Heritage, Volume 3, Number 4, Spring 1986 Page: 12
34 p. : ill. ; 28 cm.View a full description of this periodical.
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THE
FIRST TEXANS
by Dr. John Coffman
The question "Who were the first Texans?" is
easily answered: the American Indians. By
now it is apparent to virtually all scholars that
these first Texans migrated to the New World
from Asia. By contrast, the questions, "When
did they migrate to the Americas? and "How
did they migrate?" generate surprisingly strident
controversies that have generated more
than light. Markedly emotional disagreements
exist between those scholars who suggest first
arrival of Asian migrants over 70,000 years
ago, those who suggest an arrival time from
5,000 to 35,000 years before the present
(probably the current majority), and a remarkably
conservative remnant who still cling
to Professor Ales Hrdlicka's adamant belief
that mankind did not arrive in the New World
until more than a millenium after the retreat
of Wisconsin glaciation. Prior to the middle
1920s few young scholars were willing to risk
their future by courting a fierce denunciation
by Prof. . . Hrdlicka of the Smithsonian Institution.
Although fewer and fewer archeologists
still cling to Hrdlicka's postglacial migration
time frame, a distinct barrier seems to
remain for any arrival prior to 35,000 years
ago. In the best traditions of empirical science,
many archeologists refuse to make quite
rational inferences that cannot be directly
supported by immediate archeological records
of well-dated human remains. Several recent
challenges to dates for early man in California
circa 50,000 b.p. (before the present) have
hardened resistance to earlier migration time
frames. Unfortunately, part of the dispute
seems based on a turf battle between archeologists,
who tend to hold to the more recent
dates, and other culture historians, who find
greater intellectual consistency in earlier migration
times. There is ample environmental
evidence and several plausible scenarios for an
earlier migration time frame but little or
nothing in the way of undisputed human remains
dating prior to 20,000 b.p.
The conflict between the isolationists and diffusionists
is even more bitter and unresolved.
The extreme isolationist insists that all New
World cultural systems evolved in this hemisphere
without inputs from Old World sources:
not from the Middle East, Europe, or Asia.
The diffusionist, on the other hand, sees a
myriad of examples of Old World cultural
traits and, more convincingly, Old World culture
plants and animals in pre-contact (preColumbian)
cultural settings. Again, the isolationists
have been mainly from the field of
archeology, and the diffusionists have been
mainly from the field of anthropology, andPART I.
other prehistorians. In recent years the evidence
of undisputable genetic material introduced
from the Old World into the New World
and vice versa has mounted to the point that
strict isolationists are rare. Chromosomes
from Old World cotton, for example, are
clearly present in the cotton of pre-contact
New World settings, and black beans unmistakably
of New World origin are clearly present
in Southeast Asian sites a millennium and
more prior to Europen contacts between the
New World and Southeast Asia. Many archeologists
now allow that pre-Columbian contact
across both oceans is quite plausible but
that hard evidence for such journeys and especially
evidence of their influences on local cultural
systems, is currently lacking.
From this array of legitimate, although occasionally
strident, disagreements concerning
the arrival of the very first Texan, can we adjudicate
some safe noncontroversial common
ground? First, it is clear that mankind is not
native to this continent. Second, initial migrants
to this continent were definitely from
Asia. The spectrum of skin colors, hair that is
straight, coarse, and black, on rarely balding
heads with little facial or body hair, widely
spaced cheek bones, and shovel-shaped hollows
behind the front incisors all point to the
Asian ancestry of American Indians. There
are distinct differences, however, Most American
Indians have prominent "hawk" noses and
are missing the fleshy epicanthic folds which
give East Asians a "slant-eyed" look. The absence
of B blood types among American Indians
when it is most common among Asians,
the presence of the Diego positive blood group
among South American Indians, and the presence
of Carabelli's cusp (extra grinding point
along the inside of molars) among North
American Indians all confirm that American
Indians have been separated from the East
Asian relatives for considerable time. The
existence of many unrelated linguistic groups
among New World groups also implies longer12
periods of time in isolation in this hemisphere.
A third conclusion we can draw is that the
Indians of the New World arrived between
35,000 and 100,000 years before the present.
Postulation of the most probable times for migration
is a complex problem involving the
appearance of the Bering Sea land bridge
(Beringia) and the development of a broad
ice-free but animal-rich corridor along the
Mackenzie River valley and southward along
the eastern flanks of the Rocky Mountains.
Since the same glaciation processes leading to
the removal of oceanic water, and thus the
drop in sea levels which reveals Beringia as
dry land, also tend to extend ice across the
Mackenzie River corridor, there may be only
very narrow time frames during which such
migrations could have occurred. Three possible
broad time periods seem apparent: (1)
during the Sangamon Interglacial period
(more than 70,000 b.p.), (2) during advance
of early Wisconsin ( Tazewell glaciation
(60,000-70,000 b.p.), or (3) during the
glacial retreat of early Wisconsin glaciation
(32,000-40,000 b.p.). Any later migration
date is highly improbable. It is now apparent
to virtually all scholars that there is not
enough time since the last glacial retreat to
allow for the remarkable linguistic and other
cultural variations among New World Indians.
Moreover, there are almost unassailable dating
for human occupance circa 12,000 b.p.,
a millennium before the end of Wisconsin
glaciation.
Once these migrants had cleared the ice-free
corridor, they were in what is now Colorado,
New Mexico, and the Texas Panhandle. Total
migration was likely very small in number,
with "budding-off" or small groups moving in
diverse directions. With ice-cap just north of
the Great Lakes and tundra through the MidWest,
Texas had a range of climates similar to
current conditions from Minnesota to Alberta.
Small hunting groups following this
corridor south to Texas faced a rich array of
big game: giant moose, ten feet at shoulder
height; elephant-like mammoths standing
12-13 feet at the shoulder; beavers the size of
today's bears, jaguars larger than lions, and
ground sloths the size of giraffes. Using the
facile analysis of today's self-styled "ecologists,"
it would be easy to blame the disappearance
of these zoological specimens on the
ignorance and intemperance of our first Texans
for indeed these great mammals did disappear
'on their watch.' Of course, it was the
end of the cool, humid environments of the
Ice Age and not the philistine avarice of early
man that doomed these Pleistocene mammals.
SPRING 86 * HERITAGE
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Texas Historical Foundation. Heritage, Volume 3, Number 4, Spring 1986, periodical, March 1, 1986; Austin, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth45441/m1/12/: accessed April 19, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas Historical Foundation.