NYSAA Bulletin No. 52 — Archaic Sites: Croton Point & Dogan Point — Passage 24

[Various (1971)] Many field investigations and new research have radically changed views since 1960. Louis A. Brennan's new book American Dawn: A New Model of American Prehistory tells the story of these discoveries and their impact upon the framework of New World prehistory. In this book Mr. Brennan demonstrates his fine talent as a writer and draws heavily upon his own experience as a participant in prehistoric studies. The "standard model" of American prehistory with its simplistic story of a few people struggling across the Bering land bridge from Siberia to Alaska about 15,000 years ago seems to have little merit to Brennan and he raises the following questions: Why have we been unable to trace the early cultures of the New World to a direct ancestor in Asia?

Why are the typical Paleo-Indian projectile points and associated tools in interior America older than those along the corridor to Alaska? How do we explain the presence of crude, non-projectile point tool assemblages that seem unrelated to any known and datable New World cultures? As answers to these questions, Brennan suggests that we must grant that man reached the New World long before 15,000 years ago and that his tool kit consisted of a much older and basic Paleolithic assemblage. The fluted points now generally considered as the marker for Early Man in America were a development from these earlier assemblages and thus an unique New World invention.