Ancient Ocean Crossings

Ancient Ocean Crossings PDF Author: Stephen C. Jett
Publisher: University of Alabama Press
ISBN: 0817319395
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 529

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Book Description
Paints a compelling picture of impressive pre-Columbian cultures and Old World civilizations that, contrary to many prevailing notions, were not isolated from one another In Ancient Ocean Crossings: Reconsidering the Case for Contacts with the Pre-Columbian Americas, Stephen Jett encourages readers to reevaluate the common belief that there was no significant interchange between the chiefdoms and civilizations of Eurasia and Africa and peoples who occupied the alleged terra incognita beyond the great oceans. More than a hundred centuries separate the time that Ice Age hunters are conventionally thought to have crossed a land bridge from Asia into North America and the arrival of Columbus in the Bahamas in 1492. Traditional belief has long held that earth’s two hemispheres were essentially cut off from one another as a result of the post-Pleistocene meltwater-fed rising oceans that covered that bridge. The oceans, along with arctic climates and daunting terrestrial distances, formed impermeable barriers to interhemispheric communication. This viewpoint implies that the cultures of the Old World and those of the Americas developed independently. Drawing on abundant and concrete evidence to support his theory for significant pre-Columbian contacts, Jett suggests that many ancient peoples had both the seafaring capabilities and the motives to cross the oceans and, in fact, did so repeatedly and with great impact. His deep and broad work synthesizes information and ideas from archaeology, geography, linguistics, climatology, oceanography, ethnobotany, genetics, medicine, and the history of navigation and seafaring, making an innovative and persuasive multidisciplinary case for a new understanding of human societies and their diffuse but interconnected development.

Ancient Ocean Crossings

Ancient Ocean Crossings PDF Author: Stephen C. Jett
Publisher: University of Alabama Press
ISBN: 0817319395
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 529

Get Book Here

Book Description
Paints a compelling picture of impressive pre-Columbian cultures and Old World civilizations that, contrary to many prevailing notions, were not isolated from one another In Ancient Ocean Crossings: Reconsidering the Case for Contacts with the Pre-Columbian Americas, Stephen Jett encourages readers to reevaluate the common belief that there was no significant interchange between the chiefdoms and civilizations of Eurasia and Africa and peoples who occupied the alleged terra incognita beyond the great oceans. More than a hundred centuries separate the time that Ice Age hunters are conventionally thought to have crossed a land bridge from Asia into North America and the arrival of Columbus in the Bahamas in 1492. Traditional belief has long held that earth’s two hemispheres were essentially cut off from one another as a result of the post-Pleistocene meltwater-fed rising oceans that covered that bridge. The oceans, along with arctic climates and daunting terrestrial distances, formed impermeable barriers to interhemispheric communication. This viewpoint implies that the cultures of the Old World and those of the Americas developed independently. Drawing on abundant and concrete evidence to support his theory for significant pre-Columbian contacts, Jett suggests that many ancient peoples had both the seafaring capabilities and the motives to cross the oceans and, in fact, did so repeatedly and with great impact. His deep and broad work synthesizes information and ideas from archaeology, geography, linguistics, climatology, oceanography, ethnobotany, genetics, medicine, and the history of navigation and seafaring, making an innovative and persuasive multidisciplinary case for a new understanding of human societies and their diffuse but interconnected development.

Pre-Columbian Contact with the Americas Across the Oceans

Pre-Columbian Contact with the Americas Across the Oceans PDF Author: John L. Sorenson
Publisher: Research Press (UT)
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 636

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Book Description


Polynesians in America

Polynesians in America PDF Author: Terry L. Jones
Publisher: Rowman Altamira
ISBN: 0759120064
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 382

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Book Description
The possibility that Polynesian seafarers made landfall and interacted with the native people of the New World before Columbus has been the topic of academic discussion for well over a century, although American archaeologists have considered the idea verboten since the 1970s. Fresh discoveries made with the aid of new technologies along with re-evaluation of longstanding but often-ignored evidence provide a stronger case than ever before for multiple prehistoric Polynesian landfalls. This book reviews the debate, evaluates theoretical trends that have discouraged consideration of trans-oceanic contacts, summarizes the historic evidence and supplements it with recent archaeological, linguistic, botanical, and physical anthropological findings. Written by leading experts in their fields, this is a must-have volume for archaeologists, historians, anthropologists and anyone else interested in the remarkable long-distance voyages made by Polynesians. The combined evidence is used to argue that that Polynesians almost certainly made landfall in southern South America on the coast of Chile, in northern South America in the vicinity of the Gulf of Guayaquil, and on the coast of southern California in North America.

Pre-Columbian Contact with the Americas Across the Oceans

Pre-Columbian Contact with the Americas Across the Oceans PDF Author: John L. Sorenson
Publisher: Brigham Young University Press
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 608

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Book Description


Pre-Columbian Contact between the Americas and Oceania

Pre-Columbian Contact between the Americas and Oceania PDF Author: Andrea Ballesteros - Danel
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3031648773
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 396

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Book Description


Pre-Columbian Contact with the Americas Across the Oceans

Pre-Columbian Contact with the Americas Across the Oceans PDF Author: John L. Sorenson
Publisher: Research Press (UT)
ISBN: 9780934893145
Category : America
Languages : en
Pages : 1340

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Book Description


Traveling Prehistoric Seas

Traveling Prehistoric Seas PDF Author: Alice Beck Kehoe
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1315416409
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 218

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Book Description
Alice Kehoe uses critical analysis of large bodies of interdisciplinary evidence to help scholars and students reevaluate the highly controversial theory that people sailed large distances across oceans in ancient times.

Pre-Columbian Trans-Oceanic Contact

Pre-Columbian Trans-Oceanic Contact PDF Author: Jerald Fritzinger
Publisher: Lulu.com
ISBN: 1329972163
Category : Reference
Languages : en
Pages : 320

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Book Description
Pre-Columbian Trans-Oceanic Contact examines the discovery and settlement of The New World hundreds and even thousands of years before Christopher Columbus was born.

They Came Before Columbus

They Came Before Columbus PDF Author: Ivan Van Sertima
Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 358

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Book Description
"The African presence in ancient America"--Jacket subtitle.

Prehistoric America

Prehistoric America PDF Author: Betty Meggers
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351496980
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 319

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Book Description
During the past 30 years, the relationship between humans and the environment has changed more drastically than during any previous period in human history. Local sustainable exploitation of natural resources has been overridden by global interests indifferent to the detrimental impact of their activities on local environments and their inhabitants. Increasingly efficient technology has reduced the need for human labor, but improved medical treatment favors reproduction and survival, creating a growing imbalance between population density and food supply. Rapid transportation is introducing alien species to distant terrestrial and aquatic environments, where they displace critical elements in the local food chain.This succinct and profusely illustrated volume applies evolutionary and cultural theory to the interpretation of prehistoric cultural development in the western hemisphere. After reviewing cultural development in Mesoamerica and the central Andes, Meggers examines adaptation in North and South American regions with similar environments to evaluate the influence of adaptive constraints on cultural content.What made the human species dominant on the planet is the substitution of cultural behavior for biological behavior. Prehistoric Americans applied this ability to develop sustainable relationships with their environments. Many succeeded and others did not. Paleoclimatic reconstructions can be compared with archeological sequences and ethnographic descriptions to identify cultural behavior responsible for the difference. Comparison of the responses of Amazonians and Mayans to episodes of severe drought provides useful insights into what we are doing wrong.