Solutrean Hypothesis

Solutrean Hypothesis

by Justin Durand ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

Here’s an argument against the Solutrean Hypothesis. I’ve been meaning to look for something like this. The Solutrean Hypothesis is that one wave of prehistoric migration to the Americas came from Europe, the people perhaps traveling in boats along a northern “coast” of sea ice.

I like the idea. The experts do not. It’s one of those things that falls seemingly in the same category as Mary Magdalen as wife of Jesus. Crackpot enthusiasm. The experts still prefer the idea America was populated by people from Asia traveling across what is now the Bering Strait.

Jokers like me stoutly maintain that our ancestors came up from the underworld through a hole (“sipapu“) in the bottom of the Grand Canyon, then spread to the so-called Old World from here.

The primary evidence for the theory seems to be the similarity between arrowheads made by the Solutrean people in Europe with arrowheads made by the Clovis people in America slightly. But it’s debatable whether there’s a genuine similarity. And that debate is the location of most of the action here.

But there’s another piece of evidence. I came up with the idea on my own, before I knew the Solutrean Hypothesis was already a thing.

My inspiration was the distribution of mtDNA haplogroup X2. It appears in both Northern Europe and in the Americas. A small-ish group. Look at a map, and you’ll see why some people (like me) have thought some group must have gone from Northern Europe to America. A nifty solution, but probably wrong. The experts think X2 probably spread to both Northern Europe and the Americas from a common center in Asia. In other words, they took the long away around.

Ruth Luce

Ruth Luce

by Justin Durand
Ruth Grant Luce
Ruth Luce’s memorial plaque in Ogden, Utah

Ruth (Grant) Luce was always one of my heroes. She was born in Maine the year before the American Revolution. She came west with the Mormons when she was 72 and lived another 12 years after that. She died at the age of 84, having been a pioneer of Nauvoo, Salt Lake City, and Ogden. That’s some pioneer hardiness.

A few weeks ago, I wrote about how Ruth’s husband Malatiah Luce was granted a lot in Great Salt Lake in 1848, making it likely he died there, not back in Nauvoo.

One of the things that bothered me at the time is the Ruth Luce was also listed at the Pioneer Overland Travel Database as receiving a lot in Great Salt Lake in 1848. If true, there would be some problems interpreting the entries. Would Ruth have been granted a lot if her husband was present and received a lot at the same time? It would be possible theoretically, but it didn’t work like that for any of the other pioneers on the 1848 list.

So, I wrote to the BYU Family History Center. I can never say enough good things about them. Their answer — Ruth did not receive a lot. That was a mistake and has been corrected. Very nice.

They also did some light cleanup in this area, which I deeply appreciate.

I had Ruth’s date of death in my database as 3 June 1860. Not even. I vaguely remember seeing other dates. I chose one of them, and made a note to do more research. BYU has done it for me.

BYU says, “The inscription on her gravestone shows her death date as 13 June 1860. However, the Utah State History Cemeteries and Burials Database shows 3 July 1860. The gravestone appears to have been created quite some time after her death, so we are using the date that appears on the Utah State History cemeteries and Burials Database as the more accurate date of her death.”

So now we can start the endless battle of correcting Ruth’s death date all across the Internet.

Romanticizing Cowboys

Romanticizing Cowboys

by Justin Durand

In the 1880s, “America was no more impressed by a cowboy than by a railroad employee or a shopkeeper,” according to Lynn Jacobs. That will come as a surprise to almost everyone I know, because cowboys are the embodiment of our regional heritage and culture. But that all comes from Teddy Roosevelt’s deep-seated insecurity about his own masculinity. 

“Before Roosevelt, no one wrote about cowboys with anything but disdain. They were migrant workers, seasonally employed, badly paid, ill-treated, ‘the very picture of malnutrition,’ living outdoors in miserable conditions, herding big, dumb, easily spooked, dangerous animals across inhospitable land. The cowboy came in all colors, white, black, Hispanic, Indian, but mostly he was ‘a sad spectacle,’ Lynn Jacobs wrote in Waste of the West, a history of public lands ranching. ‘He was scraggly, dirty man with tattered, ill-fitting clothes and an unmistakable smell. His poor sanitary habits, inadequate diet, alcoholic tendencies, and excessive time in the saddle made him weak and sickly. . . . When not doing mundane ranching chores, he spent his time drinking and smoking, playing cards, and generally doing little one could call exciting, heroic, romantic.'”

Updated May 21, 2020 to add link.

Scotland’s regional DNA

Scotland’s regional DNA

by Justin Durand

I’m still getting used to the new-ish research that shows ancient European populations were largely replaced by later invasions, but the most recent invasions (like the Anglo-Saxons in England) didn’t really replace the local population like we always thought they did. It takes a degree of mental agility to keep up.

Now there’s some DNA news to comfort my conservative soul. “Experts have constructed Scotland’s first comprehensive genetic map, which reveals that the country is divided into six main clusters of genetically similar individuals: the Borders, the south-west, the north-east, the Hebrides, Orkney and Shetland.

“These groupings are in similar locations to early medieval kingdoms such as Strathclyde in the south-west, Pictland in the north-east, and Gododdin in the south-east. The study also discovered that some of the founders of Iceland may have originated from north-west Scotland and Ireland and that the Isle of Man is genetically predominantly Scottish.”

You can read the full article at Medievalists.net, or take a look at the underlying study at PNAS. Either way, the part that amazes and pleases me is not just the evidence of regional continuity but the fact that the evidence comes from DNA.

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Fallibility of Memory

Fallibility of Memory

by Justin Durand

We genealogists often struggle with memory and its problems. So often, I run into fellow researchers who think the long ago memory of someone who was “there” is fully trustworthy. We saw an extreme example of that a few years on a collaborative website. A certain user made the most outlandish claims, each time attributing his information to a a conversation he had with his father. His father was able apparently to remember detailed names, dates, and relationships going back hundreds of years, and this user was able to apparently to remember the whole thing after hearing it only once. 

This was an extreme example, but it was an especially strong reminder that there are limits to memory. Even when you think you remember, you don’t. Not always. I myself am often surprised when I read my old journals, that so many incidental details were very different from the way I remember them.

I often regret I haven’t done a better job of documenting and citing the science on the the fallibility and malleability of memory. In that spirit, I’m taking note of the following piece.

“In a well-known study conducted to measure memory retention, a group of college students were told a very short thirty-second story. The researchers said, We’re going to tell you this story, and all we want you to do is remember it as accurately as you possibly can. Then we’re going to have you tell it back to us at various intervals.” And so the students would listen to the story, knowing that their only task was to remember it as accurately as possible, and then, one minute later, they would be asked to repeat the story. Five minutes later, they’d be asked to repeat it again; and then a half an hour later, and then an hour later, and then twelve hours later, and then a day later, and then two days later, and then a week later, and then finally, two weeks later.

“What the researchers found was that, in the very first retelling of the story, after only one minute, the students were actually already beginning to distort it, that their memories weren’t as accurate as they imagined. Even though the researchers were telling the story to very intelligent college students, with the relatively easy task of simply remembering the story, what they found was that when the students started to retell the story, within the third or fourth retelling, it became so different that it began to appear almost unrecognizable in relation to the original tale. And that was just within the third or fourth retelling, within an hour or two of having heard it. By a week later and certainly by two weeks later, the story was so distorted that you almost couldn’t imagine that the retelling ever came from the original story. And yet all of the students truly believed that they were remembering the story quite accurately.“

“The moments we remember from the first years of our lives are often our most treasured because we have carried them longest. The chances are, they are also completely made up.“

Updated to add links.