Around Ontario Ice

From Saraceni last week: 10500 BC site found at Avon in Connecticut.

This is during Younger Dryas, 10800-9700 BC. That was a sharp return to the Ice Age. So from an Atlantic shore perspective: Avon is about as far north as humans could live in those times and with their technology.

We are divulged some facts about Avon’s level of technology. The tools are stone of course. The spearheads are consistent with atlatl-driven spears. That implies that this tech is post-Clovis – the American Solutrean revolution. Back west, in the Great Plains, among the “ANC-A” gene group, Clovis was fully underway by 10900 BC. Thus is constrained a latest date for when Clovis tech got to the American Atlantic past the Hudson.

It doesn’t tell us anything relevant to the Solutrean Hypothesis. Also we don’t have the DNA.

For those (like me) who don’t accept this hypothesis: ANC-B DNA is projected to have split off by 12600 BC; which ANC-B becomes predominant in Ontario 2800 BC on, up to the 1500s AD. During Younger-Dryas, ice and harsh tundra (featuring that eponymous Dryas octopetala) coated Ontario proper; and I do believe the megafauna had been hunted out by then. There would be little cross-continental contact between Avon and Clovis as of 10500 BC.

So for Younger-Dryas Avon I expect ANC-B, or some now-dead para-B population, in any human remains.