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The Great Journey: The Peopling of Ancient America

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Brian Fagan first published this book in 1987 and an undated version was published in 2004. You want the updated version as it summarizes new developments and changes in thought in an introductory chapter.

What has not changed is the eternal dispute about when man first arrived in the New World. The conservatives, among whom one could probably include Fagan, say less that 15,000 years ago. The dissenters say 20,000 to 50,000 years ago. In a book for the general reader Fagan undertakes a careful summary of the evidence. He looks at the spread of Homo sapiens from their place of origin in Africa to the rest of the world. He examines the archaelogical evidence for man in Siberia -- the jumping off place for the New World -- and in Beringia, the now vanished land that linked Siberia and Alaska during the last Ice Age. He evaluates migration scenarios for paleo-Indians from Beringia south to the Americas and the archaelogical evidence from a multitude of ancient sites. Along the way, he illustrates the relevance of things such shovel-shaped incisors and linguistic theories. A thoroughly fascinating presentation!

The author has no ideological axe to grind but the weight of the evidence he presents supports the conservative view of a Paleo-Indian arrival in the New World about 15,000 years ago and a rapid dispersal reaching as far south as Chile by 13,000 years ago. But the evidence is thin and dissenters will find theories more to their liking also evaluated by the author. My opinion hardly matters, but I stand among the conservatives, However, I have a nagging doubt. How did those people get to Chile so fast? Is the famous Monte Verde site there mis-dated? Does hope still exist for for those who believe paleo-Indians arrived in the Americas 20,000 years ago?

Unlike many archaeologists, the author doesn't get lost in fascination with pottery shards or chopper blades, but keeps his eye on the goal of presenting a comprehensible, reasonable, scientific, and interesting tale of how the Americas may have become populated.

Smallchief

I first came across this book in 1990. I have read this book 4 times since then. The book is very easy to read and comprehend.

The saga of how Asians came across the land bridge following the mega fauna is very interesting. Based on speech and dental patterns, the history of at least two waves of people moving into North America and southward is unfolded.

Fagan explains how the evidence of the nomadic cultures was discovered and how this evidence shows how these people survived. From this discovery of Clovis points to group kills of now extinct species, Fagan tells a fasinating story of how the native Americans arrived here.

The extinction of the mega fauna, the land bridge, and ice age's impact on the peopling of North America are interwined into a good reading book.

I wish all anthropolgy books could read so smoothly!

Updating an older book on a broad and varied topic is a risky enterprise. If much work has been done in the ensuing years, a complete rewrite is usually in order. Too few results can fail to justify the reprise. Fagan's original effort on the peopling of the Western Hemisphere was an excellent survey. This edition is essentially that first account, with an explanatory chapter inserted at the beginning of the book. That technique has the advantage of warning the reader what to look for while going through the text. And while much new information has come into view, Fagan reminds us that the underlying questions about where "Native Americans" originated, and when, remain unanswered.

The human diaspora begins in Africa, some five million years ago according to Fagan - [recent finds emerged too late to appear here]. Unique among migratory species, Homo sapiens sapiens moved in but one direction. From our origins on the savannah, the author traces our path into north-eastern Asia. When conditions permitted, glacial ice having trapped enough water to reduce sea levels some 300 metres, these ancient Asians moved onto a lost continent now named "Berengia". This link between Asia and North America must retain evidence of human occupation, but retrieval from the sea bottom is difficult. Fagan describes the intense research into climatology, palynology and other fields to explain how the data has been accumulated over many years.

Hidden evidence provides opportunities for speculation and controversy and the studies of ancient Americans is rife with both. Fagan describes what research has revealed and reviews the suppositions drawn from the scattered and inconclusive evidence. Fagan examines the various theories of when humans entered the Americas and what dispersal paths they followed. He lists the dig sites with the opinions derived from the evidence, weighing the contending arguments with care and a considered detachment. Where dating is flawed or suspect, he resists ill-considered judgment, calling for further investigation. A few anomalous sites, such as Monte Verde in Chile and Meadowcroft in Pennsylvania receive extra attention. He's quick to praise diligent methods while readily disparaging hasty proclamations. The Pedra Furada site in Brazil, once extolled as "challenging ideas on the First Americas", is given a lengthy description, but is dismissed as poorly investigated and reported. As Fagan notes, tracing the movements of humanity in ancient times is a detective's work, with clues assessed only with extreme care.

Some points of contention the author passes over with summary evaluation. After his presentation of Paul Martin's thesis that the disappearance of large mammals was due to human predation, Fagan dismisses it. Climate shift, he states, changed the nature of plant life leaving these prey species bereft of fodder. Yet Tim Flannery, in two books published since the original edition of Great Journey, demonstrates that browsing and grazing species would have adapted to climate change. The timing of human occupation and megafauna extinction is too proximate to be ignored. The prime example of Maori hunting of moa species in New Zealand is symptomatic and well documented. Martin may have been wrong in details, but his basic thesis has withstood criticism.

These flaws don't negate the exceptional worth of Fagan's achievement in this study. It's a powerful and informative narrative of Western Hemispheric archaeology, its practitioners and their results. Starting with early views of the first European invaders, he explains how improved scholarship, better technology and disciplined approaches have clarified the picture of Native American life. Fagan provides photographs and maps for additional support of the text. This remains a valuable book, easily read and understood. It has not been replaced and will keep its well-earned reputation. [stephen a. haines - Ottawa, Canada]

I enjoyed this very readable book. I first read it in 1988 and after doing so, actually went out and bought the thing. The author has some very nice theories as to the peopling of North America and is quite well able to back them up. The book is easy reading and logical. While not all may agree with the author's explanations, they do give food for thought. Recommend you add this one to your collection.

Professor Fagan has not used the latest research findings to modify his opinions and theories as presented in this revised edition, despite the golden opportunity to do so. He mentions them but has not adapted his thinking to them. He remains married to the Clovis-First Theory, despite the near-avalanche of data that has been accumulating that suggests far different models fit the data much better.

If you want book format layman-friendly summaries of the latest (as of mid-2009), read:
-- The First Americans: The Pleistocene Colonization of the New World, ed. N G Jablonski (2002)
-- Paleoamerican Origins: Moving Beyond Clovis, ed. R Bonnichsen (2005)
Each of these is a collection of essays written by the most important researchers in the field today.

Don't waste your money on the Fagan book.

Wonderfully written, but horribly out of date. Fagan clings to the Clovis-first theory in this book, and I thought I bought the revised version! It is well-accepted in archaeology that the Clovis were not the first Americans. The Bering Land Bridge (Beringia) is no longer thought to be the only route the first settlers took.

Pick up a book written more recently than 1987 (the original publication date of The Great Journey) and you will get a completely different story of the peopling of the Americas.

I am currently reading Entering American: Northeast Asia and Beringia Before the Last Glacial Maximum edited by D.B. Madsen. It's a pretty dense book on the subject, but extremely information rich. It was published in 2004- the same year as the so-called revised edition of The Great Journey.

Brian Fagan's "The Great Journey," an update of an earlier book from the 1980's, is a wonderful summary of what is known about human settlement of the Americas, and one that is easily accessible to any reader interested in the topic. The author does not employ confusing jargon that might require course work in anthropology or archaeology to comprehend it. Furthermore, he includes a substantial list of sources in the final pages of the volume for each chapter that should provide the more enthusiastic reader with a list of other books of interest on individual subjects. It also provides the reader new to the subject with an illustration of how work in this field is done and with the collaborative character of modern archeology.

The author's background in and research interests in a variety of fields makes him an excellent commentator on the subject of first settlers. His other books, The Great Warming: Climate Change and the Rise and Fall of Civilizations, The Little Ice Age: How Climate Made History, 1300-1850, The Long Summer: How Climate Changed Civilization, Floods, Famines, and Emperors: El Nino and the Fate of Civilizations, etc., all deal with climate change and its effects on human society, and it is precisely this, as he notes, that brought about human evolution and expansion from its natal land on the African continent in the first place. By examining the likely routes of expansion and the cultural demands that radiation into an arctic type landscape would demand, the author presents the reader with a realistic assessment of the rigors of continent to continent migration.

In "The Great Journey" Professor Fagan examines the material evidence from archaeological sites in north Asian and Siberian areas as well as that from the Alaskan and north Canadian regions. He discusses the possibilities of both land and sea approaches to the Americas, evaluating the data on the climatic and environmental factors that might have limited use of either and evaluating when a possible window of opportunity may have existed.

My own observations with respect to the evidence the author presents is of the "absence of evidence is not evidence of absence" type. Like many authors, Dr. Fagan notes the icy barriers and dry environment that an open corridor between glaciers would present to populations moving to the New World from Asia. He, again like others, also notes the absence of good material evidence that would verify a migration earlier than 15000 years ago while also noting the presence of their megafaunal quarry in the North American landscape. It seems to me that miserable or not, if the animals got to the Americas, their human predators probably did also. It seems not unlikely that the humans followed the lead and the survival clues provided by their prey. Another indicator might be the presence of both horses and camels in Eurasia after their evolution in the Americas. Again, they had to have gotten there some way, and the land bridge, however ugly, must have provided them with passage. The likelihood that drowned sites along the coasts might provide the necessary evidence is mentioned repeatedly by the author, and indeed some core samples and other scientific work are beginning to provide it.

Genetic and linguistic studies have also added to the understanding of human colonization of the Americas, and Dr. Fagan enlarges on these also. His discussion of both are more limited, probably due to the fact that his own forte is climatic rather than biologic or linguistic studies and also to his obvious audience of the non-professional reader. One obtains some familiarity with these areas of research without becoming bogged down in the details of either field.

The author is especially good where he is writing about the evidence for pre-15,000 arrival proposed by researchers with pet-sites for which they claim early dates with what the author considers poor supporting data. He makes it quite evident why the evidence is considered insubstantial by pointing out that even older information from African sites has successfully endured scrutiny. While he obviously has no pet theory of his own, and owns that most researchers would love to find solid evidence for much earlier settlement of the continents, he insists that this should be evidence based--i.e. scientifically valid--and that evidence should be properly obtained and reported. Some of the more enthusiastic researchers have apparently used poorly provenanced artifacts and questionable dating results to verify their claims for early settlement. He also insists that better study of stone artifacts, and more particularly their taphonomy, needs to be done before "human made" can be applied to them. All of this seems entirely valid. It has been for some time, and early contributors to the field, especially Ales Hrdlicka, had already outlined these same principles for students of early American studies during the first years of the 20th Century.

The book also details some of the variety of cultures that grew up in response to the changes in the post-glacial environment and includes a sampling from some of the main climate regimes where individual societies took root. In doing this he also brings historical groups into the picture presenting the reader with changes wrought by more recent environmental stresses--i.e. contact with European cultures. In this respect his book is much like Diamond's Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies, which dwells extensively on the characteristics of the environments of the two primary landmasses of Eurasia and the Americas and how these factors, rather than genetically inate differences in the people, effected the outcome of confrontations between the cultures of later Europeans and Native American populations.

An excellent general book on the subject.

We had to read this for our school and I found it very deep and thought provoking. I thought it did a great job describing the early settlement of America. The book definitely taught me something I had never known before!