BajaNomad - Who did what in Baja and When

Who did what in Baja and When

Baja Bernie - 4-26-2005 at 06:25 PM

Recently I have been in contact with a few Baja People who have done a lot of work in trying to determine who came to Baja both when and how. I personally believe that the smart folk did NOT walk in but rather boated here. Stop and think about it. Even the first wave of modern explorers in Baja wandered in by sea. Ray Cannon is one example the Patchens are an other.
My money says they came from China via Australia about 10,000 years ago. The rock art in Australia and Baja may be very similar and then there is the stuff in Patagonia.
Anyway, For those interested WHY DON'T WE START POSTING THIS STUFF on the Baja Historic Interests & Literature Section. This will give us a better vehicle to communicate (over U-2-U's) and others can get involved should they wish to.

Mike Supino - 4-26-2005 at 06:36 PM

Why don't you just ask Neal Johns. He was there when they arrived.
:rolleyes:

Mike

Baja Bernie - 4-26-2005 at 06:48 PM

I hate people who cut to the chase without stopping to smell the roses.
I will defend Neal, at least for a few minutes. He wasonly there for half of it!

So...cruel (cough, true)

Gypsy Jan - 4-26-2005 at 06:51 PM

How could you insult a towering institution in this manner?

Beware, NJ will send out squads of WIW's to avenge this stain on his legacy.

The First One

MrBillM - 4-26-2005 at 07:12 PM

I had an old friend and neighbor (now dead) in Baja who was always the first anywhere in Baja, no matter what story was being told.

I used to ask him what Junipero Serra said to him when he stepped off the boat. It didn't slow down his stories at all.

Pompano - 4-26-2005 at 10:17 PM

I remember the smell of sulphur.....and of course the early Baja visitors came by boats. They were southeastern Asians and I met them at the western shore.

Bruce R Leech - 4-26-2005 at 11:38 PM

they came in space ships but they were told not to tell anyone.

Pompano - 4-27-2005 at 06:10 AM

Baja Bernie...good idea. I think the discovery of that early Baja skull that shows clear Mongoloid features and also the very distinct resemblance of Baja rock art to Australian rock art is certainly grist for the mill of ...Who first populated Baja? Australia was settled by Asians via boat, so why not Baja..and other areas? The study of early man is always unearthing new discoveries and theories. Who knows?..Bruce may not be so far off with his alien joke!

Bruce R Leech - 4-27-2005 at 06:42 AM

all jokes aside my vote is for the land bridge theory at this point. they need to do the DNA testing on more people down here to figure this out for sure.

Neal Johns - 4-27-2005 at 07:46 AM

Boy, oh boy, you guys and gals are in real trouble. Picking on a harmless, helpless, old man like me for no reason has real ticked me off. Sure I was there to greet those Nouveau Arrivals when their raft washed up on the shore and taught them how to make fire, but why is that reason to ridicule me? Who showed the Spaniards the best route for the El Camino Real, who led them to Alto California where they are still coming? I could go on and on but am constrained by only fault, an excess of modesty.

Sincerely Yours,
El Dios de Baja :fire:

:moon:

Bruce R Leech - 4-27-2005 at 07:51 AM

:lol:

Neal Johns that is good. maybe you can answer the question about the chicken bones.

David K - 4-27-2005 at 08:03 AM

You're the best Neal!
Here's how we found you in 2001, on the El Camino Real south of San Borja, showing us the rocks you moved in your youth about 1755... :lol:

BOY

Baja Bernie - 4-27-2005 at 04:06 PM

I started this out as a simple little, serious, appeal to those who research Baja and all I get is FUN which is what Baja is all about.
Neal is old I will grant you that, BUT that old I think not. That his wives in waiting will attack I am sure---What a guy.
The only person of standng that we have not heard from if Bajalera. I now know that Osprey is an old time friend of, of a friend, Don Jimmy. No I will not reveal his name but he has started a novel on Baja that just may be a blockbuster if he finishes it.
Okay---now can we get serious????

Believe me Bernie

jrbaja - 4-27-2005 at 04:14 PM

When that crotchety old Osprey finishes his writings, we will all be the better off for it!

JR

Baja Bernie - 4-27-2005 at 04:20 PM

I believe --- and he is crotchety--a good friend of Don Jimmy's
Missed you at the signing. But not much 'cause you already bought my no account books. Hey! sold a few of Jimmy's and will be sending Dona Lupe a C note from the Don.

Good for you Sir!

jrbaja - 4-27-2005 at 04:26 PM

We ran into Mike and Keri yesterday and we heard it was a blast. We tried but had to deal with bamboo and being gone for a week. Hope to see you too

bajalera - 4-27-2005 at 07:33 PM

I'm not sure you really want to hear from me, Bernie. There are some formidable difficulties with an arrival via Australia-- prevailing ocean currents, for starters.

Did you get a U2U from me about a book by Stephen Powell or Power (I forget which). I sent it off but there's no record in my out file, so maybe it's drifting around somewhere in cyberspace.

Meanwhile, this thread is evidence that my book about the peninsular Indians has a whole lot of potential customers.
Gotta work harder!

Lera

jeans - 4-27-2005 at 07:39 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Neal Johns
Boy, oh boy, you guys and gals are in real trouble. Picking on a harmless, helpless, old man like me for no reason has real ticked me off. Sure I was there to greet those Nouveau Arrivals when their raft washed up on the shore and taught them how to make fire, but why is that reason to ridicule me? Who showed the Spaniards the best route for the El Camino Real, who led them to Alto California where they are still coming? I could go on and on but am constrained by only fault, an excess of modesty.

Sincerely Yours,
El Dios de Baja :fire:

:moon:

Neal, you posted the wrong picture...that is Mike Humfreville. :lol:

[Edited on 4-28-2005 by jeans]

Lera

Baja Bernie - 4-27-2005 at 08:14 PM

No I did not get the u2u from you. I'll get back to you on thr currents. Not being a sailor I'll have to check the book

Who were the First Americans?

Pompano - 4-28-2005 at 04:29 AM

A study of skulls excavated from the tip of Baja suggests the first people (Americans, that is) may not have been the ancestors of today's Amer-Indians, but another people who came from Southeast Asia and the southern Pacific area.

This is in conflict with the traditional belief that Native Americans are supposed to have descended from northeast Asia, arriving over a land bridge between Siberia and Alaska some 12,000 years ago and then migrating across North and South America.

Recent research, including the skull find here in Baja Sur, indicates that the initial settlement of our continent was instead driven by Southeast Asians who occupied Australia 60,000 years ago and then expanded into the Americas about 13,500 years ago, thus prior to Mongoloid people arriving from Siberia.

The Baja skulls have slender-looking faces that are far different from the broad-cheeked craniums of modern Amerindians, who are descendants of the Mongoloid people. (American Indians resemble the people of Mongolia, China, and Siberia.) Most anthropologists are agreeing that the once accepted theory of a single migration of East Asians is wrong and that the settlement of the New World is better explained by considering a continuous influx of people from all over Asia. Some walked, some boated is more likely what happened. Of course, some 'beamed down'...like Bruce.

Anyone who has taken a basic 101 course in the study of mankind (Anthropology) has read the conventional wisdom that says Native Americans descended from prehistoric hunters who walked from northeast Asia across the land bridge, formed at the end of the Ice Age..about 12,000 years ago. In the 1930's acheologists found some stone spear points among mammoth bones near Clovis, New Mexico. Carbon dating placed this at 11,400 years old. These sites were assumed for years to be the first evidence of human occupation in the Americas. This was the text I was taught from in college way back in 1961 when I took my first course in anthropology. But more recent discoveries challenged that theory. In 1996 weapons and tools were found in southern Chile dating back 12,500 years. In Brazil some of the oldest human remains, including a female skeleton -named Luzia - were found that are more than 11,000 years old. The features on Luzia more closely matched those of native Aborigines in Austalia. Those Aussie Aborgines date back to about 60,000 years and were themselves descended from the first humans who probably originated in Africa.

Researchers believe Luzia was part of people, referred to as "Paleoamericans", who migrated into the Americas -possibly even by boat - long before the northen Mongoloid people. These Paleoamericans may later have been wiped out by or interbred with Mongoloids invading from the north...(those damn gringos again!)

The fairly modern skulls found in Baja are similar to Luzia and other more ancient skulls found in South America. Craniums characterized by long and narrow skulls, with faces short and low. Like the Aussies. That suggests that Baja was one of many isolated pockets throughout the Americas where Paleoamerican traits survived. This group may not have come into contact with other peoples for millennia..although some skeptics say that it is very unusual for a population, especially near a coastline, that could have been islolated for more than 10,000 years. However unusual, that is probably what happened. Hey, sounds typical for an early Baja to me! Damn that road....

A little twist to some new discoveries...Kennewick Man. The identity of the first Americans is a powerful financial and political issue with American Indians, who believe their ancestors were the first to inhabit the Americas.. (the Siberian land bridge guys out for a little stroll).

With their claim of being the first Americans with 'sovereign nation rights' American Indians build and benefit from hundreds of casinos around the nation. This is a mega-business. One little band of Chippewa native Americans near my home in North Dakota recieves over $100,000 yearly for each person, adult or child, from profits of thier local casino. There are many more reservation casinos in the state that do better.

Kenniwick Man.....controversy erupted after skeletal remains were found in Kenniwick, Washington, in 1996. This skeleton, estimated to be 9,000 years old, had a long cranium and narrow face-features typical of Europeans, the Near East, or India-rather than the wide cheekbones and rounder skull of an American Indian. The coalition of Indian tribes said that if Kennewick Man was 9,000 years old, he must be their ancestor, no matter what he looked like. Invoking a U.S. federal law that provides for the return of Native American remains to their living descendants, the tribes demanded a halt to all scientific study and the immediate return of the skeleton for burial in a secret location. The matter is still stuck in the courts. Hmm...wouldn't want to lose those 'soveriegn nation' rights to all the money machines called casinos.

So there we are...Baja people were more than likely among the very first Americans. The evidence points to an earlier settling by Paleoamericans (the Australian Aborigines and southern Asians) than by Mongoloids (the Siberian northern land bridge walkers).

[Edited on 4-28-2005 by Pompano]

Bruce R Leech - 4-28-2005 at 06:50 AM

so dose this mean our fames Baja fish tacos may have originated from Mongoloid people? this would explain allot of things.

David K - 4-28-2005 at 07:54 AM

There's quite a story behind this guy... and his father!

David K - 4-28-2005 at 08:01 AM

Here is where Sr. Daggett rests, today. Another interesting Baja person is Jesus Flores, pictured here...

David K - 4-28-2005 at 08:07 AM

Here was Jesus, over 40 years ago... in Erle Stanley Gardner's 'The Hidden Heart of Baja'...

David K - 4-28-2005 at 08:15 AM

Here is Jesus autographing his photo in my copy of Gardner's book (in 2002, near Camp Gecko), on the same mode of transportation he has used most his life, I suspect! Jesus told me he was born in Calmalli (near El Arco), and his ranch south of L.A. Bay is Los Paredones... I hired him as a guide to help us find the 'lost mission' site... It is still lost... as is Jesus' Spanish mine that Erle wrote about, that Jesus offered to sell a map of, to Erle...

Pompano - 4-28-2005 at 08:39 AM

Uh..that's very interesting, David. I'm not sure how those fellows fit in with early Baja settlement by Asians via a land bridge or by boat from Australia, but what the hell..I guess it's all about Baja in the end.

Bruce R Leech - 4-28-2005 at 08:48 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by David K
Here is Jesus autographing his photo in my copy of Gardner's book (in 2002, near Camp Gecko), on the same mode of transportation he has used most his life, I suspect! Jesus told me he was born in Calmalli (near El Arco), and his ranch south of L.A. Bay is Los Paredones... I hired him as a guide to help us find the 'lost mission' site... It is still lost... as is Jesus' Spanish mine that Erle wrote about, that Jesus offered to sell a map of, to Erle...

is he looking for work? :lol:

Pompano - 4-28-2005 at 08:52 AM

Good grief, I give up.

David K - 4-28-2005 at 09:00 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by Pompano
Uh..that's very interesting, David. I'm not sure how those fellows fit in with early Baja settlement by Asians via a land bridge or by boat from Australia, but what the hell..I guess it's all about Baja in the end.

Well Pompano, I just looked at the title of the thread: 'Who did what in Baja and When' and figured Dick Daggett (Sr. and Jr.) and Jesus Flores where interesting Baja people for Bernie's inquisitive post. Maybe 'Prehistoric or ancient man in Baja' would have been a more specific thread title, if that was the limitation...?

Bummer you didn't make the Pyramid event... next time you are in the area, let's get together... Mi Casa es su casa... Baja maps, books, satellite images, El Camote's films and Bajo California movie... Just ask TheSquarecircle, BajaCactus, and the few other Nomads that have actually been here... it is a little bit of Baja in the U.S.!

bajalera - 4-28-2005 at 10:13 AM

Don't give up, Pomp! You've got interesting stuff, so hang tough.

My favorite estimate of arrival times is that of a botanist named Oakes Ames, who estimed that people must have reached the Americas at least 100,000 years ago because it would have taken that long to develop all the plants they domesticated.

Closer to home, archaeologist Harumi Fujita has obtained dates of around 40,000 BP for sites on Isla Espitiru Santo and is waiting for them to be confirmed. I talked with her a week or so ago, the day before she left to work on a really big dig over there.

Lera

Bruce R Leech - 4-28-2005 at 11:22 AM

keep your sense of hummer Pompano it is all tung and cheek. we are just dumb and bored. :yawn:

Dave - 4-28-2005 at 11:53 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by Bruce R Leech
keep your sense of hummer Pompano it is all tung and cheek.

If/when I can decipher this I'm pretty sure it will be both physically impossible and indecent

neilmac - 4-28-2005 at 03:31 PM

" keep your sense of hummer Pompano it is all tung and cheek. we are just dumb and bored. :yawn:

"

could that have been 'bung and cheek?"

Neil

Osprey/ Pomp

Baja Bernie - 4-28-2005 at 03:51 PM

Here is a link to some good stuff on the Kennewick man. Apparently the 'Native' American Indians feel very threatened by this guy. My reading of this stuff is that the Army Corp of Engineers worked very hard to destroy the evidnece in this case. They buried the discovery site under tons of bolders.http://www.cr.nps.gov/aad/kennewick/

I kinda like David's approach because a whole lot of my Mexican friends carry a bunch of Chinese features around with them. I enjoy pretending that they might be related to those guys who landed, by boat, about 10,000 or so years ago---I know that this is not true because the priests gentle ways caused that crop of natives to bite the dust.

Osprey---Chuck Potter is bringing you another book--"1421 The Year China Discovered America" by Gavin Menzies. He does a reasonable job of trying to prove that the Chinese visited all three Californias long before the Spanards. Great read.

[Edited on 4-28-2005 by Baja Bernie]

According to all the comida china

jrbaja - 4-28-2005 at 03:56 PM

restaurants I see everywhere, I think some of them probably stayed since then! :lol:

And speaking of which, Bamboo Express in the Sorianas markets has better chinese food than most restaurants I have chopsticked at. Probably has something to do with the name. :light:

Mexitron - 4-28-2005 at 07:03 PM

Bajalera--Howard Wilson found a female skull in Laguna Beach in the 30's that was later dated at around 17, 500 years, if my memory serves me. Don't know which batch of Paleoamerican she was related to though.

Is there any evidence the Aussies had vessels big enough to make a crossing of the Pacific? Maybe they coast hopped up and around the Northern coasts in smaller boats.

bajalera - 4-28-2005 at 08:41 PM

Mexitron, I didn't know about the California skulls, but others similar to the long-headed "Pericu" type have been found in Texas, Brazil and several other places. My husband was the archaeologist who did the first formal excavation of hyperdolichocephalic skulls in the Cape Region, which seem to be those that a couple of guys rediscovered in a museum a year or so ago, and apparently assumed they'd somehow never been noticed previously.

The rafts of the aboriginal Bajacalifornians weren't sturdy enough for extensive ocean voyages--one of the main arguments against arrival from the South Pacific. Then there's the food. Transoceanic travel would require a pretty good supply--so after landing, the voyagers lost all knowledge of agriculture? Doesn't seem likely.

I kinda like the "Pericu were Melanesian" theory of arrival that some ballet folklorico groups feature in La Paz--on parade floats their dancing girls wear fake grass skirts and a couple of strategically placed coconut shells. That's certainly the most attractrive origin theory, and by far the most popular.

Lera

Very interesting indeed

jrbaja - 4-28-2005 at 09:22 PM

The origin of man based on the parade floats in La Paz. I think we've definitely stumbled on to something here! :light:

JR

Baja Bernie - 4-29-2005 at 10:11 AM

You seem to be unable to grasp the nuances involved in gathering the threads of history and attempting to weave them into a pattern that makes some sort of sense.

This is a very interesting thread that seems to balance the HaHa of Baja with a little of the thread gathering that a few of us really enjoy.

To all of my fellow 'weavers' please do not give up because I find myself enjoying the journey with a large smile writ all over my face. Same goes to you pokers of fun.

Saludos Baja

Where is my sage, OSO, in all of this?

Nuances Schmooances

jrbaja - 4-29-2005 at 10:20 AM

This was a little spat between Lera and I regarding paintings, carvings, history, parades and such. Its just our typical nonsense :lol:

She seems to enjoy this as do I. So what? Was it something I said about that idiot president? :lol:

JR

Baja Bernie - 4-29-2005 at 12:37 PM

I am somewhat aware of your sense of humor--this was addressed to all who posted Ha Ha stuff as well as those I termed 'weavers.' Really hope they will come back with some more history theories.

I guess when you read my stuff you don't see 'my' low key sense of humor.

I found new evidence....or at least a new theory...

Pompano - 4-29-2005 at 03:24 PM

This shakes up my old beliefs somewhat.....Archaeologists say a site in South Carolina may rewrite the history of how the Americas were settled by pushing back the date of human settlement thousands of years.

Of course everything is subject to interpretation and this is already igniting controversy among scientists.

An archaeologist from the U of SC announced radiocarbon tests that dated the first human settlement in North America to 50,000 years ago--at least 25,000 years before other known human sites on the continent. (Albert Goodyear, USC Institure of Achaeologhy and Anthropology.) If this is true, the find represents a revelation for scientists studying how humans migrated to the Americas...and for us to speculate over! I told you anthropology was fun!!

Most scientists thought humans first ventured into the New World across a land bridge from present-day Russia into Alaska about 13,000 years ago. This new discovery suggests humans may have crossed the land bridge into the Americas much earlier--possibly during another ice age--and rapidly colonized the two continents.

This from the opposing side: "It poses some real problems trying to explain how you have people arriving in Central Asia almost at the same time as people in the Eastern United States," said Theodore Schurr, anthropology professor at the University of Pennsylvania and a curator at the school's museum. "You almost have to hope for instantaneous expansion...We're talking about a very rapid movement of people around the globe." "If carbon-dating is confirmed, then it really does have a significant impact on our previous understanding on New World colonization," he said.

Most scientists today refute the theory I remember being taught...about the general belief that North America was settled by hunters following large game over the land bridge about 13,000 years ago. "That had been repeated so many times in textbooks and lectures it became part of the common lore," said Dennis Stanford, curator of acheology at eh Smithsonian Institution. "People forgot it was only an unproven hypothesis."

A scattering of sites from South America to Oklahoma have found evidence of a human presence before 13,000 years ago - or the first Clovis sites - since the discovery of human artifacts in a cave near Clovis, New Mexico, in 1936.
These discoveries are leading achaeologists to support alternative theories - such as settlement by sea - for the Americas.

Worldwide, ideas about human origins have rapidly changed with groundebreaking discoveries that humans ranged farther and earlier than once believed. Fossils in Indonesia nearly 2 million years old suggest that protohumans left their African homeland hundreds of thousands of years earlier than first theorized. Modern humans, or homo sapiens, most likely emerged between 60,000 and 80,000 years ago in Africa. They quickly fanned out to Australia and Cental Asia about 50,000 years ago and arrived in Europe only about 40,000 years ago. Ancestral humans - hominids like australopithecines and Neanderthals - have never been found in the New World.

Goodyear, the one who found the relics in South Carolina, plans to publish his work in a peer-reviewed scientific journal next year, which is the standard method by which scientists announce their findings. Until research is peer-reviewed, experts in the field may not have an opportunity to evaluate the scientist's methods, or weigh in on the validity of his conclusions. Archeologists will meet in October of 2005 for a conference in Columbia, South Carolina, to discuss the earliest inhabitants of North America, including a visit to the excavation site.

Goodyear has been excavating the dig site along the Savannah River since the 1980's. He recovered manhy of the artifacts and tools last May. He dug four meters (13 feet) deeper than the soil layer containing the earliest North American people and began uncovering a plethora of tools. Until recently, many archeologists did not dig below where Clovis artifacts were expected to be found.

Scientists and volunteers at the dig site have unearthed hundreds of possible instruments, many appearing to be stone chisels and tools that could have been used to skin hides, butcher meat, or carve antlers, wood, and ivory. The tools were fashioned from a substance called chert, a flint-like stone found in the region.

Goodyear and his colleagues began their dig at the site in the early 1980's with the goal of finding out more about the Clovis people. Goodyear thought it would also be a good place to look for earlier human settlers because of the resources along the Savannah River and the moderate climate.

What does this do to your timelines?? Adios Native American casino tax-relief? :light:

Pomp

Baja Bernie - 4-29-2005 at 06:18 PM

Wonderful post!

Your post ,"Until recently, many archeologists did not dig below where Clovis artifacts were expected to be found."

Sadly the learned persons who expounded all of the theory's that became fact for the unknowing have done exactly that in order to maintain their research that was based upon their desire to support previously unproven ideas.

In doing this they have set back human understanding for humdreds of years and will continue to block and attack new evidence such as you mention.

They will circle the wagons and deny the truth until the media picks up their felacious arguments and drowns the 'true' voice in the wilderness.

Thanks for the information.

my young mind...

eetdrt88 - 4-29-2005 at 09:45 PM

is taking all this in all this historical information...and soon i will be passing it on to my children,so i'm assuming everything posted on this thread is purely based on fact :lol:

bajalera - 4-29-2005 at 10:26 PM

Sheesh! I didn't know anyone was taking notes.

Eetdrt 88

Baja Bernie - 4-30-2005 at 06:54 PM

I think you are on the right track and you can convey the truth to your kids if it comes from POMP, Osprey, Baja Lera, or me---But if it comes from JR I suggest that you wait until they can vote in the States or they can drink in Baja.

Very true EE

jrbaja - 5-1-2005 at 10:57 AM

All of my info comes from the locals. And what the heck would they know about their own country compared to a bunch of gringo tourists? :lol:

Plus, I tend to embellish or completely make things up. Just like the u.s. history books! Which is why I also tend to take a grain of salt with history or travel guides written by more gringo tourists.
Yall may enjoy my new book about those who write books about Baja :lol: