When Did Humans Reach the Americas?

By Claire Eamer

Now there's a question that opens a can of worms!

A couple of years ago, I wrote a short news article -- Archaeological Find Puts Humans in North America 10,000 Years Earlier Than Thought -- for Hakai Magazine. It was about a new analysis of bones found 40 years ago in the Bluefish Caves in the northern Yukon by Canadian anthropologist Jacques Cinq-Mars. The magazine followed it up with a lengthy and fascinating piece by Heather Pringle: From Vilified to Vindicated: the Story of Jacques Cinq-Mars.

Doctoral student Lauriane Bourgeon's analysis of the bones, particularly a horse jawbone with cut marks on it, appears to confirm Cinq-Mars's original conclusion -- that human hunters were using the Bluefish Caves at least 24,000 years ago, at the height of the last glaciation. At that time sea levels were much lower than today, and people could have crossed to North America from Siberia on the wide, dry, windswept plains of Beringia, a route now blocked by the waters of the Bering Strait.


At the time Cinq-Mars published his first account of the excavation, the prevailing theory said humans arrived in North America from northeastern Siberia about 14,000 years ago at a time when the glaciers were finally disappearing, but when there was still a dry-land link between Asia and North America. They then followed an ice-free corridor between glaciers that led them south to the rest of the Americas. The problem with that theory is the growing body of evidence that no such corridor existed or was inhabitable at that time, as well as another growing body of evidence that people were living well south of the glaciated lands before the glaciers disappeared.

Cinq-Mars's find and Bourgeon's re-analysis of it support another theory: the Beringian standstill hypothesis. According to that theory, humans moved into the dry region linking Asia and North America 10,000 years or more before the great ice sheets melted and the sea level rose. And there they stayed, making a decent living from the animals -- both large and small -- that shared their giant refuge from the ice.

But what about those people living farther south when the ice was still melting? Current thinking suggests they might have arrived by sea, travelling down the west coast of North America, with its rich resources of shellfish and other coastal foods. A report just released dates a cache of artifacts found in Idaho to 16,000 years ago. A joint research effort by Western scientists and First Nations in British Columbia recently found even more startling evidence to support the coastal theory -- 29 footprints left, probably, by a small family walking along a beach 13,000 years ago.

Unravelling the mystery of humans in the Americas is no easy task. Much of the evidence was ground to dust by kilometres-deep ice or flooded by rising seas as the ice melted. But scientists and Indigenous peoples are working on it. It's still a can of worms, but each worm that emerges changes the picture slightly and makes it a little clearer. And a lot more interesting.

Claire Eamer's most recent book is Out of the Ice: How Climate Change is Revealing the Past (Kids Can Press, 2018).

Exploring Haida Gwaii

Sci/Why's peripatetic correspondent Margriet Ruurs sends us another report from a fascinating part of the world - this time from Haida Gwaii, on the western edge of Canada. -CE

By Margriet Ruurs

Haida Gwaii – the very name conjures up images of windblown spruce clinging to rocks surrounded by foamy waves, not unlike an Emily Carr painting. The archipelago stretches along the northern BC coast almost to Alaska. You can reach it by ferry from Prince Rupert or fly in from Vancouver.

We flew into Sandspit, a tiny town on the northeast shore of huge Moresby Island. We wanted to visit the very southern tip, which is in a National Park called Gwaii Haanas. Basically, the only way to reach this remote region is by a Zodiac (inflatable boat) tour offered by a local wilderness company called Moresby Explorers. We studied our options, counted our coins and decided to splurge on a four-day trip with a photography theme.

Bryan, our guide and skipper, picked us up and also five other guests with whom we would spend the next four days on a Zodiac. We drove from Sandspit across a ridge of Moresby Island, on dirt logging roads, to Moresby Landing where we were outfitted with bibbed rain pants, large rain jackets and gumboots. We’d live in these for the next few days. We wore undershirts, a sweater, a fleece jacket topped by our own rain jackets and then the provided rain gear over top. This meant we could only wobble like astronauts in space suits.

Of course we had prepared ourselves for four days of driving rain, grey skies and grey waves. Fortunately, we were lucky and only ended up with a half day of rain and three-and-a-half days of blue sky and sun and/or cloudy but dry weather. Considering that Gwaii Haanas averages rain for about 230 days a year, we were lucky.

We had not even left the Landing when I spotted the first black bear browsing on the intertidal beach. The island’s bears have evolved to have much longer snouts than the mountain bears we are used to seeing on the mainland. Like the Galapagos, even the same species of animals have made adaptations to different local environments resulting in, among others, a different subspecies of stickleback fish in every lake. At least 39 distinct subspecies of plants and animals evolved in the archipelago, including seven mammals, three birds and fifteen species of the stickleback fish that are found nowhere else in the world.

We cruised across inlets and around Louise Island to spend the first night at Moresby Float Camp, a guest house anchored in a secluded fjord. The blue skies reflected in mirror-calm green waters. We docked and were welcomed by two young women who cooked for us, offering us tasty appetizers, tea, coffee and hot chocolate. They even had a fireplace, giving us much needed warmth to warm our chilled hands and feet. After a great dinner of bbq salmon, salad, veggies and rice we fell asleep in no time.

The next morning we bundled up again. This became a ritual: two or three layers of warm clothes, thick socks and gloves. Then our own outer gear, the provided rain pants tucked into the gumboots and the rainjacket over top of everything else. By the time you can’t bend down anymore, you still have to manoeuvre into a lifejacket and into the waiting Zodiac. We’d pull a warm hat and scarf over nose, mouth and face and then we were ready to zoom across Hecate Strait to our next destination.

On our way by Zodiac to the most southern tip of Gwaii Haanas, we visited ancient village sites and remnants of totem poles in several locations: Skedans, Tanu, S’qang Gwaii, Rose Harbour and more. Each site has its own intrigue and charm. Skedans is a village site with house remnants and totem poles, but not as many as in the most southern tip S’qang Gwaii. Here, a mystical and misty atmosphere enhances the site where old spirits dwell and history is tangible. The bleached and weathered totems lean against moss covered house beams. The beach still tells stories of canoe runs between rocks, where the “Vikings of the Pacific” showed their power by rowing their long boats far east, north and south, taking slaves as they encountered other nations.

I was intrigued to learn that a Haida Chief could marry a slave woman, thus making the former slave the most powerful matriarch of the clan. In this matriarchal society, men do as the leading woman dictates and children are part of their mother’s lineage.

I also learned about different totem poles: the shortest one were usually house poles, depicting the family’s clan and history. Tall plain poles with rings are potlatch poles, showing how many potlatches, or celebrations, have been held. Some poles are a memorial for a particular person, sharing his life story, while yet others have a hollowed-out square opening at the top housing a bentwood box of bones: a burial pole. Their silent stories are impressive and pay tribute to a society that lived here long before “contact” – as the period after the arrival of European explorers’ ships is called.

Houses were large, sometimes dug down to allow more space. Immense ceiling beams were held up by corner posts and closed by cedar walls. Now, all that remains is rounded beams covered in soft green moss, often with a new cedar tree growing on each corner as the trees reseeded. Slowly and silently, history is swallowed up by the rainforest. The Haida people have chosen to let their history return to the earth, as it always has, rather than have Parks Canada follow their usual mandate of preserving history.

We were most impressed by the Watchmen. This ancient term refers to Haida who spend the summer in each historic location. They are provided with a small house with a wood stove and basic comforts. Here they work for the summer, hosting visitors. They are extremely well spoken, gracious hosts with a wealth of knowledge about their people. Each host told us amazing stories. Haida Gwaii is made up of stories and the oral history seems alive and well. We heard stories of how people first came to populate the earth when Raven found a clamshell full of little people on Rose Spit. He pried open the shell and the people spilled out. Raven also brought light to the world.

Bear married a woman who gave birth to bear cubs, and in return he gave hunting powers to humans. There are many tales of supernatural beings in this land. Mostly, these are people wearing animal cloaks. Eagle, Raven, Whale, Bear – they all have specific powers and fascinating stories. Haida also strongly believe in reincarnation.

One of the men who told stories, told us of the impressive oral history. “When I was about 10 years old,” he said, “my uncle called me into his house and told me a two-hour story. The next night I had to come back and tell the story back to him without embellishing, best as I could.”

This repeated night after night until he had memorized much of his own history. The tradition continues today as he tells his daughter the ancient tales and makes her tell them back to him.

We learned to chew spruce tips and licorice root. Even ate herring roe on kelp. We saw many, many eagles. A few glimpses of whales as well as two bears.

One overnight was spent in Rose Harbour, an old whaling station. Much debris, buildings and rusty tools remind one of an era when people caught and processed whales for oil. I found it a sad place to be. The lone woman who lives here offers a guest house and meals to Moresby Explorers. We ate greens from her immense garden and freshly caught ling cod. In the morning she ground grains on her converted exercise bike to make us pancakes with rhubarb sauce from the garden. An outhouse and wood-heated shower made it into a rustic adventure.

All photos by Margriet and Kees Ruurs.

Moving Moai and the Birdman Battle

By Margriet Ruurs

Note: This is the second of two posts by Margriet about Rapa Nui. To see the first, go to https://sci-why.blogspot.ca/2017/09/exploring-world-through-travel-rapa.html

Walking along the steep cliffs of the southwest coast of Rapa Nui, or Easter Island, I gaze down on foaming white waves pounding the shore of a small island: Moto Nui. This is where history was made.

The view of Moto Nui from the cliffs of the larger island, Rapa Nui.

The first inhabitants likely arrived on Rapa Nui in wooden canoes from far-away Tahiti. From these first few grew a population of thousands. But European diseases and fighting reduced their numbers to a low of 110 at one point. After the era of the moai (stone figure) carving culture, competing tribes designed a non-violent way to establish order on Easter Island: the Birdman Cult. Chosen young men competed for the right to have their tribe rule for the next year, until the next competition was held.

Birdman figure

The competition was held near the most important site on the island, the Rano Kau volcano, and consisted of climbing down the steep rock face of Orongo to the wild ocean below, building rafts from reeds, using these as flotation devices and swimming the rough kilometre-wide passage of pounding ocean to Moto Nui island.

The young men had to bring back the first egg laid by birds returning in spring. They tucked this egg into a woven headband, swam the ocean and climbed the cliff to hand the egg, unbroken, to the chief.

I saw tiny rock houses at Orongo and scattered rocks carved with birdman and boat pictures. We climbed the sides of the ancient volcano to look inside the crater, filled with shallow lakes where drinking water was collected and reeds for the rafts were cut.

The best came last, when we visited the site famous from so many photos – the long row of moai standing shoulder to shoulder. This is iconic face of Easter Island.

But my favourite site is the quarry. When I first heard the name, I pictured a rock excavation site where rocks were dug up. However, when you approach the quarry, it is as if the stone people have come to life and are walking out of the mountain from where they were born. A gently sloping green side of a volcano is scattered with upright figures. They seem to be walking down, stumbling and standing all over the slopes. The sight gave me goosebumps and a lump in my throat.

The moai were carved here from gigantic blocks of basalt and lava. Weighing many tons and measuring up to ten metres in height, their individual features were carved. I had heard that most figures only show the upper body while the lower half is still buried.

Before I saw them, I thought that this meant that the moai had been covered by drifting sand over the ages. But that is not true at all. There is no sand. Only lava and rocks. The artists did not have ladders, so they dug deep pits in which they lowered or raised the moai until they could reach their faces to carve them.

Once a figure was finished, it was erected and “walked” down the mountain to spots all over the island – a mind-boggling feat that National Geographic has tried to recreate.

Why did people stop carving and moving the figures? It seems like they were in the middle of ongoing projects when work came to a halt. No one knows why.

Why did the Rapa Nui create these statues in the first place? Scientists believe that well-to-do families ordered a moai in memory of an important member of the community. When this person died, male or female, a moai was constructed in his or her image and erected over their bones.

Once the grey basalt figure, with or without red lava topknot, had been given white coral eyes with a black obsidian center, it was believed that the deceased person’s spirit had entered the moai and would now protect Rapa Nui and its future generations.

For details on Easter Island and its history, click here: http://www.mysteriousplaces.com/easter_island/

See a reenactment of ‘walking’ the statues here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yvvES47OdmY

All photos by Margriet and Kies Ruurs. For more of the Ruurs's travel adventures, visit their blog, Globetrotting Grandparents.

Great White (Northern) Science – LINKS and a CHALLENGE

By Claire Eamer

There’s lots of great science happening in the Great White North. (Actually, it’s not very white today – gorgeous fall colours instead – but you know what I mean.) And a lot of that science is being done by Northerners themselves. So I decided to spread the word.

Here’s the LINKS bit: I’ve dug out a few kid/teacher/librarian-friendly links for you. You’ll find them below, with short notes about where they lead.

And here’s the CHALLENGE bit: Hey, all you Northerners, scientists, science freaks (that’s me!), geeks (young and old), and wizards of Google-fu - let’s find some more! If you have a favourite science link to something that’s taking place in northern Canada, post it in the Comments section at the bottom. We can build something here.

So, here’s my first kick at the can - a mostly-but-not-entirely Yukon contribution.

This scimitar cat once roamed the Yukon grasslands. Today,

it snarls at visitors to the Yukon Beringia Interpretive Centre

in Whitehorse. Claire Eamer photo

Would you like to learn about the amazing animals that roamed the Yukon 20,000 years ago, when most of Canada was buried under kilometres of ice? Check out the Yukon Beringia Interpretive Centre's Education Corner. There's everything from educational materials for senior grades to colouring sheets for the little kids. And check back regularly. I was talking to the Beringia Centre folk yesterday, and they're planning some great new additions to the site.

If I've got you hooked on mammoths, giant sloths, and scimitar cats, there's more information about the latest research (and lots of cool photos) in the online (pdf) booklets Ice Age Klondike and Ice Age Old Crow, published by the Yukon Government.

By the way, if you want to know what life is like today at Old Crow, the Yukon's most northerly community and home of the Vuntut Gwitchin First Nation, check out the community website. It offers a sampler of the Gwich'in language, traditional stories, culture, history, cooking (lots of caribou recipes!), and a whole lot of other entertaining bits and pieces of information, including a collection of videos made by Old Crow students.

Back to ice ages and climate: how about climate change? The climate is warming faster in the North than anywhere else in Canada. What do northerners think about that? In 2000, the Inuvialuit people of Banks Island talked about their lives and how climate change is affecting them in a video called Inuit Observations of Climate Change, which is online in both a short version and a long version.

All that warming has turned up a few surprises. High in the  mountains of the Yukon and the Northwest Territories, there are patches of permanent ice, too small to be glaciers but too big to melt over the short summer. Until recently. Now many of them are melting and revealing a record of plant, animal, and human life going back thousands of years. I blogged about the ice patch discoveries here last year. The online (pdf) booklet The Frozen Past has both information and photos of Yukon finds. And Archaeology magazine has an online article about ice patch finds in other parts of the world.

For first-hand accounts at what it's like to live and do research at the northwest edge of Canada, check out this series of podcasts produced by the Wildlife Management Advisory Council (North Slope). You'll find everything from elder Danny C. Gordon's account of a lifetime of travel across the Yukon North Slope and park ranger Richard Gordon's song in praise of Herschel Island to permafrost researcher Chris Burn's musings on using both scientific and traditional knowledge to understand the land and its future.

Okay, that's my contribution - for now. I won't promise not to come back and add more links in the Comments section, but I'll let you guys have a chance first. What's your favourite science link for the North? And don't think just about the northern territories. Besides the Yukon, the Northwest Territories, and Nunavut, there's Labrador, Nunavik, and the northern regions of most of the provinces. Have I left anyone out? If so, add it in below.

Chewing on Books

Chewing on Books

In a culture overflowing with ear-worn copies of Harry Potter and jam-stained editions of Robert Munsch’s works, it’s easy to take books for granted. They’re everywhere—our homes, schools, bookstores, libraries, vast cubes of them at Costco.

With all these books, it’s easy to forget that we learn not just to read, but how to respect and use books. 

There’s a science to how we learn not just to read, but also to use books; an anthropology of books.

All you have to do is to go somewhere with a less developed book culture for this to jump right of the page, so to speak.

When I go on book tours to remote and rural communities in Canada, some of the most striking moments are talking with children for whom books are a novelty.

Several years ago I did a reading in Thompson, Manitoba’s public library as part of a Canada Book Week tour. The kids jostled in, sat cross-legged, smiling and laughing during the reading. Then came the book signings and sale. The librarian shepherded one elementary student up to me, ten dollars clenched in her small hand. She wanted to buy a copy of my book. It was the first book she’d ever bought. I was the first author she’d ever met.

The experience of buying a book and meeting an author are both important parts of book acculturation. Learning that you can access books and that, in seeing yourself reflected in that author, that you have the power and opportunity to write, to self-express, to share your experience-- whatever it might be—of the world.

The most dramatic example of this anthropology of books is in a community like Bunalwenhi, Uganda. A neighbour of mine recently returned from a sixth-month stint starting the small, rural community’s first library.

What she discovered is that filling the bookshelves was the easier part of fostering a book culture. People needed to learn to use books.

Bunalwenhi is primarily an oral culture. Even with mandatory primary school education, most children make it to the sixth grade—including learning the rudiments of reading and writing—without ever holding, let alone owning, a book.

For Bunalwenhi’s children arriving at the library was like going to a foreign land, populated with strange creatures—books. Kids in primary school approached the books as tactile objects. They pulled books from one-another’s hands, ripped them, hit one another with them, folded pages, scribbled in them. All the things that kids do with books, but here generally at a much younger age when they’re first introduced to books and learning how to properly use them, which became a focus for the librarians.

When we give babies books they can chew, or plasticized ones they play with in the bathtub, a watching anthropologist would jot down a note about book acculturation. Later some adult will joyfully read in a warm, bubbly tub; or feel a sense of peace reading the paper while chewing on breakfast toast.

Every time we hold a book, we can be glad that someone taught us not just how to read, but that a book can be ours to read.

Learn more about the Bunalwenhi Community Library:http://bunalwenhi.wordpress.com/2011/07/27/canadian-authored-childrens-books-in-bucl/