The First Settlers to the New World Were European Solutreans

Windover is an Early Archaic (6000 to 5000 BC) site in Florida where archaeologists in 1984 discovered the skeletal remains of 168 Caucasian people buried in peat at the bottom of a pond. Researchers were able to recover remarkably well-preserved brain tissue from many of the skulls and sequence the DNA. The results revealed the haplogroup X2a, which is of European origin.

Note on historical falsification: The Wikipedia page on this topic is falsified. A PBS “Nova” special on the Windover Pond states that the DNA in the skulls is European. Videos on the Windover site, produced by the Central Florida Museum and South Carolina Public Television, both state that the DNA is European. And the video produced by the supervising archaeologists at Windover Pond states that the DNA is European.

However, the Wikipedia page on the Windover Pond archaeological site states: “The DNA indicated Asian origin, similar to that of the four other major haplotypes of Native American peoples, and a relatively rare Haplogroup X.” This person used a citation without a page number from a book written by a PhD who was NOT involved with the genetic studies of the Windover skeletons.

These findings continue to support the Solutrean Theory. The principal proponents of the theory are Dennis J. Stanford, the director of the Paleoindian/Paleoecology Program at the National Museum of Natural History at the Smithsonian Institution, and professor Bruce Bradley of Stanford. In 2012, they published details concerning their hypothesis in “Across Atlantic Ice: The Origin of America’s Clovis Culture.”

During the Ice Age, people holed up in what is referred to as the Iberian Refuge, an area in Spain and southwestern France.

Because ice locked up water, the distance between North America and Western Europe would have been shorter, perhaps reduced by as much as a third. There was also a ice bridge spanning the North Atlantic that would have presented a crossing. Shallow spots like the Grand Banks would have been islands above water. The crossing would have been by boats, with ample stops along the ice sheet to hunt seal and to fish. There are ancient drawings of expeditions on cave walls in France. These images show both seal and deep-ocean fish as discussed in the video.

My personal theory is that the splotches or dots under the boat in the petroglyph photo at right represent floating oceanic ice and slush.

But others would have pushed on to the fish rich Great Banks of Newfoundland, the St. Lawrence River and eventually beyond. Initially, the theory was that the trans-Atlantic migration from western Europe would have been around 12,000 B.C. to 10,000 B.C, or 14,000 years ago. This would have been when the ice bridge was intact.

Incredibly, a new site at Miles Point, Maryland, is now turning up proto-Clovis Solutrean tools dated from 17,000-21,000 years ago! Other sites in Chesapeake Bay are turning up smaller and more-crude “miller points” of up to 25,000 years old! In fact, artifacts are found all over North America of these older ages. The details are covered here starting at minute 00:26:30.

Recently, according to senior researcher Torben Rick from the National Museum of Natural History, “There is a coalescence of data — genetic, archaeological, and geologic — that support a colonization around 20,000–15,000 years ago.”

Maximum reach of this phase of the Ice Age was 18,000 years ago. So there may very well have been major Atlantic crossings at two separate Ice Age maximums. There have been no boats found because the old coastlines are now 15 to 20 miles offshore, and the materials used would have been wood and hides, which decay.

The following image is a screen grab from Dennis’ Stanford presentation.

The Clovis culture is named for its distinct stone tools that appear in North America before the end of the last glacial period 11,700 years ago. Clovis is characterized by the manufacture of “Clovis points” and distinctive bone and ivory tools. Archaeologists’ most precise determination at present suggests the radiocarbon age is equal to roughly 13,500 to 12,900 years ago. In other words, Solutrean Clovis culture was present before the Atlantic ice crossing receded- but also before the Beringian ice free corridor opened up.

No Clovis tools have been found in Siberia or Beringia. Both Europeans and Clovis culture used quartz crystal for larger tools and arrows whenever possible.

With the arrival of genetic testing in recent years, the X European haplogroup is showing up in native American people, mostly in the Northeast U.S., Ontario and the Quebec region of Canada. This would have been the disembarkation location of Solutreans. They would have spread south-westward from there, and this also explains the strong similarities of Clovis tools in North America with European tools of that age.

Haplogroup X is not a common genetic root in the world population of today. But as this map shows, it’s not Asiatic but European — and North American.

This means that the Native Americans are derived from five (at least) — not four — different lineages. Based on the mutations found in the mtDNA, most conventional researchers think that groups A, C and D entered America from Siberia across Beringia. Group B, they assert, probably came to America from the South Pacific or Japan via boats. It’s believed that B groups began this migration not long after the A, C and D groups arrived. To be clear though, so as not to turn this into an unnecessary politically correct squabble, the A, C and D Asiatic groups in the end were the dominant, larger groups. We refer to A, C, D as Beringian Asiatics, or simple Asiatics.

The conventional theory was that the first A, C and D group crossed the Bearing passage or along the now underwater coastline at an unknown time before 12,600 years ago. However, a new Beringia Standstill hypothesis has developed holding that serious migrations were bottlenecked at the Yukon (source: Life Science).

The outer portions of Beringia, in what is now Alaska and the Russian Far East, were likely drier grassland steppes where woolly mammoths, saber-toothed tigers and other big game grazed.

“The central part of Beringia was probably the mildest, most-comfortable place to live at high latitudes during the last glacial maximum,” Hoffecker told Live Science. “It’s the most logical place for a group of people to hunker down.”

Once the glaciers melted, only then did the Beringian inhabitants stream into North America, traveling along the coastline and into the interior through ice-free passageways.

In other words, the Ice Age facilitated Solutrean Atlantic crossings and put a stop light on land penetration from the Asiatic groups. Once the ice melted, the Solutreans were cut off and the A, B and D Asiatic group’s ice-free corridor opened up (estimated at 12,600-12,700 years ago) for colonization of the Americas. Further East, the Solutreans were already there. The question: In what numbers? Not enough to even remotely outnumber the Asiatics once the ice free corridor opened.

Also, the politically correct crowd has condemned this theory not on its merits but on the standard “racism” slur. We hold that the evidence is piling up that the Solutreans were first. Then the Asiatics brought greater numbers to bear in colonizing the Americas.

There’s also an amazing number of straw-man fallacies around the issue and a lack of human remains from this older epic. When a human remain is found, the Indian tribes have a law that requires turning evidence over to them for burial. In one case, the genetic material of a small girl dated 12,600 years old in Montana (that had Clovis artifacts nearby) was tested. The results pointed to an Asiatic girl, and the “debunkers” ran victory laps.

But no one on the Solutrean Theory side is arguing that Asiatics weren’t on the scene 12,600 years ago. This date would indicate that they came through the ice corridor from Beringia quickly but then, logically, why would they linger around in the far north once the path was open? Or it could point to a margin of error of 100 years or so earlier for the corridor opening. They could have also made contact with Solutreans and may have acquired Clovis goods through trade or plunder or even have adapted the technology. So after 12,600 years ago, Clovis could also be associated with Asiatic colonizers.

Incredibly misdirection exists on a 9000 year old remain called Kennewick Man in Washington State. After a DNA test was conducted, the results were dishonestly declared “Asiatic”. Omitted was the important detail that he was haplogroup X2a, or Solutrean.

This next map shows other skeletal remains in limbo. Once tested, these could go either way; but given the later dates, if they were Asiatic, it would not be any particular surprise. The older (13,000-year-old) Arlington Springs remains in California, however, predate the ice corridor and would be an essential test of competing theories.

Indeed, the Solutrean X2a group is present in 3 percent of modern Native Americans. Although in 10,000 B.C. X2a would have been a higher percentage in North America, the X group’s route for further migration reinforcement would have been cut off as the Atlantic crossing ice sheet retreated North just as the Asiatic groups streamed in.

A good candidate for some measure of Solutrean blood is the Great Lakes tribe Ojibwe. They are rather unique looking, probably an Asiatic-European admixture. You can decide for yourselves, but they could pass for Spaniards or Basques. X2a is a major mtDNA subclade in North America, where among the Algonquian peoples (Ojibwe and Chipewa) it comprises up to 25% of mtDNA types.

The first individual was a chief. Some might argue he has French trapper blood as there was some intermixing from this source. However, the Ojibwe had a strict extended kinship system. For this reason, children with French or English fathers or grandfathers were considered outside the clan and had no official place in Ojibwe society and certainly couldn’t become chief.

Here’s what ancient oral Ojibwe pre-contact history says. The St. Lawrence River system would have been a primary migration and entry route for Solutreans, not Asiatics. Note the direction taken is from the East, not from the West in the direction of the Asiatics.

“The Ojibwe originated from the mouth of the St. Lawrence River on the Atlantic coast of what is now Quebec. They traded widely across the continent for thousands of years as they migrated and knew of the canoe routes to move North, West, East and then South in the Americas.”

Seven great miigis (radiant/iridescent) beings appeared to them in the Waabanakiing (Eastern Land). Six of the great miigis beings remained to teach, while the one returned into the ocean. Then these six miigis beings returned into the ocean as well. At a later time, one of these miigis appeared in a vision to relate a prophecy. It said that if the Anishinaabeg (Ojibwe) did not move further West, they would not be able to keep their traditional ways alive because of the many new pale-skinned settlers who would arrive soon in the east.

After receiving assurance from their “Allied Brothers” (the Mi’kmaq tribe) of their safety to move inland, the Anishinaabeg (Ojibwe) gradually migrated west along the Saint Lawrence River to the Ottawa River and to Lake Nipissing, and then to the Great Lakes.

As Winter Watch previously suggested in our Doggerland article, the incentives shifted anyway once the ice sheet receded. The actual post-Ice Age real estate prize for European Solutreans would have shifted to the lush but now sunken Doggerland in what is now the Dogger Banks. Post-Ice age and minus the ice bridge, the people in the Iberian Refuge would have dispersed into northwestern Europe, effectively ending any more attempts at trans-Atlantic crossing.

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Read “Was Mesolithic Doggerland the Inspiration for the Legends of Atlantis and The Flood?”

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Even More Dark Horse Candidates?

The RNA of the plants in North America are related to the RNA of plant species found in Europe, not Asia. The RNA found in plants in South America are most closely related to the RNA of plants found in Western Africa. We may be looking at a separate crossing theory of other people from West Africa in a future post.

Large-scale voluntary genetic testing in recent years has turned up even more smaller dark-horse candidates, including haplogroup F found in Mexican heritage, supporting a Polynesian Pacific crossing. This stems back to Thor Heyerdahl’s theories. He held that ocean migration was far easier than by land, and that prehistoric sailing technology was more advanced than generally recognized. The only real questions in our minds: How many ocean crossings were there, how many people were involved, from how many directions did they arrive and when? Our hunch is plenty- as native legends of strange foreigners abound.