Solutrean hypothesis

[4] The Solutrean hypothesis posits that about 21,000 years ago a group of people from the Solutré region of France, who are characterized historically by their unique lithic technique, migrated to North America along pack ice in the Atlantic Ocean.

[10] Supporters of the Solutrean hypothesis had indicated the presence of haplogroup X2, the global distribution of which is strongest in Anatolia and the northeast of America, a pattern they argue is consistent with their position.

The abstract of that article also states that "[t]he similarities in ages and geographical distributions for C4c and the previously analyzed X2a lineage provide support to the scenario of a dual origin for Paleo-Indians.

Comparisons showed strong affinities with DNA from Siberian sites, and the report stated that "In agreement with previous archaeological and genetic studies our genome analysis refutes the possibility that Clovis originated via a European (Solutrean) migration to the Americas."

The authors state that their findings have four implications, the third being that "such an easterly presence in Asia of a population related to contemporary western Eurasians provides a possibility that non-east Asian cranial characteristics of the First Americans derived from the Old World via migration through Beringia, rather than by a trans-Atlantic voyage from Iberia as proposed by the Solutrean hypothesis.

[19][20] Stanford and Bradley's 2012 book Across Atlantic Ice: The Origin of America's Clovis Culture expands upon and revises earlier formulations of the Solutrean Hypothesis.

The radiocarbon dates from purported pre-Clovis archaeological sites presented by Stanford and Bradley are consistently earlier in North America, pre-dating Solutrean culture in Europe by 5–10 thousand years.

[20] Mitochondrial haplogroup X2a has also been claimed as evidence for ancient trans-Atlantic gene flow, but according to a comprehensive review by Raff & Bolnick (2015): X2a has not been found anywhere in Eurasia, and phylogeography gives us no compelling reason to think it is more likely to come from Europe than from Siberia.

Nor have any high-resolution studies of genome-wide data from Native American populations yielded any evidence of Pleistocene European ancestry or trans-Atlantic gene flow.

These factors led Stanford and Bradley to reiterate in 2014 their academic advocacy of pre-Clovis peoples in North America and their possible link to paleolithic Europeans.

"[24] A report in the January 2015 issue of American Antiquity reviewed the literature and concluded "that the dual claims that such point forms are both rare and do not date to post-LGM contexts cannot be sustained.

"[24] The same report also examined the 13 artifacts claimed to be older than 22,000 BP, finding they were "indistinguishable from visually identical bipoints from Holocene contexts across the eastern seaboard", and concluding: "The widespread distribution of these points, their well-established chronological and culture-historical associations, and the reported association with marine/deep-sea exploitation leads us to conclude that there is no reason to consider bi-points from the Delmarva Peninsula, New England, the Continental Shelf—or indeed anywhere in eastern North America—as necessarily derived from Solutrean culture or as necessarily being 'older than Clovis,' much less a distinct pre-Clovis 'cultural pattern'.

The opinion is shared by Lawrence G. Straus, who wrote that "there are no representations of boats and no evidence whatsoever either of seafaring or of the ability to make a living mainly or solely from the ocean during the Solutrean.

Advocates state that the historic coastlines of western Europe and eastern North America during the Last Glacial Maximum are now under water and thus, evidence of Solutrean-era seafaring may have been obliterated or submerged.

An episode of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation documentary The Nature of Things in January 2018 was widely criticized by scientists and Native Americans for its uncritical presentation of the Solutrean hypothesis.