Please put this into plain English. If it weren’t for 5 years of Anthropology, Archaeology and 3 years of geology, I wouldn’t have a clue as to what this article was about.
In plain English, a big-assed meteor/comet/asteroid hit the earth and its’ impact ring covered a wide geographic area, leaving behind identical impact fragments/evidence that could be dated.
When you have a comet or meteor hit a chunk of Big Ice it's going to 'splode like nobody's business in SECONDS.
It would excavate a great mass of the underlying earth ~ rocks, dirt, gold bearing sands (quartz and otherwise), and everything else.
That mass would go flying out for thouands of miles and come down where it could be found later and "mined", ploughed under, or whatever.
My theory is that there was enough recoverable gold in the debris that the debris was mostly dissipated and destroyed as evidence even in Paleo-Indian times, and certainly by Spanish and other European gold hunting periods. That gold was sent to Europe for the most part after the Spanish conquest.
This stuff shouldn't be all that deep ~ hence the easy access.
The goldbearing region in Virginia was REVEALED by a larger asteroid that hit the DELMARVA peninsula several million years back. That is different ~ and explains why all the gold in Virginia and south into the Carolanas is kind of along the Fall Line!
I’ll write the mods, see if they’ll change the title. ;’)
-——evidence that could be dated.———
the date was 12.9 ka whenever the hell that was in BP years