Rabbit Bone One of the rabbit bones dated for the study. Credit: Andrew Somerville, Iowa State University Posted on 06/02/2021 10:39:00 AM PDT by Red Badger
An unexpected discovery by an Iowa State University researcher suggests that the first humans may have arrived in North America more than 30,000 years ago – nearly 20,000 years earlier than originally thought.
Andrew Somerville, an assistant professor of anthropology in world languages and cultures, says he and his colleagues made the discovery while studying the origins of agriculture in the Tehuacan Valley in Mexico. As part of that work, they wanted to establish a date for the earliest human occupation of the Coxcatlan Cave in the valley, so they obtained radiocarbon dates for several rabbit and deer bones that were collected from the cave in the 1960s as part of the Tehuacan Archaeological-Botanical Project. The dates for the bones suddenly took Somerville and his colleagues in a different direction with their work.
The date ranges for the bone samples from the base of the cave ranged from 33,448 to 28,279 years old. The results are published in the academic journal Latin American Antiquity. Somerville says even though previous studies had not dated items from the bottom of the cave, he was not expecting such old ages. The findings add to the debate over a long-standing theory that the first humans crossed the Bering Land Bridge into the Americas 13,000 years ago.
“We weren’t trying to weigh in on this debate or even find really old samples. We were just trying to situate our agricultural study with a firmer timeline,” Somerville said. “We were surprised to find these really old dates at the bottom of the cave, and it means that we need to take a closer look at the artifacts recovered from those levels.”
Somerville says the findings provide researchers with a better understanding of the chronology of the region. Previous studies relied on charcoal and plant samples, but he says the bones were a better material for dating. However, questions still remain. Most importantly, is there a human link to the bottom layer of the cave where the bones were found?
To answer that question, Somerville and Matthew Hill, ISU associate professor of anthropology, plan to take a closer look at the bone samples for evidence of cut marks that indicate the bones were butchered by a stone tool or human, or thermal alternations that suggest the bones were boiled or roasted over fire. He says the possible stone tools from the early levels of the cave may also yield clues.
Rabbit Bone One of the rabbit bones dated for the study. Credit: Andrew Somerville, Iowa State University
“Determining whether the stone artifacts were products of human manufacture or if they were just naturally chipped stones would be one way to get to the bottom of this,” Somerville said. “If we can find strong evidence that humans did in fact make and use these tools, that’s another way we can move forward.”
Year-long journey to even find the bones Not only was this discovery unexpected, but the process of tracking down the animal bones to take samples was more than Somerville anticipated. The collection of artifacts from the 1960s Tehuacan Archaeological-Botanical Project was distributed to different museums and labs in Mexico and the United States, and it was unclear where the animal bones were sent.
After a year of emails and cold calls, Somerville and his collaborator, Isabel Casar from the National Autonomous University of Mexico, had a potential lead for a lab in Mexico City. The lab director, Joaquin Arroyo-Cabrales, agreed to give Somerville and Casar a tour to help search for the missing collection. The tour proved to be beneficial. Among the countless boxes of artifacts, they found what they were looking for.
“Having spent months trying to locate the bones, we were excited to find them tucked away on the bottom shelf in a dark corner of the lab,” Somerville said. “At the time, we felt that was a great discovery, we had no idea it would lead to this.”
Once he located the bones, Somerville got permission from the Mexican government to take small samples – about 3/4 inch in length and 1/4 inch in width – from 17 bones (eight rabbits and nine deer) for radiocarbon dating. If closer examination of the bones provides evidence of a human link, Somerville says it will change what we know about the timing and how the first people came to America.
“Pushing the arrival of humans in North America back to over 30,000 years ago would mean that humans were already in North America prior to the period of the Last Glacial Maximum, when the Ice Age was at its absolute worst,” Somerville said. “Large parts of North America would have been inhospitable to human populations. The glaciers would have completely blocked any passage over land coming from Alaska and Canada, which means people probably would have had to come to the Americas by boats down the Pacific coast.”
Isabel Casar, a professor at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, and Joaquín Arroyo-Cabrales, a researcher with the National Institute of Anthropology and History in Mexico, contributed to this research. The work was funded by the National Science Foundation and the Wenner-Gren Foundation.
Reference: “New AMS Radiocarbon Ages from the Preceramic Levels of Coxcatlan Cave, Puebla, Mexico: A Pleistocene Occupation of the Tehuacan Valley?” by Andrew D. Somerville, Isabel Casar and Joaquín Arroyo-Cabrales, 19 May 2021, Latin American Antiquity. DOI: 10.1017/laq.2021.26
Humans have been on this planet for at least 200000 years.
Of course they populated the American continent more than 30000 years ago.🤔
Gypsies
Arrived 30,000 years ago.....and still waiting for their luggage.
May have been 100,000 years earlier. Denisovans or Neanderthals. See https://www.newscientist.com/article/2129042-first-americans-may-have-been-neanderthals-130000-years-ago/
I’ve always wondered about how scientists discovered the baseline of carbon dating. Kind of like the chicken and the egg. Don’t scientists have to start with a constant?
OK kids, follow me on this one. There was an ice age and a Bering Land Bridge because a lot of the sea water was frozen as glaciers so there was a lot more shore line than there is now. Humans were migrating from Siberia across the land bridge. Do they continue inland where everything is frozen and there might not be much food or do they stick to the coastline where they know there is a lot of stuff to eat as they move south? I would have stuck to the shoreline. Eventually the Earth starts to warm and much of that ice melts back to water. The land bridge is flooded as are most of the coastal settlements. We’ll not find any evidence of these coastal settlements because they are all under water now. However, if the ancient humans migrated far enough south along the coast they eventually would have reached areas without glaciers and could have easily moved inland. Mexico was never glaciated. See how easy it is to be a scientist?
The writers of this article knows not of the discovery in the 80s in South Carolina that shoved man’s presence back in NA to 50KYA, nor the discovery in San Diego area in 1992 along State Route 54 that shoved it back to 130KYA.
This is how Big Foot got here too.
Hey! Johnny come lately, GET OFF MY LAWN!
Thanks Red Badger!
Flood, Fire, and Famine
in the History of Civilization
by Richard Firestone,
Allen West, and
Simon Warwick-Smith
The Were Rabbit has struck again, eh, Doc?
Fascinating!
‘Face
;o]
Funny you should ping this as I’m watching an episode of America Unearthed where they are talking about bog people in Florida and that Europeans could have and most likely did follow an ice sheet from France to North America and down the coast line some 7,000 - 13,000 years before the Clovis people came from Asia across the land bridge in the west.
I’m not suggesting that the Hueyatlaco site surveys weren’t inaccurate or debatable...
...but this demonstrates that they NEVER should have shut down debate on the matter by closing off the site and burying the research under a literal façade of dirt (development) and bureaucratic stonewalling to protect the ‘settled science’ of North American archaeological history (the latter being dripping sarcasm).
I can’t recall the documentary name I watched on the dig over a decade ago, but the Mexican government literally permitted development of the site, including housing and bulldozing of the dig.
Coincidentally, both the Tehuacan Valley site and the (former) Hueyatlaco site are near the city of Puebla, Mexico. The OP article makes no mention.
Curious. /s
For reference & of interest:
https://www.ancient-origins.net/human-origins-science/hueyatlaco-00616
Most of the world was populated by migrants from the Great Rift Valley in Africa, the cradle of mankind.
So the Dutch were first to the Cape. Does that make them native or indigenous?
He who frames the issue, wins the issue. We have created these classifications like native Americans to further the narrative that the land was stolen from its original owners. It is the language of social justice warriors. Illegal aliens are undocumented workers. You can define your gender or lack thereof using pronouns. The Orwellian use of language is a means of control.
Despite the fact that 85% of us were born in the US, the phony claim that we are a nation of immigrants is repeated over and over. What nation is not a nation of immigrants? What does being first mean? What is the area defined? A valley? A continent? The Indians didn't occupy every part of North and South America. And they were certainly not there originally. They migrated from Asia.
Definition of indigenous
1a : produced, growing, living, or occurring natively or naturally in a particular region or environment indigenous plants the indigenous culture
b Indigenous or less commonly indigenous : of or relating to the earliest known inhabitants of a place and especially of a place that was colonized by a now-dominant group Indigenous peoples
2 : innate, inborn
Native
Definition of native (Entry 2 of 2)
1 : one born or reared in a particular place
2a : an original or indigenous inhabitant
b : something indigenous to a particular locality
3 : a local resident especially : a person who has always lived in a place as distinguished from a visitor or a temporary resident
LOLOL
Hope you and pups are doing ok.
I wonder if they had beagles 30,000 years ago?
Them bones them bones them chicken bones.
Them bones them bones them ...
Song I heard once.
5.56mm
Life [or Lucifer] is dumping on me again.
Dog has been tested repeatedly, turned out to be hypothyroidal.
Taking meds for that, now.
Vets said he should have a cardiac exam so we took him 2 weeks ago but they couldn’t manage him and it got rescheduled to next Monday.
So then the torque converter on the “dog car” started acting up, don’t have money to fix it.
Only car left is the PT Loser which the dog doesn’t fit in, let alone is able to haul all three of us over 100 miles of big mountains with the AC running, because the day of his new cardio appt. is calling for 95-98 degrees.
I’m to the point of randomly crying in inconvenient places.
Stress, I reckon.
They probably did have something like rabbit dogs, of a sort.
Dogs have always been with us, thank God.
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