This isn’t really a subtweet, because I love and respect a lot of folks in the “peopling of the Americas” world, but like. I have SO many more questions about life in the Americas in the Pleistocene than “when did people get here?”

What else can we ask?? I want to know what life smelled like. What did bone or dung fueled fires smell like? Did people burn plants to make things smell differently? Did they render fat and make perfume with it? How did people style their hair? Did they think mammoths were cool?

What was childhood like? What color was like THE color? How important were grandmas? What was it like to work together to process a successful mammoth hunt? How could you tell who your relatives were?

I am so jealous of the questions people in historical archaeology ask, and I want to ask those questions of the Plesitocene archaeological record. What is in collections that archaeologists didn’t recognize that could answer new things because they were looking for firsts??

Also, consider this thread a call! Who is writing this? I want to read your stuff! Point me in the direction of your papers. I will become your biggest hypeman! Wanna work together? Wanna be friends?? Etc.

Final thought. As far as my grandma has told me, we were made from the clay of the Sierra Tarahumara and sustained by corn kernels kept by the first man and the first woman. In so many ways-being clay and corn is enough of an origin for me.