Today, I would probably be more positive towards "alternative" views of human history, but when I wrote this back in 2013, I was still too much of a skeptic to appreciate the Solutrean hypothesis, etc.
"Ice Age Columbus" is a Discovery Channel
docu-drama, claiming that the Clovis people (long regarded as the first humans
to reach the American continent) were White Europeans rather than descendants
of Asians. In other words, that America was settled by Whites before American
Indians even existed. This White supremacist fantasy comes in many forms, it
seems. In this "lite" version, the Whites are no longer dominant,
thundering "bearded gods" who teach the primitives how to read, write
and build pyramids. Rather, they are heroic Stone Age hunters who manage to
reach North America through the Arctic Sea.
This speculative hypothesis was originally proposed to explain the curious presence of the European genetic marker "X" among some American Indian nations, most notably the Ojibwa. The marker seems to be very old, not the result of recent "racial" mixture. So where did it come from? The similarity between the Clovis points and similar spearheads found in France, led some daring scientists to propose that a few Stone Age Europeans might have reached the America in prehistoric times, mixing their genes with the Indians. However, nothing in the original hypothesis suggested that Europe was the *only* source of early American settlements. Indeed, there is equally strong genetic evidence suggesting that the Clovis people weren't the original inhabitants of the Americas. Asian-derived peoples probably entered America on a semi-regular basis long before Clovis.
That being said, the White supremacist use of this hypothesis don't surprise anyone who knows how pseudo-historical speculations of this kind have been used before. Book of Mormon enthusiasts are one obvious example, the fracas around Kennewick Man another. Western civilization couldn't cope with the fact that Indians created their own high cultures. Today, when "primitive" cultures are seen as just as good or perhaps even better, White supremacists want to claim them, too! Ridiculous. Why creationists have jumped on the bandwagon is less clear, but judging by the flame wars around "Ice Age Columbus", some have.
This is not really a criticism of this docu-drama (although I found it boring - it's even somewhat "politically correct" with female hunters and peaceful relations between Whites and Indians), but the kind of people it lures out of the woodworks sure makes you wonder...
This speculative hypothesis was originally proposed to explain the curious presence of the European genetic marker "X" among some American Indian nations, most notably the Ojibwa. The marker seems to be very old, not the result of recent "racial" mixture. So where did it come from? The similarity between the Clovis points and similar spearheads found in France, led some daring scientists to propose that a few Stone Age Europeans might have reached the America in prehistoric times, mixing their genes with the Indians. However, nothing in the original hypothesis suggested that Europe was the *only* source of early American settlements. Indeed, there is equally strong genetic evidence suggesting that the Clovis people weren't the original inhabitants of the Americas. Asian-derived peoples probably entered America on a semi-regular basis long before Clovis.
That being said, the White supremacist use of this hypothesis don't surprise anyone who knows how pseudo-historical speculations of this kind have been used before. Book of Mormon enthusiasts are one obvious example, the fracas around Kennewick Man another. Western civilization couldn't cope with the fact that Indians created their own high cultures. Today, when "primitive" cultures are seen as just as good or perhaps even better, White supremacists want to claim them, too! Ridiculous. Why creationists have jumped on the bandwagon is less clear, but judging by the flame wars around "Ice Age Columbus", some have.
This is not really a criticism of this docu-drama (although I found it boring - it's even somewhat "politically correct" with female hunters and peaceful relations between Whites and Indians), but the kind of people it lures out of the woodworks sure makes you wonder...
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