Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
Figure 2.1
Bison tooth and tip of Clovis Point arrowhead from Murray Springs, Arizona. The
distance between the specimens has been reduced slightly. The actual distance is about four
inches. Photograph courtesy of Vance Haynes.
There is less agreement about older sites, such as Meadowcroft Rockshelter
near Pittsburgh, 11,900-12,550 BCE to possibly as old as 16 kyr. Humans
were present at Monte Verde in Chile by 12.5 kyr, although in all these cal-
culations there is the possibility that early people arrived in Latin America
from southeastern Asia by boat as well as by overland crossings.
The Vikings were the second group to see the New World, some of them
forced to leave Scandinavia because of obnoxious and downright dangerous
behavior even by Viking standards. Thorvald Asvaldsson went to Iceland
after being banished from Norway for killing a man. His son, Eric the Red,
killed two men in Iceland and settled in Greenland at Midjokull (Middle
Glacier) to start a colony with four hundred people in 986 CE. In turn, his
son Leif Ericson fi rst landed on Baffi n Island, then Labrador, and fi nally
Vinland (Newfoundland) at a site now called L'Anse aux Meadows in about
1000 CE. They were the fi rst Europeans to see the New World.
The temptation to try and the opportunity to succeed in settling Green-
land and Newfoundland was in large measure conditioned by climatic fl uc-
tuations in the postglacial Holocene epoch. It was during the Medieval
Warm Period (800-1200 CE) that the Vikings made their extended sea voy-
ages. During the Little Ice Age that followed (1300-1850 CE), they would
