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First humans in the Americas

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Re: First humans in the Americas

Unread postby onlooker » Thu 27 Apr 2017, 20:54:30

:lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol:
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Re: First humans in the Americas

Unread postby Plantagenet » Thu 27 Apr 2017, 21:15:20

This brings to mind the Calico Hills Archeology site in California----its at least as old and probably older then then this new site.

Calico_Early_Man_Site

Its also very controversial.

Now that there are two sites suggesting early man was in North America more than 100,000 years ago, it all seems more believable.

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Re: First humans in the Americas

Unread postby rockdoc123 » Thu 27 Apr 2017, 23:04:40

Now that there are two sites suggesting early man was in North America more than 100,000 years ago, it all seems more believable.


http://www.skepticblog.org/2012/01/18/leakeys-luck-or-leakeys-laughingstock/

Archeologists have been fooled and embarrassed many times in the past over-interpreting naturally broken and flaked stones, so now the criteria for an artifact are very strict. In the case of the Calico site, several analyses have been conducted (Haynes, 1973; Duvall and Venner, 1979; Payen, 1982), and they have all demonstrated that there is no conclusive evidence for human production for most of the “artifacts.”


Yup, controversial. But obviously something that needs to be looked into further....science at it's best.
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Re: First humans in the Americas

Unread postby Plantagenet » Fri 28 Apr 2017, 02:36:08

The Calico Hills site was discovered in 1949. Until this new discovery of the Mammoth bone site, the Calico Hills site was the only proposed early man site in North America.

An early booster of the Calico Hills site was Louis Leakey, discoverer of the early man sites in Olduvai Gorge and the skeleton of "Lucy." Nonetheless Calico Hills has always been very controversial, just as the new Mammoth bone site is controversial.

Image
Ruth Simpson and Louis Leakey at the Calico Hills site

In 1954, San Bernardino County archaeologist Ruth Simpson took some artifacts unearthed at the site to renowned scientist Louis Leakey, discoverer of early man sites in Africa’s Olduvai Gorge. Leakey believed the artifacts from Calico Hills were the products of early man, and he arranged financing for more work at the site through the National Geographic Society. He visited the desert site frequently from 1964 until his death in 1970 to collect and work on the artifacts.

Everyone who looks at the proposed Calico Hills artifacts agrees that some are indistinguishable from early man artifacts, One of the main lines of evidence presented against the idea that the "artifacts" at Calico Hills were made by humans is that they are much older then other archeological sites in North America. However, with this new finding of the worked mammoth bone dated to 100,000+ years BP, that objection is no longer viable.

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Re: First humans in the Americas

Unread postby SeaGypsy » Fri 28 Apr 2017, 05:25:43

That looks knapped for sure, but the aging is suss. I learned the skills from aboriginal Australians 20 years ago. Eventually i made a set of sets- 5 of each, from small arrow heads, to spearhead, skinning knife, small & large axe heads. They were good enough to completely gobsmack experts. I was thinking to sell sets to schools, before i found out that is a big taboo, as such implements are used to authenticate aboriginal sites & cannot be accurately dated.
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Re: First humans in the Americas

Unread postby Subjectivist » Fri 28 Apr 2017, 06:33:30

I find it very difficult to believe any varient of our species was here for 100,000 years before the Amerind Migration took place around 18,000 years ago. If those proposed earlier peoples were here for so long they should have left evidence all over the place, but especially in the DNA of the Amerind population that were occupying the Americas when the Europeans arrived and brought Africans with them.

We have strong DNA evidence that Neanderthal and Denisovan peoples merged into the Homo Sapiens gene pool, we shoukd see the same thing with these early hominids in the Amerind DNA profiles.
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Re: First humans in the Americas

Unread postby onlooker » Fri 28 Apr 2017, 09:33:03

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2 ... 104010.htm
New Evidence Puts Man In North America 50,000 Years Ago

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2 ... 091428.htm
First humans arrived in North America a lot earlier than believed
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Re: First humans in the Americas

Unread postby onlooker » Fri 28 Apr 2017, 09:37:51

https://www.theguardian.com/science/201 ... tone-tools
Humans arrived in North America 2,500 years earlier than thought
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Re: First humans in the Americas

Unread postby Plantagenet » Fri 28 Apr 2017, 13:54:16

SeaGypsy wrote:That looks knapped for sure, but the aging is suss. I learned the skills from aboriginal Australians 20 years ago. Eventually i made a set of sets- 5 of each, from small arrow heads, to spearhead, skinning knife, small & large axe heads. They were good enough to completely gobsmack experts. I was thinking to sell sets to schools, before i found out that is a big taboo, as such implements are used to authenticate aboriginal sites & cannot be accurately dated.


Yup. You are 100% right.

Essentially every scientist agrees the Calico Hills artifacts/geofacts are indistinguishable from human made tools. But the deniers then argue that they can't be human artifacts because they are too old and there are no other sites of similar age in North America.

Except now there is---there's the new site with broken mammoth bones documented in the new Nature paper which is also dated to being older than 100,000 years ago and is even located pretty close by in southern California.

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Re: First humans in the Americas

Unread postby KaiserJeep » Fri 28 Apr 2017, 14:44:44

I personally believe in the existence of early humans in North America. I also can provide a valid reason that they did not contribute more of their DNA to the Human Genome. We have already discussed it once: The Younger Dryad Impact Hypothesis.

From Wikipedia:
The Younger Dryas impact hypothesis or Clovis comet hypothesis originally proposed that a large air burst or earth impact of one or more comets initiated the Younger Dryas cold period about 12,900 BP calibrated (10,900 14C uncalibrated) years ago.[1][2][3] The hypothesis has been contested by research showing that most of the conclusions cannot be repeated by other scientists, and criticized because of misinterpretation of data and the lack of confirmatory evidence.[4][5][6][7] However, a more recent study lends support to the hypothesis, finding a layer of elevated platinum and other metals at numerous locales across North America and Greenland, levels associated with extraterrestrial bodies.[8]

The current impact hypothesis states that the air burst(s) or impact(s) of a swarm of carbonaceous chondrites or comet fragments set areas of the North American continent on fire, causing the extinction of most of the megafauna in North America and the demise of the North American Clovis culture after the last glacial period.[9] The Younger Dryas ice age lasted for about 1,200 years before the climate warmed again. This swarm is hypothesized to have exploded above or possibly on the Laurentide Ice Sheet in the region of the Great Lakes, though no impact crater has yet been identified and no physical model by which such a swarm could form or explode in the air has been proposed. Nevertheless, the proponents suggest that it would be physically possible for such an air burst to have been similar to, but orders of magnitude larger than, the Tunguska event of 1908. The hypothesis proposed that animal and human life in North America not directly killed by the blast or the resulting coast-to-coast wildfires would have likely starved on the burned surface of the continent.

1. Firestone, Richard; West, Allen; Warwick-Smith, Simon (4 June 2006). The Cycle of Cosmic Catastrophes: How a Stone-Age Comet Changed the Course of World Culture. Bear & Company. p. 392. ISBN 1591430615.
2. Firestone RB, West A, Kennett JP; et al. (October 2007). "Evidence for an extraterrestrial impact 12,900 years ago that contributed to the megafaunal extinctions and the Younger Dryas cooling". Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 104 (41): 16016–21. Bibcode:2007PNAS..10416016F. doi:10.1073/pnas.0706977104. PMC 1994902Freely accessible. PMID 17901202.
3. Bunch TE, Hermes RE, Moore AM; et al. (June 2012). "Very high-temperature impact melt products as evidence for cosmic airbursts and impacts 12,900 years ago". Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 109 (28): E1903–12. Bibcode:2012PNAS..109E1903B. doi:10.1073/pnas.1204453109. PMC 3396500Freely accessible. PMID 22711809.
4. Kerr, R. A. (3 September 2010). "Mammoth-Killer Impact Flunks Out". Science. 329 (5996): 1140–1. Bibcode:2010Sci...329.1140K. doi:10.1126/science.329.5996.1140. PMID 20813931.
5. Pinter, Nicholas; Scott, Andrew C.; Daulton, Tyrone L.; Podoll, Andrew; Koeberl, Christian; Anderson, R. Scott; Ishman, Scott E. (2011). "The Younger Dryas impact hypothesis: A requiem". Earth-Science Reviews. 106 (3–4): 247. Bibcode:2011ESRv..106..247P. doi:10.1016/j.earscirev.2011.02.005.
6. Pigati JS; Latorre C; Rech JA; Betancourt JL; Martínez KE; Budahn JR (April 2012). "Accumulation of impact markers in desert wetlands and implications for the Younger Dryas impact hypothesis". Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 109 (19): 7208–12. Bibcode:2012PNAS..109.7208P. doi:10.1073/pnas.1200296109. PMC 3358914Freely accessible. PMID 22529347. Retrieved 7 February 2017.
7. Boslough, M.; K. Nicoll; V. Holliday; T. L. Daulton; D. Meltzer; N. Pinter; A. C. Scott; T. Surovell; P. Claeys; J. Gill; F. Paquay; J. Marlon; P. Bartlein; C. Whitlock; D. Grayson & A. J. T. Jull (2012). "Arguments and Evidence Against a Younger Dryas Impact Event" (PDF). GEOPHYSICAL MONOGRAPH SERIES. 198: 13–26. Retrieved 7 February 2017.
8. Moore; et al. (2017). "Widespread platinum anomaly documented at the Younger Dryas onset in North American sedimentary sequences". Nature Scientific Reports. 7: 44031. doi:10.1038/srep44031.
9. Kennett DJ, Kennett JP, West A; et al. (January 2009). "Nanodiamonds in the Younger Dryas boundary sediment layer". Science. 323 (5910): 94. Bibcode:2009Sci...323...94K. doi:10.1126/science.1162819. PMID 19119227.


There is a later elaboration of tthe above hypothesis based on the formation of impact nanodiamonds. These are found in two geological layers, one is the K-T layer of 65 million years ago that caused the extinction of the dinosaurs and other fauna[2], the other is the YDB (Younger Dryas Boundary)[1]:

1. Kinze, Charles R. (Aug 26, 2014). "Nanodiamond-Rich Layer across Three Continents Consistent with Major Cosmic Impact at 12,800 Cal BP". Journal of Geology. 122 (09/2014): 475–506. doi:10.1086/677046. ISSN 0022-1376.
2. Cohen, Julie (2014-08-28). "Nanodiamonds Are Forever | The UCSB Current". News.ucsb.edu. Retrieved 2015-11-24.

The YD impact effects are observable across three continents, which are North America, South America, and the Northern half of Africa. There is also a carbon mat (i.e. layer of ash) that indicates that over 90% of the plant life on the North American continent burned during wildfires following the YD impact. (The South American and African continents show the impact nano-diamonds but were spared the continent-wide wildfires.) This is the reason that the Clovis Culture died off, along with their DNA contribution to the Human Genome, and also the reason for the extinction of the North American megafauna, as those animals not killed outright starved from lack of fodder for the herbivores.

Yes, the YD Impact Hypothesis remains controversial. The prior most popular theory blamed human predation for megafauna extinction. As with that other unproven theory about AGW, some people would prefer to believe that humans are more significant on this globe than they actually are. I consider that pure hubris.
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Re: First humans in the Americas

Unread postby rockdoc123 » Fri 28 Apr 2017, 15:45:48

Essentially every scientist agrees the Calico Hills artifacts/geofacts are indistinguishable from human made tools. But the deniers then argue that they can't be human artifacts because they are too old and there are no other sites of similar age in North America.


this is incorrect. Shortly aftered Leakey passed away there was a conference held on the Calico site and a paper which resulted from that:

Haynes, V. 1973. The Calico Site: Artifacts or Geofacts? Science, v181, pp 305-310.

After examining, for the sixth time, the Calico site and the specimens recovered from the lower Yermo formation, I find no evidence to alter my previous views- that is, that the evidence for artifacts remains uncompelling and that a natural origin cannot be precluded. In fact, normal natural processes are adequate to explain the origin of all of the phenomena observed at the Calico site.


and a few years later a statistical study on the fragments:

G. Duvall & William T. Venner .1979. A Statistical Analysis of the Lithics from the Calico Site (SBCM 1500A), California, Journal of Field Archaeology, 6:4, 455-462, DOI: 10.1179/009346979791488952

By considering the results of our statistical testing that the Calico Tools were form selected and the other factors-that the site is located on an alluvial fan, that fractured siliceous materials are found throughout the fan, that the evidence for skeletal material and cultural structures is lacking, and that the 1970 international conference at Calico could not support the hypothesis that man was present at the Calico site-we must conclude that man had no part in the modification of the fractured siliceous materials. We also conclude that the materials labeled as tools at the Calico site were form selected and represent a biased sample of the naturally fractured siliceous rock population of the alluvial fan at the base of the Calico Mountains.


And following that work done on the supposed fire ring

Bischoff, J. L. 1984. A TL/ESR study of the hearth feature at the Calico Archaeological Site, California. American Antiquity, V 49. Pp 764-774

Thus, it would seem that no fire burned in the hearth feature during at least the past 400,000 years. This time span is twice the 200,000 years determined by uranium-series dating on CaCO, coatings of cobbles within the lower part of the deposit (Bischoff et al. 1981). These coatings are secondary and ground water-derived and therefore provide a minimum age for the deposit. However, because of the present aridity and tectonic elevation of the Yermo deposits high above modem stream channels, it appears that the carbonate-producing ground waters were moving through the sediments during or shortly after the time of fan deposition. If this interpretation is correct, the results of the present study would seem to preclude the possibility that a fire burned within the feature.


There are a few articles throughout this time period that argue the artifacts are consistent with tools. Hence it is controversial.
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Re: First humans in the Americas

Unread postby Plantagenet » Fri 28 Apr 2017, 17:22:05

rockdoc123 wrote:We ... conclude that the materials labeled as tools at the Calico site were form selected and represent a biased sample of the naturally fractured siliceous rock population of the alluvial fan at the base of the Calico Mountains.


This isn't my own field of research, but I must say that is one of the most idiotic statements I've ever seen in a scientific paper.

The scientists working at the Calico site identified some worked flint stones as human tools. OF COURSE these are a "biased sample"---these are the ones scientists picked out and identified as tools. Thats what is always done in archeological sites.

Early man would typically find "quarries" i.e. quarries where he could find flint or obsidian outcrops or rocks and then he would work the stone to create tools. OF COURSE the tools are the same lithology as the underlying rock and of course scientists looking for human tools would "form select" the stones that they believe are human tools from the other detritus at the quarry site.

Sheesh! Isn't that obvious?

---------------------------------------

I saw hundreds of human formed tools myself at an archeological site on the Alaska Peninsula. The paleo-Aleuts picked up rocks, worked some, dropped the ones they didn't liked, and left with a "tool kit" of the best ones. There were worked stones everywhere at the site. And Sea Gypsy has actually knapped stones himself to make tools. Its not a big mystery. The little flaking around the edges of sharp tools requires human working. Here in Alaska they would push off small flakes to make the edge. I can see similar flakes and edges on the Calico tools even in the pics.



--------------

While driving to the University today I heard an NPR interview on the program "Science Friday" with two of the authors of the new Nature paper reporting the discovery of primitive stone tools and the 100,000 year old human worked bones. They said that they believed their discovery should result in a reappraisal of other sites where supposed evidence of early man had been found in North America.

Thats seems smart to me. If man was in North America over 100,000 years ago, then sites with what appear to be artifacts may be early man sites even if they are more than 100,000 years old. You can't rule them out anymore by saying they are too old.

The Nature paper authors also said they had another early man site, which they couldn't discuss in full yet.

Once is an accident, twice is coincidence, and three times is enemy action. We've now got multiple early man sites in North America!!! YES!!!!!

Interesting stuff.

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Re: First humans in the Americas

Unread postby rockdoc123 » Fri 28 Apr 2017, 18:38:14

The scientists working at the Calico site identified some worked flint stones as human tools. OF COURSE these are a "biased sample"---these are the ones scientists picked out and identified as tools. Thats what is always done in archeological sites.


read the paper, the author is quite specific as to why he believes the shards are naturally formed.

The paleo-Aleuts picked up rocks, worked some, dropped the ones they didn't liked, and left with a "tool kit" of the best ones. There were worked stones everywhere at the site. And Sea Gypsy has actually knapped stones himself to make tools. Its not a big mystery. The little flaking around the edges of sharp tools requires human working. Here in Alaska they would push off small flakes to make the edge. I can see similar flakes and edges on the Calico tools even in the pics.


the whole issue of naturally formed versus worked has been a hot topic for a number of decades. Authors have attempted to use statistics to ascertain the difference but outside the end members (unaltered flint and obvious arrowheads, axeheads etc) there is a host of pieces that are argued about at various sites. Haynes wrote a more general article on the topic in 1988 that discusses pieces from various sites that he and others believe are questionable. A good summary of the problem appears in the following article

Staley, D. P. 2006. Shadow of Doubt or Doubtful Shadows: small-scale low-density lithic scatters and agrifacts. North American Archaeologist. Vol 27, Issue 2, pp. 175 – 199

The fundamental identification of flaked stone as artifact is critical to all that follows in archaeology. The identification of sites, interpretations of prehistoric behaviors, adaptations, land use patterns, settlement and subsistence studies, etc. can be distilled to the initial determination of an artifact as being “real” or the result of natural or accidental phenomena such as plow damage. In cultural resource management, artifact identification drives immediate field decisions to modify research strategies and ultimately forms the argumentative basis for research potentials and determinations of significance. Chert flakes and shatter discovered during a NYSDOT sponsored project conducted by New York State Museum-Cultural Resource Survey Program were subjected to a battery of lithic attribute analyses in an attempt to identify artifacts in an agricultural area blanketed by natural chert. With the exception of exotic material types, no single attribute can certainly identify human involvement. A cumulative score of multiple attributes affords greater levels of confidence for cultural vs. natural determinations for larger assemblages. In settings with the “background noise” of natural chert in cultivated soils, cultural genesis determinations of single pieces and very small sparse assemblages must be recognized as hunches or faith-based decisions yet worthy of measured continued investigation.


Thats seems smart to me. If man was in North America over 100,000 years ago, then sites with what appear to be artifacts may be early man sites even if they are more than 100,000 years old. You can't rule them out anymore by saying they are too old.

You didn't read the actual paper....they are claiming the bones were broken for tool manufacture or marrow extraction (they can't tell which). Although the bones can be dated it is impossible to determine whether the bones were broken at the time of death of the mastodon (the 100,000 year date) or much, much later when someone stumbled across some old bones and decided to turn them into tools. This happens all the time. Mastodon tusks which are occasionally found in the Arctic are harvested today and turned into jewellery or knife handles tens of thousands of years later. The commonality in the papers is the authors are all adamant that more work is required.
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Re: First humans in the Americas

Unread postby sparky » Fri 28 Apr 2017, 20:16:23

.
Hey Seagypsy , did some knaping too ,
I wanted to reproduce the Acheulian hand axe , the very first Swiss army knife made by our knuckles dragging forebears
then went on to spear points ,
it's easy ..lot of cuts ,scratches and bruise later ,I'm confident I could give some hopeful idiot
the proper spear to tackle one ton of diner on the hoof while I cheer him for a distance .

the surprise was mounting it in a solid fashion , that was very tricky !
I gained a lot of respect for the ancestors
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Re: First humans in the Americas

Unread postby sparky » Fri 28 Apr 2017, 20:19:22

.
Back to Early Amerids ,
Well ,that's possible but so far the evidence is scanty ,
there need to be a set of finds to establish their presence , one or two sites are not really enough
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Re: First humans in the Americas

Unread postby Synapsid » Fri 28 Apr 2017, 20:41:11

Plantagenet,

Two things:

Don Johanson discovered the Lucy material, not Louis Leakey. You have to be careful with this type of thing--priority in palaeoanthropology is grounds for spilling blood.

Remembering a long way back about the Calico material, the selecting of samples that is referred to is throughout the thickness of the fan material, not selection from a single stratigraphic horizon as would be more likely in the case you suggested. That is a main reason for skepticism: "Hey! I think I have one up here!" "Yeah, I have one [20 meters below] down here too!"

There's a similar set of locales in Brazil, especially at Pedra Furada. Artefacts or geofacts? is again the question, and the ages are far too old. At one rock shelter in a quartzite section, the broken stones on the floor are from the quartzite stratum directly above the shelter mouth but the archaeologists working there are convinced they're artefacts. I doubt it, myself.
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Re: First humans in the Americas

Unread postby Synapsid » Fri 28 Apr 2017, 21:04:02

KaiserJeep et al.,

About the demise of the Clovis culture: we need to keep in mind that the statement refers to the disappearance of a specific assemblage of stone and bone tools from the archaeological record. The iconic fluted stone point is what everyone recognizes. In the southern Great Plains we see smaller fluted stone points from the Folsom assemblage layered above Clovis material in Oklahoma sites where the dating control shows a time gap of about a century, and the researchers working the sites expect that gap to close or at least shrink as more sites are excavated. Clovis points have been associated with mammoth in a few sites in the Southwest; Folsom points are found in association with bison and, I believe, horse--that would be why they're smaller. Oh: Folsom fluted points do not look like miniature Clovis points--the flutes occupy much more of the point surface.

The takeaway: We should avoid taking "demise of the Clovis culture" type statements to refer to wipeout of people. The topic is stuff dug up.

We do have Clovis genomic material, from the Anzick child in Montana, and it shows that peoples in Central and South America are her descendants. There's a dearth of comparative genomic material from Native Americans in the US because of a long history of various kinds of abuse, but there is gradual improvement that will let us flesh out more of the history of early settlement of the New World.
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Re: First humans in the Americas

Unread postby SeaGypsy » Fri 28 Apr 2017, 21:08:40

sparky wrote:.
Hey Seagypsy , did some knaping too ,
I wanted to reproduce the Acheulian hand axe , the very first Swiss army knife made by our knuckles dragging forebears
then went on to spear points ,
it's easy ..lot of cuts ,scratches and bruise later ,I'm confident I could give some hopeful idiot
the proper spear to tackle one ton of diner on the hoof while I cheer him for a distance .

the surprise was mounting it in a solid fashion , that was very tricky !
I gained a lot of respect for the ancestors


Yeah mounting them involves a lot more skill than knapping a sharp edge. There is a severe lack of quality knapping stone through most of mainland Australia. One ancient sandstone deposit on the south coast, Vic/SA border, supplied tools to a vast area of southern Australia. One 'glassy rock' deposit in the Kimberley ranges supplied stone which spread right across the continent, rarer than the rarest, the best spear points became heirlooms passed on for thousands of years. Most places the folks got by with pretty crap rock.

(Planty, re your debate above- those stones are knapped, no way that form is reached by accident. They are also likely made in situ, as only useful shapes were carried away from the quarry. A day of knapping produces 80% flake & useless lumps, 10-20% tool quality pieces.)
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Re: First humans in the Americas

Unread postby Plantagenet » Fri 28 Apr 2017, 21:12:32

Synapsid wrote:the ages are far too old.....


1. If the new discovery of human tools and human fracturing of bones for marrow ca. 130,000 years ago in San Diego is correct, then the ages of some of these other possible sites aren't too old. The ages would be consistent with the new discovery at the San Diego site.

2. If the San Diego site was occupied by humans, then it is highly unlikely there was just one band of paleohumans magically dropped just in one place for just one moment of time---there will be other sites with records of human activity. Its just common sense to have an open mind now about other sites where possible artifacts that have previously been dismissed as being "too old"---because they aren't too old any more.

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Don't bother excavating here......the professor says these sediments are far too old to have human artifacts in them
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Re: First humans in the Americas

Unread postby Synapsid » Fri 28 Apr 2017, 21:31:43

KaiserJeep et al.,

I should have mentioned that the range of dates for the Anzick child, from Montana, is:

12 707 to 12 556 calibrated years before present. That span of time lies within the Younger Dryas.
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