.720 --> 0:03:41.880 of the high tech stuff that we're involved in now, 0:03:42.680 --> 0:03:44.200 it's a lot of work, but it's a lot of fun. 0:03:44.840 --> 0:03:46.880 It's a lot of fun. I hope you keep at it. 0:03:47.080 --> 0:03:50.040 Um not. I want to tell people. Let's say you're 0:03:50.080 --> 0:03:54.360 at You're at a one of your faculty parties. We're 0:03:54.400 --> 0:03:56.840 here at Southern Methodist Universe. You're at a faculty party. 0:03:56.840 --> 0:04:00.560 You meet like an English professor, and you you meet 0:04:00.560 --> 0:04:03.880 an English professor's husband, and he says, so, what do 0:04:03.920 --> 0:04:09.360 you do? You say, so, I work on ice age 0:04:09.560 --> 0:04:13.320 hunter gatherers. That's the sort of boring tagline. Dude, that's 0:04:13.360 --> 0:04:17.080 that's titillating to me. Okay, So what follows is I 0:04:17.200 --> 0:04:20.440 work on the people who are the first to come 0:04:20.480 --> 0:04:24.159 into the America's Imagine what it must have been like 0:04:24.320 --> 0:04:27.640 to look around one day and see no smoke on 0:04:27.680 --> 0:04:32.039 the horizon, no freshly killed animals, no sign of any 0:04:32.120 --> 0:04:37.240 other human being, and realize, oh, we're all alone here, 0:04:38.200 --> 0:04:41.400 and this place is kind of looking different than where 0:04:41.400 --> 0:04:44.839 we came from. And what's over the next hill, and 0:04:44.920 --> 0:04:47.440 what's over the hill next to that. Imagine what it 0:04:47.520 --> 0:04:50.479 must have been like to be that person, to be 0:04:50.560 --> 0:04:54.640 in that group, to see a landscape teeming with animals 0:04:54.680 --> 0:04:57.839 that some of which you've never seen before. And you 0:04:57.839 --> 0:05:00.560 don't know which ones are going to feed you, which 0:05:00.560 --> 0:05:03.000 ones are going to cure you. The plants I think 0:05:03.000 --> 0:05:04.960 you raised in one of your books which ones are 0:05:04.960 --> 0:05:06.320 going to hurt you? When which ones are going to 0:05:06.400 --> 0:05:09.200 try and kill you? Exactly. You have a hypothetical scenario 0:05:09.240 --> 0:05:11.240 and one of your books where you point out something 0:05:11.279 --> 0:05:14.880 that's interesting is that people are coming from the north 0:05:14.920 --> 0:05:18.760 and had been were thousands of years, perhaps separated from 0:05:18.839 --> 0:05:22.480 tropical climates. And you're coming from the north and there 0:05:22.640 --> 0:05:24.720 there's a guy, we don't know, a woman, a man, 0:05:24.800 --> 0:05:27.240 whoever it was, that was like the first one to 0:05:27.360 --> 0:05:33.839 encounter a rattlesnake. No awareness, no even ancestral awareness of 0:05:33.880 --> 0:05:37.440 what that was. You kind of wonder though, Um, I mean, 0:05:37.440 --> 0:05:40.719 you guys surely have encountered rattlesnakes in your travels. And 0:05:41.360 --> 0:05:44.520 there is something that that that hits your reptilian brain 0:05:45.320 --> 0:05:47.839 that says, oh, it's kind of an interesting noise, but 0:05:47.920 --> 0:05:51.479 oh dear, that looks like that could be that could 0:05:51.520 --> 0:05:56.479 be trouble. Um. But yeah, imagine that and imagine all 0:05:56.680 --> 0:06:01.920 these these trees, these plants that you know you kind 0:06:01.920 --> 0:06:03.880 of recognize them. I mean, you know what a tree 0:06:03.920 --> 0:06:06.680 looks like for grind out loud, But what can that 0:06:06.760 --> 0:06:08.840 do for you? And that's one of the really amazing 0:06:08.880 --> 0:06:13.279 things about the peopling processes that after getting onto the 0:06:13.279 --> 0:06:17.120 continent and being here for ten thousand years, there's virtually 0:06:17.200 --> 0:06:21.440 not a single plant that Native Americans hadn't figured out. 0:06:21.880 --> 0:06:25.920 It's medicinal properties, it's food properties, its use as tools. 0:06:26.279 --> 0:06:30.839 I mean, it's really quite remarkable how folks learned about 0:06:30.880 --> 0:06:33.440 this new land. And I suspect they had to learn 0:06:33.600 --> 0:06:36.080 on the go, and they had to learn fairly quickly 0:06:36.400 --> 0:06:41.440 because they were moving with remarkable speed, archaeologically breathtaking speed 0:06:41.480 --> 0:06:44.520 across the continent. Uh, and they were able to figure 0:06:44.560 --> 0:06:47.719 things out. Can you can you explain that? Well? You know, 0:06:47.800 --> 0:06:50.920 let me ask you this, what's the best way if 0:06:50.920 --> 0:06:52.920 we're gonna get in, if we want to do a 0:06:52.960 --> 0:06:56.599 good fly over of the peopling of the New World, 0:06:58.360 --> 0:07:01.200 where's the best way to begin? Because I have in 0:07:01.360 --> 0:07:03.479 thinking about talking to you, there's all these things I 0:07:03.480 --> 0:07:05.200 wanted you to explain. I wanted he was playing like 0:07:06.360 --> 0:07:11.960 Clovis pre Clovis, sort of the moving like our best 0:07:12.000 --> 0:07:14.760 guests of Well, here's nothing I want to explain. How 0:07:14.840 --> 0:07:19.920 for a while the oldest accepted site in the New World, 0:07:20.400 --> 0:07:22.560 correct me if I'm wrong. For a while, the oldest 0:07:22.600 --> 0:07:29.080 one we knew about rock solid was down monta Verde 0:07:29.280 --> 0:07:35.200 right in Chili. Still is, so what happened between that? 0:07:35.480 --> 0:07:41.440 If they're coming from Siberia, what happened between Bryngia in Chili? 0:07:42.680 --> 0:07:46.120 Where's all their stuff? Fair question? Absolutely, these are all 0:07:46.200 --> 0:07:47.920 questions I want to ask you, So you tell me, like, 0:07:47.960 --> 0:07:50.520 what's the best place to begin what we used to 0:07:50.520 --> 0:07:52.320 think was the beginning or what we now think is 0:07:52.320 --> 0:07:55.960 the beginning. Well, so it used to be tough because 0:07:56.280 --> 0:08:02.040 with archaeological material, you're getting what's preserved, and it's a 0:08:02.080 --> 0:08:06.280 crapshoot because we are talking about a relatively small population 0:08:06.560 --> 0:08:10.000 on a vast continent. They're going to be flying below 0:08:10.080 --> 0:08:14.920 archaeological radar for centuries, if not millennia. There's simply not 0:08:15.080 --> 0:08:19.400 enough of them producing enough sites that the odds are 0:08:19.440 --> 0:08:22.200 that you'll find them. Right, So we always knew that 0:08:22.240 --> 0:08:24.920 the archaeological record, the oldest site you find is never 0:08:24.920 --> 0:08:26.640 going to be the oldest site in America. I mean, 0:08:26.640 --> 0:08:30.960 the odds are simply infinitestainally small. But now we've got 0:08:31.000 --> 0:08:34.720 genetics and genomics, And what genetics and genomics can tell 0:08:34.840 --> 0:08:39.760 us is the point at which ancestral Native Americans separated 0:08:40.240 --> 0:08:45.360 from Northeast Asian populations and started to make their way here. Now, 0:08:45.640 --> 0:08:49.600 the moment they split from their Asian cousins is not 0:08:49.720 --> 0:08:52.280 necessarily the moment they headed to the Americas, but it 0:08:52.320 --> 0:08:55.840 gives us a maximum age. And we now know based 0:08:55.840 --> 0:08:58.240 on ancient danna and genomics. And this is work that's 0:08:58.240 --> 0:09:00.959 been done by quite a number of but most especially 0:09:01.000 --> 0:09:04.680 my colleague Eski Willerslev at the GeoGenetics Center in Copenhagen, 0:09:05.559 --> 0:09:10.120 and our work has shown that around twenty three thousand 0:09:10.200 --> 0:09:12.839 years ago twenty three you know, plus or minus a 0:09:12.880 --> 0:09:15.400 thousand were archaeologists, right, Plus and minus a thousand years 0:09:15.480 --> 0:09:19.600 is nothing does around twenty three thousand years ago, we 0:09:19.679 --> 0:09:22.320 have that initial split. So we know that at some 0:09:22.440 --> 0:09:25.319 point after that they're coming this way and there was 0:09:25.360 --> 0:09:29.960 no longer exchange. Correct. We also know that, as you 0:09:30.040 --> 0:09:32.560 just said, we've got Monte verd A and the dates 0:09:32.559 --> 0:09:36.280 they're around fourteen thousand, seven hundred calibrated years. So we 0:09:36.320 --> 0:09:38.880 now have a window within which we can real quick 0:09:38.880 --> 0:09:42.079 explain for people what that means. Ah, okay, So radiocarbon 0:09:42.200 --> 0:09:45.920 years radiocarbon dating. Basically, you're looking at the amount of 0:09:45.960 --> 0:09:48.680 C four team that still resides in a sample after 0:09:48.760 --> 0:09:50.800 a certain period of time. And we know the half life, 0:09:50.800 --> 0:09:54.120 we know how long it takes to disintegrate in a sample. Yeah, 0:09:54.160 --> 0:09:57.480 I'm gonna annoy you here. Okay, go even deeper the sun. 0:09:57.880 --> 0:09:59.599 Like notice, tell peop real quick, because people get this 0:09:59.600 --> 0:10:01.240 is stuff you here their whole lives. They never know 0:10:01.320 --> 0:10:03.200 like what it means. So the sun comes down, it 0:10:03.240 --> 0:10:08.400 hits our atmosphere. Yeah right, okay. So basically, nitrogen gets blasted, 0:10:08.480 --> 0:10:12.480 turns into a stabile isotope of carbon, normal garden variety 0:10:12.520 --> 0:10:14.400 carbon is carbon twelve, right, and then you've got this 0:10:14.480 --> 0:10:17.640 isotope carbon four team. Carbon four team behaves just like 0:10:17.720 --> 0:10:21.679 carbon twelve in that it joins up with oxygen forms. 0:10:21.720 --> 0:10:25.960 CEO two gets absorbed into living matter. When it's no 0:10:26.000 --> 0:10:29.240 longer being absorbed, when that organism dies, the amount of 0:10:29.280 --> 0:10:36.040 CEO two begins to decay back to basically it's zeros out, okay, 0:10:36.360 --> 0:10:38.480 and it decays at a known rate. It's called a 0:10:38.520 --> 0:10:40.520 half life, and a half life of radio carbon is 0:10:40.520 --> 0:10:43.480 about five thousand seven hundred and thirty years. So if 0:10:43.480 --> 0:10:46.560 you've got half of the amount, not even looking at notes, No, 0:10:46.640 --> 0:10:52.119 I'm just making it up. Um. If you've got half, um, 0:10:52.160 --> 0:10:55.240 half the radio carbon is gone. Five thousand, seven thirty 0:10:55.320 --> 0:10:58.800 years has elapsed, right, okay, So and it just halves halves, halves, 0:10:58.840 --> 0:11:03.280 halves halves. Okay. Here's the problem. The very mechanism that 0:11:03.400 --> 0:11:06.400 creates the C fourteen in the atmosphere in the first place, 0:11:06.440 --> 0:11:10.280 which is the sun bombarding the upper atmosphere and and 0:11:10.320 --> 0:11:13.920 creating all the C fourteen, It's varying. So at certain 0:11:13.960 --> 0:11:16.360 points in the past more C fourteen is being produced. 0:11:16.400 --> 0:11:18.400 At other points in the past, less C fourteen is 0:11:18.440 --> 0:11:21.640 being produced. What that means is that when you get 0:11:21.640 --> 0:11:25.120 a radio carbon date, you've got to say to yourself, Okay, 0:11:25.160 --> 0:11:28.040 if this was a period when excess carbon was being 0:11:28.040 --> 0:11:30.840 produced in the atmosphere, it's going to give me a 0:11:30.840 --> 0:11:34.000 funky date. I've got to calibrate it. And how do 0:11:34.040 --> 0:11:38.200 you calibrate it? Tree rings? Tree rings. When a tree 0:11:38.240 --> 0:11:42.080 grows and you guys cut down trees, right, Um, you 0:11:42.160 --> 0:11:45.760 see all the growth rings. Those growth rings come on 0:11:45.760 --> 0:11:49.360 one year at a time. Okay. If you date an 0:11:49.400 --> 0:11:52.880 individual growth ring on a tree that you've counted back, 0:11:53.760 --> 0:11:55.760 and we now have a tree ring sequence that goes 0:11:55.800 --> 0:11:59.080 back thirteen thousand years in change. I don't know the 0:11:59.120 --> 0:12:01.360 exact number. If I were to look it up, I 0:12:01.360 --> 0:12:05.560 could tell you. Uh, you date those individual rings, you 0:12:05.600 --> 0:12:08.920 know that that ring should be eleven thousand, three and 0:12:09.000 --> 0:12:11.560 forty eight years old, But your radio carbon date tells 0:12:11.559 --> 0:12:15.600 you something else. That's how you know how much it's off, right, 0:12:15.880 --> 0:12:20.320 And so we have these really elaborate calibration curves. There's 0:12:20.360 --> 0:12:24.440 a there's a difference. So a radio carbon date of 0:12:24.679 --> 0:12:29.120 ten thousand years is actually equivalent to a real year 0:12:29.480 --> 0:12:34.480 date about eleven thousand seven d okay. And when you 0:12:34.640 --> 0:12:39.480 and today we're speaking in count well let's speaking and 0:12:39.600 --> 0:12:42.240 basically like we're you're arranging it into years as we 0:12:42.320 --> 0:12:44.600 understand that exactly right, I'm gonna give you real years. 0:12:44.640 --> 0:12:46.360 And the reason I'm doing that is a bit because 0:12:46.400 --> 0:12:50.280 the estimates that we get from genetics and genomics are 0:12:50.320 --> 0:12:55.040 in essentially real years, right, Okay, So we've got the 0:12:55.120 --> 0:12:59.600 genetic estimates at twenty three, Monte Verde has a date 0:12:59.640 --> 0:13:04.080 of four teen seven, fourteen thou seven hundred real years. 0:13:04.360 --> 0:13:07.320 It's radio carbon years. Just to kind of finish up 0:13:07.360 --> 0:13:10.040 with the example is twelve five, Okay, so you can 0:13:10.040 --> 0:13:12.440 see what the discrepancy is between a radio carbon in 0:13:12.440 --> 0:13:16.840 a real year. Okay. So in that window between twenty 0:13:16.880 --> 0:13:20.720 three and fourteen seven, we know people showed up. Now 0:13:21.600 --> 0:13:25.880 there's an issue there because that window is downtown. Last 0:13:25.880 --> 0:13:29.880 glacial maximum, right, the coldest period of the last hundred 0:13:29.920 --> 0:13:34.319 thousand years was between about twenty three thousand and nineteen 0:13:34.320 --> 0:13:37.440 thousand years ago. That's when we had these massive ice 0:13:37.480 --> 0:13:43.040 sheets covering basically Canada. Okay, two big ice sheets. One 0:13:43.080 --> 0:13:48.600 that goes from Newfoundland and lapse up against the eastern 0:13:48.640 --> 0:13:52.160 flank of the Rocky Mountains Lauren Tied ice sheet. It 0:13:52.200 --> 0:13:56.640 goes as far south as Ohio, Central Ohio and Pennsylvania. 0:13:57.040 --> 0:13:59.440 It goes as far north as well. It actually connects 0:13:59.480 --> 0:14:01.360 up with an ice eat that makes it over to Greenland. 0:14:02.080 --> 0:14:04.120 Is there a point when a glacier turns into an 0:14:04.120 --> 0:14:10.720 ice sheet or absolutely um. It all starts with snow, 0:14:11.679 --> 0:14:15.480 and it all starts with summer temperatures. And this was 0:14:15.520 --> 0:14:19.160 figured out actually by a guy sitting in a prisoner 0:14:19.200 --> 0:14:22.440 of war camp in World War One. He was a 0:14:22.680 --> 0:14:26.280 he was a mathematician, and he understood that if you 0:14:26.400 --> 0:14:30.080 play around with the amount of sunlight and heat hitting 0:14:30.120 --> 0:14:33.880 the Earth, you can either grow a glacier or make 0:14:33.960 --> 0:14:38.280 one go away. And the reason this happens is that UM, 0:14:38.280 --> 0:14:39.640 and it has to do with a whole bunch of 0:14:39.680 --> 0:14:44.160 sort of astronomical physics UM, where basically all the planets 0:14:44.160 --> 0:14:46.520 are constantly getting jostled. We like to sort of think 0:14:46.520 --> 0:14:49.200 of our Earth is is orbiting in a particular way, 0:14:49.200 --> 0:14:50.960 and it's always been that way and it's never going 0:14:51.000 --> 0:14:53.880 to change. And that's just not right right because we've 0:14:53.880 --> 0:14:56.880 got all these other planets out there, so we've got 0:14:56.920 --> 0:14:59.880 the gravitational effects of the Sun. But then there's Jupiter 0:15:00.040 --> 0:15:04.160 parked a few orbits out there, and it's also affecting us. 0:15:04.200 --> 0:15:07.200 So at times in the past, the northern hemisphere has 0:15:07.240 --> 0:15:11.400 been closer or further away from the Sun, which meant 0:15:11.440 --> 0:15:15.720 there's been more or less solar radiation hitting the surface. 0:15:17.600 --> 0:15:20.880 When you reduce the amount of solar radiation hitting the 0:15:20.880 --> 0:15:27.400 surface in um the summer, last year's winter snow doesn't melt, 0:15:28.640 --> 0:15:31.960 The next year snow piles up, and if it doesn't 0:15:32.000 --> 0:15:35.680 melt again, well you pile that up to a certain 0:15:35.720 --> 0:15:42.560 depths or so, it compresses, it packs, it turns to ice, 0:15:43.160 --> 0:15:47.400 and it starts to flow. Okay, it used to be 0:15:48.640 --> 0:15:51.360 that there was about a three week window in the 0:15:51.400 --> 0:15:58.640 far North between the last of the spring um freezing 0:15:58.640 --> 0:16:02.960 temperatures and the first of the fall freeze. If you 0:16:03.040 --> 0:16:06.280 close that two to three week window, you could start 0:16:06.320 --> 0:16:08.200 another ice age. I mean you have to close it 0:16:08.280 --> 0:16:11.760 sort of consistently for many, many years, right, um. But 0:16:11.880 --> 0:16:14.360 that's how it works. And so we had this period 0:16:14.400 --> 0:16:18.560 between twenty three thousand, nineteen thousand years ago where you 0:16:18.680 --> 0:16:22.440 had these massive ice sheets that had built up starting 0:16:22.480 --> 0:16:26.400 probably around twenty nine thirty thousand years ago and reached 0:16:26.440 --> 0:16:30.360 their maximum extent between that twenty three and nineteen thousand, 0:16:30.480 --> 0:16:35.440 covering up ground upon which now lives millions and millions 0:16:35.440 --> 0:16:38.560 of Americans. There's a reason Minnesota's the land of ten 0:16:38.600 --> 0:16:43.440 thousand lakes. Those are all glacial puddles, right. Uh. Seattle 0:16:43.960 --> 0:16:48.040 had um an ice sheet basically in downtown Seattle. That's 0:16:48.080 --> 0:16:51.720 why it's a great port. Right. The ice basically created 0:16:51.720 --> 0:16:56.600 these fiords Chesapeake Bay wise, Chesapeake Bay a bay. Well, 0:16:56.640 --> 0:17:00.480 the Susquehanna River had to because and you grow that 0:17:00.600 --> 0:17:03.480 much ice on land, and we are talking about an 0:17:03.480 --> 0:17:06.960 ice sheet that again east coast to the Rocky Mountains, 0:17:07.000 --> 0:17:08.800 and then from the Rocky Mountains to the coast range 0:17:08.840 --> 0:17:10.760 there was a second major ice sheet, the Quardier and 0:17:10.840 --> 0:17:14.560 Ice sheet. You put that much ice on land, where's 0:17:14.560 --> 0:17:19.320 all the water coming from the ocean, right, So all 0:17:19.359 --> 0:17:24.680 of that precipitation, like oceans evaporate, precipitation clouds move over land, 0:17:25.240 --> 0:17:29.120 falls its snow, and then it freezes. It doesn't get 0:17:29.119 --> 0:17:32.360 back to the ocean. So when that happens, you're basically 0:17:32.400 --> 0:17:35.360 locking up about five percent of the world's water. When 0:17:35.359 --> 0:17:38.960 that happens, sea levels drop, and we know that sea 0:17:39.040 --> 0:17:41.560 levels dropped, and this becomes part of the people in 0:17:41.600 --> 0:17:46.679 America story. Right, sea levels drop about a hundred and 0:17:46.720 --> 0:17:50.200 thirty meters, so you know, put it in defeat, uh 0:17:50.240 --> 0:17:55.800 several hundred feet in depth. So you could walk from 0:17:55.840 --> 0:17:59.679 Asia to America and you would have no idea that 0:17:59.720 --> 0:18:02.040 you were walking from one hemisphere to another. And the 0:18:02.080 --> 0:18:04.040 reason you would have no idea is that don't think 0:18:04.040 --> 0:18:06.560 of the bearing Land bridge. Is this sort of skinny 0:18:06.640 --> 0:18:10.600 rope bridge over the Amazon River somewhere. No, it's a 0:18:10.640 --> 0:18:13.760 thousand miles and you know, you look around and it's 0:18:13.800 --> 0:18:15.639 just a continent to you. That's that was one of 0:18:15.680 --> 0:18:17.360 the things that really started to interest me in this 0:18:17.440 --> 0:18:20.280 world a little bit, was when I started to get 0:18:20.320 --> 0:18:25.680 that because in every every like American school child's imagination, 0:18:26.080 --> 0:18:28.520 the Bearing Land Bridge is this thing where you like, 0:18:28.720 --> 0:18:32.560 it's like Moses going through right the part of red seat, 0:18:32.600 --> 0:18:34.879 Like you pack your ship up and it's this narrow 0:18:34.880 --> 0:18:37.600 little thing. Everybody's like, okay, ready, and then you run 0:18:37.640 --> 0:18:40.359 across it. You know, it's like you're you're sort of 0:18:40.359 --> 0:18:42.680 impression of it. And then to go up at what's 0:18:42.720 --> 0:18:45.000 now the would be the foot of it now and 0:18:45.040 --> 0:18:48.399 just you're your Northwest Alaska and you stand there and 0:18:48.400 --> 0:18:51.600 be like, you don't have any you don't understand where 0:18:51.600 --> 0:18:54.800 the oceans sit. You're just out on this massive thing. 0:18:55.520 --> 0:18:57.560 And that's what life on the Bearing the Bearing Land 0:18:57.560 --> 0:19:00.520 Bridge wasn't any more than when you're in Michigan. You're 0:19:00.600 --> 0:19:02.479 very aware of that you're on a peninsula. You're just 0:19:02.760 --> 0:19:05.760 somewhere exactly look at the map, and you also put 0:19:05.800 --> 0:19:08.120 it together. Right. No, that's a great analogy because it's 0:19:08.119 --> 0:19:10.359 a scale issue. You know, humans are small and the 0:19:10.359 --> 0:19:13.439 bearing land Bridge was really large, and you would have 0:19:13.440 --> 0:19:15.760 had no idea. And in fact, you know, there's no 0:19:15.800 --> 0:19:17.679 reason to think that people were only coming in one 0:19:17.720 --> 0:19:20.640 direction either. You know, they could go east, they could 0:19:20.640 --> 0:19:22.879 go west, And we're starting to see some of that 0:19:22.920 --> 0:19:26.560 evidence genetically that these populations are moving back and forth 0:19:26.640 --> 0:19:30.760 across the land Bridge. It was trafficking in humans, plants, 0:19:30.960 --> 0:19:38.600 animals for thousands of years. Yeah, but you're right. But 0:19:38.640 --> 0:19:40.520 there's a point you bring up in one of your 0:19:40.680 --> 0:19:42.680 I think it's I say, people in the New World. 0:19:42.840 --> 0:19:46.480 You bring up a thing and I mentioned I quote 0:19:46.480 --> 0:19:47.840 you on this a lot, and I hope but I'm 0:19:47.880 --> 0:19:49.960 not over emphasizing it. But you bring up a thing 0:19:50.880 --> 0:19:54.560 where you said the movement of people. As people are 0:19:54.600 --> 0:19:57.919 moving around, they're moving quickly. And I can't remember if 0:19:57.920 --> 0:19:59.520 you say this that I added it to it. But 0:19:59.640 --> 0:20:05.320 they're not like running from warfare necessarily, like they're they're 0:20:05.359 --> 0:20:10.480 they're leaving there, They're leaving places they're sparsely populated, four 0:20:10.520 --> 0:20:13.359 places that are sparsely or not populated at all. And 0:20:13.359 --> 0:20:16.040 and you I do know this part. You to the 0:20:16.040 --> 0:20:21.440 point where like you can't rule out some amount of curiosity, absolutely, 0:20:21.440 --> 0:20:23.639 like someone like they're Maybe they weren't like saying, hey 0:20:23.680 --> 0:20:26.640 we're headed America. We're headed of what will become America. 0:20:27.000 --> 0:20:30.359 But they are saying they're thinking something or else. You 0:20:30.400 --> 0:20:33.280 can't account for that they would have gone as far 0:20:33.320 --> 0:20:38.240 as they went. Well, let's put it this way, when 0:20:38.520 --> 0:20:42.720 when Europeans started sailing around the globe, did they find 0:20:42.800 --> 0:20:47.200 a single habitable landmask that wasn't already inhabited. No, everywhere 0:20:47.240 --> 0:20:50.440 they got to there was already somebody living there. Humans 0:20:50.480 --> 0:20:55.359 have been moving for millions of years, but humans, modern humans, 0:20:55.359 --> 0:20:58.320 anatomically modern humans, they've been moving all over the globe 0:20:58.520 --> 0:21:02.600 for the last fifty thousand years. Um. Do we know 0:21:02.680 --> 0:21:06.560 the exact motives? Not really, But I think curiosity had 0:21:06.600 --> 0:21:08.440 to have something to do with it, right. I mean, 0:21:08.480 --> 0:21:14.480 in any group, somebody's gonna say, hey, let's go over there. Uh, 0:21:14.520 --> 0:21:20.280 but let's go over there also has a good um My, 0:21:20.280 --> 0:21:23.359 My now deceased colleague lue Binford always used to say, 0:21:23.520 --> 0:21:26.800 for hunter gatherers, insurance is not knowing what you have 0:21:26.920 --> 0:21:29.440 right in front of you, it's knowing where you go next. 0:21:29.480 --> 0:21:32.720 When things go bad right in front of you, there's 0:21:32.720 --> 0:21:38.800 an incentive to look over that next hill, because especially 0:21:38.800 --> 0:21:40.760 when things are okay, because that's when you have the 0:21:40.800 --> 0:21:44.040 time and the resources and the teenage sons who are 0:21:44.080 --> 0:21:46.960 just driving you insane, and you say, why don't you 0:21:47.040 --> 0:21:49.240 go do a walk about and come back in a 0:21:49.280 --> 0:21:52.640 month and tell us what you've found. I mean, one 0:21:52.640 --> 0:21:55.439 of the really interesting things about where we do have 0:21:55.600 --> 0:21:58.760 oral history records, like in the colonization of the Pacific 0:21:58.800 --> 0:22:03.160 on these remote islands, and the civic inevitably it's younger brother. 0:22:03.960 --> 0:22:05.800 It's like, get him out of the house. He's not 0:22:05.800 --> 0:22:08.640 going to inherit anything anyway. Let's let him get into 0:22:08.680 --> 0:22:13.080 boat and go someplace and and find new things. Uh. 0:22:13.119 --> 0:22:15.639 And so you know there's an advantage to that. Humans 0:22:15.640 --> 0:22:18.600 are also very good at surviving, and that was part 0:22:18.680 --> 0:22:21.800 of that buying that insurance policy. Did you bring up 0:22:22.840 --> 0:22:25.280 like do you address this or here to somewhere else 0:22:25.400 --> 0:22:28.159 that there's that there's yet the idea of expansion and 0:22:28.200 --> 0:22:31.520 you could say that you know, every hill I come over, 0:22:31.600 --> 0:22:34.719 there's more game and right, and the wood sources are 0:22:34.760 --> 0:22:36.480 down by the rivers and no one's burned it yet, 0:22:36.520 --> 0:22:39.840 and it's just good living. But when you look at 0:22:39.880 --> 0:22:43.040 the landscape in the ice sheets, you're talking about there 0:22:43.080 --> 0:22:46.600 had people had to have come up with up against 0:22:46.600 --> 0:22:50.320 what would be perceived as like a hostile environment perhaps 0:22:50.640 --> 0:22:53.719 and then jumped it without question. And in fact, one 0:22:53.720 --> 0:22:57.600 of the things that's really striking about the earliest archaeological 0:22:57.680 --> 0:23:00.480 record that we have is that we've got stuff all 0:23:00.560 --> 0:23:02.760 over the place in a very short period of time. 0:23:02.800 --> 0:23:05.200 So we know people are moving in their tracking great distances, 0:23:05.920 --> 0:23:09.639 but their distribution was broad, it was not deep. We 0:23:09.720 --> 0:23:13.320 are not seeing every single spot being filled in. What 0:23:13.320 --> 0:23:16.080 we're seeing is that these people were probably leap frogging 0:23:16.800 --> 0:23:20.480 right because they are paying attention to what's over the 0:23:20.520 --> 0:23:23.720 next hill. Um, and if it looks bad that way, 0:23:23.720 --> 0:23:27.600 we'll go someplace else, go in another direction. So in fact, 0:23:27.720 --> 0:23:32.600 they are moving, um, not necessarily in a nice wave, 0:23:33.040 --> 0:23:37.600 expanding out, washing out across the continent. Um. They're looking 0:23:37.600 --> 0:23:40.720 for sweet spots. They're looking for the places that the 0:23:40.840 --> 0:23:44.480 hunting is good, the gathering is good. Um, it's a 0:23:44.520 --> 0:23:47.800 decent place to spend the winter, those kinds of places. 0:23:47.920 --> 0:23:49.679 I mean, they're all like us. They want to have comfort, 0:23:49.680 --> 0:23:51.360 they want to have food, they want to have security. 0:23:51.960 --> 0:23:55.840 If you're knowing what you now know, um, I don't 0:23:55.840 --> 0:23:59.080