D.B. Madsen (ed.). Entering America: Northeast Asia and Beringia before the Last Glacial Maximum.

D.B. Madsen (ed.). Entering America: Northeast Asia and Beringia before the Last Glacial Maximum. D.B. MADSEN (ed.). Entering America: Northeast Asia and Beringiabefore the Last Glacial Maximum The Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) refers to the time of maximum extent of the ice sheets during the last glaciation (the W��rm or Wisconsin glaciation), approximately 20,000 years ago. This extreme persisted for several thousand years. . vi+486 pages, 104 illustrations,tables. 2004. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press The University of Utah Press is a university press that is part of the University of Utah. External linkUniversity of Utah Press ; 0-87480-786-7hardback $50. It's called the 'peopling of the Americas,' anuproar that has set rival archaeologists gracelessly arguing againsteach other in a state of earplugged stubbornness. As soon as one set oftheories is declared to be delusional the others are alleged to be indenial in denialPsychiatry To be in a state of denying the existence or effects of an ego defense mechanism. See Denial. . I imagine the gods are laughing at those of us involved in thiscontest--the eagerly opinionated, the selectively uncritical, thetaphonomically naive, the aggressively unsceptical. We all may be deadwrong. Entering America contains papers addressing the question 'Whatif humans had dispersed from Northeast Asia into the Americas before theLGM LGM Last Glacial MaximumLGM Little Green Men (Astronomical: first used as the designation for pulsars)LGM Lembaga Getah Malaysia (Malay: Malaysian Rubber Board)LGM The Lone Gunmen (Last Glacial Maximum)?' Included are ten contributed papersand two essays by the editor, plus two commentaries by external readers.The editor's own introductory chapter gets the volume off, if noton the wrong foot, then decidedly on one foot, with a list, perhaps morea wish-list, of putative reasons why a very late glacial peopling of theAmericas is deemed impossible. In my view, a couple of other papers arealso partisan, although many readers will inevitably take them to beimpartial summaries. A much more useful chapter is the one by Brigham-Grette andcolleagues, an informative reference point for imagining human diasporasin western Beringia around the LGM, in spite of uncertainties aboutshort-term climatic patterning and a lack of detailed sea-level curvesfor Beringia. Clague et al.'s chapter on the pre-LGM and LGMenvironments of northwestern North America North America,third largest continent (1990 est. pop. 365,000,000), c.9,400,000 sq mi (24,346,000 sq km), the northern of the two continents of the Western Hemisphere. is another valuable source ofinformation about the period. This chapter makes the point that in thelate glacial period extensive ice cover and no possible food resourceswould have been barriers to human movement along the coast southwardsfrom Beringia until 13.5 ka (uncalibrated). Fedje et al., in turn, hopeto convince readers that the north-western coastal entry route was usedby the Americas' early immigrants, and predict where sites may oneday be found; but they then make a leap of faith, proposing that thepresence of Late Pleistocene-Early Holocene coastal people implies aneven earlier, invisible, presence, needed for the development of coastaladaptations. If this sort of argument were applied to the LatePleistocene-Early Holocene sites known from the ice-free corridor ofinterior Canada, it would mean the late glacial interior route was alsopassable much earlier than conceded by many authors in this volume.Meltzer's later commentary also acknowledges that the interiorcorridor may indeed have been open earlier than frequently argued. Goebel's chapter is the most important one in the book. Hiscareful examination of sites in subarctic Siberia ultimately narrowsdown the possibilities for a likely Clovis progenitor pro��gen��i��torn.1. A direct ancestor.2. An originator of a line of descent.progenitorancestor, including parent.progenitor cellstem cells. . Goebel wrote thispaper before the discovery of the Yana RHS RHS Royal Horticultural SocietyRHS Right Hand SideRHS Rural Housing ServiceRHS Rickards High School (Tallahassee, FL)RHS Red Hat SocietyRHS Ridgewood High School (New Jersey)site, dated to about 27 ka(uncalibrated), in the northeast Asian Arctic; the presence of thissite, however, does not invalidate in��val��i��date?tr.v. in��val��i��dat��ed, in��val��i��dat��ing, in��val��i��datesTo make invalid; nullify.in��val Goebel's main point--that humanbeings were very scarce in northeast Asia during the period of maximumglacial conditions, and only after the LGM did the adaptive featuresthat had begun appearing earlier allow long-distance human dispersalthrough Beringia into the Americas. Schurr's chapter surveys the genetic data; to me, the mostimportant point is that there may not be a lengthy genetic disconnectionbetween Northeast Asians and Native Americans--the estimates forevolutionary rate range widely enough to accommodate either a pre-LGM orpost-LGM entry from Asia, in fact extending as late as just before theClovis era itself. Schurr proposes that several separate expansions outof Asia account for Native American diversity, but not all geneticexperts would be satisfied with that. Remarks on the number of well-documented archaeological sites thatsupposedly prove a pre-LGM arrival for the first Americans can be foundin several chapters, including the commentaries of the two externalreaders; at best this is the view of only a part of the archaeologicalcommunity, and at worst it is just a slant, broadcast by very vocaladvocates unwilling to tolerate dissent or scepticism. If morearchaeologists would read original data reports and not rely onsecondary summaries, they might emerge from the task confused about theflimsy evidence and the tissue-thin supporting arguments. Still, I think this book is worth reading if you are looking forpalaeoenvironmental or archaeological information not generallyavailable elsewhere, or if you are an interested outsider seeking thebigger picture of the peopling of the Americas. New students will needto be guided through the occasional misconception or biasedpresentation, but they should also feel inspired to make their owncontributions after reading the finer chapters that point the wayforward, such as those, not yet mentioned, by Collins and Lohse onClovis blades, Brantingham and colleagues on the early Upper Palaeothicin southern and subarctic Siberia (see especially their list ofdeficiencies in the Siberian evidence on p. 267), and Ikawa-Smith onpre-LGM cultures in and around Japan. GARY HAYNES Department of Anthropology, University of Nevada, Reno The University of Nevada, Reno (Nevada or UNR) is a university located in Reno, Nevada, USA, and is known for its programs in agricultural research, animal biotechnology, and mining-related engineering and natural sciences. , USA