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Re: Diffusion chickens, sweet potato, maize, grourds and more coming
Peter van Rossum (pmv100@psu.edu)
Tue, 31 Dec 1996 16:34:52
In article <5abdsl$pdf@news1.io.org> yuku@io.org (Yuri Kuchinsky) writes:
>Domingo wrote:
>: If no progress has been made to the post-Pleistocene
>: pre-Columbian diffusion, it could also be interesting to find out why
>: (discounting of course very silly conspiracy theories).
>
>Domingo, I hasten to assure you that A LOT of progress has been made. You,
>and most others in these groups, don't have a clue how much progress has
>been made... Myself, only recently I've gone into trying to find the
>newest research, after familiarizing myself with previous research. Now,
>I've tracked down much of it (yes, I have plenty up my sleeve yet, so,
>fear and tremble, you miserable Isolationists!), and I'm constantly amazed
>how much is known now _already_ about transoceanic contacts in earliest
>antiquity. I will just give you some names of respected scholars. Their
>work certainly did not yet get the publicity that it deserves. But I think
>it's only a matter of time now... Stephen Jett, David H. Kelley, Paul
>Tolstoy, and Carl Johannessen, of course. Only some of them... I think the
>day is coming when the old paradigms will be overturned.
>Yuri.
Yuri, Jett's work on the blowgun dates back to the early '70s (that about 25
years old), Kelley's work on the calendar dates to at least the mid-'70s
(that's at least 20 years ago), Tolstoy's arguments on bark cloth go all the
way back to 1963 (that 33 years ago). These works have all been cited by
archaeologists in mainstream publications. They aren't in any way obscure -
just unconvincing to the majority of archaeologists.
Johannessen's work is relatively new, but I had seen his letter in Nature the
same year it came out - 1988. So again its not like no one was aware of it.
You also forget that the old paradigm used to be that diffusion had definitely
occurred and provided the major impetus for many New World developments.
That paradigm had started shifting by the '50s to where now it is not the
current position of most archaeologists (although I don't know of any who
would state they can prove for certain that contacts didn't occur).
Peter van Rossum
PMV100@PSU.EDU
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