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 evolved in East Africa. That makes the Dutch the first Europeans there not first humans unless you think other than Europeans aren’t human.
Indigenous in the context of anthropology (which is listed in your dictionary definitions) means first humans to occupy the land.
You’re doing what liberals always do. Redefine the language to suit yourself.
BTW - by your definition Europeans are Asians since the vast majority of the European gene pool migrated out of Asia.
When the Dutch colonized South Africa, they ere the first humans to go to Capetown. Aren't the Dutch then the indigenous or native people to that area in much the same way that those who entered North and South America over the Siberian land bridge, indigenous to those areas?
Indigenous in the context of anthropology (which is listed in your dictionary definitions) means first humans to occupy the land.
There are many areas of North and South America where the first humans to occupy the land were from Europe, not Asia.
You’re doing what liberals always do. Redefine the language to suit yourself.
No. You have bought into the construct that Europeans are occupying native lands. Sort of a territorial imperative. Just like we are a nation of immigrants. Who got there first imbues the "native/indigenous" people with certain rights and the moral high ground. We owe them something regardless of how much time elapses. There were warring tribes long before the Europeans got here. They seized one anothers territory.
BTW - by your definition Europeans are Asians since the vast majority of the European gene pool migrated out of Asia.
My definition? I don't recognize "native/indigenous" people. but rather, an earlier wave of migrants.
There's no such thing as a 'pure' European—or anyone else.
South Africa is not East Africa. Nevertheless the Dutch weren’t the first in Africa. Because the inhabitants were nomadic doesn’t negate their status as first inhabitants.
The word “indigenous” has one meaning in this context and that meaning doesn’t add a value beyond that.
However you seem to agree with liberals that there is a value attached to that meaning. That is that nobody other than the indigenous has property rights.
Sorry I don’t buy that. Land is the property of those who can hold it. If the Europeans don’t reproduce either themselves or their culture, I see no special right to the land they’ve occupied most of the Holocene. The ancestors of modern Europeans took it from the Mesolithic inhabitants before them. It looks like new Asiatics or Africans will take the land from modern Europeans if things don’t change.The next wave of humans who occupy every land has every right to it. It’s the right of conquest.
So one first step on a continent makes you a native/indigenous person. The first European settlement in southern Africa was established in 1652 by the Dutch East India Company at Table Bay, 30 miles (48 km) north of the cape. The first Europeans to reach the Cape were the Portuguese. Bartholomeu Dias arrived in 1488 after journeying south along the west coast of Africa. The Dutch imported slaves from elsewhere to support the settlement.
However you seem to agree with liberals that there is a value attached to that meaning. That is that nobody other than the indigenous has property rights.
I don't attach a value to it. You do. I consider them migrants with no special rights and privileges just because they got to a certain place first.
Sorry I don’t buy that. Land is the property of those who can hold it. If the Europeans don’t reproduce either themselves or their culture, I see no special right to the land they’ve occupied most of the Holocene. The ancestors of modern Europeans took it from the Mesolithic inhabitants before them. It looks like new Asiatics or Africans will take the land from modern Europeans if things don’t change.The next wave of humans who occupy every land has every right to it. It’s the right of conquest.
Agree completely. America is facing the same problem as it is being colonized by the Third World thanks to our immigration policies. IMO Europe will fight harder to retain its culture and history than we will. America will be lost thru the ballot box.
The Path to National Suicide:An Essay on Immigration and Multiculturalism by Lawrence Auster
No, they found them in the Clinton White House under his desk.
I do value the indigenous in and of themselves. Native Americans are an ancient group of indigenous peoples. Sometimes the indigenous aren't that ancient. The Maori are indigenous to New Zealand but only got there 700 years ago.
If you’re talking down to Mexico, sure, I’d buy the Siberian thing. But I think most of the Siberians lived on or near the Bering Strait, with about a group of 70 or so, adventurer or outcast, persons making it to the American continent and begatting indians before the land was submerged
But if you’re talking South America, I’m down with the Aussies, “long ears”, tall white men with beards, who sailed west and settled the Pacific islands, then hopped across to Peru to the east, expanding the Y-DNA group (Asian/European) up the east coast of SA, possibly further, throughout the interior prior to the Amazonian culture, employing the same block-building techniques found in ancient Egypt. Eventually exterminated by war with the ‘short ears’, the blood-thirsty Marqueses of the pacific, and/or, north american indians with ‘viking-like’ canoes strapped two by two’ according to polynesian legends relayed to the Kon-Tiki expedition leader, Heyerdahl.
” a new line of evidence indicates that the first American clades split in East Asia, not in Beringia, which makes the gene flow of the Y ancestry from the ancestral East Asian groups even more likely “
https://www.pnas.org/content/118/14/e2025739118.full
after listening to a description of the boats from a polynesian storyteller, an european explorer might consider a ‘viking’ boat was being described and the best way to also describe the craft to his readers. Here’s a ‘viking’ boat on Lake Titicaca, Peru, the ‘birthplace’ of Inca culture:
https://i0.wp.com/www.alanarnette.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Reed-boat-on-Lake-Titicaca.jpg?fit=2028%2C1521&ssl=1
See if you can get dog rescheduled to a cooler later date, or ask for a call on an earlier cancellation appt. Thirty years ago they may have had semi-tame prowling wolves.
I intend to tomorrow.
We are trying to scrounge up $250 for a full transmission flush because several people have said it may fix the issue, hopefully.
The idiots at Dodge made the tranny filler tube prone to water getting in and contaminating the tranny fluid.
Plus, there’s a stupid “drain hole” under the wipers that lets water pour right down into that area of the engine compartment, as well.
The first time this issue popped up was over a year ago, right after I ran it through a really good carwash.
The shudder started immediately and continued to escalate until the tranny gave up.
No one local had a clue what it was until it was too late.
Last October, we put a low mileage tranny from a Dodge Charger in it but as usual, this spring has been one drenching downpour after another.
For a month, no one listened to me, that the car was “idling weird” at stops.
Turns out that was the first subtle symptom.
I tried to go to town last Friday night in a real frog drowner and the shudder started an 1/8 mile from my lane.
I turned around and went home.
Unlike the last time, the bump shift gears are still working like they should so it *might* just be fluid contamination messing up the torque converter.
Won’t know until I can afford a thorough flush.
Praying to God that fixes it because otherwise, it’s $1100 for a new torque converter installed.
That ain’t gonna happen, since every dime I had has been spent fighting to get the dog properly diagnosed.
The covid crap has screwed up my ability to get good, timely vet care and add to that, *8* vets have given up in this area, in the last two months, so the remaining vets are swamped and not giving the usual thorough care they used to.
The same could be said for the North Atlantic.
Good luck on getting a changed appointment or finding a way to fix your Dodge. I too have had a few rants about my old 96 Dodge Caravan, but am now much happier with a new Ford Transit Connect. My only problem now is that the local dump insists this is a cargo van even though it can also be a six passenger automobile so they give me problems trying to dump the stuff from the house I am renovating. Oh, well. One good rant deserves another. ;-)
In “science” there are accepted concensi (sic) that should never been disturbed or challenged. the YD event is one of those challenges. Another is that the Americas could never had been visited prior to Clovis. We do know that Austral-asian DNA is found in segments of the Native American population, as well as Polynesian. Now the question is how did they get there? They could have island and shoreline hopped up north and around to the Americas. They moight have travelled straigh across with boat and sail...frankly, we don’t really know. Neither did Hancock. But the conversation needs to take place and thrashed out.
When the Climate people started talking about “settled science”, every decent scientist in the world should have jumped up and said, “Hang on. We never really know much of anything in science. We don’t “prove” things in science — that’s a mathematical concept not a scientific concept. Science is a quest, we are constantly learning new things. Science is never “settled” and it’s a bad idea to talk about it that way.”
But, of course, scientists kept their mouths shut.
But the conversation needs to take place and thrashed out.
My DNA families agree with you.
It is amazing to us how the leading Genealogy on line companies can show/document 1% African DNA down to our grand kids and grand nephews/nieces.
Yet, they then list zero DNA re Native American/ancestors, mainly the civilized tribes. Ancestors documented by them as grandparents with standard historical genealogy proof/data.
In spite of them using standard genealogy historical documents to list these people as up to 4th to 9th grandparents. None of them are listed as DNA grandparents.
Nor, do we the living descendants, show any so called Native American DNA in spite being shown as descendants of so called Native Americans.
According to the major on line Ancestor company, I have over 100 documented Cherokees and other civilized tribe ancestors/grandparents at various levels via genealogy standards.
Yet, there is zip/nadda/no DNA evidence/data re me, my siblings and other relatives.
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