Settlement of the Americas

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Map of the earliest securely dated sites showing human presence in the Americas, 16–13 ka for North America and 15–11 ka for South America.

The settlement of the Americas is widely accepted to have begun when Paleolithic hunter-gatherers entered North America from the North Asian Mammoth steppe via the Beringia land bridge, which had formed between northeastern Siberia and western Alaska due to the lowering of sea level during the Last Glacial Maximum. These populations expanded south of the Laurentide Ice Sheet and spread rapidly throughout both North and South America, by 14,000 years ago. The earliest populations in the Americas, before roughly 10,000 years ago, are known as Paleo-Indians.

The peopling of the Americas is a long-standing open question, and while advances in archaeology, Pleistocene geology, physical anthropology, and DNA analysis have shed progressively more light on the subject, significant questions remain unresolved. While there is general agreement that the Americas were first settled from Asia, the pattern of migration, its timing, and the place(s) of origin in Eurasia of the peoples who migrated to the Americas remain unclear.

The prevalent migration models outline different time frames for the Asian migration from the Bering Straits and subsequent dispersal of the founding population throughout the continent. Indigenous peoples of the Americas have been linked to Siberian populations by linguistic factors, the distribution of blood types, and in genetic composition as reflected by molecular data, such as DNA.

The "Clovis first theory" refers to the 1950s hypothesis that the Clovis culture represents the earliest human presence in the Americas, beginning about 13,000 years ago; evidence of pre-Clovis cultures has accumulated since 2000, pushing back the possible date of the first peopling of the Americas to 33,000 years ago.

The environment during the latest glaciation

For an introduction to the radiocarbon dating techniques used by archaeologists and geologists, see radiocarbon dating.

Emergence and submergence of Beringia

Figure1. Submergence of the Beringian land bridge with post-Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) rise in eustatic sea level

During the Wisconsin glaciation, the Earth's ocean water was, to varying degrees over time, stored in glacier ice. As water accumulated in glaciers, the volume of water in the oceans correspondingly decreased, resulting in lowering of global sea level. The variation of sea level over time has been reconstructed using oxygen isotope analysis of deep sea cores, the dating of marine terraces, and high resolution oxygen isotope sampling from ocean basins and modern ice caps. A drop of eustatic sea level by about 60 to 120 metres (200 to 390 ft) from present-day levels, commencing around 30,000 years BP, created Beringia, a durable and extensive geographic feature connecting Siberia with Alaska. With the rise of sea level after the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM), the Beringian land bridge was again submerged. Estimates of the final re-submergence of the Beringian land bridge based purely on present bathymetry of the Bering Strait and eustatic sea level curve place the event around 11,000 years BP (Figure 1). Ongoing research reconstructing Beringian paleogeography during deglaciation could change that estimate and possible earlier submergence could further constrain models of human migration into North America.

Glaciers

The onset of the Last Glacial Maximum after 30,000 years BP saw the expansion of alpine glaciers and continental ice sheets that blocked migration routes out of Beringia. By 21,000 years BP, and possibly thousands of years earlier, the Cordilleran and Laurentide ice sheets coalesced east of the Rocky Mountains, closing off a potential migration route into the center of North America. Alpine glaciers in the coastal ranges and the Alaskan Peninsula isolated the interior of Beringia from the Pacific coast. Coastal alpine glaciers and lobes of Cordilleran ice coalesced into piedmont glaciers that covered large stretches of the coastline as far south as Vancouver Island and formed an ice lobe across the Straits of Juan de Fuca by 15,000 ¹⁴C years BP (18,000 cal years BP). Coastal alpine glaciers started to retreat around 19,000 cal years BP  while Cordilleran ice continued advancing in the Puget lowlands up to 14,000 ¹⁴C years BP (16,800 cal years BP). Even during the maximum extent of coastal ice, unglaciated refugia persisted on present-day islands, that supported terrestrial and marine mammals. As deglaciation occurred, refugia expanded until the coast became ice-free by 15,000 cal years BP. The retreat of glaciers on the Alaskan Peninsula provided access from Beringia to the Pacific coast by around 17,000 cal years BP. The ice barrier between interior Alaska and the Pacific coast broke up starting around 13,500 ¹⁴C years (16,200 cal years) BP. The ice-free corridor to the interior of North America opened between 13,000 and 12,000 cal years BP. Glaciation in eastern Siberia during the LGM was limited to alpine and valley glaciers in mountain ranges and did not block access between Siberia and Beringia.

Climate and biological environments

The paleoclimates and vegetation of eastern Siberia and Alaska during the Wisconsin glaciation have been deduced from high resolution oxygen isotope data and pollen stratigraphy. Prior to the Last Glacial Maximum, climates in eastern Siberia fluctuated between conditions approximating present day conditions and colder periods. The pre-LGM warm cycles in Arctic Siberia saw flourishes of megafaunas. The oxygen isotope record from the Greenland Ice Cap suggests that these cycles after about 45k years BP lasted anywhere from hundreds to between one and two thousand years, with greater duration of cold periods starting around 32k cal years BP. The pollen record from Elikchan Lake, north of the Sea of Okhotsk, shows a marked shift from tree and shrub pollen to herb pollen prior to 26k ¹⁴C years BP, as herb tundra replaced boreal forest and shrub steppe going into the LGM. A similar record of tree/shrub pollen being replaced with herb pollen as the LGM approached was recovered near the Kolyma River in Arctic Siberia. The abandonment of the northern regions of Siberia due to rapid cooling or the retreat of game species with the onset of the LGM has been proposed to explain the lack of archaeosites in that region dating to the LGM. The pollen record from the Alaskan side shows shifts between herb/shrub and shrub tundra prior to the LGM, suggesting less dramatic warming episodes than those that allowed forest colonization on the Siberian side. Diverse, though not necessarily plentiful, megafaunas were present in those environments. Herb tundra dominated during the LGM, due to cold and dry conditions.

Coastal environments during the Last Glacial Maximum were complex. The lowered sea level, and an isostatic bulge equilibrated with the depression beneath the Cordilleran Ice Sheet, exposed the continental shelf to form a coastal plain. While much of the coastal plain was covered with piedmont glaciers, unglaciated refugia supporting terrestrial mammals have been identified on Haida Gwaii, Prince of Wales Island, and outer islands of the Alexander Archipelago. The now-submerged coastal plain has potential for more refugia. Pollen data indicate mostly herb/shrub tundra vegetation in unglaciated areas, with some boreal forest towards the southern end of the range of Cordilleran ice. The coastal marine environment remained productive, as indicated by fossils of pinnipeds. The highly productive kelp forests over rocky marine shallows may have been a lure for coastal migration. Reconstruction of the southern Beringian coastline also suggests potential for a highly productive coastal marine environment.

Environmental changes during deglaciation

Pollen data indicate a warm period culminating between 14k and 11k ¹⁴C years BP (17k-13k cal years BP) followed by cooling between 11k-10k ¹⁴C years BP (13k-11.5k cal years BP). Coastal areas deglaciated rapidly as coastal alpine glaciers, then lobes of Cordilleran ice, retreated. The retreat was accelerated as sea levels rose and floated glacial termini. It has been estimated that the coast range was fully ice-free between 16k and 15k cal years BP. Littoral marine organisms colonized shorelines as ocean water replaced glacial meltwater. Replacement of herb/shrub tundra by coniferous forests was underway by 12.4k ¹⁴C years BP (15k cal years BP) north of Haida Gwaii. Eustatic sea level rise caused flooding, which accelerated as the rate grew more rapid.

The inland Cordilleran and Laurentide ice sheets retreated more slowly than did the coastal glaciers. Opening of an ice-free corridor did not occur until after 13k to 12k cal years BP. The early environment of the ice-free corridor was dominated by glacial outwash and meltwater, with ice-dammed lakes and periodic flooding from the release of ice-dammed meltwater. Biological productivity of the deglaciated landscape was gained slowly. The earliest possible viability of the ice-free corridor as a human migration route has been estimated at 11.5k cal years BP.

Birch forests were advancing across former herb tundra in Beringia by 14.3ka ¹⁴C years BP (17k cal years BP) in response to climatic amelioration, indicating increased productivity of the landscape.

Analyses of biomarkers and microfossils preserved in sediments from Lake E5 and Burial Lake in northern Alaska suggest early humans burned Beringian landscapes as early as 34,000 years ago. The authors of these studies suggest that fire was used as means of hunting megafauna.

Chronology, reasons for, and sources of migration

25,000 years ago Beringia during the LGM 16-14,000 years ago peopling of the Americas just after the LGM

The archaeological community is in general agreement that the ancestors of the Indigenous peoples of the Americas of historical record entered the Americas at the end of the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM), shortly after 20,000 years ago, with ascertained archaeological presence shortly after 16,000 years ago.

There remain uncertainties regarding the precise dating of individual sites and regarding conclusions drawn from population genetics studies of contemporary Native Americans. It is also an open question whether this post-LGM migration represented the first peopling of the Americas, or whether there had been an earlier, pre-LGM migration which had reached South America as early as 40,000 years ago.

Chronology

In the early 21st century, the models of the chronology of migration are divided into two general approaches.

The first is the short chronology theory, that the first migration occurred after the Last Glacial Maximum, which went into decline after about 19,000 years ago, and was then followed by successive waves of immigrants.

The second theory is the long chronology theory, which proposes that the first group of people entered the Americas at a much earlier date, possibly before 40,000 years ago, followed by a much later second wave of immigrants.

The Clovis First theory, which dominated thinking on New World anthropology for much of the 20th century, was challenged by the secure dating of archaeosites in the Americas to before 13,000 years ago in the 2000s. The "short chronology" scenario, in the light of this, refers to a peopling of the Americas shortly after 19,000 years ago, while the "long chronology" scenario permits pre-LGM presence, by around 40,000 years ago.

The archaeosites in the Americas with the oldest dates that have gained broad acceptance are all compatible with an age of about 15,000 years. This includes the Buttermilk Creek Complex in Texas, the Meadowcroft Rockshelter site in Pennsylvania and the Monte Verde site in southern Chile.  Archaeological evidence of pre-Clovis people points to the South Carolina Topper Site being 16,000 years old, at a time when the glacial maximum would have theoretically allowed for lower coastlines.

It has often been suggested that an ice-free corridor, in what is now Western Canada, would have allowed migration before the beginning of the Holocene, but a 2016 study has argued against this, suggesting that the peopling of North America via such a corridor is unlikely to significantly pre-date the earliest Clovis sites. The study concludes that the ice-free corridor in what is now Alberta and British Columbia "was gradually taken over by a boreal forest dominated by spruce and pine trees" and that the "Clovis people likely came from the south, not the north, perhaps following wild animals such as bison". An alternative hypothesis for the peopling of America is coastal migration, which may have been feasible along the deglaciated (but now submerged) coastline of the Pacific Northwest from about 16,000 years ago.

Evidence for pre-LGM human presence

Figure 2. Schematic illustration of maternal (mtDNA) gene-flow in and out of Beringia (long chronology, single source model).

 

Map of Beringia showing the exposed seafloor and glaciation at 40,000 years ago and 16,000 years ago. The green arrow indicates the "interior migration" model along an ice-free corridor separating the major continental ice sheets, the red arrow indicates the "coastal migration" model, both leading to a "rapid colonization" of the Americas after c. 16,000 years ago.

Pre-Last Glacial Maximum migration across Beringia into the Americas has been proposed to explain purported pre-LGM ages of archaeosites in the Americas such as Bluefish Caves and Old Crow Flats in the Yukon Territory, and Meadowcroft Rock Shelter in Pennsylvania.

At the Old Crow Flats, mammoth bones have been found that are broken in distinctive ways indicating human butchery. The radiocarbon dates on these vary between 25,000 and 40,000 years BP. Also, stone microflakes have been found in the area indicating tool production.

Previously, the interpretations of butcher marks and the geologic association of bones at the Bluefish Cave and Old Crow Flats sites, and the related Bonnet Plume site, have been called into question.

In addition to disputed archaeological sites, additional support for pre-LGM human presence has been found in lake sediment records of northern Alaska. Biomarker and microfossil analyses of sediments from Lake E5 and Burial Lake in suggest human presence in eastern Beringia as early as 34,000 years ago. These analyses are indeed compelling in that they corroborate the inferences made from the Bluefish Cave and Old Crow Flats sites.

Pre-LGM human presence in South America rests partly on the chronology of the controversial Pedra Furada rock shelter in Piauí, Brazil. A 2003 study dated evidence for the controlled use of fire to before 40,000 years ago. Additional evidence has been adduced from the morphology of Luzia Woman fossil, which was described as Australoid. This interpretation was challenged in a 2003 review which concluded the features in question could also have arisen by genetic drift.

The ages of the earliest positively identified artifacts at the Meadowcroft site are safely within the post-LGM period (13.8k–18.5k cal years BP).

Stones described as probable tools, hammerstones and anvils, have been found in southern California, at the Cerutti Mastodon site, that are associated with a mastodon skeleton which appeared to have been processed by humans. The mastodon skeleton was dated by thorium-230/uranium radiometric analysis, using diffusion–adsorption–decay dating models, to 130.7 ± 9.4 thousand years ago. No human bones were found, and the claims of tools and bone processing have been described as "not plausible".

The Yana River Rhino Horn site (RHS) has dated human occupation of eastern Arctic Siberia to 27k ¹⁴C years BP (31.3k cal years BP). That date has been interpreted by some as evidence that migration into Beringia was imminent, lending credence to occupation of Beringia during the LGM. However, the Yana RHS date is from the beginning of the cooling period that led into the LGM. But, a compilation of archaeosite dates throughout eastern Siberia suggest that the cooling period caused a retreat of humans southwards. Pre-LGM lithic evidence in Siberia indicate a settled lifestyle that was based on local resources, while post-LGM lithic evidence indicate a more migratory lifestyle.

The oldest archaeosite on the Alaskan side of Beringia date to 12k ¹⁴C years BP (14k cal years BP). It is possible that a small founder population had entered Beringia before that time. However, archaeosites that date closer to the Last Glacial Maximum on either the Siberian or the Alaskan side of Beringia are lacking. Biomarker and microfossil analyses of sediments from Lake E5 and Burial Lake in northern Alaska suggest human presence in eastern Beringia as early as 34,000 years ago. These sedimentary analyses have been suggested to be the only possibly recoverable remnants of humans living Alaska during the last Glacial period.

Genomic age estimates

Studies of Amerindian genetics have used high resolution analytical techniques applied to DNA samples from modern Native Americans and Asian populations regarded as their source populations to reconstruct the development of human Y-chromosome DNA haplogroups (yDNA haplogroups) and human mitochondrial DNA haplogroups (mtDNA haplogroups) characteristic of Native American populations. Models of molecular evolution rates were used to estimate the ages at which Native American DNA lineages branched off from their parent lineages in Asia and to deduce the ages of demographic events. One model (Tammetal 2007) based on Native American mtDNA Haplotypes (Figure 2) proposes that migration into Beringia occurred between 30k and 25k cal years BP, with migration into the Americas occurring around 10k to 15k years after isolation of the small founding population. Another model (Kitchen et al. 2008) proposes that migration into Beringia occurred approximately 36k cal years BP, followed by 20k years of isolation in Beringia. A third model (Nomatto et al. 2009) proposes that migration into Beringia occurred between 40k and 30k cal years BP, with a pre-LGM migration into the Americas followed by isolation of the northern population following closure of the ice-free corridor. Evidence of Australo-Melanesians admixture in Amazonian populations was found by Skoglund and Reich (2016).

A study of the diversification of mtDNA Haplogroups C and D from southern Siberia and eastern Asia, respectively, suggests that the parent lineage (Subhaplogroup D4h) of Subhaplogroup D4h3, a lineage found among Native Americans and Han Chinese, emerged around 20k cal years BP, constraining the emergence of D4h3 to post-LGM. Age estimates based on Y-chromosome micro-satellite diversity place origin of the American Haplogroup Q1a3a (Y-DNA) at around 10k to 15k cal years BP. Greater consistency of DNA molecular evolution rate models with each other and with archaeological data may be gained by the use of dated fossil DNA to calibrate molecular evolution rates.

Source populations

There is general agreement among anthropologists that the source populations for the migration into the Americas originated from an area somewhere east of the Yenisei River (Russian Far East). The common occurrence of the mtDNA Haplogroups A, B, C, and D among eastern Asian and Native American populations has long been recognized, along with the presence of haplogroup X. As a whole, the greatest frequency of the four Native American associated haplogroups occurs in the Altai-Baikal region of southern Siberia. Some subclades of C and D closer to the Native American subclades occur among Mongolian, Amur, Japanese, Korean, and Ainu populations.

A 2019 study suggested that Native Americans are the closest living relatives to 10,000-year-old fossils found near the Kolyma River in northeastern Siberia.

Human genomic models

The development of high-resolution genomic analysis has provided opportunities to further define Native American subclades and narrow the range of Asian subclades that may be parent or sister subclades. For example, the broad geographic range of haplogroup X has been interpreted as allowing the possibility of a western Eurasian, or even a European source population for Native Americans, as in the Solutrean hypothesis, or suggesting a pre-Last Glacial Maximum migration into the Americas. The analysis of an ancient variant of haplogroup X among aboriginals of the Altai region indicates common ancestry with the European strain rather than descent from the European strain. Further division of X subclades has allowed identification of subhaplogroup X2a, which is regarded as specific to Native Americans. With further definition of subclades related to Native American populations, the requirements for sampling Asian populations to find the most closely related subclades grow more specific. Subhaplogroups D1 and D4h3 have been regarded as Native American specific based on their absence among a large sampling of populations regarded as potential descendants of source populations, over a wide area of Asia. Among the 3764 samples, the Sakhalin – lower Amur region was represented by 61 Oroks. In another study, Subhaplogroup D1a has been identified among the Ulchis of the lower Amur River region (4 among 87 sampled, or 4.6%), along with Subhaplogroup C1a (1 among 87, or 1.1%). Subhaplogroup C1a is regarded as a close sister clade of the Native American Subhaplogroup C1b.

Subhaplogroup D1a has also been found among ancient Jōmon skeletons from Hokkaido. The modern Ainu are regarded as descendants of the Jōmon. The occurrence of the Subhaplogroups D1a and C1a in the lower Amur region suggests a source population from that region distinct from the Altai-Baikal source populations, where sampling did not reveal those two particular subclades. The conclusions regarding Subhaplogroup D1 indicating potential source populations in the lower Amur and Hokkaido areas stand in contrast to the single-source migration model.

Subhaplogroup D4h3 has been identified among Han Chinese. Subhaplogroup D4h3 from China does not have the same geographic implication as Subhaplotype D1a from Amur-Hokkaido, so its implications for source models are more speculative. Its parent lineage, Subhaplotype D4h, is believed to have emerged in east Asia, rather than Siberia, around 20k cal years BP. Subhaplogroup D4h2, a sister clade of D4h3, has also been found among Jōmon skeletons from Hokkaido. D4h3 has a coastal trace in the Americas.

The contrast between the genetic profiles of the Hokkaido Jōmon skeletons and the modern Ainu illustrates another uncertainty in source models derived from modern DNA samples:

However, probably due to the small sample size or close consanguinity among the members of the site, the frequencies of the haplogroups in Funadomari skeletons were quite different from any modern populations, including Hokkaido Ainu, who have been regarded as the direct descendant of the Hokkaido Jōmon people.

The descendants of source populations with the closest relationship to the genetic profile from the time when differentiation occurred are not obvious. Source population models can be expected to become more robust as more results are compiled, the heritage of modern proxy candidates becomes better understood, and fossil DNA in the regions of interest is found and considered.

HTLV-1 genomics

The Human T cell Lymphotrophic Virus 1 (HTLV-1) is a virus transmitted through exchange of bodily fluids and from mother to child through breast milk. The mother-to-child transmission mimics a hereditary trait, although such transmission from maternal carriers is less than 100%. The HTLV virus genome has been mapped, allowing identification of four major strains and analysis of their antiquity through mutations. The highest geographic concentrations of the strain HLTV-1 are in sub-Saharan Africa and Japan. In Japan, it occurs in its highest concentration on Kyushu. It is also present among African descendants and native populations in the Caribbean region and South America. It is rare in Central America and North America. Its distribution in the Americas has been regarded as due to importation with the slave trade.

The Ainu have developed antibodies to HTLV-1, indicating its endemicity to the Ainu and its antiquity in Japan. A subtype "A" has been defined and identified among the Japanese (including Ainu), and among Caribbean and South American isolates. A subtype "B" has been identified in Japan and India. In 1995, Native Americans in coastal British Columbia were found to have both subtypes A and B. Bone marrow specimens from an Andean mummy about 1500 years old were reported to have shown the presence of the A subtype. The finding ignited controversy, with contention that the sample DNA was insufficiently complete for the conclusion and that the result reflected modern contamination. However, a re-analysis indicated that the DNA sequences were consistent with, but not definitely from, the "cosmopolitan clade" (subtype A). The presence of subtypes A and B in the Americas is suggestive of a Native American source population related to the Ainu ancestors, the Jōmon.

Physical anthropology

Paleoamerican skeletons in the Americas such as Kennewick Man (Washington State), Hoya Negro skeleton (Yucatán), Luzia Woman and other skulls from the Lagoa Santa site (Brazil), Buhl Woman (Idaho), Peñon Woman III, two skulls from the Tlapacoya site (Mexico City), and 33 skulls from Baja California have exhibited craniofacial traits distinct from most modern Native Americans, leading physical anthropologists to the opinion that some Paleoamericans were of an Australoid rather than Siberian origin. The most basic measured distinguishing trait is the dolichocephaly of the skull. Some modern isolates such as the Pericúes of Baja California and the Fuegians of Tierra del Fuego exhibit that same morphological trait. Other anthropologists advocate an alternative hypothesis that evolution of an original Beringian phenotype gave rise to a distinct morphology that was similar in all known Paleoamerican skulls, followed by later convergence towards the modern Native American phenotype. Resolution of the issue awaits the identification of a Beringian phenotype among paleoamerican skulls or evidence of a genetic clustering among examples of the Australoid phenotype.

A report published in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology in January 2015 reviewed craniofacial variation focussing on differences between early and late Native Americans and explanations for these based on either skull morphology or molecular genetics. Arguments based on molecular genetics have in the main, according to the authors, accepted a single migration from Asia with a probable pause in Berengia, plus later bi-directional gene flow. Studies focusing on craniofacial morphology have argued that Paleoamerican remains have "been described as much closer to African and Australo-Melanesians populations than to the modern series of Native Americans", suggesting two entries into the Americas, an early one occurring before a distinctive East Asian morphology developed (referred to in the paper as the "Two Components Model". A third model, the "Recurrent Gene Flow" [RGF] model, attempts to reconcile the two, arguing that circumarctic gene flow after the initial migration could account for morphological changes. It specifically re-evaluates the original report on the Hoya Negro skeleton which supported the RGF model, the authors disagreed with the original conclusion which suggested that the skull shape did not match those of modern Native Americans, arguing that the "skull falls into a subregion of the morphospace occupied by both Paleoamericans and some modern Native Americans."

Stemmed points

Stemmed points are a lithic technology distinct from Beringian and Clovis types. They have a distribution ranging from coastal east Asia to the Pacific coast of South America. The emergence of stemmed points has been traced to Korea during the upper Paleolithic. The origin and distribution of stemmed points have been interpreted as a cultural marker related to a source population from coastal east Asia.

Migration routes

Interior route

Map showing the approximate location of the ice-free corridor along the Continental Divide, separating the Cordilleran and Laurentide ice sheets. Also indicated are the locations of the Clovis and Folsom Paleo-Indian sites.

Historically, theories about migration into the Americas have centered on migration from Beringia through the interior of North America. The discovery of artifacts in association with Pleistocene faunal remains near Clovis, New Mexico in the early 1930s required extension of the timeframe for the settlement of North America to the period during which glaciers were still extensive. That led to the hypothesis of a migration route between the Laurentide and Cordilleran ice sheets to explain the early settlement. The Clovis site was host to a lithic technology characterized by spear points with an indentation, or flute, where the point was attached to the shaft. A lithic complex characterized by the Clovis Point technology was subsequently identified over much of North America and in South America. The association of Clovis complex technology with late Pleistocene faunal remains led to the theory that it marked the arrival of big game hunters that migrated out of Beringia then dispersed throughout the Americas, otherwise known as the Clovis First theory.

Recent radiocarbon dating of Clovis sites has yielded ages of 11.1k to 10.7k ¹⁴C years BP (13k to 12.6k cal years BP), somewhat later than dates derived from older techniques. The re-evaluation of earlier radiocarbon dates led to the conclusion that no fewer than 11 of the 22 Clovis sites with radiocarbon dates are "problematic" and should be disregarded, including the type site in Clovis, New Mexico. Numerical dating of Clovis sites has allowed comparison of Clovis dates with dates of other archaeosites throughout the Americas, and of the opening of the ice-free corridor. Both lead to significant challenges to the Clovis First theory. The Monte Verde site of Southern Chile has been dated at 14.8k cal years BP. The Paisley Cave site in eastern Oregon yielded a ¹⁴C date of 12.4k years (14.5k cal years) BP, on a coprolite with human DNA and ¹⁴C dates of 11.3k-11k (13.2k-12.9k cal years) BP on horizons containing western stemmed points. Artifact horizons with non-Clovis lithic assemblages and pre-Clovis ages occur in eastern North America, although the maximum ages tend to be poorly constrained.

Geological findings on the timing of the ice-free corridor also challenge the notion that Clovis and pre-Clovis human occupation of the Americas was a result of migration through that route following the Last Glacial Maximum. Pre-LGM closing of the corridor may approach 30k cal years BP and estimates of ice retreat from the corridor are in the range of 12 to 13k cal years BP. Viability of the corridor as a human migration route has been estimated at 11.5k cal years BP, later than the ages of the Clovis and pre-Clovis sites. Dated Clovis archaeosites suggest a south-to-north spread of the Clovis culture.

Pre-Last Glacial Maximum migration into the interior has been proposed to explain pre-Clovis ages for archaeosites in the Americas, although pre-Clovis sites such as Meadowcroft Rock Shelter, Monte Verde, and Paisley Cave have not yielded confirmed pre-LGM ages.

Dené–Yeniseian language family proposal

A relationship between the Na-Dené languages of North America (such as Navajo and Apache), and the Yeniseian languages of Siberia was first proposed as early as 1923, and developed further by others. A detailed study was done by Edward Vajda and published in 2010. This theory received support from many linguists. Also archaeological and genetic studies gave it further support.

The Arctic Small Tool tradition of Alaska and the Canadian Arctic may have originated in East Siberia about 5,000 years ago. This is connected with the ancient Paleo-Eskimo peoples of the Arctic, the culture that developed by 2500 BCE.

The Arctic Small Tool tradition source may have been the Syalakh-Bel’kachi-Ymyakhtakh culture sequence of East Siberia, dated to 6,500 – 2,800 calBP.

The interior route is consistent with the spread of the Na-Dene language group and subhaplogroup X2a into the Americas after the earliest paleoamerican migration.

Nevertheless, some scholars suggest that the ancestors of western North Americans speaking Na-Dene languages made a coastal migration by boat.

Pacific coastal route

The Pacific coastal migration theory proposes that people first reached the Americas via water travel, following coastlines from northeast Asia into the Americas, originally proposed in 1979 by Knute Fladmark as an alternative to the hypothetical migration through an ice-free inland corridor. This model would help to explain the rapid spread to coastal sites extremely distant from the Bering Strait region, including sites such as Monte Verde in southern Chile and Taima-Taima in western Venezuela.

The very similar marine migration hypothesis is a variant of coastal migration; essentially its only difference is that it postulates that boats were the principle means of travel. The proposed use of boats adds a measure of flexibility to the chronology of coastal migration, because a continuous ice-free coast (16–15,000 calibrated years BP) would then not be required: Migrants in boats could have easily bypassed ice barriers and settled in scattered coastal refugia, before the deglaciation of the coastal land route was complete. A maritime-competent source population in coastal east-Asia is an essential part of the marine migration hypothesis.

A 2007 article in the Journal of Island and Coastal Archaeology proposed a "kelp highway hypothesis", a variant of coastal migration based on the exploitation of kelp forests along much of the Pacific Rim from Japan to Beringia, the Pacific Northwest, and California, and as far as the Andean Coast of South America. Once the coastlines of Alaska and British Columbia had deglaciated about 16,000 years ago, these kelp forest (along with estuarine, mangrove, and coral reef) habitats would have provided an ecologically homogenous migration corridor, entirely at sea level, and essentially unobstructed. A 2016 DNA analysis of plants and animals suggest a coastal route was feasible.

Mitochondrial subhaplogroup D4h3a, a rare subclade of D4h3 occurring along the west coast of the Americas, has been identified as a clade associated with coastal migration. This haplogroup was found in a skeleton referred to as Anzick-1, found in Montana in close association with several Clovis artifacts, dated 12,500 years ago.

Problems with evaluating coastal migration models

The coastal migration models provide a different perspective on migration to the New World, but they are not without their own problems: One such problem is that global sea levels have risen over 120 metres (390 ft) since the end of the last glacial period, and this has submerged the ancient coastlines that maritime people would have followed into the Americas. Finding sites associated with early coastal migrations is extremely difficult — and systematic excavation of any sites found in deeper waters is challenging and expensive. Strategies for finding earliest migration sites include identifying potential sites on submerged paleoshorelines, seeking sites in areas uplifted either by tectonics or isostatic rebound, and looking for riverine sites in areas that may have attracted coastal migrants. On the other hand, there is evidence of marine technologies found in the hills of the Channel Islands of California, circa 10,000 BCE. If there was an early pre-Clovis coastal migration, there is always the possibility of a "failed colonization". Another problem that arises is the lack of hard evidence found for a "long chronology" theory. No sites have yet produced a consistent chronology older than about 12,500 radiocarbon years (~14,500 calendar years), but research in South America related to the possibility of early coastal migrations has been limited.

Ussher chronology

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chronology_of_the_Bible 

 

Annales Veteris Testamenti page 1 (Latin)

 

Annals of the World page 1 (English)

The Ussher chronology is a 17th-century chronology of the history of the world formulated from a literal reading of the Old Testament by James Ussher, the Archbishop of Armagh and Primate of All Ireland. The chronology is sometimes associated with young Earth creationism, which holds that the universe was created only a few millennia ago by God as described in the first two chapters of the biblical book of Genesis. Ussher fell into disrepute in the 19th century.

Published in 1650, the full title of Ussher's work in Latin is Annales Veteris Testamenti, a prima mundi origine deducti, una cum rerum Asiaticarum et Aegyptiacarum chronico, a temporis historici principio usque ad Maccabaicorum initia producto ("Annals of the Old Testament, deduced from the first origins of the world, the chronicle of Asiatic and Egyptian matters together produced from the beginning of historical time up to the beginnings of Maccabees").

Ussher's work was his contribution to the long-running theological debate on the age of the Earth. This was a major concern of many Christian scholars over the centuries.

The chronology is sometimes called the Ussher–Lightfoot chronology because John Lightfoot published a similar chronology in 1642–1644. This, however, is a misnomer, as the chronology is based on Ussher's work alone and not that of Lightfoot. Ussher deduced that the first day of creation was October 23, 4004 BC on the proleptic Julian calendar, near the autumnal equinox. Lightfoot similarly deduced that Creation began at nightfall near the autumnal equinox, but in the year 3929 BC.

Ussher's proposed date of 4004 BC differed little from other biblically-based estimates, such as those of Jose ben Halafta (3761 BC), Bede (3952 BC), Ussher's near-contemporary Scaliger (3949 BC), Johannes Kepler (3992 BC) or Sir Isaac Newton (c. 4000 BC). Ussher was influenced by the same account as the apocryphal Book of Jasher, dating the worldwide flood to 2349 BC and the birth of Terah in 2127 BC. The date of 4000 BC as the creation of Adam was at least partially influenced by the widely held belief that the Earth was approximately 5600 years old (2000 to Abraham, 2000 from Abraham to the birth of Christ, and 1600 years from Christ to Ussher), corresponding to the six days of Creation, on the grounds that "one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day" (2 Peter 3:8). This tradition was believed to indicate that Jesus would return in 2000 AD, more than six thousand years after 4004 BC. Modern proponents of this interpretation hold that the creation date 4004 BC could be inaccurate.

Ussher's methods

The chronologies of Ussher and other biblical scholars corresponded so closely because they used much the same method to calculate key events recorded in the Bible. Establishing the chronologies is complicated by the fact that the Bible was compiled by different authors over several centuries with lengthy chronological gaps, making it difficult to do a simple totaling of Biblical ages and dates. In his article on Ussher's calendar, James Barr has identified three distinct periods that Ussher and others had to tackle:

1. "Creation to Abraham's migration." This section is fairly easy to calculate, using the chronological data in Genesis 5 and 11, which gives an unbroken male lineage, with numbers of years, from the creation to Abraham being called out of Ur of the Chaldeans. Ussher used the chronology found in the Masoretic text instead of the alternative chronologies found in the Septuagint and Samaritan Pentateuch. Ussher fixed this period as 2082 years, from 4004 to 1922 BC.
2. "Abraham's migration to Solomon's temple." Ussher wrote that the time from Abraham leaving Haran to the Exodus was 430 years (based on Abraham's descendants suffering a period of 400 years of persecution, commencing 30 years after Abraham left Haran) 1 Kings 6 states that 480 years elapsed from the Exodus to the beginning of construction of Solomon's temple in the fourth year of Solomon's reign. Thus the temple foundations were laid 910 years after Abraham left Haran; these 910 years spanned from 1922 to 1012 BC.
3. "Period of the temple laid to the Babylonian captivity." This period is the most difficult to calculate, due to repeated difficulties in correlating the regnal years of the kingdoms of Judah and Israel. The simple addition of the reigns of Judah's kings results in a total of 430 years, but by positing a few overlapping reigns, Ussher shortened this to 424 years: 1012 to 588 BC.

After reckoning the years from creation to the last kings of Judah, Ussher used 2 Kings 25:27 to establish the length of time from the creation to the accession of Babylonian king Amel-Marduk (also known as Evil-Merodach). He then used information from Babylonian, Greek, and Roman sources to fix the date of Amel-Marduk's enthronement at 562 BC (after Nebuchadnezzar's death), from which he was able to deduce a creation in 4004 BC.

In fixing the date of Jesus' birth, Ussher took account of an error perpetrated by Dionysius Exiguus, the founder of the Anno Domini numbering system. Ussher chose 5 BC as Christ's birth year because Josephus indicated that the death of Herod the Great occurred in 4 BC. Thus, for the Gospel of Matthew to be correct, Jesus could not have been born after that date.

The season in which Creation occurred was the subject of considerable theological debate in Ussher's time. Many scholars proposed it had taken place in the spring, the start of the Babylonian, Chaldean and other cultures' chronologies. Others, including Ussher, thought it more likely that it had occurred in the autumn, largely because that season marked the beginning of the Jewish year.

Ussher further narrowed down the date by using the Jewish calendar to establish the "first day" of creation as falling on a Sunday near the autumnal equinox. The day of the week was a backward calculation from the six days of creation with God resting on the seventh, which in the Jewish calendar is Saturday—hence, Creation began on a Sunday. The astronomical tables that Ussher probably used were Kepler's Tabulae Rudolphinae (Rudolphine Tables, 1627). Using them, he would have concluded that the equinox occurred on Tuesday, October 25, only one day earlier than the traditional day of its creation, on the fourth day of Creation week, Wednesday, along with the Sun, Moon, and stars Genesis 1:16. Modern equations place the autumnal equinox of 4004 BC on Sunday, October 23 (by the Julian calendar).

Ussher's understanding of creation placed the "first day" referred to in Genesis 1:5 on October 23, but with a "pre-creation" event, which he identified as the "beginning of time" occurring the previous night. Ussher referred to his dating of creation on the first page of Annales in Latin and on the first page of its English translation Annals of the World (1658). In the following extract from the English translation, the phrase "in the year of the Julian Calendar" refers to the Julian Period, of which year 1 is 4713 BC, and therefore year 710 is 4004 BC.

In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. Ge. 1:1 This beginning of time, according to our chronology, happened at the start of the evening preceding the 23rd day of October in the year of the Julian Calendar, 710.

Ussher provides a slightly different time in his "Epistle to the Reader" in his Latin and English works: "I deduce that the time from the creation until midnight, January 1, 1 AD was 4003 years, seventy days and six hours." Six hours before midnight would be 6 pm.

Ussher's chronology today

By the middle of the 19th century, Ussher's chronology came under increasing attack from supporters of uniformitarianism, who argued that Ussher's "young Earth" was incompatible with the increasingly accepted view of an Earth much more ancient than Ussher's. It became generally accepted that the Earth was tens, perhaps even hundreds of millions of years old. Ussher fell into disrepute among theologians as well; in 1890, Princeton professor William Henry Green wrote a highly influential article in Bibliotheca Sacra entitled "Primeval Chronology" in which he strongly criticised Ussher. He concluded:

We conclude that the Scriptures furnish no data for a chronological computation prior to the life of Abraham; and that the Mosaic records do not fix and were not intended to fix the precise date either of the Flood or of the creation of the world.

The similarly conservative theologian B. B. Warfield reached the same conclusion in "On The Antiquity and Unity of the Human Race", commenting that "it is precarious in the highest degree to draw chronological inferences from genealogical tables".

Archbishop Ussher's chronology has in recent years been subject to artistic criticism, including in the play Inherit the Wind (based on the Scopes Monkey Trial) and the fantasy novel Good Omens which alleges that "he is off by a quarter of an hour".

A different viewpoint comes from Stephen Jay Gould, who, while totally disagreeing with Ussher's chronology, nevertheless wrote:

I shall be defending Ussher's chronology as an honorable effort for its time and arguing that our usual ridicule only records a lamentable small-mindedness based on mistaken use of present criteria to judge a distant and different past

Ussher represented the best of scholarship in his time. He was part of a substantial research tradition, a large community of intellectuals working toward a common goal under an accepted methodology…

Wisdom

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wisdom 

Wisdom Defending Youth Against Love by Meynier, c. 1810

Wisdom, sapience, or sagacity is the ability to think and act using knowledge, experience, understanding, common sense and insight. Wisdom is associated with attributes such as unbiased judgment, compassion, experiential self-knowledge, self-transcendence and non-attachment, and virtues such as ethics and benevolence.

Wisdom has been defined in many different ways, including several distinct approaches to assess the characteristics attributed to wisdom.

Definitions

Early mention of wisdom in Beowulf

The Oxford English Dictionary defines wisdom as "Capacity of judging rightly in matters relating to life and conduct; soundness of judgement in the choice of means and ends; sometimes, less strictly, sound sense, esp. in practical affairs: opp. to folly;" also "Knowledge (esp. of a high or abstruse kind); enlightenment, learning, erudition." Charles Haddon Spurgeon defined wisdom as "the right use of knowledge". Robert I. Sutton and Andrew Hargadon defined the "attitude of wisdom" as "acting with knowledge while doubting what one knows". Psycanics defines wisdom as "the ability to foresee the consequences of action" (allowing one to avoid negative consequences and produce the desired positive ones.) In social and psychological sciences, several distinct approaches to wisdom exist, with major advances made in the last two decades with respect to operationalization and measurement of wisdom as a psychological construct. Wisdom is the capacity to have foreknowledge of something, to know the consequences (both positive and negative) of all the available course of actions, and to yield or take the options with the most advantage either for present or future implication.

Mythological and philosophical perspectives

The ancient Greeks considered wisdom to be an important virtue, personified as the goddesses Metis and Athena. Metis was the first wife of Zeus, who, according to Hesiod's Theogony, had devoured her pregnant; Zeus earned the title of Mêtieta ("The Wise Counselor") after that, as Metis was the embodiment of wisdom, and he gave birth to Athena, who is said to have sprung from his head. Athena was portrayed as strong, fair, merciful, and chaste. Apollo was also considered a god of wisdom, designated as the conductor of the Muses (Musagetes), who were personifications of the sciences and of the inspired and poetic arts; According to Plato in his Cratylus, the name of Apollo could also mean "Ballon" (archer) and "Omopoulon" (unifier of poles [divine and earthly]), since this god was responsible for divine and true inspirations, thus considered an archer who was always right in healing and oracles: "he is an ever-darting archer". Apollo was considered the god who prophesied through the priestesses (Pythia) in the Temple of Apollo (Delphi), where the aphorism "know thyself" (gnōthi seauton) was inscribed (part of the wisdom of the Delphic maxims). He was contrasted with Hermes, who was related to the sciences and technical wisdom, and, in the first centuries after Christ, was associated with Thoth in an Egyptian syncretism, under the name Hermes Trimegistus. Greek tradition recorded the earliest introducers of wisdom in the Seven Sages of Greece.

To Socrates and Plato, philosophy was literally the love of wisdom (philo-sophia). This permeates Plato's dialogues; in The Republic the leaders of his proposed utopia are philosopher kings who understand the Form of the Good and possess the courage to act accordingly. Aristotle, in Metaphysics, defined wisdom as understanding why things are a certain way (causality), which is deeper than merely knowing things are a certain way. He was the first to make the distinction between phronesis and sophia.

According to Plato and Xenophon, the Pythia of the Delphic Oracle answered the question "who is the wisest man in Greece?" by stating Socrates was the wisest. According to Plato's Apology, Socrates decided to investigate the people who might be considered wiser than him, concluding they lacked true knowledge:

[…] οὗτος μὲν οἴεταί τι εἰδέναι οὐκ εἰδώς, ἐγὼ δέ, ὥσπερ οὖν οὐκ οἶδα, οὐδὲ οἴομαι [I am wiser than this man; for neither of us really knows anything fine and good, but this man thinks he knows something when he does not, whereas I, as I do not know anything, do not think I do either.]

— Apology to Socrates 21d

Thus it became popularly immortalized in the phrase "I know that I know nothing" that it is wise to recognize one's own ignorance and to value epistemic humility.

The ancient Romans also valued wisdom which was personified in Minerva, or Pallas. She also represents skillful knowledge and the virtues, especially chastity. Her symbol was the owl which is still a popular representation of wisdom, because it can see in darkness. She was said to be born from Jupiter's forehead.

Wisdom is also important within Christianity. Jesus emphasized it. Paul the Apostle, in his first epistle to the Corinthians, argued that there is both secular and divine wisdom, urging Christians to pursue the latter. Prudence, which is intimately related to wisdom, became one of the four cardinal virtues of Catholicism. The Christian philosopher Thomas Aquinas considered wisdom to be the "father" (i.e. the cause, measure, and form) of all virtues.

In Buddhist traditions, developing wisdom plays a central role where comprehensive guidance on how to develop wisdom is provided. In the Inuit tradition, developing wisdom was one of the aims of teaching. An Inuit Elder said that a person became wise when they could see what needed to be done and did it successfully without being told what to do.

In many cultures, the name for third molars, which are the last teeth to grow, is etymologically linked with wisdom, e.g., as in the English wisdom tooth. It has its nickname originated from the classical tradition, which in the Hippocratic writings has already been called sóphronistér (in Greek, related to the meaning of moderation or teaching a lesson), and in Latin dens sapientiae (wisdom tooth), since they appear at the age of maturity in late adolescence and early adulthood.

Educational perspectives

Truth and Wisdom assist History in writing by Jacob de Wit, 1754

Public schools in the US have an approach to character education. Eighteenth century thinkers such as Benjamin Franklin, referred to this as training wisdom and virtue. Traditionally, schools share the responsibility to build character and wisdom along with parents and the community.

Nicholas Maxwell, a contemporary philosopher in the United Kingdom, advocates that academia ought to alter its focus from the acquisition of knowledge to seeking and promoting wisdom. This he defines as the capacity to realize what is of value in life, for oneself and others. He teaches that new knowledge and technological know-how increase our power to act. Without wisdom though, Maxwell claims this new knowledge may cause human harm as well as human good.

Psychological perspectives

Psychologists have begun to gather data on commonly held beliefs or folk theories about wisdom. Initial analyses indicate that although "there is an overlap of the implicit theory of wisdom with intelligence, perceptiveness, spirituality and shrewdness, it is evident that wisdom is an expertise in dealing with difficult questions of life and adaptation to the complex requirements."

Such implicit theories stand in contrast to the explicit theories and empirical research on resulting psychological processes underlying wisdom. Opinions on the exact psychological definitions of wisdom vary, but there is some consensus that critical to wisdom are certain meta-cognitive processes affording life reflection and judgment about critical life matters. These processes include recognizing the limits of one's own knowledge, acknowledging uncertainty and change, attention to context and the bigger picture, and integrating different perspectives of a situation. Cognitive scientists suggest that wisdom requires coordinating such reasoning processes, as they may provide insightful solutions for managing one's life. Notably, such reasoning is both theoretically and empirically distinct from general intelligence. Robert Sternberg has suggested that wisdom is not to be confused with general (fluid or crystallized) intelligence. In line with this idea, researchers have shown empirically that wise reasoning is distinct from IQ. Several more nuanced characterizations of wisdom are listed below.

Baltes and colleagues in Wisdom: its structure and function in regulating lifespan successful development defined wisdom as "the ability to deal with the contradictions of a specific situation and to assess the consequences of an action for themselves and for others. It is achieved when in a concrete situation, a balance between intrapersonal, inter- personal and institutional interests can be prepared". Balance itself appears to be a critical criterion of wisdom. Empirical research started to provide support to this idea, showing that wisdom-related reasoning is associated with achieving balance between intrapersonal and interpersonal interests when facing personal life challenges, and when setting goals for managing interpersonal conflicts.

Researchers in the field of positive psychology have defined wisdom as the coordination of "knowledge and experience" and "its deliberate use to improve well being." Under this definition, wisdom is further defined with the following facets:

• Problem Solving with self-knowledge and sustainable actions.
• Contextual sincerity to the circumstances with knowledge of its negative (or constraints) and positive aspects.
• Value based consistent actions with knowledge of diversity in ethical opinions.
• Tolerance towards uncertainty in life with unconditional acceptance.
• Empathy with oneself to understand one's own emotions (or to be emotionally oriented), morals...etc. and others feelings including the ability to see oneself as part of a larger whole.

This theoretical model has not been tested empirically, with an exception of a broad link between wisdom-related reasoning and well-being.

Grossmann and colleagues have synthesized prior psychological literature, indicating that in the face of ill-defined life situations wisdom involves certain cognitive processes affording unbiased, sound judgment: (i) intellectual humility or recognition of limits of own knowledge; (ii) appreciation of perspectives broader than the issue at hand; (iii) sensitivity to the possibility of change in social relations; and (iv) compromise or integration of different perspectives. Grossmann found that habitual speaking and thinking of oneself in the third person increases these characteristics, which means that such a habit makes a person wiser. Importantly, Grossmann highlights the fundamental role of contextual factors, including the role of culture, experiences, and social situations for understanding, development, and propensity of showing wisdom, with implications for training and educational practice. This situated account of wisdom ushered a novel phase of wisdom scholarship, using rigorous evidence-based methods to understand contextual factors affording sound judgment. For instance, Grossmann and Kross have identified a phenomenon they called "the Solomon's paradox" - wiser reflections on other people's problems as compared to one's own. It is named after King Solomon, the third leader of the Jewish Kingdom, who has shown a great deal of wisdom when making judgments about other people's dilemmas but lacked insight when it came to important decisions in his own life.

Empirical scientists have also begun to focus on the role of emotions in wisdom. Most researchers would agree that emotions and emotion regulation would be key to effectively managing the kinds of complex and arousing situations that would most call for wisdom. However, much empirical research has focused on the cognitive or meta-cognitive aspects of wisdom, assuming that an ability to reason through difficult situations would be paramount. Thus, although emotions would likely play a role in determining how wisdom plays out in real events and on reflecting on past events, only recently has empirical evidence started to provide robust evidence on how and when different emotions improve or harm a person's ability to deal wisely with complex events. One notable finding concerns the positive relationship between diversity of emotional experience and wise reasoning, irrespective of emotional intensity.

Measuring wisdom

Measurement of wisdom often depends on researcher's theoretical position about the nature of wisdom. A major distinction here concerning either viewing wisdom as a stable personality trait or rather as a context-bound process. The former approach often capitalizes on single-shot questionnaires. However, recent studies indicated that such single-shot questionnaires produce biased responses, which is antithetical to the wisdom construct and neglects the notion that wisdom is best understood in the contexts when it is most relevant, namely in complex life challenges. In contrast, the latter approach advocates for measuring wisdom-related features of cognition, motivation, and emotion on the level of a specific situation. Use of such state-level measures provides less biased responses as well as greater power in explaining meaningful psychological processes. Furthermore, a focus on the level of the situation has allowed wisdom researchers to develop a fuller understanding of the role of context itself for producing wisdom. Specifically, studies showed evidence of cross-cultural and within-cultural variability and systematic variability in reasoning wisely across contexts and in daily life.

Many, but not all, studies find that adults' self-ratings of perspective and wisdom do not depend on age. This belief stands in contrast to the popular notion that wisdom increases with age. The answer to the question of age-wisdom association depends on how one defines wisdom, and the methodological framework used to evaluate theoretical claims. Most recent work suggests that the answer to this question also depends on the degree of experience in a specific domain, with some contexts favoring older adults, others favoring younger adults, and some not differentiating age groups. Notably, rigorous longitudinal work is necessary to fully unpack the question of age-wisdom relationship and such work is still outstanding, with most studies relying on cross-sectional observations.

Sapience

Sapience is closely related to the term "sophia" often defined as "transcendent wisdom", "ultimate reality", or the ultimate truth of things. Sapiential perspective of wisdom is said to lie in the heart of every religion, where it is often acquired through intuitive knowing. This type of wisdom is described as going beyond mere practical wisdom and includes self-knowledge, interconnectedness, conditioned origination of mind-states and other deeper understandings of subjective experience. This type of wisdom can also lead to the ability of an individual to act with appropriate judgement, a broad understanding of situations and greater appreciation/compassion towards other living beings.

The word sapience is derived from the Latin sapientia, meaning "wisdom". The corresponding verb sapere has the original meaning of "to taste", hence "to perceive, to discern" and "to know"; its present participle sapiens was chosen by Carl Linnaeus for the Latin binomial for the human species, Homo sapiens.

Religious perspectives

Ancient Near East

In Mesopotamian religion and mythology, Enki, also known as Ea, was the God of wisdom and intelligence. Divine Wisdom allowed the provident designation of functions and the ordering of the cosmos, and it was achieved by humans in following me-s (in Sumerian, order, rite, righteousness), restoring the balance. In addition to hymns to Enki or Ea dating from the third millennium BC., there is amongst the clay tablets of Abu Salabikh from 2600 BC, considered as being the oldest dated texts, an "Hymn to Shamash", in which it is recorded written:

Wide is the courtyard of Shamash night chamber, (just as wide is the womb of) a wise pregnant woman! Sin, his warrior, wise one, heard of the offerings and came down to his fiesta. He is the father of the nation and the father of intelligence

The concept of Logos or manifest word of the divine thought, a concept also present in the philosophy and hymns of Egypt and Ancient Greece (being central to the thinker Heraclitus), and substantial in the Abrahamic traditions, seems to have been derived from Mesopotamian culture.

Sia represents the personification of perception and thoughtfulness in the traditional mythology adhered to in Ancient Egypt. Thoth, married to Maat (in ancient Egyptian, meaning order, righteousness, truth), was also important and regarded as a national introducer of wisdom.

Zoroastrianism

In the Avesta hymns traditionally attributed to Zoroaster, the Gathas, Ahura Mazda means "Lord" (Ahura) and "Wisdom" (Mazda), and it is the central deity who embodies goodness, being also called "Good Thought" (Vohu Manah). In Zoroastrianism in general, the order of the universe and morals is called Asha (in Avestan, truth, righteousness), which is determined by the designations of this omniscient Thought and also considered a deity emanating from Ahura (Amesha Spenta); it is related to another ahura deity, Spenta Mainyu (active Mentality). It says in Yazna 31:

To him shall the best befall, who, as one that knows, speaks to me Right's truthful word of Welfare and of Immortality; even the Dominion of Mazda which Good Thought shall increase for him. About which he in the beginning thus thought, "let the blessed realms be filled with Light", he it is that by his wisdom created Right.

Hebrew Bible and Judaism

The word wisdom (חכם) is mentioned 222 times in the Hebrew Bible. It was regarded as one of the highest virtues among the Israelites along with kindness (חסד) and justice (צדק). Both the books of Proverbs and Psalms urge readers to obtain and to increase in wisdom.

In the Hebrew Bible, wisdom is represented by Solomon, who asks God for wisdom in 2 Chronicles 1:10. Much of the Book of Proverbs, which is filled with wise sayings, is attributed to Solomon. In Proverbs 9:10, the fear of the Lord is called the beginning of wisdom. In Proverbs 1:20, there is also reference to wisdom personified in female form, "Wisdom calls aloud in the streets, she raises her voice in the marketplaces." In Proverbs 8:22–31, this personified wisdom is described as being present with God before creation began and even taking part in creation itself.

The Talmud teaches that a wise person is a person who can foresee the future. Nolad is a Hebrew word for "future," but also the Hebrew word for birth, so one rabbinic interpretation of the teaching is that a wise person is one who can foresee the consequences of his/her choices (i.e. can "see the future" that he/she "gives birth" to).

Hellenistic religion and Gnosticism

Christian theology

In Christian theology, "wisdom" (From Hebrew: חכמה transliteration: chokmâh pronounced: khok-maw', Greek: Sophia, Latin: Sapientia) describes an aspect of God, or the theological concept regarding the wisdom of God.

David and Abigail, Abigail was a "wise woman" who helped David, 1860 woodcut by Julius Schnorr von Karolsfeld

There is an oppositional element in Christian thought between secular wisdom and Godly wisdom. Paul the Apostle states that worldly wisdom thinks the claims of Christ to be foolishness. However, to those who are "on the path to salvation" Christ represents the wisdom of God. (1 Corinthians 1:17–31) Wisdom is considered one of the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit according to Anglican, Catholic, and Lutheran belief. 1 Corinthians 12:8–10 gives an alternate list of nine virtues, among which wisdom is one.

The book of Proverbs in the Old Testament of the Bible primarily focuses on wisdom, and was primarily written by one of the wisest kings according to Jewish history, King Solomon. Proverbs is found in the Old Testament section of the Bible and gives direction on how to handle various aspects of life; one's relationship with God, marriage, dealing with finances, work, friendships and persevering in difficult situations faced in life.

Solomon and Lady Wisdom by Julius Schnorr von Karolsfeld, 1860

According to King Solomon, wisdom is gained from God, "For the Lord gives wisdom; from His mouth come knowledge and understanding" Proverbs 2:6. And through God's wise aide, one can have a better life: "He holds success in store for the upright, he is a shield to those whose walk is blameless, for he guards the course of the just and protects the way of his faithful ones" Proverbs 2:7-8. "Trust in the LORD with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways submit to him, and he will make your paths straight" Proverbs 3:5-6. Solomon basically states that with the wisdom one receives from God, one will be able to find success and happiness in life.

There are various verses in Proverbs that contain parallels of what God loves, which is wise, and what God does not love, which is foolish. For example, in the area of good and bad behaviour Proverbs states, "The way of the wicked is an abomination to the Lord, But He loves him who pursues righteousness (Proverbs 15:9). In relation to fairness and business it is stated that, "A false balance is an abomination to the Lord, But a just weight is His delight" (Proverbs 11:1; cf. 20:10,23). On the truth it is said, "Lying lips are an abomination to the Lord, But those who deal faithfully are His delight" (12:22; cf. 6:17,19). These are a few examples of what, according to Solomon, are good and wise in the eyes of God, or bad and foolish, and in doing these good and wise things, one becomes closer to God by living in an honorable and kind manner.

Solomon's Wisdom, 1860 woodcut by Julius Schnorr von Karolsfeld

King Solomon continues his teachings of wisdom in the book of Ecclesiastes, which is considered one of the most depressing books of the Bible. Solomon discusses his exploration of the meaning of life and fulfillment, as he speaks of life's pleasures, work, and materialism, yet concludes that it is all meaningless. "'Meaningless! Meaningless!" says the Teacher [Solomon]. 'Utterly meaningless! Everything is meaningless'...For with much wisdom comes much sorrow, the more knowledge, the more grief" (Ecclesiastes 1:2,18) Solomon concludes that all life's pleasures and riches, and even wisdom, mean nothing if there is no relationship with God.

The book of James, written by the apostle James, is said to be the New Testament version of the book of Proverbs, in that it is another book that discusses wisdom. It reiterates Proverbs message of wisdom coming from God by stating, "If any of you lacks wisdom, you should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to you." James 1:5. James also explains how wisdom helps one acquire other forms of virtue, "But the wisdom that comes from heaven is first of all pure; then peace-loving, considerate, submissive, full of mercy and good fruit, impartial and sincere." James 3:17. In addition,through wisdom for living James focuses on using this God-given wisdom to perform acts of service to the less fortunate.

Apart from Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and James, other main books of wisdom in the Bible are Job, Psalms, and 1 and 2 Corinthians, which give lessons on gaining and using wisdom through difficult situations.

Indian religions

In the Indian traditions, wisdom can be called prajña or vijñana.

Developing wisdom is of central importance in Buddhist traditions, where the ultimate aim is often presented as "seeing things as they are" or as gaining a "penetrative understanding of all phenomena", which in turn is described as ultimately leading to the "complete freedom from suffering". In Buddhism, developing wisdom is accomplished through an understanding of what are known as the Four Noble Truths and by following the Noble Eightfold Path. This path lists mindfulness as one of eight required components for cultivating wisdom.

Buddhist scriptures teach that a wise person is usually endowed with good and maybe bodily conduct, and sometimes good verbal conduct, and good mental conduct.(AN 3:2) A wise person does actions that are unpleasant to do but give good results, and doesn't do actions that are pleasant to do but give bad results (AN 4:115). Wisdom is the antidote to the self-chosen poison of ignorance. The Buddha has much to say on the subject of wisdom including:

• He who arbitrates a case by force does not thereby become just (established in Dhamma). But the wise man is he who carefully discriminates between right and wrong.
• He who leads others by nonviolence, righteously and equitably, is indeed a guardian of justice, wise and righteous.
• One is not wise merely because he talks much. But he who is calm, free from hatred and fear, is verily called a wise man.  By quietude alone one does not become a sage (muni) if he is foolish and ignorant. But he who, as if holding a pair of scales, takes the good and shuns the evil, is a wise man; he is indeed a muni by that very reason. He who understands both good and evil as they really are, is called a true sage.

To recover the original supreme wisdom of self-nature (Buddha-nature or Tathagata) covered by the self-imposed three dusty poisons (the kleshas: greed, anger, ignorance) Buddha taught to his students the threefold training by turning greed into generosity and discipline, anger into kindness and meditation, ignorance into wisdom. As the Sixth Patriarch of Chán Buddhism, Huineng, said in his Platform Sutra,"Mind without dispute is self-nature discipline, mind without disturbance is self-nature meditation, mind without ignorance is self-nature wisdom." In Mahayana and esoteric buddhist lineages, Mañjuśrī is considered as an embodiment of Buddha wisdom.

In Hinduism, wisdom is considered a state of mind and soul where a person achieves liberation.

The god of wisdom is Ganesha and the goddess of knowledge is Saraswati.

The Sanskrit verse to attain knowledge is:

असतो मा सद्गमय । Asatō mā sadgamaya
तमसो मा ज्योतिर्गमय । tamasō mā jyōtirgamaya
मृत्योर्मा अमृतं गमय । mr̥tyōrmā amr̥taṁ gamaya
ॐ शान्तिः शान्तिः शान्तिः ॥ Om śāntiḥ śāntiḥ śāntiḥ
- Br̥hadāraṇyakopaniṣat 1.3.28

"Lead me from the unreal to the real.

Lead me from darkness to light.

Lead me from death to immortality.

May there be peace, peace, and peace".

Brihadaranyaka Upanishad 1.3.28.

Wisdom in Hinduism is knowing oneself as the truth, basis for the entire Creation, i.e., of Shristi. In other words, wisdom simply means a person with Self-awareness as the one who witnesses the entire creation in all its facets and forms. Further it means realization that an individual through right conduct and right living over an unspecified period comes to realize their true relationship with the creation and the Paramatma.

Islam

The Arabic term corresponding to Hebrew Chokmah is حكمة ḥikma. The term occurs a number of times in the Quran, notably in Sura 2:269: "He gives wisdom to whom He wills, and whoever has been given wisdom has certainly been given much good. And none will remember except those of understanding." (Quran 2:269). and Sura 22:46: "Have they not travelled in the land, and have they hearts wherewith to feel and ears wherewith to hear? For indeed it is not the eyes that grow blind, but it is the hearts, which are within the bosoms, that grow blind."Quran 22:46 Sura 6: 151: "Say: "Come, I will rehearse what Allah (God) hath (really) prohibited you from": Join not anything as equal with Him; be good to your parents; kill not your children on a plea of want;― We provide sustenance for you and for them;― come not nigh to shameful deeds, whether open or secret; take not life, which Allah hath made sacred, except by way of justice and law: thus doth He command you, that ye may learn wisdom" (Quran 6:151).

The Sufi philosopher Ibn Arabi considers al-Hakim ("The Wise") as one of the names of the Creator. Wisdom and truth, considered divine attributes, were concepts related and valued in the Islamic sciences and philosophy since their beginnings, and the first Arab philosopher, Al-Kindi says at the beginning of his book:

We must not be ashamed to admire the truth or to acquire it, from wherever it comes. Even if it should come from far-flung nations and foreign peoples, there is for the student of truth nothing more important than the truth, nor is the truth demeaned or diminished by the one who states or conveys it; no one is demeaned by the truth, rather all are ennobled by it.

— Al-Kindi, On First Philosophy

Chinese religion

The Buddhist term Prajñā was translated into Chinese as 智慧 (pinyin zhìhuì, characters 智 "knowledge" and 慧 "bright, intelligent").

According to the Doctrine of the Mean, Confucius said:

"Love of learning is akin to wisdom. To practice with vigor is akin to humanity. To know to be shameful is akin to courage (zhi, ren, yong.. three of Mengzi's sprouts of virtue)."

Compare this with the Confucian classic Great Learning, which begins with: "The Way of learning to be great consists in manifesting the clear character, loving the people, and abiding in the highest good." One can clearly see the correlation with the Roman virtue prudence, especially if one interprets "clear character" as "clear conscience". (From Chan's Sources of Chinese Philosophy).

In Taoism, wisdom is construed as adherence to the Three Treasures (Taoism): charity, simplicity, and humility. "He who knows other men is discerning [智]; he who knows himself is intelligent [明]." (知人者智，自知者明。Tao Te Ching 33)

Others

In Norse mythology, the god Odin is especially known for his wisdom, often acquired through various hardships and ordeals involving pain and self-sacrifice. In one instance he plucked out an eye and offered it to Mímir, guardian of the well of knowledge and wisdom, in return for a drink from the well. In another famous account, Odin hanged himself for nine nights from Yggdrasil, the World Tree that unites all the realms of existence, suffering from hunger and thirst and finally wounding himself with a spear until he gained the knowledge of runes for use in casting powerful magic. He was also able to acquire the mead of poetry from the giants, a drink of which could grant the power of a scholar or poet, for the benefit of gods and mortals alike.

In Baháʼí Faith scripture, "The essence of wisdom is the fear of God, the dread of His scourge and punishment, and the apprehension of His justice and decree." Wisdom is seen as a light, that casts away darkness, and "its dictates must be observed under all circumstances". One may obtain knowledge and wisdom through God, his Word, and his Divine Manifestation and the source of all learning is the knowledge of God.

In the Star Wars universe, wisdom is valued in the narrative of the films, in which George Lucas figured issues of spirituality and morals, recurrent in mythological and philosophical themes; one of his inspirations was Joseph Campbell's The Hero of a Thousand Faces. Master Yoda is generally considered a popular figure of wisdom, evoking the image of an "Oriental Monk", and he is frequently quoted, analogously to Chinese thinkers or Eastern sages in general. Psychologist D. W. Kreger's book "The Tao of Yoda" adapts the wisdom of the Tao Te Ching in relation to Yoda's thinking. Knowledge is canonically considered one of the pillars of the Jedi, which is also cited in the non-canon book The Jedi Path, and wisdom can serve as a tenet for Jediism. The Jedi Code also states: "Ignorance, yet knowledge." In a psychology populational study published by Grossmann and team in 2019, master Yoda is considered wiser than Spock, another fictional character (from the Star Trek series), due to his emodiversity trait, which was positively associated to wise reasoning in people: "Yoda embraces his emotions and aims to achieve a balance between them. Yoda is known to be emotionally expressive, to share a good joke with others, but also to recognize sorrow and his past mistakes".

Deus ex machina

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deus_ex_machina 

Deus ex machina in Euripides' Medea, performed in 2009 in Syracuse, Italy; the sun god sends a golden chariot to rescue Medea

Deus ex machina (/ˌdeɪəs ɛks ˈmækɪnə, - ˈmɑːk-/ DAY-əs ex-MA(H)K-in-ə, Latin: [ˈdɛ.ʊs ɛks ˈmaːkʰɪnaː]; plural: dei ex machina; English ‘god from the machine’) is a plot device whereby a seemingly unsolvable problem in a story is suddenly and abruptly resolved by an unexpected and unlikely occurrence. Its function can be to resolve an otherwise irresolvable plot situation, to surprise the audience, to bring the tale to a happy ending, or act as a comedic device.

Origin of the expression

Deus ex machina is a Latin calque from Greek ἀπὸ μηχανῆς θεός (apò mēkhanês theós) 'god from the machine'. The term was coined from the conventions of ancient Greek theater, where actors who were playing gods were brought onto stage using a machine. The machine could be either a crane (mechane) used to lower actors from above or a riser which brought them up through a trapdoor. Aeschylus introduced the idea, and it was used often to resolve the conflict and conclude the drama. The device is associated mostly with Greek tragedy, although it also appeared in comedies.

Ancient examples

Aeschylus used the device in his Eumenides, but it became an established stage machine with Euripides. More than half of Euripides' extant tragedies employ a deus ex machina in their resolution, and some critics claim that Euripides invented it, not Aeschylus. A frequently cited example is Euripides' Medea, in which the deus ex machina is a dragon-drawn chariot sent by the sun god, used to convey his granddaughter Medea away from her husband Jason to the safety of Athens. In Alcestis, the heroine agrees to give up her own life to spare the life of her husband Admetus. At the end, Heracles shows up and seizes Alcestis from Death, restoring her to life and to Admetus.

Aristophanes' play Thesmophoriazusae parodies Euripides' frequent use of the crane by making Euripides himself a character in the play and bringing him on stage by way of the mechane.

The device produced an immediate emotional response from Greek audiences. They would have a feeling of wonder and astonishment at the appearance of the gods, which would often add to the moral effect of the drama.

Modern theatrical examples

Characters ascend into heaven to become gods at the end of the 1650 play Andromède

Shakespeare uses the device in As You Like It, Pericles, Prince of Tyre, and Cymbeline. John Gay uses it in The Beggar's Opera where a character breaks the action and rewrites the ending as a reprieve from hanging for MacHeath. During the politically turbulent 17th and 18th centuries, the deus ex machina was sometimes used to make a controversial thesis more palatable to the powers of the day. For example, in the final scene of Molière's Tartuffe, the heroes are saved from a terrible fate by an agent of the compassionate, all-seeing King Louis XIV — the same king who held Molière's career and livelihood in his hands.

Plot device

Aristotle was the first to use a Greek term equivalent to the Latin phrase deus ex machina to describe the technique as a device to resolve the plot of tragedies. It is generally deemed undesirable in writing and often implies a lack of creativity on the part of the author. The reasons for this are that it does damage to the story's internal logic and is often so unlikely that it challenges suspension of disbelief, allowing the author to conclude the story with an unlikely ending.

Examples

The Martians in H. G. Wells's The War of the Worlds have destroyed everything in their path and apparently triumphed over humanity, but they are suddenly killed by bacteria. In the novel Lord of the Flies, a passing navy officer rescues the stranded children. William Golding called that a "gimmick", other critics view it as a deus ex machina. The abrupt ending conveys the terrible fate that would have afflicted the children if the officer had not arrived at that moment.

J. R. R. Tolkien referred to the Great Eagles that appear in several places in The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings as "a dangerous 'machine'". This was in a letter refusing permission to a film adapter to have the Fellowship of the Ring transported by eagles rather than traveling on foot. He felt that the eagles had already been overused as a plot device and they have elsewhere been critiqued as a deus ex machina.

Charles Dickens used the device in Oliver Twist when Rose Maylie turns out to be the long-lost sister of Agnes, and therefore Oliver's aunt; she marries her long-time sweetheart Harry, allowing Oliver to live happily with his saviour Mr. Brownlow.

Criticism

The deus ex machina device is often criticized as inartistic, too convenient, and overly simplistic. However, champions of the device say that it opens up ideological and artistic possibilities.

Ancient criticism

Antiphanes was one of the device's earliest critics. He believed that the use of the deus ex machina was a sign that the playwright was unable to properly manage the complications of his plot.

when they don't know what to say

and have completely given up on the play

just like a finger they lift the machine

and the spectators are satisfied.

— Antiphanes

Another critical reference to the device can be found in Plato's dialogue Cratylus, 425d, though it is made in the context of an argument unrelated to drama.

Aristotle criticized the device in his Poetics, where he argued that the resolution of a plot must arise internally, following from previous action of the play:

In the characters, too, exactly as in the structure of the incidents, [the poet] ought always to seek what is either necessary or probable, so that it is either necessary or probable that a person of such-and-such a sort say or do things of the same sort, and it is either necessary or probable that this [incident] happen after that one. It is obvious that the solutions of plots, too, should come about as a result of the plot itself, and not from a contrivance, as in the Medea and in the passage about sailing home in the Iliad. A contrivance must be used for matters outside the drama — either previous events, which are beyond human knowledge, or later ones that need to be foretold or announced. For we grant that the gods can see everything. There should be nothing improbable in the incidents; otherwise, it should be outside the tragedy, e.g., that in Sophocles' Oedipus.

— Poetics, (1454a33–1454b9)

Aristotle praised Euripides, however, for generally ending his plays with bad fortune, which he viewed as correct in tragedy, and somewhat excused the intervention of a deity by suggesting that "astonishment" should be sought in tragic drama:

Irrationalities should be referred to what people say: That is one solution, and also sometimes that it is not irrational, since it is probable that improbable things will happen.

Such a device was referred to by Horace in his Ars Poetica (lines 191–2), where he instructs poets that they should never resort to a "god from the machine" to resolve their plots "unless a difficulty worthy of a god's unraveling should happen" [nec deus intersit, nisi dignus uindice nodus inciderit; nec quarta loqui persona laboret.

Modern criticism

Following Aristotle, Renaissance critics continued to view the deus ex machina as an inept plot device, although it continued to be employed by Renaissance dramatists.

Toward the end of the 19th century, Friedrich Nietzsche criticized Euripides for making tragedy an optimistic genre by use of the device, and was highly skeptical of the "Greek cheerfulness", prompting what he viewed as the plays' "blissful delight in life". The deus ex machina as Nietzsche saw it was symptomatic of Socratic culture, which valued knowledge over Dionysiac music and ultimately caused the death of tragedy:

But the new non-Dionysiac spirit is most clearly apparent in the endings of the new dramas. At the end of the old tragedies there was a sense of metaphysical conciliation without which it is impossible to imagine our taking delight in tragedy; perhaps the conciliatory tones from another world echo most purely in Oedipus at Colonus. Now, once tragedy had lost the genius of music, tragedy in the strictest sense was dead: for where was that metaphysical consolation now to be found? Hence an earthly resolution for tragic dissonance was sought; the hero, having been adequately tormented by fate, won his well-earned reward in a stately marriage and tokens of divine honour. The hero had become a gladiator, granted freedom once he had been satisfactorily flayed and scarred. Metaphysical consolation had been ousted by the deus ex machina.

— Friedrich Nietzsche

Nietzsche argued that the deus ex machina creates a false sense of consolation that ought not to be sought in phenomena. His denigration of the plot device has prevailed in critical opinion.

In Arthur Woollgar Verrall's publication Euripides the Rationalist (1895), he surveyed and recorded other late 19th-century responses to the device. He recorded that some of the critical responses to the term referred to it as 'burlesque', 'coup de théâtre', and 'catastrophe'. Verrall notes that critics have a dismissive response to authors who deploy the device in their writings. He comes to the conclusion that critics feel that the deus ex machina is evidence of the author's attempt to ruin the whole of his work and prevent anyone from putting any importance on his work.

However, other scholars have looked at Euripides' use of deus ex machina and described its use as an integral part of the plot designed for a specific purpose. Often, Euripides' plays would begin with gods, so it is argued that it would be natural for the gods to finish the action. The conflict throughout Euripides' plays would be caused by the meddling of the gods, so would make sense to both the playwright and the audience of the time that the gods would resolve all conflict that they began. Half of Euripides' eighteen extant plays end with the use of deus ex machina, therefore it was not simply a device to relieve the playwright of the embarrassment of a confusing plot ending. This device enabled him to bring about a natural and more dignified dramatic and tragic ending.

Other champions of the device believe that it can be a spectacular agent of subversion. It can be used to undercut generic conventions and challenge cultural assumptions and the privileged role of tragedy as a literary/theatrical model.

Some 20th-century revisionist criticism suggests that deus ex machina cannot be viewed in these simplified terms, and contends that the device allows mortals to "probe" their relationship with the divine. Rush Rehm in particular cites examples of Greek tragedy in which the deus ex machina complicates the lives and attitudes of characters confronted by the deity, while simultaneously bringing the drama home to its audience. Sometimes, the unlikeliness of the deus ex machina plot device is employed deliberately. For example, comic effect is created in a scene in Monty Python's Life of Brian when Brian, who lives in Judea at the time of Christ, is saved from a high fall by a passing alien space ship.