The Board invites you to a General Meeting of the Hill Country Archeological Association.
We have a great speaker, Dr. Clark Wernecke speaking on the “Peopling of the Americas.”
The Zoom Meeting “Doors” will open at 12:30 pm so you can log on to the meeting. The meeting will start at 1:00 pm as usual. You will receive an email with the Zoom link several days before the meeting.
More on Zoom Tips . . .
Presentation Title: Dogma and the Peopling of the Americas
Speaker: Clark Wernecke, Executive Director, The Gault School of Archaeological Research
Abstract:
In 1590, a novel idea was proposed to explain the presence of humans in the New World: they must have walked here from Asia. That idea seemed better than the alternatives being floated at the time so it became generally accepted and gradually added to until it became the story we teach 4th graders today. With the discovery of older materials at Blackwater Draw in New Mexico it was put forward that Clovis technology must represent these first peoples.
Unfortunately, there was never any scientific proof that this is what had happened. Popular media would have it that scientists began to doubt this train of events in the 70’s with the discovery of Monte Verde though the reality is that there have been many in the scientific community that have always doubted all aspects of this idea – who, what, when, where, and why. Recent discoveries have shown that humans were in the Western Hemisphere a lot longer than previously thought and should cause us to reexamine all aspects of the old hypothesis.
Photos are of some of the oldest materials from Gault (left photo), and a Clovis point from Zephyr, Texas, that was recently brought to the GSAR.
Bio:
Clark Wernecke is the Project Director for the Prehistory Research Project at the University of Texas at Austin and Executive Director of the Gault School of Archaeological Research, a nonprofit dedicated to research and education regarding the earliest peoples in the Americas. Dr. Wernecke started his academic career with a degree in history from SMU followed by an MBA from Northwestern University, an M.A. in Anthropology from Florida Atlantic, and finally his PhD from the University of Texas at Austin. He came back to archaeology after a career in business and has worked in the Middle East, Mesoamerica, the American Southeast and Southwest, and Texas. Dr. Wernecke’s primary specialty is that of archaeological project management but he has also written extensively on architecture and paleoindian art.