The Solutrean Hypothesis: Retracing Ancient Footsteps Across Atlantic Ice ft. Ancient Americas 

Why doesn't ancient kurgan culture in America make it a Solutream fact?? I mean, that is what these mounds are- kurgans.. It's not just the kurgans, it's their genetics, which have never been found on the "northern route". They were a copper wares kurgan culture, and we think we don't know who they were?! Nonsense! Obfuscating nonsense. Clearly, the mere idea is outside the scope of The Overton Window. "The eyes of that species of extinct giants whose bones fill the Mounds of America, have gazed on Niagara as ours do now." - Lincoln.

Loved being a part of this ! Thank you!

Looking forward to this! Two of my favourite channels on a crazy hypothesis 🔥

As an archaeologist myself, and as someone who has handled a lot of fluted points, and been immersed in the literature for several decades, it is important to recognize that while "pre-Clovis" components were "obvious" to some of us, others flatly rejected the notion, and when Stanford and Bradley published their book, there were many North American archaeologists who still insisted Clovis was the earliest occupation, reflecting the actual colonization of the Americas. This was despite the inherent logical problems and evidential issues the Clovis First hypothesis, which had been regarded by many as a proven fact. Recently (2022) work has been published by the National Academy of Science that demonstrated that the Ice Free Corridor was not open soon enough or long enough for people from the arctic to populate the lower latitudes. Most American archaeologists were still supposing that while pre-Clovis had to be a thing, that the time depth of their entry could not be too much earlier than the appearance of Clovis. Bradley and Stanford were adhering to that. If you add an additional 5,000 years to earliest Clovis, then you are still looking at an entry not much earlier than Meadowcroft. ca. 18 kya. There are still problems, because scattered older dates _must_ mean the continent was largely explored by that time. If you add dates from South America even that 18 kya estimate begins to look too recent. The White Sands footprints, and osteoderm beads in Brazil push the problem back immensely farther. Currently there are no working hypotheses that handles the available evidence efficiently. The one fact we can draw is that Clovis hunters did not emerge from the Ice Free Corridor, and eat every mammoth on the continent, along with every horse, camel, giant ground sloth and short-faced bear. As concerns the size of Clovis populations, the distribution of a technology _may_ correlate with a people, but it may also reflect the spread of an idea through many peoples. The spread of the use of the bow and arrow in North and South America is an example. Clovis technology, the manufacturing and weapon construction ideas may well have spread widely through word of mouth or example rather than colonization. In fact, entire technological, material culture and ritual complexes can spread through adjacent populations, independent of colonization. The late prehistoric archaeology of California, or the Northwest Coast both exhibit this. In California much of the northern state reflects a broadly uniform material and ritual culture which multiple linguistic populations p[articipated in prior to historic contact. The Northwest Coast shows a similar spread of material culture reachin from southern Alaska, south along the Pacific Coast to Northwestern California, with dentalium shell used as a medium of exchange throughout that range. So, a technological distribution is not at all necessary evidence of a single population. The real take away, IMHO, that despite what looks like an immense amount of data, 1) it is not that much data when you are trying tunderstand around 20,000 years or more of prehistory, and 2) we don't know much at all when you accept the reality of the immense canyons of missing information. Unlike the science of archaeology, prehistory is mainly story telling, based on tiny glimpses of what might have happened once upon a time.

I keep reading the title as The Soultrain Hypothesis.

Two of my favorite archaeology channels teaming up! Great video!

This video made me hungrier than I would have anticipated 😂

Being a scientist by training and profession, and having long been interested ancient American culture (and, incidentally, living about 1.6 km from the Anzick site) what I find particularly interest is that the Solutrean hpothesis was actually presented as a testable hypothesis. That meant it could be tested, with some rigor, and either either falsified or accepted (but never actually proven, of course). And, then, how the subsequent studies actually did support an alternative hypothesis. Your treatment and presentation was informative, balanced, and well-done. Actually, the whole resultant body of work generated by the Spolutrean hypothesis is one the best really clear-cut discrete examples of archaeology being truly a science, I have seen. This joint presentation was really good, playing off both narrator's strong points. Nicely done, gentlemen!!! Thanks!

When you talked about the clovis cache and the variety of finished pieces and unfinished ones all the way to raw chirt, it made me wonder if these were a way of teaching other people how to do it. A early power point kinda of deal.

Great collaboration of the two of you! Thanks!

Two of my favorite channels teaming up!! Fascinating subject, glad you two cleared some of that up.

Great Collaboration!! Would love to see more of these. Very interesting!!!

Great content y'all. Appreciate the commitment to proper analysis. Nice collaboration from two of my fav creators.

I appreciate that you have approached this with respect for all involved. It pained me to see the ad home I'm attacks that Stanford was subject to. Thank you.

Great presentations. You two really worked well together!!! Here is another hypothesis - Maybe the Solutrean did make it to North America 5000 years earlier but then abandoned their sites or migrated south during a cold period. It was only later that an early indigenous archeologist found a Solutrean cache of projectile points and said "Wow these are really neat and so much better than what we have. Lets learn how to make them".

Excellent work you two! I appreciate the framing that this hypothesis isn't as totally wild or racist as it seems on its face, but also the discussion about why it doesn't make sense after it drove so much good research.

Awesome collaboration! Thank you both.

Thank you both for sharing the results of your research.

Great to see you two working together!

Oh wow! I love Ancient Americas stuff. Great to see you guys working together

I clicked so fast for this collab, and the topic is just a bonus.

The collab I’ve been waiting for

Thank you Nathanael...looking forward to seeing your next installment...especially the cache contents. Cheers 🥂

Thank you gentlemen for covering this. I have been looking for more than conspiracy information about this topic for a while & this is exactly what I wanted lol.

The BBQ plot twist has convinced me.

I’m not giving up on Solutrean or pre Clovis artifacts found at Cactus Hill…right down the road from where I live. Amazing what you can find just by digging another 6-10 inches. Mind blowing. I imagine much more will be discovered in the next 10-20 years about how these people came here.

Fantastic video, gentlemen. I love the collaborative effort. Excellent work👍

This was awesome. Excellent collaboration

Thank you for your work, actually pretty good.and and thorough.

Excellent collaboration an video. Very nice assimilation and presentation of facts n findings..

Very good. Many insightfully presented.

love the collab, 2 great channels!

what an excellent combination of talents in archeological science communication. I hope you two do more collaborations!

Great video. Thanks.

Thanks for what has to be the most thorough address of the Solutrean Hypothesis on RU-vid since Stanford; that I can find. Though I’m a Solutrean “Fan Boy”, I appreciate the thoroughness, as opposed to outright dismissiveness, which only fans my paranoia more than answering any real questions.

Great job by both of you

Great video! I haven't heard this hypothesis before and very interesting. I like that you look at all the evidence and it's very respectful. Also, kudos on the team up. AA is another favorite of mine. Keep up the good work Nathanael!

Dude I need that paper on the phylogenetic (phylomemetic?) relationship of Clovis and Solutrean lithic material! I’m an evolutionary biologist and just seen the figures blew my mind! I need the doi, please, I wanna impress my doctoral adviser 😅. Kudos on the good work! Excelent video 🎉🎉

Epic colab you guys! That was awesome

Really enjoyed this! Something I had heard about and was wondering about.

Excellent and sympathetic review of a popular, interesting, unsuccessful hypothesis. Thank you.

I remember discovering this hypothesis around 2015 and was forever intrigued by it. Great video!!

thank you for the video

Loved this, you two are both fantastic. I've always been intrigued by the Solutrean Hypothesis and for a while found merit in it but more recent scholarship has given me reason to doubt its usefulness with things like you've presented here. One thing I do enjoy about it still is that if anything it has produced more research and scholarship on both sides leading to more discoveries and understanding, and after all isn't that what a good hypothesis is supposed to do?

Great job, guys!

I love this channel

I thought this was a very good episode, informative. I remember reading the text book that was attributive to the theory, and noticed the similarities as well back in the early eighties. Much appreciation for the breakdown.

Thank you both for exploring this topic. I appreciate that you are not destroying anyone’s hopes about a possible Solutrean influence, only that it is becoming increasingly unlikely, and the more dna evidence we have, the less likely it seems to be. I applaud your objective critical approach, it is refreshing to see, cheers!

I'm glad you did this because it helped me understand it a little better. I've been around long enough to have been aware of the Solutrean hypothesis when it was still pretty new. I thought I had seen the late Dennis Stanford talk about it on video and say that it was no longer as hopeful as it had been because of new DNA evidence. It made me sad for him and his colleague. One of the reasons the Solutrean Hypothesis always interested me is because when I was a kid there was a diehard insistence that paleolithic people didn't know about or use boats. Since all young boys and a few of the girls I knew spent time trying to make things float during warm weather, I thought they were wrong. The last fifty years or so has made a dent in the boat viewpoint. And there are those interesting sites such as Monte Verde.

So much expanding mind. Collaborations are CRAZY!

Great video 👌 Love the collab.

Hyped for this

This is like a good Avengers movie. A crossover inside the RU-vid archeology universe.

What a great adressing of the topic. I have seen so many unknowledgable people on the internet and in the other medias adress the Hypothesis out of hand as Eurosupremacist and leave it at that. As you acknowledge, many non-academic proponents do indeed take that view. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't engage with the idea honestly. Which you both do. Best short-form analysis of the hypothesis I've seen. I totally agree with the conclusion.

I read a book by this title many years ago, so when I happened across your video, I clicked, I 👍🏻 I subscribed

The pinned comment thread is insane idk how you were so patient with that person 😭

One thing I think gets overlooked by people opposed to the Solutrean Hypothesis is the fact that currently there are tons of people who can make flint tools in styles other than those of the culture into which they were born. For example, EVERYONE currently making stone tools is doing so in a style other than the non-stone age technology in which they were raised. As such, it would be possible for a single individual with a Solutrean point to make it to the East coast and either demonstrate the technology or trade the point to someone with enough know how to reverse engineer it. At that point (pun) the Solutrean tech can travel across the whole of North America without any additional individuals coming over. Clovis as a "culture" is really just a technology. It could be a single culture spanning the entirety of North America or it could be thousands of individual cultures who've all gained access to the same material technology and are producing their version of the latest iPhone -- a much better tool than what they had been using and it gets adopted by everyone who comes across it.

This is fascinating. You kept it interesting with images. I do a lot of reading on the Archaic in North America and have just started making content because of this encounter lithic related materials. I aspire to make content like you. P.s working on a BA

What a GREAT collaboration! Very happy to see this. I'm really grateful to Ancient Americas for the policy of not showing remains of Native folks out of respect. I'm a non-Native person who cares about that issue very deeply, and am grateful.

This theory does have a strong potential. There have been several recreations of ancient Atlantic voyages, The Brendan voyages and the Ra Expeditions by Thor Heyerdahl come to mind. And the ancient voyages describes by Herodotus where Phoenician ships circumnavigated Africa. Indeed, there is no Ocean on the planet that cannot be crossed by primitive boats; a 40-60 foot dug out canoe can travel around the world

Hello there. This is fascinating. I’m definitely here for the wisdom that’s presented. I’m into kayaking and rock hounding around the creek beds around where I live. I just wish I didn’t wait until my mid-40’s to begin learning. New sub here👍🏻

An excellent examination and explanation as always but the mention of BBQ & a rib dinner really focused my attention.

tyvm

I gave you a like, even though I misread the title. I thought this was about the Soul Train hypothesis, with Don Cornelius.

I think you're right about the Solutreans.

Yessss a dream combo

Cheer! Cheer! 🍻

This must be a good channel. Look at all the trolls. Video and trolls got me subscribed....

Excellent overview of the subject! It must be a real challenge to decide what to include and how to lay out an analysis like this, so kudos for a job well done! If I might offer a few points of interest - 1 - Never trust anyone who immediately discounts an idea as "white supremacist". You'll notice that the people who immediately attacked the Solutrean Hypothesis intentionally used that terminology to demonize the idea... rather than using actual science. This is a very bad sign for the scientific community, condemning the whole field because it necessarily implies that those people would bury any evidence that didn't fit their ideology. They've shows that they will go on the attack with logical fallacies and false claims, so you have to wonder what else they would do. We saw this behavior again in the recent find of the ancient fossilized footprint in Crete, where the "experts" attacked the people who presented the find, did the research, etc. That report could only be printed in a journal of geology because there was no denying the rock layer it had been found in. 2 - DNA is a fickle thing and can easily mislead people who have preconceived notions. As you said, the DNA samples we're dealing with are minuscule and we can't say that we have a complete picture of human migration. It's important to remember that 80% of men, historically, have not bred. That means their DNA isn't necessarily available to us. If you are the only surviving child of the family and get killed by a Wooly Mammoth, all the evidence of you and your ancestry going back millions of years... disappears entirely. This is important because we have to remember that we cannot assume that the lack of European DNA in current American Indian samples means that there were no European DNA people here in the Western Hemisphere thousands of years ago. There's absolutely zero reason to believe there would have been any interbreeding between the two peoples. If we look at the Cherokee Indian origin story of the "Moon Eyed People", we see how they talked about fighting them and warring with them, driving the Moon-Eyed People out of the area so the Cherokee could have it. There's no mention of them falling in love, getting married, joining together to make a stronger group. Instead, it's talk about meeting them and immediately fighting them, driving them away. This is important because it gives us some tidbit of insight into how relations might have been. When European tribes first arrived in historical times, the incidents of interbreeding were still rather rare due to all sorts of societal things going on, and the 'native' tribes had a long history of warring with one another rather than interbreeding and raising happy families in some utopian existence. As an example of this "in miniature", consider that we know for certain that viking-era Europeans were living in Newfoundland for a period of time, yet there is no European DNA found in the local indian tribes who were also in the area and should have interbred if the idea of interbreeding is some kind of mandatory thing human groups must engage in. 3 - Disease works both ways. It is possible that the Solutrean outposts in America were wiped out by either a disease brought over from traders back in Europe.... or that something was introduced by the indians coming across the Land Bridge. 4 - I don't think it's fair to say the Solutrean points found in America are not Solutrean since they are more rounded along the edges. While this could indicate Simultaneous Invention, it could also be simply what the singular flintknapper did because that's what they wanted to do. It's not like we have a huge collection of points to judge things by, and it's reasonable to believe that a group of Solutreans in an American trading outpost might show a little variation from the Solutreans living back in the Solutrean capital city. Here's where we get to the problem of having to filter through the anti-European sentiment in the sciences which is highlighted by these attacks with claims of "white supremacy" I mentioned above. Nobody hesitates to say that Siberians or Pacific Islanders could navigate huge expanses of open ocean on boats made of reeds, obviously populating places like Hawaii and Rapa Nui against all odds, but those same people will turn their noses up at the notion that Early Europeans could never have "island hopped" from Mainland Europe to England, Iceland, Greenland, and then to the American Continent. Even though that feat is far easier and more believable since the distances were far shorter and we know the people must have had boats of some kind, much like the Eskimo have developed, the scientific community has a very long history of fighting hard against the idea. Again we can look to the way the Viking Hypothesis was treated by the scientific community.... until incontrivertible evidence was dug up in Newfoundland. Prior to those finds, the scientific community as a whole was very quick to attack anyone suggesting the idea, calling them all sorts of vile names, and those same people are still there, still working, and have faced no censure for their unscientific actions. It makes you wonder what else they might be doing to undermine the sciences in order to bolster their own beliefs.

I believe, and Gravettian also, I have collected both from collections some over 100 yrs old along the east coast. For the last12.years, the book is a wakeup call Rember Toper dates 50,000 years ago. Great videos thank you very much Nathanael. .

Fantastic presentation. It helped me to hear that this was only proposed as a hypothesis to be tested in the original publication. I am very interested in genetic genealogy as well as precolumbian history. A couple of possible problems with evaluating Native American genetics is that they suffered an extremely high population loss after European contact. Some say 90%. Also, probably the majority of Native American burial grounds were destroyed by agriculture and construction. This skews the genetic data for surviving Native Americans and burials in the extreme. For example, there are accounts of black-skinned NA in California and Costa Rica and white-skinned NA in Venezuela for which there is no surviving evidence. So genetic comparisons with old world populations is going to be hit-or-miss at best. I appreciate you doing these videos for those of us who have the interest but not the same education as you. My family farm was a Keyauwee campsite on the NC Great Trading Path and my gr-grandmother was from the NC Catauba tribe, so the information you share about east coast tribes answers many life-long questions for me personally. -Andy

Neat

20:18 - 20:48 Another thing to point out, regarding convergent evolution, is the different peoples working stones the same way in different places at different times, are working with very similar materials for a prolonged period. Remember, the Eastern coasline of North America and the Western Europe were just a single landmass before the Atlantic Ocean formed. These rocks that 2 different cultures an ocean apart were working were once the same rocks, not an ocean apart because said ocean is younger than the rocks in question.

This is fascinating and I think maybe in 20 years we’ll be closer to the truth. I think the bog bodies having no genetic relatives and having 1000 years of habitation, evidence for Vikings in America, the footprints in New Mexico, the mammoth carved monuments at the bottom of the Great Lakes, the bluefish caves in Canada. I think it’s time someone tried to synthesize all that with the Clovis data. Polynesian influence in South America but not north? Seems everyone picks their own little piece of history, ignores everything else and says here’s how people got to America. Would just love to see someone try to paint an actual picture of what was going on here 25k years ago.

Is this guy you did this collaboration with the same guy who has the Dark Footage and Dark Docs channels? His voice sounds familiar.

Nice study, I congratulate you. You should also take into account that X mtdna is close relative of A mtdna, possibly younger than A mtdna. I think A, X mtdna are paralel to P, Q, R ydna. P1 is altaic siberian ydna and ancestor of both native american Q and central asian and european R similar to A is older and X is younger maternal linage of same separation to east and west from siberia. Because, A mtdna is found inside turkic, siberian people as also found in native americans. If we take into consideration, X is related to A mtdna and found both in Turkey (west) and America (east) originated from siberia. So, everything is getting clear in my mind. Thanks and regards!

Much as the tool making would be a lovely connection, we have too many examples of when completely different cultures developed similar things at the same approximate time. We forget that humans are inquisitive, inventive and intelligent and we tend to think alike in problem solving, like this way of shaping a rock works better than that way of doing so. We don't need a Solutrean intrusion in pre-Columbian America to explain how this happened. And that's OK. Our ancestors were just as smart as we are, they just had shorter shoulders to stand on.

it is terrible that some people definitely did not watch the video, yet they swarm here to comment. Or they did watch, yet they learnt nothing.

❤

2 questions. one is outlandish but im still curious. How could all this connect and relate if say instead of saying that ancient western europeans went to eastern america, that western europeans and eastern americans were disseminated from say greenland. Yes I know greenland has been an ice cube for at least 100k years, and they had to come from somewhere but human migration is full of back n forth and criss crosses and is messy, and greenlqands ice has 'changed' its age before. 2nd question. is it possible that there is a specific prey item in the north atlantic that may necessitate these types of similarities in hunting tools?

I kept rewinding to try and figure out if that coffee at the start was some kinda Easter egg 😂

Nice work guys. I love the idea of ancient, heroic migrations but I prefer to let the evidence convince me (or not).

I found alot of useful information here. I believe I'm in possession of artifacts from the preclovis overshot pieces. I have identified a settlement sight. Southeast Appalachia.

21:01 The feature common to Magdalenian and Clovis, _"the pebble paved floors are __20:52__ interesting but the Solutreans never made __20:54__ them as far as we know that's a later __20:57__ Magdalenian feature"_ ... well, would fall within the years from 2693 and 2644. It would also fit within the lifespan of a single early post-Flood artist.

What is the style where a slightly curved flake is the entire piece (arrow point) and there is absolutely no flakes removed from the concave side? It only has 1 flake knocked off for the base, 2 for the sides and 3 or 4 for the point. 3/4 of an inch long by almost half. Pretty much diamond shaped with a flat bottom and only a suggestion of "wings" to tie to (not sure the term). Between the east coast and the Great lakes area. Solid tan and nearly transparent like a lighter beer bottle glass that is slightly milky. It isn't anything like the grey flint I find that's got 70 to 100 flakes removed to finish it. It looks nothing like all the rest (dozens of points and scrapers), except the polished slate blade/scraper. That's kinda novel too, slate chest plates are not unheard of around here along the rivers.

Loved the video. Even my wife, who usually watches laughing babies and cats, was asking me about bifaces.

Too bad you couldn't get Bruce Bradley to come on your program to counterpoint your argument He's an incredible archaeologist and would be a great asset to be able to have his point of view in this discussion.

Great collab! But sad to see the kidiots in the comments didnt learn a thing from the video. History, much like science, is constantly evolving. Much respect to both! A'ho!

I love covergent development. It makes more sense to me.

The stone actually is likely similar because at one time europe and north america were connected so you may see similar stone tools when the same kind of stone (with even a shared source) is used.

Truly fascinating. I wonder" without the accusations of Eurocentric supremacy, would the Solutrean Hypothesis have been subjected to the same degree of *urgent* scrutiny? In other words, it seems that in this case an objection born out of an ideological premise was actually stronger that a purely technical argument as a motivating factor in stimulating futher research on the topic.

So in Indiana I've found 3 Clovis points in a field with " pea gravel" and Willow leaf points. The field is in the area once known as the Grand Kankakee Marsh on a sand hill surrounded by black dirt. As I was told " pea gravel" is found where Glacier Cane areas. Another find inthis area has been 2 rat tail copper points. What do you think 🤔

My theory is that because geologically the americas and europe share some similar stone types and working the same type of stone would cause one to make similar choices in working the stone without any contact.

Since the gap was so long ago people dont have a feel for how long the 5,000 years between Solutreans and Clovis is. 5,000 years ago Sumerians were just learning how to keep records by drawing pictograms on wet clay. It was 5,000 years before that wheat, sheep and goats were domesticated. Another 5,000 years back and you're in Clovis time. Another 5,000 years back and you're in Solutrean time. We lose track.

This was very interesting. I'll have to watch it again. {:o:O:}

What if pre clovis went to Europe and then came back? 🤯

Seas are highways not barriers.

Awesome crossover. Many Native American oral traditions hold that they came from this land, standing directly against tradition anthropological explanations such as a migration through the Bering straight or, in this instance, over the Atlantic. I find the relationship between the two to be fascinating, and I think it’s worth mentioning :) Thanks for the video!

Elsa Kramer's desert varnish

While I am not going to dispute anything spelled out here, I will point out that everything we are told about the past (especially where it comes to humanity) demands that we ALL accept the idea that EVERYTHING is a product of co-evolution. Around the world we see stone works like Stonehenge, and we are told that ALL the cultures who erected these sites did so for the exact same reason-- astrological mapping or something like following the seasons. We are likewise assured that even though the people who constructed these almost sites had no contact with each other, and yet we see that a bit younger than the Stonehenge-type constructions we see (around the world) pyramids, and looking closer we see that there is a sort of polygonal construction method (where stones are set one upon the other without mortar, and featuring corners that interlock perfectly) in every place from Easter Island, South America, Egypt even in the islands of the South Pacific. Again we are assured that each culture sporting these building methods did not have any contact with each other. This is like seeing a Ranch Style ( a domestic architectural style that originated in the United States) house in places around the world like China, or Australia and not understanding that its being there is because someone who knew about Ranch style homes used that style to build their home. It did not spring up coincidentally around the world as we are expected to believe these other building styles did. When you look at the other things we we are told to accept as coincidental we see the same tortured logic being used to explain them. The dates on these ancient buildings, cave are (compare the newly discovered 9 mile long wall in South America and the cave paintings in Lascaux to see that they are not only of the same age, but depict much the same style of drawing and animals) and even tool marks (the same around the world) are not only the same age, (30,000 years), but use similar materials. Red Ochre is also used around the world in much the same way--especially when dealing with the dead. How can all of these things be coincidental? They can't. However, they could reset the entire history of Earth but perhaps this is being concealed for a reason.