| "The first discovery of a Palaeolithic site in Japan took place just after World War II. Until this time so strong was the belief amongst archaeologists that there was no Palaeolithic at all in Japan that excavators of Jomon sites would stop digging once they had reached the bottom... simply because the discovery of earlier artefacts was seen as totally impossible... In 1980 artefacts from a number of sites... were reliably dated... Those from Zazaragi were dated to 130,000 BP although sceptics maintained that they were perhaps no older than 50,000 years... IT must be said that the idea of Homo Erectus being the first American is, to almost all archaeologists, absolutely out of the question... According to Simpson and her team, a number of distinct types of artefacts, including hand-axes, hammerstones, and scrapers, were found at Calico, and their forms could not be the result of natural forces but can be nothing else [than] the tool kits of 200,000 year old occupants of California. They also claim that these artefacts are of a comparable technological level to those found at Lower Palaeolithic sites in China, and see the lack of acceptance of their finds as indicating a psychological barrier on the part of most archaeologists in accepting new and controversial data that does not fit neatly into preconceived notions of the antiquity of humans in the Americas." [pp 247-260] |
