Posted on 02/17/2007 10:59:54 AM PST by blam
Archaeologists to return to Allendale site in May
By PETER FROST
pfrost@islandpacket.com
843-706-8169
Published Saturday, February 17, 2007
It was on the banks of the Savannah River in Allendale County where Al Goodyear in 2004 found the clues of an ancient civilization that could rewrite the history books.
The University of South Carolina archaeologist and a group of volunteers unearthed artifacts estimated to be 50,000 years old, implying humans lived on this continent before the last Ice Age, far earlier than previously believed.
They uncovered what appeared to be cutting tools and stone chisels used by humans that existed an estimated 37,000 years before the earliest-known inhabitants, known as the Clovis culture. It was a discovery that rocked the archaeological community and generated international media attention.
To date, it's the oldest radiocarbon-dated site in North America, Goodyear said.
"The entire Western Hemisphere is coming under closer scrutiny," Goodyear said. "Everything that I was taught as a student is breaking down rapidly."
For decades, the Clovis culture has been recognized as the oldest in the New World. Goodyear discovered evidence of the Clovis at what's called the "Topper site" more than 20 years ago, when he and a researcher found a fluted spear point, the signature tool of the culture.
Then, in 1998, Goodyear decided to dig deeper. He and a rotating group of scientists and volunteers uncovered evidence of a pre-Clovis culture well below the level at which the Clovis artifacts were found.
In 2004, they uncovered artifacts about 12 feet underground -- about seven feet below the Clovis finds.
Goodyear and his group will be back in May for five weeks, offering volunteers the opportunity to work alongside archaeologists and researchers in their quest to debunk the long-held theory that man arrived in North America around 13,000 years ago.
Hilton Head Island resident Jean Guilleux, 64, has assisted Goodyear and his crews for the past five years and plans to volunteer for the May dig.
"After I retired, I became fascinated with archaeology and decided to go and get my hands dirty," he said. "After the first dig, I was hooked."
Guilleux, who is also the president of the Hilton Head chapter of the Archaeological Association of South Carolina, said he's "done it all" at the digs. He's specialized on the pre-Clovis digs for the last three years, digging soil, sifting for artifacts and watching scientists test their finds in the lab.
"It's absolutely fantastic," he said.
GGG Ping.
Uh oh, this could really screw up the whole native american sovereignty thing if they weren't the first ones here.... Maybe we are going to have to turn over South Carolina to Guatemala or Peru (I think North Carolina has already gone to Mexico).
So, Kennewick Man was just a johnny-come-lately? Or maybe a tourist?
Quite probably. The last ice age would have wiped out much evidence (if there was any) of any hypothetical predecessor civilizations.
I doubt it. These pre-Clovis sites have been of the solutrean type of objects that originate from European areas. There has already been some pretty solid genetic evidence that links eastern tribes to genetic markers found only in Europeans. So yes, it may foul the treasured myths that indians were the first on this continent; it may show that ice-age and pre-ice-age Europeans got here first. So 1492 may have been the beginning of the European "Reconquista" of the North American continent.
Well how about Arkansas? I live about 70 miles north of the Arkansas border. Maybe we can turn it over to a bunch of inbreeding rednecks who...oh...
...never mind.
When Arkansas rednecks inbreed, they send the worst, most brain-damaged progeny 70 miles north of the border.
Well, only in what is now Canada and the northern US. The evidence should still be present in the south, right?
Theoretically, but if those areas weren't settled at the time the glaciers came marching down from the north, the oldest of the settlements we'd find (assuming the mud hasn't swallowed them, New-Madrid-like quakes haven't levelled them, or the jungles haven't destroyed/vanished them) would date from (surprise) just after the ice age reached its peak.
It looks like a single group (haplogroup X) in Eurasia split, with one part going west and into Europe, with the other going east, across the Bering land bridge and into the US in the area of the Great Lakes.
The following website has some of the details:
Click here, go to the bottom and click on 'Genetic Markers', look on the right and click on haplogroup X. Read it.
I've spent lots of time working in Arkansas and I have appreciation for those areas which are very nice so realize this is all tongue-in-cheek. Please no flames for Arkie bashing. I'd still rather live in Arkansas than New York City or San Francisco (or Los Angeles again)
Archaeologist's Find Could Shake Up Science (Topper Site)
SP Times | 1-7-2007 | Heather Urquides
Posted on 01/08/2007 2:14:54 PM EST by blam
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1764245/posts
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Study Says Americas Settled 15,000 Years Ago
Source: National Geographic
Published: 8-31-2001 Author: Not stated
Posted on 09/03/2001 06:59:54 PDT by blam
http://www.freerepublic.com/forum/a3b938cda48c8.htm
There have been some "rethinks" about that too, as of late. Some thoughts have the glaciation coming down as far as North Central Texas.
That said, much of the rest of North America would have been permafrost or uninhabitable even with the depicted amount of glaciation. Any artifacts would have been destroyed.
Neat !!!
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