WEBVTT - Ep. 327: The Mystery of America’s Oldest Human Bones 0:00:05.360 --> 0:00:09.880 In nineteen sixty eight in central Montana, construction workers digging 0:00:09.960 --> 0:00:14.600 with a backo discovered human bones. It was a child 0:00:14.960 --> 0:00:19.560 buried twelve thousand, nine hundred years ago in the Pleistocene 0:00:19.760 --> 0:00:22.759 the Ice Age, which is a time period that has 0:00:22.840 --> 0:00:29.000 remained a mystery for archaeologists until now, because in twenty fourteen, 0:00:29.720 --> 0:00:34.520 forty six years after the discovery, a new technology emerged 0:00:34.600 --> 0:00:38.080 that told us who this child was, as it became 0:00:38.120 --> 0:00:43.640 the first and only Clovis era human DNA to be 0:00:43.760 --> 0:00:50.479 fully sequenced, giving us insight into the first Americans. In 0:00:50.680 --> 0:00:55.080 this episode, doctor David Meltzer will tell us what we 0:00:55.280 --> 0:01:01.040 learned from America's oldest bones. I doubt that you're gonna 0:01:01.040 --> 0:01:01.880 want to miss this one. 0:01:03.160 --> 0:01:07.440 We've got enzac in Montana, We've got these individuals in 0:01:07.520 --> 0:01:11.080 southeastern Brazil. It's a site called Lego Asanta, and we 0:01:11.120 --> 0:01:14.399 can see a tight connection between the two in a 0:01:14.480 --> 0:01:19.319 genetic sense. But there's also something lurking in those genomes 0:01:19.400 --> 0:01:24.800 at Lego Asanta. Geneticists refer to it as a ghost population. 0:01:25.400 --> 0:01:28.840 Does this possibly represent a pre Clovis population that has 0:01:28.840 --> 0:01:32.080 simply disappeared and the only record we have of it 0:01:32.160 --> 0:01:34.760 was that there was some sort of gene flow or 0:01:34.800 --> 0:01:38.559 interaction and why is it only in South America? 0:01:40.319 --> 0:01:42.200 And hey, don't forget that. 0:01:42.360 --> 0:01:45.160 On June ninth, there will be a new drop on 0:01:45.240 --> 0:01:48.639 the bear Grease feed to go along with bear Grease. 0:01:48.720 --> 0:01:52.640 What you're listening to now the Bear Grease Render Brent's 0:01:52.800 --> 0:01:56.920 this country life podcast. But now you'll be able to 0:01:56.960 --> 0:02:02.120 listen to Lake Pickles Backwoods Universe. This is our wildlife 0:02:02.240 --> 0:02:06.080 biology podcast and it's really good. We're going to learn 0:02:06.120 --> 0:02:11.280 a lot. But now we're on to the peopling of America. 0:02:12.280 --> 0:02:22.400 Roll the intro Reba. My name is Klay Nukem, and 0:02:22.480 --> 0:02:26.120 this is the bear Grease Podcast where we'll explore things 0:02:26.200 --> 0:02:30.840 forgotten but relevant, search for insight and unlikely places, and 0:02:30.919 --> 0:02:34.600 where we'll tell the story of Americans who live their 0:02:34.639 --> 0:02:40.440 lives close to the land. Presented by FHF gear, American 0:02:40.560 --> 0:02:44.680 made purpose built hunting and fishing gear as designed to 0:02:44.760 --> 0:02:46.440 be as rugged as the place. 0:02:46.440 --> 0:02:59.320 As we explore, there's a whole sort of new synthesis emerging, 0:02:59.480 --> 0:03:02.760 a new view emerging about the peopling of the Americas, 0:03:02.840 --> 0:03:06.560 which is making it clear that the traditional interpretations that 0:03:06.600 --> 0:03:09.400 we had people get to Alaska, they come through the 0:03:09.400 --> 0:03:10.240 ice free corridor. 0:03:10.280 --> 0:03:13.480 Boom, it's all done. It's Clovis. It just doesn't work anymore. 0:03:13.600 --> 0:03:16.280 And it really hasn't worked for quite some time, right, 0:03:16.680 --> 0:03:21.000 because we've had these pre Clovis age sites now for 0:03:21.160 --> 0:03:24.520 the better part of fifteen twenty years. But what's happening 0:03:24.560 --> 0:03:26.760 now is that we're getting a much better picture, a 0:03:26.800 --> 0:03:30.720 more nuanced picture of the process itself and the routes 0:03:30.760 --> 0:03:34.160 that they may have taken, and getting back to the 0:03:34.240 --> 0:03:35.680 DNA who they were. 0:03:38.720 --> 0:03:42.600 I want to learn about the peopling of America, about 0:03:42.600 --> 0:03:45.880 who were the first people that came here. This is 0:03:45.920 --> 0:03:49.440 a conversation that's been heated since the late eighteen hundreds. 0:03:49.800 --> 0:03:54.040 The technology in the last ten years has changed the conversation. 0:03:55.400 --> 0:04:00.720 This is doctor David Meltzer, an archaeologist, author and from 0:04:00.920 --> 0:04:04.920 SMU in Dallas, Texas. He's a great communicator. 0:04:07.200 --> 0:04:08.920 It used to be that I had lots of questions 0:04:08.960 --> 0:04:11.840 as an archaeologist, who are these folks, where did they 0:04:11.840 --> 0:04:14.600 come from? Who are they related to? These are not 0:04:14.720 --> 0:04:18.600 questions I could answer with archaeological remains. Right, I can 0:04:18.640 --> 0:04:20.800 look at a projectile point over here, and I can 0:04:20.800 --> 0:04:23.240 look at a projectile point over there, and I can 0:04:23.400 --> 0:04:26.680 infer that they're made in a similar fashion, they have 0:04:26.720 --> 0:04:30.640 a similar style. Maybe they're related, but I'd never know 0:04:30.720 --> 0:04:35.440 that for sure. Right, But with ancient DNA, if I 0:04:35.600 --> 0:04:40.720 have skeletal material that we can extract the DNA from 0:04:40.800 --> 0:04:43.920 an ancient individual, which we do very carefully and with 0:04:44.520 --> 0:04:47.359 considerable respect. There's a lot of ethical issues tied with 0:04:47.440 --> 0:04:54.160 ancient DNA, As you might imagine, I can identify ad mixture, ancestry, 0:04:54.480 --> 0:04:57.320 who these people are, where they came from, who their 0:04:57.480 --> 0:05:01.920 ancestors were in Northeast Asia and the like. And it's 0:05:01.960 --> 0:05:05.479 been it's been an absolute sea change in terms of 0:05:05.520 --> 0:05:08.599 our understanding of the peopling process. So we know from 0:05:08.600 --> 0:05:12.600 the ancient genetic record, ancient genomic record, that we had 0:05:12.640 --> 0:05:16.760 groups that were living in Eastern Asia China today, forty 0:05:16.800 --> 0:05:20.359 thousand years ago, very distinctive genomically. They've been isolated for 0:05:20.440 --> 0:05:25.880 some time. When we say distinctive genomically, we're not talking 0:05:25.880 --> 0:05:29.880 about them being you know, superior or inferior or anything 0:05:29.960 --> 0:05:33.560 like that. What we're actually measuring are genetic traits that 0:05:33.600 --> 0:05:37.360 have absolutely no bearing on their fitness. These are parts 0:05:37.360 --> 0:05:40.120 of your genome that actually don't do anything. So you 0:05:40.120 --> 0:05:42.080 can look at two different populations and there will be 0:05:42.120 --> 0:05:44.880 a certain amount of genetic distance between them. So we 0:05:44.880 --> 0:05:47.840 can use we can use DNA as a clock. This 0:05:47.920 --> 0:05:51.240 is just wild stuff. Is this would not have been imaginable, 0:05:51.480 --> 0:05:52.360 you know, forty years ago. 0:05:52.680 --> 0:05:54.240 How long have we had this technology? 0:05:54.880 --> 0:05:59.240 Well, so the first ancient North American genome was twenty fourteen, 0:06:00.120 --> 0:06:03.320 just a shade over ten years ago, ten years ago, 0:06:03.360 --> 0:06:05.400 ten years ago. Yeah, no, Clay, if we had had 0:06:05.400 --> 0:06:07.960 this conversation in twenty ten, it'd be over in about 0:06:08.000 --> 0:06:09.719 five minutes because I'd have nothing else to say. 0:06:10.720 --> 0:06:15.680 Really. Yeah, it's exciting to live in the times of 0:06:15.760 --> 0:06:20.760 new technology being developed that's solving ancient mysteries. But it 0:06:20.760 --> 0:06:23.760 can also be a little unnerving as it up ends 0:06:23.800 --> 0:06:28.359 long held philosophies, and I sometimes wonder if our certainty 0:06:28.480 --> 0:06:32.000 at some point won't be disrupted again in the future 0:06:32.400 --> 0:06:36.960 by even more cryptic technology. But we need to understand 0:06:37.040 --> 0:06:40.720 what we are certain about. We need to talk about bones. 0:06:41.960 --> 0:06:47.120 So what discovery of human remains was found that opened 0:06:47.160 --> 0:06:49.479 the key to these place to see people? 0:06:49.760 --> 0:06:53.520 Well so, in terms of North America, right, the first 0:06:53.560 --> 0:06:56.920 ancient genome was the Anzik child. So The Antik child 0:06:57.279 --> 0:07:03.080 was discovered in the nineteen sixties, and the story, as 0:07:03.120 --> 0:07:05.799 I understand it, was a rancher was sort of doing 0:07:05.839 --> 0:07:09.200 some dirt work on his property with some heavy equipment, 0:07:09.279 --> 0:07:13.040 Montana and just outside of Wilson, Montana. In fact, it 0:07:13.080 --> 0:07:15.880 was quite close to where we did the bison butchering experiment, 0:07:16.360 --> 0:07:18.960 and I kept looking off in that distance thinking I'm close. 0:07:19.800 --> 0:07:20.240 Wow. 0:07:21.240 --> 0:07:26.880 And the Anzik child was interred with grave goods some 0:07:26.920 --> 0:07:30.080 really distinctive Clovis points, so we know that the Anzick 0:07:30.160 --> 0:07:32.400 child was a member of that Clovis cultural group. 0:07:34.200 --> 0:07:36.960 How this came about was that a backo operator was 0:07:37.000 --> 0:07:40.760 digging gravel off a ranch owned by a family named Anzik. 0:07:41.400 --> 0:07:44.440 He hit an unusual layer of dirt and recognized his 0:07:44.560 --> 0:07:49.320 stone point. He got off, and he discovered human bones 0:07:49.360 --> 0:07:53.080 there too. What he'd later learn is that he found 0:07:53.240 --> 0:07:56.600 a formal burial of a one to two year old 0:07:56.720 --> 0:08:00.200 male child, buried with one hundred and twenty stone own 0:08:00.280 --> 0:08:06.600 tools in six non human bone adladal four shafts, and 0:08:06.680 --> 0:08:11.120 some elk antlers dusted with red ochre, and the human 0:08:11.280 --> 0:08:15.240 bones appeared to have red ochre on them as well. 0:08:16.240 --> 0:08:18.920 It makes you wonder if they buried the child with 0:08:19.000 --> 0:08:21.760 the things they thought it would need for the afterlife, 0:08:22.240 --> 0:08:25.520 the things they relied on most stone tools. 0:08:26.800 --> 0:08:28.520 But here is what they learned. 0:08:29.760 --> 0:08:34.320 Subsequent radiocarbon dating demonstrated that Anazik was around twelve seven 0:08:34.400 --> 0:08:39.120 hundred years ago, so late Pleistocene, Late Ice Age, and 0:08:39.280 --> 0:08:44.200 when Eski's group did the sequencing, what they discovered, what 0:08:44.280 --> 0:08:47.680 we discovered and published in twenty fourteen was that that 0:08:47.880 --> 0:08:53.239 individual was part of a population movement into the Americas 0:08:53.840 --> 0:08:58.320 that we subsequently identified as Southern Native Americans. Now we 0:08:58.360 --> 0:09:02.520 all know that Montana's not in southern portion of the continent. 0:09:02.880 --> 0:09:06.560 But what Anzik signified was this was one member of 0:09:06.559 --> 0:09:10.920 a population that subsequently would spread throughout the hemisphere. Whereas 0:09:11.040 --> 0:09:14.120 the other sort of fork in the road, right, so 0:09:14.200 --> 0:09:16.640 one fork goes south, the other stays north. Those are 0:09:16.679 --> 0:09:17.880 Northern Native Americans. 0:09:18.080 --> 0:09:22.040 So Anzik all connected anzimatically to this Anzik child. 0:09:22.280 --> 0:09:24.920 It all sort of gets channeled back through Anzik or 0:09:24.960 --> 0:09:28.160 through others of that population, right, So Anzik is not 0:09:28.240 --> 0:09:31.480 sort of the founding population per se, It's a member 0:09:31.520 --> 0:09:33.199 of that early population. 0:09:33.600 --> 0:09:37.360 This discovery of this Anzik child was is the only 0:09:38.000 --> 0:09:42.120 pliest scene human remains that we were able to extract 0:09:42.240 --> 0:09:45.880 good enough DNA from to really do the type of 0:09:46.080 --> 0:09:49.000 genetic research and discovery that you're talking about. 0:09:49.480 --> 0:09:51.640 Fact, that's correct so far, So all. 0:09:51.559 --> 0:09:55.000 This is based upon one really good specimen. 0:09:55.280 --> 0:09:59.320 Well, there's actually more to it, okay. So anzik Is 0:09:59.600 --> 0:10:02.439 so far are the oldest genome that we have in 0:10:02.480 --> 0:10:06.240 the Americas. However, we have others that come along pretty 0:10:06.240 --> 0:10:10.360 soon thereafter, and that help fill in the picture of 0:10:10.440 --> 0:10:14.480 the dispersal of these populations throughout the hemisphere. We have 0:10:14.559 --> 0:10:20.280 some in southeastern Brazil that date to so anziic is 0:10:20.320 --> 0:10:24.120 twelve seven. We've got ones in South America, southeastern Brazil 0:10:24.120 --> 0:10:26.400 that are around ten and a half. We've got in 0:10:27.160 --> 0:10:29.920 Spirit Cave and Nevada that's about ten to seven. What's 0:10:30.000 --> 0:10:33.360 really striking about the genetic data, so again, you know 0:10:33.400 --> 0:10:37.920 we've got data from Montana, we've got Nevada, we've got Brazil, 0:10:37.960 --> 0:10:42.839 we've got various other places in South America. Is how 0:10:43.120 --> 0:10:46.880 closely linked they are and how similar they are at 0:10:46.920 --> 0:10:50.079 the genetic level. What that tells us is that this 0:10:50.160 --> 0:10:54.280 is a population that was actually moving pretty fast because 0:10:54.320 --> 0:10:58.319 there hasn't been that much change in the time from 0:10:58.559 --> 0:11:01.120 Anazik down to southeastern percent. 0:11:01.280 --> 0:11:05.400 Yes, so it wasn't like five thousand years no, no, no, yeah, 0:11:05.400 --> 0:11:08.560 so it's literally people generations, maybe a little more than that, 0:11:08.720 --> 0:11:13.160 but yeah, that's that's the tendency, right, is that it 0:11:13.240 --> 0:11:14.439 happened really fast. 0:11:14.480 --> 0:11:16.880 We call them quick waivers. They you know, it's just 0:11:16.920 --> 0:11:20.160 a fast moving radiation throughout the hemisphere. 0:11:21.320 --> 0:11:25.440 Can you imagine moving on foot from Montana to Brazil? 0:11:26.440 --> 0:11:30.000 What was pushing these people? Why did they move? These 0:11:30.000 --> 0:11:33.000 are answers we will never know. But maybe one day 0:11:33.000 --> 0:11:36.080 they'll have a technology that can read the thoughts and 0:11:36.200 --> 0:11:39.840 understand the motivations of people by the DNA. 0:11:39.520 --> 0:11:41.440 Extracted from their bones. 0:11:46.080 --> 0:11:49.240 One of the most interesting things about the Anazac child 0:11:49.679 --> 0:11:53.200 was recorded in a peer review paper in the Science 0:11:53.280 --> 0:11:57.360 Advances journal, in which an isotope analysis was done on 0:11:57.400 --> 0:12:00.400 the bones and in that they can determine and the 0:12:00.400 --> 0:12:04.560 type of protein that the mother ate when she nursed 0:12:04.600 --> 0:12:08.760 the young child, and they found that her diet was 0:12:08.840 --> 0:12:14.000 more closely related to a scimitar cat, a carnivore, than 0:12:14.120 --> 0:12:18.080 anything else. They use this study to say that these 0:12:18.120 --> 0:12:22.400 people were eaten a lot of big mammal meat that 0:12:22.640 --> 0:12:28.040 is pretty durned crazy. But our next question is what 0:12:28.080 --> 0:12:31.800 did these bones tell us about where these people came from. 0:12:32.840 --> 0:12:35.400 So we've got these two populations, one in Eastern Asia 0:12:35.440 --> 0:12:38.080 and one sort of in the region around Lake Baikal, 0:12:38.640 --> 0:12:45.360 probably around twenty five twenty three thousand years ago. There's 0:12:45.760 --> 0:12:49.800 there's interaction. These groups or members of these groups kind 0:12:49.800 --> 0:12:53.600 of bump into one another and then split off as 0:12:53.640 --> 0:12:58.000 a sort of combined entity. A combined population. That's the 0:12:58.040 --> 0:13:02.800 group that will become ancestor to Native Americans. That's the 0:13:02.840 --> 0:13:05.760 group that will make their way across the land bridge. 0:13:05.960 --> 0:13:08.640 They'll do it in at least a couple of different pulses. 0:13:09.760 --> 0:13:12.480 They'll be the initial one, and those will be the 0:13:12.480 --> 0:13:14.160 folks that will make it all the way down into 0:13:14.160 --> 0:13:17.160 the lower forty eight, throughout South America and so on. 0:13:17.880 --> 0:13:20.480 Then there'll be a slightly later one which will come 0:13:20.480 --> 0:13:24.200 into Alaska and stay and not go any further south 0:13:25.360 --> 0:13:31.800 and ultimately disappear from the genetic and archaeological record. Okay, wow, 0:13:32.160 --> 0:13:35.040 we could never see disappearance in the archaeological record. Before 0:13:35.240 --> 0:13:37.959 we could see artifacts, but we had no idea who 0:13:38.000 --> 0:13:40.000 made them and whether the people who made them had 0:13:40.000 --> 0:13:44.200 descendants among modern groups. All modern people have ancestors, there's 0:13:44.200 --> 0:13:48.400 no question about that, right, But not all ancient people 0:13:48.640 --> 0:13:52.439 that we see in the ancient DNA record necessarily had descendants, 0:13:52.760 --> 0:13:58.080 because some populations disappeared others were replaced, either you know, 0:13:58.160 --> 0:14:02.960 locally or regionally or whatever. Humans move and humans been 0:14:03.000 --> 0:14:06.640 moving for a long time. Yeah. Yeah, so we can 0:14:06.679 --> 0:14:09.080 start to see that kind of thing. We can see 0:14:09.120 --> 0:14:12.160 people and populations disappearing. 0:14:11.800 --> 0:14:16.160 All from basically finding bits of DNA and. 0:14:16.520 --> 0:14:20.800 Well bones in bones exactly right. So when you're doing 0:14:20.840 --> 0:14:24.920 ancient DNA on skeletal remains, what you're doing is you're 0:14:24.960 --> 0:14:29.280 getting that individual's genome. But it's more than just that individual, 0:14:29.800 --> 0:14:34.720 because your genome, my genome. All of these things are 0:14:34.800 --> 0:14:38.440 a record of all of our ancestors and the big picture. 0:14:38.200 --> 0:14:43.560 This would be like sorcery to someone one hundred years ago. 0:14:43.640 --> 0:14:44.320 Oh, no question. 0:14:44.440 --> 0:14:48.400 Like if you said, I can tell you everything about 0:14:48.520 --> 0:14:51.480 where you're from, who your people were, I mean. 0:14:51.960 --> 0:14:54.680 Really, well, it's a scale thing though, right. I mean, 0:14:56.160 --> 0:14:57.880 by the way, don't buy any of those things that 0:14:58.000 --> 0:15:01.160 the genetic ancestry testing companies are telling you about. We 0:15:01.160 --> 0:15:03.960 can tell you exactly who your ancestors. No, there's a 0:15:04.000 --> 0:15:07.120 lot of arm weaving with a lot of that stuff. Really, yeah, yeah, yeah, 0:15:07.400 --> 0:15:12.000 Now what we're looking at are population level trends, right, Okay, 0:15:12.240 --> 0:15:16.080 so we're not able to take your DNA and precisely show. 0:15:15.920 --> 0:15:17.280 Who your ancestors were. 0:15:17.360 --> 0:15:19.520 That makes sense, But we can look at it as 0:15:19.560 --> 0:15:20.720 a population and we do. 0:15:22.240 --> 0:15:25.040 What if you told a human living in the Pleistocene 0:15:25.040 --> 0:15:29.240 that inside their bones were the inscriptions of their ancestors. 0:15:30.200 --> 0:15:32.120 I think they tell you that they already knew that. 0:15:33.080 --> 0:15:37.760 I find this bizarre and oddly circular. Author Barry Lopez 0:15:37.800 --> 0:15:41.000 and his book Arctic Dreams, raises the question of how 0:15:41.040 --> 0:15:45.760 far modern man has actually come. He questions whether all 0:15:45.840 --> 0:15:52.120 we've accomplished is quote a more complicated manipulation of materials, 0:15:52.800 --> 0:15:55.440 more astounding display of his grasp. 0:15:55.200 --> 0:15:57.440 Of the physical principles of matter. 0:15:58.360 --> 0:16:03.120 We are dazzled by mere styles of expression end of quote. 0:16:03.720 --> 0:16:07.120 I think what he's saying is that modernity has produced 0:16:07.200 --> 0:16:12.440 a very technical quote style of expression like sequencing DNA, 0:16:13.120 --> 0:16:17.240 where previous humans might have been more spiritually acute and 0:16:17.360 --> 0:16:19.600 expressed life in different ways. 0:16:20.400 --> 0:16:22.320 I like thinking about this kind of stuff. 0:16:32.120 --> 0:16:34.160 This is the perfect time to stop for just a 0:16:34.200 --> 0:16:36.760 second and review some basic stuff that will help all 0:16:36.840 --> 0:16:40.680 this make sense. The Clovis era is a term used 0:16:40.720 --> 0:16:43.640 to describe a group of people that we're here in 0:16:43.680 --> 0:16:48.400 what is now America roughly thirteen thousand years ago. They 0:16:48.440 --> 0:16:52.920 spanned the continent and made uniquely fluted stone points. That's 0:16:52.960 --> 0:16:55.320 basically the only way that we know who they are 0:16:55.400 --> 0:16:59.360 is because of their technology. For decades, people thought that 0:16:59.480 --> 0:17:02.520 these the Clovis people, crossed the burying land bridge out 0:17:02.520 --> 0:17:05.240 of Asia in the Pleistocene and came through an ice 0:17:05.359 --> 0:17:10.440 free corridor between the glaciers into the interior of North America. 0:17:11.000 --> 0:17:12.120 But through this. 0:17:12.160 --> 0:17:15.520 Ice core technology that we learned about on episode two 0:17:15.600 --> 0:17:19.400 ninety eight of Bear Grease, we're realizing that that ice 0:17:19.440 --> 0:17:23.480 free corridor travel path wouldn't be possible. All that information 0:17:23.600 --> 0:17:25.680 is going to be valuable in just a little bit. 0:17:26.920 --> 0:17:31.520 But I'm gonna throw a wrinkle in here, anazak is Clovis. 0:17:32.320 --> 0:17:38.239 We still don't have a pre Clovis genome, so we 0:17:38.359 --> 0:17:42.919 don't know whether the earlier population that comes into the Americas, 0:17:43.359 --> 0:17:46.480 who are they and how do they relate to Clovis, 0:17:46.560 --> 0:17:49.800 and were they part of that quick wave? Will presumably 0:17:49.960 --> 0:17:55.320 not because that quick wave is Clovis down to you know, 0:17:55.600 --> 0:17:58.800 South America. We're looking. 0:17:59.600 --> 0:18:03.679 So it's just so hard to find human remains that 0:18:03.760 --> 0:18:05.879 are over ten thousand years old. I mean, that's what 0:18:05.920 --> 0:18:10.920 we're dealing with. Like there were hundreds, clearly hundreds for sure, 0:18:11.040 --> 0:18:15.320 even thousands of people, oh yeah, across the landscape, across 0:18:15.359 --> 0:18:18.639 all spread out, all across North America, and we can't 0:18:18.800 --> 0:18:23.720 find any of their bones because it's organic matter, it deteriorates. 0:18:23.760 --> 0:18:26.639 What we find is what you specialize in, which is 0:18:27.400 --> 0:18:32.879 stone points and archaeological like physical evidence that humans were here. 0:18:33.040 --> 0:18:37.440 And so just these really unique situations where something happened, 0:18:37.440 --> 0:18:42.160 where bones were preserved. It's like literally searching for a 0:18:42.200 --> 0:18:44.640 needle in a thousand haystacks. 0:18:44.760 --> 0:18:49.879 It's a challenge. So throughout the hemisphere North and South America, 0:18:50.240 --> 0:18:57.399 there's maybe twenty five thirty human remains older than about 0:18:57.440 --> 0:19:01.040 eight thousand years. That's a hell of a small population 0:19:01.240 --> 0:19:04.679 on which to you know, create any sort of inferential 0:19:04.720 --> 0:19:10.119 basis for what the first people look like. Now, the 0:19:10.160 --> 0:19:12.960 thing that's really interesting is that at this time in 0:19:13.000 --> 0:19:17.919 Europe we've got all sorts of skeletal remains, right, So, yeah, 0:19:18.040 --> 0:19:22.080 it's a preservation issue, but obviously, you know, Europe must 0:19:22.119 --> 0:19:25.400 have preservation issues there as well. But the difference is 0:19:25.400 --> 0:19:29.600 is that their base population of individuals that were living 0:19:29.800 --> 0:19:32.800 at that time is so much larger that if you 0:19:32.840 --> 0:19:35.480 take one percent of that population and then one percent 0:19:35.520 --> 0:19:37.520 of the population that's living in the America's which is 0:19:37.520 --> 0:19:39.760 a lot smaller, you know, what are the odds that 0:19:39.800 --> 0:19:43.720 you're going to get well preserved human vas Yeah, yeah, 0:19:43.760 --> 0:19:47.040 I mean it is the case that throughout most of 0:19:47.119 --> 0:19:50.560 eastern North America, bone does not preserve in sediments. 0:19:50.920 --> 0:19:54.119 Eastern North America being the eastern deciduous forest where have 0:19:54.160 --> 0:19:59.119 a lot of rainfalls at a lot of biological a 0:19:59.119 --> 0:20:02.720 lot of soils and all that stuff. In the West, 0:20:02.760 --> 0:20:03.920 it would be better. 0:20:03.800 --> 0:20:07.439 Better chances, absolutely absolutely, But you know, preservation depends on 0:20:07.520 --> 0:20:10.320 just so many things. You know, was the individual interred, 0:20:11.600 --> 0:20:13.600 what was the context of the burial, you know, where 0:20:13.600 --> 0:20:15.800 scavenger is able to get to the you know, the 0:20:15.840 --> 0:20:21.280 remains or you know, these people were highly mobile. They 0:20:21.320 --> 0:20:24.320 did not have cemeteries, you know, at this period of time. 0:20:24.520 --> 0:20:26.880 Actually the first cemetery we see is probably around ten 0:20:26.960 --> 0:20:30.639 thousand years ago. But as I mentioned earlier, you know, 0:20:30.720 --> 0:20:32.960 this is something that is now being done much more 0:20:33.000 --> 0:20:36.320 in concert with Native American groups, because these are the 0:20:36.400 --> 0:20:41.840 ancestors of these individuals, right. The people today are descended 0:20:41.880 --> 0:20:45.639 from these first Americans, and so a lot of the 0:20:46.720 --> 0:20:50.480 you know, the first decade or so of ancient DNA work, 0:20:50.480 --> 0:20:54.200 and this is true globally, there was a bone rush, right. 0:20:54.480 --> 0:20:56.680 Every time you found a bone, somebody wanted to sequence 0:20:56.720 --> 0:20:58.280 it and say, you know, because you learn something new 0:20:58.320 --> 0:21:01.159 with each new specimen. We're starting to calm down a 0:21:01.200 --> 0:21:03.720 little bit because, you know, we're starting to get the 0:21:03.760 --> 0:21:06.480 picture together. We're filling in you know, it's much more 0:21:06.520 --> 0:21:09.080 filling in the details rather than creating the whole canvas. 0:21:10.520 --> 0:21:14.119 But we're also doing much more collaborative work with the 0:21:14.200 --> 0:21:19.439 native groups because you know, they're interested. They might not 0:21:19.480 --> 0:21:21.280 necessarily be interested in the same kinds of things we're 0:21:21.280 --> 0:21:25.720 interested in, but we find that out right, we do 0:21:25.800 --> 0:21:29.879 what we can to sort of respect the descendants, the 0:21:29.920 --> 0:21:33.920 descendant communities, and at the same time sort of look 0:21:34.000 --> 0:21:37.639 into and try and understand their history. And really, this 0:21:37.840 --> 0:21:40.560 is this is human history, right, This is the story 0:21:40.680 --> 0:21:45.159 of people essentially coming out of Africa and making their 0:21:45.200 --> 0:21:49.200 way around the globe. It's an amazing story, because one 0:21:49.200 --> 0:21:52.880 of the things that's always struck me is the vanity 0:21:52.920 --> 0:21:56.359 of Europeans when they started sailing around the globe. You know, 0:21:56.400 --> 0:21:59.240 they talked about exploring all these places and going where 0:21:59.280 --> 0:22:01.840 no man has gone before, throwing in a star trek 0:22:01.880 --> 0:22:05.080 reference here. But the reality is is every place they 0:22:05.160 --> 0:22:09.560 landed there was somebody there, right. Yeah, you know, so 0:22:10.760 --> 0:22:14.800 hunter gatherer groups, foraging groups leaving Africa managed to pretty 0:22:14.840 --> 0:22:18.119 much populate the entire globe, with the exception of Antarctica, 0:22:18.200 --> 0:22:22.240 and even then there's some question about whether indigenous groups 0:22:22.280 --> 0:22:25.960 got to Antarctica before James Cook approached it in the 0:22:26.359 --> 0:22:27.520 late seventeen hundreds. 0:22:28.080 --> 0:22:31.720 Humans seem to be really good at dividing up based 0:22:31.800 --> 0:22:37.120 upon really the quite small cosmetic and cultural differences within 0:22:37.160 --> 0:22:41.280 our species. But doctor Meltzer makes a good point, this 0:22:41.600 --> 0:22:47.520 is the story of mankind. As I learned about archaeology, 0:22:47.920 --> 0:22:52.399 what is most astonishing to me is how random the 0:22:52.480 --> 0:22:55.800 data points seemed to be for because I mean, like 0:22:55.840 --> 0:22:58.920 we talk about Clovis this well, first of we talk 0:22:58.960 --> 0:23:04.320 about Folsome, this incredible archaeological discovery discovered by George mcjenkin, 0:23:04.720 --> 0:23:07.280 who you know, is just this cowboy get out on 0:23:07.320 --> 0:23:09.960 his ranch and he finds these bones and he gets 0:23:09.960 --> 0:23:13.359 old there. And then the Clovis site is basically a 0:23:13.359 --> 0:23:17.880 commercial gravel pit where they're digging up stuff and they 0:23:17.920 --> 0:23:21.600 and they find it. The Anzik child is discovered when 0:23:21.640 --> 0:23:26.520 they're doing excavation on just some rancher's random place. And 0:23:26.960 --> 0:23:30.400 I mean it feels like as a species, we would 0:23:30.480 --> 0:23:34.720 be like globally like, okay, everyone, we're gonna grid off 0:23:34.720 --> 0:23:38.639 the earth and we want every man, woman and child 0:23:38.760 --> 0:23:41.920 to go out and excavate the land that they own 0:23:42.080 --> 0:23:46.920 and look for evidence of deep human antiquity. Ready, go 0:23:47.080 --> 0:23:49.720 report back to us in a month, and we we 0:23:49.840 --> 0:23:53.199 grid off the whole earth and we find everything that 0:23:53.320 --> 0:23:56.000 is not even remotely I mean that's a fairy tale, 0:23:56.480 --> 0:24:00.480 like like you know, how much has been destroyed? How 0:24:00.560 --> 0:24:04.240 much is there? Is there an archaeological site under my 0:24:04.400 --> 0:24:07.560 house in Arkansas that would change the world and the 0:24:07.600 --> 0:24:10.000 whole story, But we're never gonna dig it up in 0:24:10.000 --> 0:24:11.480 my lifetime because my house is. 0:24:11.440 --> 0:24:12.000 There, you know. 0:24:12.520 --> 0:24:15.120 Yeah, funny fact. What do you think about that? 0:24:15.240 --> 0:24:18.359 Well, I think you should move your house and we 0:24:18.400 --> 0:24:19.119 can see what's on it. 0:24:19.320 --> 0:24:21.280 I do find stone points in my yard. 0:24:21.520 --> 0:24:23.440 Okay, Well there you go, then it really is good. 0:24:23.280 --> 0:24:25.399 Reason to move to your house find stone points in 0:24:25.440 --> 0:24:25.880 my yard. 0:24:26.040 --> 0:24:29.520 So there's there's a bunch of things. First off, you're 0:24:29.560 --> 0:24:35.760 absolutely right in that it's complicated. Sites are found randomly. 0:24:36.920 --> 0:24:42.600 Sites are found owing to construction erosion, dumb luck. The 0:24:42.640 --> 0:24:44.720 person happened to be walking along at the moment that 0:24:44.800 --> 0:24:47.520 something eroded out, and if they'd come twenty minutes later, 0:24:47.560 --> 0:24:50.560 it would have washed downstream and they'd never know. This 0:24:50.720 --> 0:24:54.080 is why we as archaeologists when we're out in the field, 0:24:54.119 --> 0:24:56.840 we're talking to ranchers, we're talking to farmers, we're talking 0:24:56.840 --> 0:25:01.600 to people who are following you orders and surveying that 0:25:01.800 --> 0:25:06.640 you know, one square mile around their house, and they're 0:25:06.640 --> 0:25:09.359 the ones his eyes are on the ground all the time. Okay, 0:25:10.359 --> 0:25:13.920 But at the same time, we're also thinking, and we're 0:25:13.960 --> 0:25:19.679 also using techniques like remote sensing, techniques like understanding the 0:25:19.680 --> 0:25:24.680 local geology, like understanding erosional and depositional processes. The best example, 0:25:25.000 --> 0:25:29.360 wonderful example of this is fellow by name of Reed 0:25:29.400 --> 0:25:33.879 Firing at the University of North Texas. Reid has two PhDs, 0:25:33.920 --> 0:25:36.520 one an anthropology, one in geology, and reads a pretty 0:25:36.560 --> 0:25:40.760 savvy guy, and he was looking at the geology in 0:25:40.840 --> 0:25:44.679 his neighborhood literally, and he got to thinking, you know, 0:25:45.480 --> 0:25:49.000