Customer Reviews

The First American: The Suppressed Story of the People Who Discovered the New World

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This is the best book on the skullduggery and infighting behind the scenes in the Pre-Clovis debate since Elaine Dewar's "Bones". The fact that the author has been a credentialed, practicing archaeologist for over thirty years adds additional weight to his commentary on a subject usually addressed by nonprofessional outsiders.

The primary source documents for this book were graciously made available to me about a year ago by Virginia Steen-McIntyre, a tephronologist member of the original Valsequillo excavations. In a weekly newspaper column I write, I did my best to synopsize the technical material in those documents for the lay reader but Chris Hardaker's distillation surpasses my own by an order of magnitude. In addition, Chris has ferreted out related but exceedingly obscure material that I have never seen in print before and likely never would have. This would include his account of recent discoveries of advanced tool making in the African Middle Paleolithic, Lorenzo's raid on the Smithsonian for the Armenta's inscribed bone artifact, and his personal account of suppression of student investigation of Carter's Texas Street Site by his California archaeology professor.

Accusations of archaeological coverups abound in the "fringe" literature and in my experience, the majority of them lack foundation. By the same token, over the years I have found a small core of these accusations have a very real basis in fact. Chris Hardaker covers these as well in "The First American" and goes into the mentality and politics that give rise to such baffling suppression. Still, in the end, Chris is left as puzzled as I am, as to why mainstream science would turn its back on its core principles. To even raise the question of conspiracy to suppress knowledge is to invite an avalanche of ridicule and I must commend Chris Hardaker's courage to stand up publicly and face it. Virginia Steen-McIntyre has endured such ridicule for four decades in an effort to keep the profound discoveries in the Valsequillo Valley from vanishing into the black hole of public consciousness and in 2004 finally saw this site reopened by Texas A&M and INAH. We are still waiting for official publication of their findings promised three years ago. In the meantime, we have Chris' account of what he observed at Hueyatlaco along with surviving members of the original excavations. Though there will be howls of protests that this book is doing an end run around the peer review process, Chris has done a yeoman job of making this fascinating story accessible to highly interested laymen such as myself and he has done so in an extremely lively and entertaining style. For those with a taste for dissident but real archaeology, I give "The First American" my highest recommendation.

Recently I attended a "science" methods seminar offered by the San Bernardino County Museum. Featured in the seminar was a simulated archeological dig that could be done with children. At my dig "site" I found some nails, and the presenter, modelling a good inquiry extension strategy, asked me, "What can you conclude from the nails?" "Well," I responded, "I would conclude that these were human artifacts, had I discovered them anywhere in the world except the Calico Early Man Site. But, had I discovered them at the Calico Early Man Site, I would conclude they are natural geological features." At this point my presenter asked what I would be doing at the Calico Man site in the first place.

As Christopher Hardaker demonstrates in this delightful little book, this exchange is illustrative of what regularly happens in archeology. So long as artifact finds can be dated within the "Clovis first" paradigm, they are accepted. But as soon as one uncovers earlier artifacts, they are simply assumed to be "geofacts" instead, and all further inquiry at the those particular sites are discouraged. For the record, many of the articfacts at Calico date to more than 20,000 years old, far older than the 12,000 year old Clovis culture that until recently was paraded as the oldest evidence of human habitation in the new world. Because of its association with Louis Leaky, this site figures prominently in Hardaker's book. But the bulk of the book is devoted to archeological digs around Valsequillo resevoir in Mexico. Here the dating of artifacts to more than 200,000 years has been confirmed by multiple lines of geological evidence, all of which has resulted in the archeological profession studiously ignoring their own finds at the various Valsequillo sites. Indeed, the story Hardaker tells includes the actual destruction of artifacts by a prominent archeologist, and the "loss" of hundreds of in situ photographs and dig notes. It is an amazing story, but one that confirms a thesis I have long held, namely that "science" operates more like a religion than its proponents would like to admit. Just as Catholic biblical scholars have some leeway in interpreting texts, scientists can do research so long as they do not seriously question existing paradigms. Should they go beyond the unwritten boundaries, however, they are "excommunicated" from academe and their work is ignored or sometimes even outright destroyed, as this little volume illustrates in copious detail.

Taken the whole, 'The First American' is really two books. The first discusses dozens of archeological sites where the evidence contradicted the established beliefs and careers were lost or destroyed. This is by far the longest portion of the book. But the second part offers some interesting speculations in defense of diffusionism: in particular, it argues that paleolithic (pre modern) humans might well have mastered ocean travel and come further than many thought possible. I found this argument intriguing, if not entirely convincing. But the fact that the first part of the book was the most riveting speaks volumes about the nature of scientific inquiry in this day and age. Open minded readers will find this an interesting book. Dogmatists will not, but absent their dominance in science today, this book would not have been written in the first place.

EDIT: This was my first Amazon review, I think, and maybe I was a bit harsh. I should mention some of the good. You see in the fascinating story this book covers the turf battles between "objective" scientists, and also that fact scientists are just as likely as the rest of us to be bound by previous beliefs and reluctant to challenge the norm. You also get lots of fascinating archeology. All that makes the book good, but not necessarily right. Still, there's no way I can raise a fifteen dollar kindle book to four stars! END EDIT.

12,000 years ago becomes 40,000. That becomes 250,000. Now one reviewer is proposing a million.

12 certainly. Maybe 40. But if it's much over that we are probably not talking about Homo Sapiens. There are three fields of enquiry that, taken together, point to a sudden "big bang" in evolution that occurred in East Africa in a small group of hominids about 50-60 thousand years ago. Those first modern humans quickly proceeded to dominate the world and, we may assume, wipe out in one way or another the other branches of humanity, who were apparently no match for them.

The three fields are archaeology, linguistics, and genetics. What's fascinating is that all three arrived independently at roughly the same time and place for a hypothetical big bang. Of the three, linguistics is the most speculative. So speculative, in fact, that without corroborating evidence from the other two, it is close to worthless. (Most linguists haven't considered the corroborating evidence and have in fact considered it worthless, though that may be changing.) Linguistics is my field so I'll give a quick overview.

Linguists can reconstruct "proto-languages" by tracing back divergent but similar strings of grammar and vocab to a hypothetical parent language. For example, if we had no record of Latin, we could probably reconstruct a fairly accurate version (which would be called Proto-Romance) by tracing back the probable lines of development from French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, and Romanian. That has actually been done for Germanic languages, giving us Proto-German. Tracing back Latin, Ancient Greek, Sanskrit, Proto-German, Proto-Celtic, and other languages, linguists have come up with Proto-Indo-European, which was spoken roughly in the Black Sea area about 8,000 years ago. There is no controversy about the existence of Proto-IE.

But fringe linguists try to take it farther. They take Proto-IE and other Proto-Languages of the world and trace them back to a Proto-Proto ancestor. And then trace those back to a Proto-Proto-Proto until they arrive at their hypothetical original language from which all others have branched off through dispersal and the natural processes of language change. The first split, they believe, occurred in East Africa very roughly 50 to 100 thousand years ago. One part of the split went south and evolved into all the sub-Saharan languages. The other went north and evolved into everything else.

Taken by itself, there is no reason to believe any of that, as there is no actual evidence, just reconstructions by ivory-tower linguists. Many archeologists, though, also point to a sudden blossoming of culture at roughly the same time and place. A sudden evolutionary jump in language proficiency at that time and place would certainly explain the cultural blossoming.

And then, in the 1990s, geneticists, again working completely independently, proposed a genetic trail that leads back to East Africa 50-60,000 years ago, from which all modern humans are descended. They propose the identical initial split that linguists-on-the-fringe propose, followed by thousands of subsequent splits resulting from migration and changes over time.

Where the geneticists differ, though, is in their incredible specificity. I don't know how they can confidently make the following claims, but they do: The original group of modern humans from which we are all descended consisted of only several thousand members in the area of modern Eritrea and Ethiopia 50 or 60 thousand years ago. Several hundred went north or across the Red Sea and became everyone to the north; the rest went south and became everyone to the south. Once they started moving, they colonized the entire world fairly quickly. Hugging the coastline around India and into Asia, they were already in Australia within several thousand years. Surprisingly, they reached Europe rather late. The ice age and Neanderthals were tough customers. (A Neanderthal woman, they project, could have flattened Gov. Schwarzenegger in a wrestling match.)

If this is true, modern humans in the Americas 40,000 years ago is theoretically possible. (Though in fact, both genetic and linguistic evidence indicate something more in the range of twelve to fifteen thousand years ago). But anyone much older than 40,000 must have been a more primitive human line without the sophisticated command of language we moderns have. A line which disappeared after the arrival of "us."

I read this a few months ago. I should no longer be amazed that politics plays more into science then the simple facts. As someone in the book mentions, "I don't see the logic of rejecting data just because it seems incredible". The simple fact that this mega-site contradicts the obvious error that the Clovis New Mexico site is the oldest site of man in the Americas.
The amount of effort that the Clovis Firsters are putting in to suppressing any contradicting evidence is beyond amazing. It will take many more years of scientific proof (and rubbing people's noses in that prove) to convince these people that the evidence from the many and various sites that are older then their site.

Clover Firsters, now's the time
To demolish your paradigm.
Americas' history is deep in time;
1,000,000 years is just fine.

Most of the book is about the Valsequillo site in Mexico and how it's "impossible" dates were ridiculed then ignored.

The last part of the book is the best. The author tells of so many recent finds that turn archaeological paradigms on the heads. So much of what we "knew" about ancient humans has turned out to be mistaken.

Not having a reputation or funding to protect, I can entertain "heretical" ideas about the peopling of the Americas. Please note that the dates given here are my personal opinion. It is my opinion that humans have been in the Americas at least 250,000 years minimum, maximum of 1,000,000 years.

This book is well worth reading. It was a little wordy and the author has a soap box, however, the subject matter is well covered and the author does have his reasons for speaking out. Read to find out why!
If you are a 'new world' archaeology buff this book is a must read. Graham Hancock fans or readers of 1421: The Year China Discovered America should receive this book very well.

One of the most important things to do when you are selling an unpopular view, position, or account of how things happened, is to be clear, organized, and come across as professional. Mr. Hardaker's writing is unorganized, all over the map, and just plain not well presented. You can't convince people of a paradigm if your evidence is not well presented, and you play the "blame game" of what happened to corrupt what was great evidence. I was sorely disappointed in this book. I doubt it will convince anyone of pre-clovis occupation if you do not already have that belief. The whole thing reads more like a JFK conspiratorial book than anything else. At least that is the way I see it. I am sure he is a fine man and his beliefs may be right on target, but the presentation is not well done.