Academia Letters Academic Apartheid: The Beauty of pre-Clovis By Alvah M. Hicks (AMH) Abstract Many researchers have waited patiently for the authors-validation of the earlier MV I and their subsequent approval of ongoing habitation in timely sequence-and-place spanning several sites dating between 33 kbp and MV II, 14,500 ybp. On October 2 2020 in the “Abstract” of the "Brief Rebuttal" the authors Dillehay et. al 2020 validated Monte Verde I as “allochthonous and cultural in origin.” Key Words: Paleoamerican, Pre-Clovis, Clovis-first, formal -Paleolithic (RP) Record, Monte Verde I, Peopling, Autochthonous, Game-changer, academia.edu Discussions This paper revisits a 150-year-old “major problem confronting late 19th century human evolutionists”. “A major problem confronting late 19th century human evolutionists was the incipient argument for the relative stability of the human form. From accumulating skeletal evidence it appeared as if the modern human skeleton extended far back in time, an apparent fact which led many workers to either abandon or modify their views on human evolution. One such apostate was Alfred Russell Wallace (1823-1913). In 1887, Wallace examined the evidence for early “early man” in the New World, and, like the German anatomist Julian Kollman (1834-1918) who three years earlier had made a similar survey, found not only considerable evidence of antiquity from the available specimens, but also, a continuity of type through time. In an effort to explain this, Wallace [1889, pp 454-461] suggested that once man had become morphologically differentiated from his apish kin (during the mid-Tertiary period), he had remained physically stable (Frank Spencer)” 1984 pg. 7; emphasis added). This remains a major problem that remains unrequited. It has not seen the light-of-day and, as a result, researchers today have never examined the evidence at-hand, only human evolution defined in Old-World terms. . and later underlying circumstances, (Aleš Hrdlička, Piltdown Man, and Clovis-first theory), undermining past-present-and-future academic investigations of an autochthonous Paleoamerican origination. Out of America, First stop Asia Stuart Fiedel posted October 10, 2020 in my academia.edu Discussion: Monte Verde I: The Case for Ancient Occupation of the Americas https://www.academia.edu/s/6df6e633ea "Dillehay has published articles in 2015 and 2019 on additional work near MV, and claims to have evidence of occupation at ca. 18,500 cal BP and probably earlier than 20,000 (although still stopping short of endorsing the 38,000 cal BP stuff from MV I). "emphasis added an academia.edu Discussion: Monte Verde I: The Case for Ancient Occupation of the Americas https://www.academia.edu/s/6df6e633ea Point being made; it is not "still" anymore and has never been just “stuff”. On October 2 2020 in the “Abstract” of the "Brief Rebuttal" the authors Dillehay et. al 2020 validated Monte Verde I as “allochthonous and cultural in origin.” “Abstract This comment is a brief response to the opinion statement made by Politis and Prates in this issue of PaleoAmerica. Some of their errors and misunderstandings are corrected. We maintain that the psephites from Monte Verde-I and Chinchihuapi-I are allochthonous and cultural in origin.” Tom D. Dillehay Mario Pino, and Carlos Ocampo Pg. 1 CSFA; ‘Opinions’; Gustavo Politis and Luciano Prates, ‘Comments’; Tom D. Dillehay Mario Pino, and Carlos Ocampo; ‘Response’ by GP and LP and Brief Rebuttal by TD, MP, and CO’ This discourse is available at academia.edu here: https://www.academia.edu/44357506/Debate_between_Politis_Prates_2018_and_2020_and_Dillehay_Pino_Ocampo_2020_about_Monte_Verde_Four_papers The significance of accepting just a 33 Kya year occupation of the Americas is profoundly relevant, geologically, for one. It changes the geographic pathway into or out of the Americas by pre-dating the onset of barriers presented by the entire Wisconsin Glacial. The 8-miles of Bering Sea separating two Hemispheres is much-less-formidable than a nearly 3,000-mile ride down the “kelp-highway” (see Tamm et al. 2007). What can be said to satisfy the limited archaeological signatures encompassing the earliest Paleoamerican Pleistocene Limited-Paleolithic (LP) record. “Anyone who might have been here before that (and left no archaeological traces comparable to any Lower or Middle Paleolithic complexes of the Old World) contributed nothing to the biological ancestry of ancient and living Native Americans. Stuart Fiedel ibid Discussion 2020 emphasis added Pre-Clovis discovery or advocacy is not a risk to scientist’s reputations in the same vein it once was, but the-damage-has-been-done. To continue to limit the time, ~15 Kya rather-then 33 Kya, and scope without delving into the greater World-wide implications is academic apartheid. To render conclusions that pre-Clovis Paleoamericans went extinct, and that greater Amerindians today have a limited presence in their Homeland of the Americas is academic apartheid II, an attempt to erase another’s past (see Steeves 2016). “An example of contemporary discussions which are derisive include those which identify Indigenous people of the Western Hemisphere as Asians or as recent migrants from Asia. ‘‘They made prehistory, those later day Asians who, by jumping continents, became the first Americans’’ (Meltzer 2009:1).” (From Steeves, P. 2015: 59) Perhaps these First Americans became the first Homo sapiens sapiens of the Old-World. The basal-nature of a ‘Reduced Paleolithic’ (RP) stage rather than a bonified Middle or Upper Paleolithic behavior, best describes MV I & II and other Paleoamerican sites. “Paleolithic complexes of the Old World” should not be used as a prerequisite for automatic dismissal of pre-Clovis habitations in the Americas. Rather, as my papers distinguish at academia.edu, these well manifestoed and yes, related sites, offer an original measure of human behaviors pre-dating the ~43ky initial Upper Paleolithic in the Old World. The Upper Paleolithic manifestation is in its “initial” embryonic form, (while basal RP in the Americas), in southern Siberia (Intentional fragmentation of blades in the initial upper Paleolithic industries of the Kara-Bom site (Altai, Russia) 2019; Vyacheslav S. Slavinsky, Evgeny P. Rybin, Arina M. Khatsenovich, Natalia E. Belousova). We have the cart-before-the-horse and we’re heading in the wrong direction. “Clovis-first” pre-dates Fiedel’s call for ‘lithic ‘dissent’, while it can be suggested that continuing this war is a-hostile-action. As the Late Distinguished Geneticist Luca Cavalli-Sforza stated (below), a “battlefield” mentality underscores “archeology of the Americas”. “I prefer archaeological dates, when available, but archaeology of the Americas seems more like a battlefield than a research topic. Given the circumstances, I suppose it is reasonable to be cautious. Only if I were forced to bet I would probably prefer older dates.” Luca Cavalli-Sforza, in a personal letter to AMH 1992 Luca Cavalli-Sforza,1991 in a personal letter to Alvah Hicks The greater ramifications, of placing the earliest ‘New’ World habitations into a larger picture centering on the sudden Old-World arrival of Homo sapiens sapiens, is better adapted to the peopling of the Eastern Hemisphere and not the Americas. “The model suggests a parallel between ancestral Native Americans and modern human populations that retreated to refugia in other parts of the world during the arid LGM. It is supported by evidence of comparatively mild climates and rich biota in south-central Beringia at this time (30,000-15,000 years ago). These and other developments suggest that the settlement of the Americas may be integrated with the global dispersal of modern humans.” Hoffecker et al. 2016:.65 Beringia and the Global Dispersal of Modern Humans John F. Hoffecker, Scott A. Elias, Dennis H. O’rourke, G. Richard Scott, and Nancy H. Bigelow Researchers need to counter and ‘call-out” the desperate measures Clovis-First advocates employ to renounce all things pre-Clovis. Inexplicable reasoning diverts real science from interpreting thoughtful implications and/or a greater meaning. Middle-Rang-theory anyone? Monte Verde offers profound implications by “breaking” the Clovis-First barrier. What kind of genuineness is evidenced by someone who would show up at a major conference with unrestricted derisive handouts for every participant in order to attempt to debunk the broader valued implications of fellow researchers work at Monte Verde; Stuart Fiedel. I was there in Santa Fe New Mexico! What kind of integrity do such an action afford real science when dismissing any and all pre-Clovis evidence as compromised, be it the archaeological-evidence-at-hand, or the broader-implications contained in theory, as with my work. To ignore the ramifications of Monte Verde and other proven without-a-doubt, human occupations go beyond singular attempts of censure to a broader form of academic apartheid. Clovis only advocates are practicing pseudoscience at its lowest level. I think of the attempts, past-and-present, to damage the careers of researchers who just happen(ed) to find evidence of early ‘early man’ in the Americas beyond the-then-and-now ‘accepted limits’ was/is/and-always-has-been, appalling. Distractors, who have/had an agenda to make-claim that others are practicing pseudoscience; are unproductive, especially when pseudoscience is exactly what they are practicing in living in a ‘fantasy-land’ of skepticism themselves. What a pawn-job. Checkmate of the Clovis-Firsters will come as they offer nothing more than “fake, anomalies, absurd, stuff, or fallacious” attitudes to satisfy only the fact that their views have long dismissed the allegory that an ‘elephant is in the room’ when it has for them already fallen through the floor. There remains a fox in the henhouse. I was in Bakersfield California at a somewhat wild animal auction in 1970 when an elder cowboy/rancher bought a baby elephant for his 90-year-old father (who lived 95 years of wisdom). Jack later had to scold his Father John for allowing the ‘critter’ into the kitchen (it did not fall through the floor but perhaps his father knew it wouldn’t because he ‘built-the-floor.’ Dillehay et al. 1989 & 1997, laid a foundation for establishing evidence for what has become a pre-Clovis game-breaker, Stuart Fiedel et. al only satisfy the scientific reality that pseudoscience is ‘alive and well’ by suggesting that Mammoths leaving undigested seaweed dung at MV II explains it’s ‘non-archaeological’ presence. There are more than enough exotic plants (see Dillehay 1989) to satisfy a highly viable living ‘archaeological “culture”’ at 14.500 years ago at MV II. We can now be satisfied that this Reduced-Paleolithic Culture (RPC) dates back at-least to MV I ‘s 33,000-year age, by the Authors own conservative re-reconning. It is time to raise the levels of theory-building and lower the level of intransigence. References: Andrew D Kern, Matthew W Hahn Molecular Biology and Evolution, Volume 35, Issue 6, June 2018, Pages 1366–1371, https://doi.org/10.1093/molbev/msy092 Hoffecker John F., Scott A. Elias, Dennis H. O’rourke, G. Richard Scott, and Nancy H. Bigelow 2016. Beringia and the Global Dispersal of Modern Humans, Meltzer, D.J. 2009. First Peoples in a New World: Colonizing ice Age America. University of California Press, Berkeley, CA. Politis, Gustavo and Luciano Prates 2018. CSFA; ‘Opinions’; ‘Comments’; Tom D. Dillehay Mario Pino, and Carlos Ocampo; ‘Response’ by GP and LP and Brief Rebuttal by TD, MP, and CO’ Steeves, Paulette F. 2015. Decolonizing the Past and Present of the Western Hemisphere (The Americas); Archaeologies: Journal of the World Archaeological Congress (_ 2015) DOI 10.1007/s11759-015-9270-2 Smith, Fred H., Spencer, Frank (eds) 1984. The Origins of Modern Humans: A World Survey of the Fossil Evidence. New York: Alan R. Liss, Inc. Trinkaus, Eric. 1989. The Upper Pleistocene transition. in The Emergence of Modern Humans ed. by Eric Trinkaus Cambridge University Press 5