The case for New World Diffusion

• The Atlantic Monthly, January 2000, contains an article, "The Diffusionists Have Landed" reopening the diffusion question in a mainstream magazine. Leaving the details to experts in these fields, we can suggest why so much dogmatic thinking that disallowed this possibility could be wrong.

Issues of New World diffusion are extremely complex, and uniquely confusing. Mainstream scholarship has been extremely skeptical of the disparate theories and books in this area, while proponents of diffusion tend to introduce a host of wild claims based on unsupported material that tends to discredit the whole subject. But, like him or not, Thor Heyerdal, in the midst of his numerous errors and unreliable assertions, fairly well resolved (without conclusive proof) some of the issues, at least as to possible contact from the Mediterranean to the West Indies and Central Americas via the Atlantic Current.

One thing we can't do here is the settle the question, so, before entering the fray, it is worthwhile remembering that nothing short of smoking gun evidence is sufficient. And that evidence tends, on the one hand, to be lacking, suspicious in itself, or to be ambiguous to the point where nothing can be concluded from it. The answer is simple, information is tasteless, odorless, and can travel in small doses to have a large effect. Men can climb in a boat and seed influences afar. They do that everywhere else. But the New World is to be a puzzling exception to this.

Thus the evidence could be nearly nothing. And what there is, we must ask, Is it really evidence at all? A good example is the lore, black hole, of debate over the famous Olmec heads, which look like men of African descent. After the smoke settles on the battlefield of this question, I can only say, I don't know, as I slip away from madmen.   But as Cyrus Gordon showed a long time ago, the evidence is not so against diffusion as people think.

It is good to be skeptical in this area. OK. At the same time, it is also true, or arguable, that this skepticism can work both ways.

• For, a broad view of the evolution of civilization suggests on theoretical grounds alone the high probability of some diffusion. Study of the eonic effect makes it obvious why. Civilization is not likely to have evolved more than once on the surface of this planet, as the great scholar Cyrus Gordon pointed out long ago. (Cyrus Gordon, Before Columbus)

It simply defies the odds that there could be no contact, on navigational grounds, we suspect. But there is more. Part of the difficulty is the confusion over concepts of cultural evolution as these are influenced by Darwinism. The fact is that we have not observed so much cultural evolution, not a close hand over tens of millennia in the Paleolithic.

Part of the problem is the theoretical logjam of current evolutionary thinking. It does not distinguish system, initial conditions, and 'free activity. A 'system' of cultural evolution is spawned in the thinking of historical anthropologists, without considering whether this is causal, or whether it has boundaries, initial states and dynamics. It is all mostly wishful thinking. The point is that the evolution of culture requires some very complex theories, or it is not worth bothering with. In any case, such a theory is immediately contradicted by the possibility of someone climbing in a boat  and going somewhere to found a new system, culture or civilization. The eonic effect shows one resolution of this 'paradox', and it suggests that the New World civilizations are quite natural hybrids of what can before, the linear local stream, and external information arriving from outside! That's not a crazy idea!

Cultural evolution is also thought of, when not a 'system', as some kind of slow steady random process, yet one that follows some theoretical law. This type of thinking unconsciously wants to isolate the phenomenon culture as a kind of 'unit of analysis'. But this fails to consider that at close range, the 'primitive' and the 'modern' are identical, in the sense of process and species, and are open to the simple exception to process created by a man with an idea carrying it somewhere else to found a new culture! Evolution, let alone independent evolution, is without meaning in this sense, so influenced by Darwinism, or economic dynamics.

What we do have is the record of history. And that shows the record of emergent civilization in one great burst visible from the later Neolithic, and this shows, like it or not, consistent sourcing in the Old World civilizations. Some are brazen enough to think this Eurocentric superiority, driving critics to find independent reinventions of everything everywhere. All that on both sides is nonsense. We suspect evolution is semi-global, yet sourcing locally, and integrating outward. There are absolutely no superior cultures in the long term over several millennia. Thus independent evolutionism deflects attention from the fact that there is an overall evolutionary system at work, although it is hard indeed to see it, without a close look at the eonic effect. We note that what we call the 'birth of civilization' (not really, but a massive advance) is occurring around -3500 to -3000 in Egypt and Sumer. This is not really the beginning of anything. But it is a unique moment, we must suspect. But what is interesting is the flood of diffusion from that point. It is a phenomenon that couldn't really happen twice because the planet is covered with its influences before anyone could reinvent anything on this scale. This plateau creates a massive wave of advance that stretches around Eurasia, and westward into Europe in a consistent expansion. We could never claim anymore the Indic or Sinic civilizations were totally independent evolutionary civilizations. Unfortunately some still would, so be wary. The Chinese case is especially confusing, since it shows consistent creativity on a shoe string throughout its history. If any example were to show independent evolution evolution, it would be this one. But we can see the influences arriving.In many ways, both viewpoints are correct, yet, if there is diffusion, independent evolution fails It is a matter of timing. The influences reach the pre-Shang in the wake of Sumer. And so on. The whole Eurasian context then shows a remarkable balance of unity and diversity. In this context, people seriously claim the New World evolves in complete isolation. 

The eonic effect shows the catch in this logic of independent evolution in the New World. A system is energy intensive. Therefore the double expenditure would be egregious. Second, the appearance of higher civilization in the New World is precisely in proportion to time and distance, ca. 1200 B.C., the last to be reached by shock wave from Sumer and Egypt. Please note that this says very little.It does not obviate an independent stream of development also. All that is required is that some information arrive to influence history in significant fashion, and the independent evolution fails.The reality, however, is probably that the very basis of the civilization is diffusing from a prior source.It is just very sudden indeed. And it has nothing to do with genes, colonists, etc... It is clear Sumer influenced, say, Mycenean Greece, but there is no genetic relationship. This red-herring of genetic evidence on assimilated colonists in the New World is not the issue.

Note the fact that the Old World, alone, shows the full sequence from Neolithic to the Classical Era, with its imploding Eurasian oikoumene. We see almost five thousand years of Neolithic advance, as a foundation for the takeoff into higher civilization after -3000. It is hard to claim we see a similar sequence in the new world.  These are interrupted sequences, surely. For that swelling tide of focussed advance is, so far, not evident in the New World, which just seems to show advanced civilizations after about 1500. It doesn't quite add up in the standard accounts.