In this article we present a summary of information on the very interesting suggestion that Stone-Age Europeans discovered North America.
Archaeologists have found a number of stone tools dating back between 19,000 and 26,000 years, and bearing remarkable similarities to those made in Europe.
All of the ancient implements were discovered along the north-east coast of the USA.
Previous discoveries of tools have only been dated back to 15,000 years ago and prompted many archaeologists and historians to question claims that stone-age man managed to migrate to North America.
But the striking resemblance in the way the primitive American tools were made to European ones dating from the same period now suggests a remarkable migration took place.
Adding to the weight of evidence is fresh analysis of stone knife unearthed in the US in 1971 that revealed it was made of French flint*.
Professor Dennis Stanford from Washington’s Smithsonian Institution, and Professor Bruce Bradley from Exeter University believe that the ancient Europeans travelled to North America across an Atlantic frozen over by the Ice Age.
During the height of the Ice Age, ice covered some three million square miles of the North Atlantic, providing a solid bridge between the two continents. Plentiful numbers of seal, penguins, seabirds and the now extinct great auk on the edge of the ice shelf could have provided the stone-age nomads with enough food to sustain them on their 1,500-mile walk.
*This clearly is very important, if true. We have not managed to find an official publication of this find though.
(Source: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/9110838/Stone-age-Europeans-were-the-first-to-set-foot-on-North-America.html)
New archaeological evidence suggests that America was first discovered by Stone Age people from Europe – 10,000 years before the Siberian-originating ancestors of the American Indians set foot in the New World.
A remarkable series of several dozen European-style stone tools, dating back between 19,000 and 26,000 years, have been discovered at six locations along the US east coast. Three of the sites are on the Delmarva Peninsular in Maryland, discovered by archaeologist Dr Darrin Lowery of the University of Delaware. One is in Pennsylvania and another in Virginia. A sixth was discovered by scallop-dredging fishermen on the seabed 60 miles from the Virginian coast on what, in prehistoric times, would have been dry land.
The similarity between other later east coast US and European Stone Age stone tool technologies has been noted before. But all the US European-style tools, unearthed before the discovery or dating of the recently found or dated US east coast sites, were from around 15,000 years ago – long after Stone Age Europeans (the Solutrean cultures of France and Iberia) had ceased making such artefacts. Most archaeologists had therefore rejected any possibility of a connection. But the newly-discovered and recently-dated early Maryland and other US east coast Stone Age tools are from between 26,000 and 19,000 years ago – and are therefore contemporary with the virtually identical western European material.
What’s more, chemical analysis carried out last year on a European-style stone knife found in Virginia back in 1971 revealed that it was made of French-originating flint*.
Stanford and Bradley have long argued that Stone Age humans were quite capable of making the 1500 mile journey across the Atlantic ice – but till now there was comparatively little evidence to support their thinking.
But the new Maryland, Virginia and other US east coast material, and the chemical tests on the Virginian flint knife, have begun to transform the situation. Now archaeologists are starting to investigate half a dozen new sites in Tennessee, Maryland and even Texas – and these locations are expected to produce more evidence.
Another key argument for Stanford and Bradley’s proposal is the complete absence of any human activity in north-east Siberia and Alaska prior to around 15,500 years ago. If the Maryland and other east coast people of 26,000 to 19,000 years ago had come from Asia, not Europe, early material, dating from before 19,000 years ago, should have turned up in those two northern areas, but none have been found.
Some genetic markers for Stone Age western Europeans simply don’t exist in north- east Asia – but they do in tiny quantities among some north American Indian groups. Scientific tests on ancient DNA extracted from 8000 year old skeletons from Florida have revealed a high level of a key probable European-originating genetic marker. There are also a tiny number of isolated Native American groups whose languages appear not to be related in any way to Asian-originating American Indian peoples.
*We have not managed to find an official publication on this very crucial find.
Stone tools found recently in Delaware, Maryland and Virginia in the eastern United States, all appear to bear a striking resemblance to tools used by Stone Age peoples in early Europe, and have been dated to a time between 19,000 and 26,000 years ago, a period during which Stone Age people were making such tools, and long before the early Asians arrived.
It’s not an implausible theory, suggests Dennis Stanford, of the Smithsonian Institution and Bruce Bradley of the University of Exeter, because Stone Age people could have come from Europe by traveling across the ice-bound North Atlantic during the Ice Age. The evidence is further bolstered by the recent discovery that an ancient knife found in Virginia in 1971 was made of flint that originated from France*. They two have coauthored a book on the subject, Across Atlantic Ice.
Stanford and Bradley also point out the lack of evidence of any human activity in the north-east part of Siberia or in Alaska any earlier than 15,500 years ago. And the reason early Asians won out, evolving into the people now called Native Americans, was because their window of opportunity was much wider, 15,000 years versus just 4500 for the early Europeans. Thus the original Native Americans were either assimilated or killed by the large numbers of migrating Asians. Evidence that it was likely the former has been found in the DNA of skeletons of North American Native American people. Also, the language of several Native American tribes doesn’t seem to have originated from Asia.
*We have not managed to find an official publication on this very crucial find.
(Source: https://phys.org/news/2012-02-european-style-stone-tools-age.html)
Abstract The early peopling of the New World has been a topic of intense research since the early twentieth century. We contend that the exclusive focus of research on a Beringian entry point has not been productive. Evidence has accumulated over the past two decades indicating that the earliest origin of people in North America may have been from south-western Europe during the last glacial maximum. In this summary we outline a theory of a Solutrean origin for Clovis culture and briefly present the archaeological data supporting this assertion.
(Source: “The North Atlantic ice-edge corridor: a possible Palaeolithic route to the New World”, by Bruce Bradley and Dennis Stanford)
Last but not least, we wish to inform our reader that there are many scientists opposing the above described theory. To acquire a more spherical view on the issue and form your own opinion, we suggest a read of the paper titled “On thin ice: Problems with Stanford and Bradley’s proposed Solutrean colonisation of North America“, by Michael J. O’Brien, Matthew T. Boulanger, Mark Collard, Briggs Buchanan, LiaTarle, Lawrence G.Straus & Metin I. Eren)
Research-Selection for NovoScriptorium: Philaretus Homerides
Novo Scriptorium 
Not having read that book it is more entertaining to imagine – Why should the Solutrean men make this trudge ? Was Europe a horrid place already then ? Or, may be, the authors think those men were progenitors of Irish people ?
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