Jon Turk

For some reason, for many years, I've been intrigued by early North American Man. Not Native American necessarily, although that too, piques my interest, but man from 10,000 years ago.
10,000 year old Mastadons were around in WI back then and quartz spear points have been found with the skeletons. I especally got interested in the atlatl, a device that allowed ice-age man to in effect, increase the length of his forearm to allow for the huge increase in the power and speed of throwing spears/darts.

This interest was in the early 90's. About that time, a series of books came that were interesting in that they were fiction based on fact written by 2 archeologists. The books covered all the various human North American life back 11,000 to 8,000 years ago. People of the Lakes, People of the Wolf, People of River, People of the Sea. I really enjoyed this series. The First North American Series

Then, I went to listen to Jon Turk in Madison, WI at an event call Canoecopia. Jon talked about his kayak trip from Japan to Alaska. He had a great story to tell about the how the ancient Jomon people could have made the trip from Asia NOT using the traditional and accepted Bering Land Bridge by making the trip himself. Jon's quite the adventurer.

Then along came the Kennewick Man and that changed everything...at least for me, as he was found to be a Caucasoid, not of a Mongolian decent, that our Native American originated from. There is a lot of difference of opinion on this, though. Kennewick man is believed to be around 9,300 years old.

One interesting thing for me is that there are many that believe the Bering Land Bridge was not the most traveled route, but that some ancient peoples came over by water, and Jon Turk proved it could be done.