This awl, fashioned from a piece of deer bone, has been radiocarbon dated to 10,400 BP, making it the oldest organic implement yet documented in Indiana. It was discovered by University of Indianapolis students in 2003. [University of Indianapolis]
Posted on 10/28/2008 8:28:30 PM PDT by SunkenCiv
A prehistoric bone tool discovered by University of Indianapolis archeologists is the oldest such artifact ever documented in Indiana, the researchers say.
Radiocarbon dating shows that the tool -- an awl fashioned from the leg bone of a white tail deer, with one end ground to a point -- is 10,400 years old.
The find supports the growing notion that, in the wake of the most recent Ice Age, the first Hoosiers migrated northward earlier than previously thought. Sites from the Paleoindian and Early Archaic eras are more common in surrounding states such as Illinois and Ohio, which were not as heavily glaciated as Indiana...
The tool was found in 2003 in northwestern Indiana's Carroll County by students participating in the university's annual summer archeology field school. Schmidt has directed ongoing excavations since 2002 at the site near the small town of Flora, where a glacial lake attracted mastodon, giant beaver and smaller wildlife for thousands of years.
Stone tools thought to be from the same era have been found in Indiana, but because they are not made from organic materials, their age cannot determined precisely, only inferred from surrounding materials and comparison with similar artifacts. Tools made from biodegradable materials, such as bone, rarely survive intact from such ancient times.
(Excerpt) Read more at newswise.com ...
This awl, fashioned from a piece of deer bone, has been radiocarbon dated to 10,400 BP, making it the oldest organic implement yet documented in Indiana. It was discovered by University of Indianapolis students in 2003. [University of Indianapolis]
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Wonder how their ground game was back then.
More to the point (sorry), did they find someone to help them in the paint?
Bobby Knight did seem to have a little cave-man in him.
I suspect everyone then living in Indiana was killed when the great comet crashed into the remaining ice sheet to the North. That comet just happened to smash into the biggest gold and diamond site in Saskatchewan. The ejecta covered the Midwest. Residual gold can still be found in highlands to the South of this find.
I take it that white tailed deer ‘migrated northward’ just ahead of the guy with the club.
So is that where the gold came from that people pan for at Morgan-Monroe State Forest? I’ve always wondered how there could be gold there.
I have one with a hole drilled about a third the way down the shaft from the point. I believe it was used like a large sewing needle for hides and pelts.
The "mother load" was/is on top of Weed Patch Hill in Brown County state park.
During his journey from Mobile Bay DeSoto encountered many Indians who pointed unerringly to the biggest single source of gold in the MidWest/Ohio Valley.
It's not like it was hidden.
The gold dropped on lower elevations was buried and is unreachable.
The "mother load" was/is on top of Weed Patch Hill in Brown County state park.
During his journey from Mobile Bay DeSoto encountered many Indians who pointed unerringly to the biggest single source of gold in the MidWest/Ohio Valley.
It's not like it was hidden.
The gold dropped on lower elevations was buried and is unreachable.
Yes, I was also thinking about Firestone’s hypothesis, which proposes the giant meteor event at 12,800 years ago. It is interesting that this is in the 10,000 year time frame, but talks of Mastadons and Giant Beaver, so if the boloid happened, then obviously all the mega fauna was not immediately destroyed. I guess that giant beaver would have been protected by being in water or inside their huts. I like the idea about the northern Europe possible connections. Have American archeologists compared this awl/needle with European manufactures of that age?
If we change the reference to "BC" rather than "years ago", the item pops up 400 years after the end of the Younger Dryas.
Here's the rub ~ the dead beavers and mastadons in the vicinity of the glacial lake could have been "deposited" there BEFORE the Younger Dryas and unless the folks doing the study on the critters were real careful about their dating methodology, and labeling practices, later researchers might well believe animals fully extinct elsewhere in the world were still grubbing around in Northern Indiana!
I suspect the dead critters were laid down before the Younger Dryas. The deer bone tool showed up in the warmer period after the Younger Dryas simply because it really was warm enough for settlement, grass had returned to the area, deer were living there, and the hunting wasgood.
Survivor populations from further South (Virginia for example) simply tracked through Cumberland over to the Monongahela, and rafted North, then West, to the New Cut at Louisville (where the Ohio had just recently been created). They got off their rafts and began working North to Lake Michigan.
At this time, 10,400 BC, there were no East Asian hunting camps in this region. They showed up a full thousand years later. At the same time East Asians had clearly arrived along the Columbia nearly 2000 years earlier but had not penetrated East.
That was because it took a doggone long time for plants to re-colonize the Great Plains. Without forage there were no animals, and without animals, there were no East Asian colonists.
At some point in time the East Asian populations met the European populations and formed the new American Indian populations in the most logical manner.
You know this will happen again. North America will become like Antarctica, everyone will die, and the weather will be remarkably nasty for about 100,000 years. The great cities will be ground under miles of ice. Someday someone will find a pig bone in the vicinity of what used to be Chicago and proclaim "Voila, they were here earlier than we expected".
The Cycle of Cosmic Catastrophes:
Flood, Fire, and Famine
in the History of Civilization
by Richard Firestone,
Allen West, and
Simon Warwick-Smith
“If we change the reference to BC.....”
I’m older school. I wish they would quit changing references. BP means British Petroleum to me.
Use AD and BC with Christians. Use BCE and CE with the others.
Remember, only Christians are smart enough to remember two references to the same numbering system. (/sarc).
Although it is possible there could have been an AD, BC comfusion in the dates, I think it is also possible that the mastadon/beaver bones could have represented remnant populations of those animals that were not killed in the Firestone event(s). If the megafauna was majorly depleated, it would not surprise me if resurgent humans killed off the remaining specimens. Also it is not unreasonable to suggest that small populations might have survived around the fringes of the event and as you suggest moved north as conditions improved.
If they were calibrated using the current curve, rather than uncalibrated, you will get a difference of a couple of thousand years when you are that old.
I would find it hard to believe that radiocarbon dates today would be reported uncalibrated. But the calibrated dates I get from the laboratory have both AD/BC and BP (before present) dates, with ranges at both one and two sigma. It would be good to know exactly how the date was being reported for this bone tool.
Yes, I thought there might also be a problem with the calibration of the dating which is why I included you in my comment. I know you have done work in this area. Unfortunately, I have no way of knowing what they used, but perhaps as an expert you might gleen more from the article and the researchers involved—their reputation and all.
I’ve never heard of “before present”. When did people start using that term?
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