Bones: Discovering the First Americans

by Elaine Dewar

Award-winning journalist Elaine Dewar explores new terrain with Bones , uncovering evidence that challenges the conventional wisdom on how the Americas were peopled in early history. In her probing investigation, Dewar travels from Canada's Mackenzie River to the Brazilian state of Piaui, from the offices of the Smithsonian Institution to the Washington state riverbank where the remains of Kennewick man were found. Dewar captures a tale of hard science and human folly where the high stakes include professional reputations, lucrative grants, fame, and the resting places of wandering spirits.

Genres: History, Science, Anthropology, Nonfiction, Archaeology, American History, Canada

640 pages, Paperback

First published March 6, 2001

Reviews

[Chrisl · Rating 4 out of 5]

12/4/17
First read as interlibrary loan about ten years ago. Spotted a used copy on Friends of Library sale shelves. Previously reader had marked it very little and often same sentences that caught my interest. A massive amount of research is reported clearly. Some interesting characters among the scientists interviewed. A book to read between exploring other pieces of print. Read from the index, following topics.

Reading it because my primary mental fantasy involves the arrival of humans in the Americas, "The New World in the East," ... I seek information particularly about boats and routes used during the first migration, by people who were eliminated/replaced by subsequent migrations.

Quote concerning the waves of migration - "'We show everything from 12,000 to 9,000 or 8,000 BP (*note Mount Mazama) looks non-Mongoloid. All after 8000 BP is Mongoloid. There is no gradient.'" (Has there been research linking population change to Oregon's Mount Mazama eruption?)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_M...

Much of the evidence cited in Bones supports the idea that earliest arrivals in the Americas were boat people, for instance some early skeletal remains :

"The Kennewick specimen, featuring a morphology close to the Polynesians ... becomes ... clear evidence that a more complex model for the peopling of the Americas is needed."

"Wizards Beach ... found not far from ancient fishing tools commonly found in Oregon ... Wizards Beach and Kennewick look like they could be brothers."
**

In Chapter 21, the author introduces Alejandra Duk-Rodkin as central figure in "The Corridor That Wasn't : The Cold Facts Behind the Absence of Evidence."

Here's the first paragraph, displaying Dewar's writing style

"A schizoid May morning in Calgary: on one side of the river, blue sky, but to the north clouds black as an iron frying pan, signaling a downpour. This uncertain light fell on Alejandra Duk-Rodkin's hair as she walked gracefully down the lobby staircase of the Geological Survey of Canada's western headquarters. She was a surprising figure, far too small for an overthrower of orthodoxy, almost tiny beside the vast display wall of stone and concrete forms shaped like the fossil animals found throughout the West. She had pixie-cut shiny black hair, huge brown eyes with thick black lashes, a gorgeous smile." ...

"She was born in Chile, and finished her undergraduate work at the Catholic University of Valparaiso in 1971. ... There was no graduate education in geology to be had in Chile, then or now. So ... she took a scholarship from the Soviet Union and went to Moscow State University.

"'The Russians offered the best scholarship in the world--a salary to study,' ... stayed for seven years. Finished her doctorate (on Chilean geology, married a Russian geological scientist, ...

"She was offered a job teaching applied geology to civil engineers at the University of Santiago in Chile, which she accepted in 1980. It took her husband another year and a half to get permission to leave the Soviet Union. Soon after he arrived, the director of the university left, and a person from the military was put in charge. Pinochet was then at the height of his power. 'So, he decided to clean house,' she said, with a wry smile. Those who could be linked to the left were not welcome ... 'Canada took us in,' was how she put it. In Calgary she studied English and got a three-month contract job with the Geological Survey of Canada, which eventually turned into a permanent position,''which to me was like winning the lottery.'" ...

"'I started working on the problem of the Glacial Mackenzie River,' she said. It took her ten years to be sure she was right. In 1994, she published a paper ... that threw out much of what people previously thought they knew about the formation of the Mackenzie River ... Before the last period of glaciation, the old Mackenzie River system, a mighty skein of tributaries, had drained through and past Hudson Bay ... The last and greatest thrust of the Laurentide ice sheet changed what had been unchanged for millions of years ... and resulted in the Mackenzie River flowing north parallel to the mountain front."

" ... the Cordilleran valley glaciers grew and coalesced and then advanced down the mountains toward the plains ... the two great ice masses actually joined each other. Duk-Rodkin's maps for this period show one large continuous gray ice zone across the mountains and right down over the whole interior of the continent.

"'After 12,000 BP ... they separate very fast ... At 11,000 BP there are glacial lakes all over." ...

"Could one have walked through the mountains from Alaska to the south? Could people have walked across these glaciers?"

"'You can walk on it,' she said, 'but the lakes interrupt everywhere.' These glacial melt lakes were bitterly cold, with practically no life in them. No one could have made their way south from Alaska without some means of crossing the lakes. In other words, in order for ancient people to have walked into the interior by this mountain route, they would have had to have reliable and portable boats, a technology that most proponents of the Bering Strait theory are unwilling to credit to the First Americans."
**

First review -- This book covers one of my non-fiction "sweet spots." However, it is too long. Recommended for those interested in the ancient Americas. Skimming suggested. For readers who prefer to be involved with multiple books simultaneously. Appreciate Dewar's passion and perspective. She's Canadian, too.

"Introduction

"This book begins with a simple question. Where did Native Americans come from? ... For more than a century this answer was ready for anyone who needed it: Native Americans came from somewhere else--from Asia. All are descendants of the same immigrant people." ...

"So why, you might ask, should a journalist investigate ... Journalists are willing to go anywhere, to be passionate fools, to ask innocent questions, to ignore barriers, to look for patterns that connect disciplines and solitudes, and to have no vested interest ... Journalists are the last of the generalists. We are also a little like bees. We dip into everybody's business and carry the news along. We cross-pollinate. We fertilize. Sometimes, we sting."

Chapter One "Asian Origins?"

" ... the practice of archaeology ... has become a disgrace. There are laws and rules ... which have turned archaeology into a kind of handmaiden of industrial development. All archaeology has to be done under license, and is supposed to be document ... but the whole system is a sham. Very little archaeology is published in peer-reviewed journals. Most of it is done by contract archaeologist who 'salvage' sites about to be destroyed by development, which means they dig them, remove what they find and write up their findings. Bu then their reports languish in a provincial archive closed to the public, unavailable even to academics ...

" ... The copper tool had been made almost 3,000 years before metal tools were forged in Europe. Why, I asked the archaeologist, wasn't the fantastic antiquity of metalworking in North America widely known? Well, he replied sardonically, do you read a journal called Radiocarbon?"

"It is still accepted that the First Americans came on foot from Siberia ... simply followed herds of buffalo, caribou or mammoths over the dry strait into Alaska. ..."

"Oddly enough, most of the sites with the oldest dates had been found in the lower United States, not Alaska." ..

" ... if archaeology is a science, why had so much of it languished unpublished in government archives and private basements? Without publication and independent evaluation, what use are these reports? Similarly, why had the story of the First Americans been built on such a small base of evidence? And, given that the evidence base was small, why wasn't there more dissent?

"This story of the First Americans turned out to be deeply mired in politics of the worst sort--land politics, religious politics, academic politics. For one thing, many Native people consider the Beringian Walk to be a ridiculous theory. According to their oral histories and beliefs, they have been in the Americas for time immemorial. They are not just another group of immigrants. Further, they see this story as something invented to undermine their land claims." ...

Chapter 3: "Found and Lost - The Misplaced Remains of the Accepted Path"

... "Interestingly, the oldest of the North American remains they had listed had been found in Texas, and in Florida ... This was not the sort of distribution one would expect if the Bering Strait was the point of entry. ... Canada was a blank, a place through which it was assumed the First Americans must have passed, but from which no evidence was offered up.

"One American scholar who had looked north of the border to see what had been found in Canada was the person who presented Kennewick Man to the world, James Chatters. He told me of at least one ancient skeleton, about the same age as Kennewick Man, found in British Columbia in the late 1970s at a place called Gore Creek." ...

" ... explained what had happened to the Gore Creek remains. For years, he said, Native people had been asking for the return of their ancestors' remains, which they knew were in the museum. ... One Native person, acting as an individual, organized a sit-in. Within days, the museum handed over forty-five boxes of human remains to three bands ... The Gore Creek remains were included ... If I wanted to know where they were exactly, the curator suggested I speak to the bands involved.

... " ... Each band had taken a few. He had no idea where each of the remains had been interred ... nor did he have any knowledge of the Gore Creek remains ... This was the equivalent of reburying King Tutankhamen without marking the site."

"Now, things had changed. I had already told Chatters that Gore Creek had been reburied. I thought I'd call him about this one, but I wanted to find the skeleton first. I called the anthropology department at the University of Toronto. No one in archaeology knew where these remains could be." ...

"When the Milton-Thomazi remains were found, Milton and Savage were both very aware that Native people were upset about the digging ... demanding that bones be reburied without study. The two of them were determined to save these remains for science. Howard Savage had kept the remains in his lab at the university all those years.

"But Friesen can't find them in the database, I said.

"Of course not, Milton replied. Savage never entered them into the university database. Deliberately. That way the Native groups would not hear of them and ask for them back."

[Karin · Rating 1 out of 5]

On the one hand, there was some interesting information in this book. I did like seeing the many different scientists and views on the history of people in the Americas. It doesn't dispute any first people's claims about being here first, but it also clearly shows the insane ways people will go to to cling to theories that were made before many things were studied, how politics and rivalry between scientists can cause problems and how seldom--at least at that time--people in the States or even Canada read the work of archaeologists and anthropologists from South America--I mean all of it.

I wanted to like this--my dad really liked it, the author is Canadian and from my dad's home province, I am interested in the topic--but it was sometimes boring as dust, other times interesting and often gossipy and even a bit catty a few times. Overall it was a bit disjointed when taken as a whole as well. It's not the author's fault for the state of this field, but how she put this together is bothering me more. Here's a note I made part way through because the comment she made just had no business in a book like this that gives an eg of catty and also completely inappropriate information and comment in a book like this.

I'm still reading this, but wanted to make a note at how disappointed I was that Dewar--a woman to boot--made such a thoughtless, pointless and inane remark about a woman's body! As if her breast size has anything at all with who she is as a woman, and in this instance that's exactly what she implies page 354 hardcover Elayne Dick is a tiny woman in her twenties, her skin tanned to the shade of expensive Italian shoe leather, her body as slim and flat as a thirteen-year-old's. What did she know of sex scenes? the context is about sex scenes on an ancient piece of pottery. So a woman with small breasts doesn't/can't get sex or enough of it to know about sex scenes?

[Patricia · Rating 5 out of 5]

Awesome journey, well said. Vividly conveys the archeological world of set ways and blasts those concepts that have become entrenched in academia. My Ojibwe people have a creation story and it is considered 'myth'; if so, then the Bible is myth as well.

[Mike Brassfield · Rating 2 out of 5]

I wanted to like this book, I really did. In fact, I was predisposed to LOVE this book.

But, my god, it just drones on and on and on. I'm not sure I've ever read a book that needed an editor so badly. Normally I have no problem with long books -- the longer the better -- but the hardcover edition of "Bones" clocks in at 628 pages and needs to be cut in half.

The narrative starts out strongly enough, and some of it is quite evocative. We learn interesting things and consider provocative questions. But I started to lose steam halfway through, during the author's interminable description of her trip to Brazil. What she ate, what she wore, what shade of lipstick her guide was wearing. WHO CARES? I finally started to skim and scan pages, searching for tidbits that were actually worth reading.

There is so. Much. Unnecessary. And uninteresting. Stuff. Cluttering up this book.

Based on the introduction, I thought I knew what the point of this book was going to be. But I don't anymore.

[Marsha · Rating 1 out of 5]

This is not scholarly, but rather a gossipy and wordy attempt to prove a highly contested theory concerning Native American origins.

[Taru Luojola · Rating 3 out of 5]

Kirja, jossa tarkastellaan tiedeyhteisön käsityksiä siitä, milloin ja miten ensimmäiset ihmiset saapuivat Amerikkaan. Tämä olikin journalistisempi kuin alun perin odotin. Asioita ei siis esitellä systemaattisesti (populaaristetun) tietoteoksen tavoin, vaan kirjoittaja on rakentanut narratiivin omasta selvitystyöstään. Esihistoriaa koskevien tietojen ja käsitysten lisäksi kirjassa esitellään huomattavan paljon aiheeseen liittyviä tutkijoita ja heidän välisiään henkilöriitoja sekä tietenkin poliittisesti tulenarkaan aiheeseen liittyvää poliittista vääntöä. Luin tätä kyllä ihan mielelläni, koska janosin nimenomaan sitä esihistoriaa koskevaa tietoa ja tiedonmuruja oli ripoteltu pitkin matkaa niin, että aina oli luettava eteenpäin ja eteenpäin, jotta saisi paremman käsityksen asiasta. Mutta lopulta monet asiat jäivät melko pinnallisen esittelyn tasolle, eikä kirjoittajalla ole esittää mitään yhteenvedon kaltaista kokonaiskäsitystä.

Mutta sitten se tietopuoli. Lähtökohtana on se perinteinen uskomus, että ihminen saapui Amerikkaan ensimmäisen kerran kävelemällä Beringin kannaksen yli joskus 10–15 tuhatta vuotta sitten, kun kannas oli kuivaa maata. Kirjan tietojen perusteella tässä teoriassa on se ongelma, ettei se perustu mihinkään havaittuihin faktoihin vaan on muodostunut aksioomaksi ennen kuin asiaa on edes tutkittu, ja nyttemmin uudemmat tutkimustulokset puhuvat ennemminkin tätä teoriaa vastaan. Arkeologiset todisteet ovat hajanaisia ja viittaavat toisaalta myös Beringin ylittämiseen 30–50 tuhatta vuotta sitten, Tyynenmeren ylittämiseen veneellä Australiasta/Polynesiasta Etelä-Amerikkaan tai Atlantin ylittämiseen veneellä Afrikasta Brasiliaan tai Euroopasta Kanadan itärannikolle. Suurin osa merkeistä viittaa siihen, että Etelä-Amerikka asutettiin ensin ja Pohjois-Amerikka asutettiin etelästä käsin.

Vaan tähän kirjan tietopuolinen anti sitten loppuukin, ja lähinnä jää kutkuttamaan, että mitä asiasta nyt sitten todellisuudessa tiedetään ja mitä vain luullaan tiedettävän. Toisaalta kirja on jo melkein 20 vuotta vanha, joten aiheesta saattaa olla jo uudempaakin tietoa tarjolla. Joka tapauksessa edessä taitaa olla jonkin vähän systemaattisemman ja tuoreemman tietoteoksen etsiminen aiheesta.

[Maggie Clark · Rating 2 out of 5]

When I first spotted this book in my apartment building’s mini library, I was immediately intrigued but also wary. It proposed that there was a different origin to the first Americans in North and South America. While that sounded harmless enough and certainly interesting, I was cynical enough to wonder if this was going to be some sort of indirect racist attack on Indigenous folk.

I’ll freely admit to not knowing much about the author, Elaine Dewar, or even the topic at the time before reading. So I did some Internet sleuthing, and nothing untoward stood out to me.

Feeling more comfortable about actually reading the book, I went ahead with it, and wow, was the book off to a promising start! Right away, it eased my mind about the direction it would take for Indigenous folk. The book made it clear that the author was aware of the racism that Indigenous folk endure in Canada and elsewhere and that this isn’t acceptable. And it soon drew me into a world of science I had never known, where actual facts on the history of the first Americans were often hindered by politics, egos, and more. (To be honest, it was disheartening to realize that what we learn from scientists could be more questionable than I’d expect -- but I suppose that’s human nature for you.)

It also didn’t take me long to notice that the book also had a habit of meandering down a number of superfluous details. While they did give the book a more engaging, narrative feel at times, there were just too many of them! It wasn’t long before the book felt like a complete slog to read, as I waded through drawn-out descriptions of how Elaine travelled to interview various specialists, what every place looked like, her thoughts on nearby travelers, and so on.

It eventually felt like I was trying to read through a sea of important names in scientific research and fairly complex scientific details that didn’t often add much to answering the question on the origin of the first Americans.

I won’t claim to know the best way to handle all these intricate details that Elaine captured. But at the same time, I think it’s reasonable to suggest that this book needed to be organized a bit better. It overloads you with information and expects you to keep up even as it goes back and forth between ideas, scientific scandals, and other minute details between each scientific person she interviews.

Sometimes, Elaine’s charismatic writing is able to make this huge tangle of information palatable. But more often than not, I’d find myself nodding off while trying to remember who was who and why their details even mattered.

P.S. I also noticed the use of the word “Eskimo,” which frankly made me cringe. I’m still learning about Indigenous folk myself, so I am a little hesitant to say that this usage and some other Indigenous naming conventions used in this book were harmful. But I am at least aware that the Inuit certainly wouldn’t prefer that title. Whether that’s the same or not for the Indigenous in Alaska as Elaine refers to now and then, I’m not sure. Still, I think it’s worth pointing out that the naming in some areas in this book felt a little behind the times.

[J2e · Rating 3 out of 5]

An excellent book for the ways it shows how politics have become the central story in the question of who arrived in the Americas first and when. Some reviewers have criticised Dewar for going off on personal tangents. We'll give those to her because she does a thorough job of describing the major finds in North and South America and does a good job of explaining why they challenge 'current' theory. I put current in inverted commas because the book was published in 2001 and more recent discoveries may have made some of her research redundant. It is still worth reading as a book that doesn't have it's own theory to push and the language is not technical.

[Carbon · Rating 4 out of 5]

I find this book a wonderful read even though at times it seems a little long winded. The information stored in this book is interesting and has changed my views in how all of the Americas were populated. It also has made me realize how much politics is in everything as even the archeology field is affected by politics, sometimes even to our detriment.

[Jeff · Rating 3 out of 5]

Sprawling (in a bad way) but I think I learned a lot