Austin-area dig gives rare clues to how people lived 16,000 years ago

Austin American-Statesman ^ | Friday, May 11, 2018 | Ralph K.M. Haurwitz

[SunkenCiv]

Prehistoric humans began gravitating to the Gault Site about 16,000 years ago, Texas State researchers say. The Gault Site is preserved forever because an archaeologist bought it and gave it to a conservation group... [Few academics have such wherewithal and fewer still would spend it this way, said Tom Dillehay, an anthropology professor at Vanderbilt University.]

You can hardly walk 10 steps along Buttermilk Creek about 45 miles north of Austin without finding evidence that people lived here thousands of years ago. The ground is littered with flakes of chert, a plentiful stone from which projectile points, blades, cleavers and other tools were fashioned...

The Gault Site, as this tract in southern Bell County and northern Williamson County is known, and a parcel just downstream known as the Debra L. Friedkin Site are among a handful in North America with compelling evidence of human occupation predating what is known as the Clovis period...

Researchers say the Gault Site also has yielded evidence of the oldest known house site in North America, rock carvings that are among the oldest artwork found in the Americas and bones from a mammoth...

"Gault went a long way to contributing to the unraveling of the Clovis-first model," said James Adovasio, a former University of Pittsburgh professor who excavated the Meadowcroft Rockshelter. "We used to think that the makers of Clovis artifacts were the first people into the New World. Now we know for a fact that's not the case."

It's pretty clear from genetic and other evidence that the people of the pre-Clovis era migrated from Asia. They looked a lot like current generations except they were shorter, Adovasio said, adding, "If you dressed them up in a Brioni suit, they would go unnoticed."

[ro_dreaming]

You’re right, every country on Earth is a nation of immigrants. Now, we have man-made laws that govern the process, and must be followed. But then again, when I get yelled at, or at the norm, chastised about the American Indians and their plight, I usually remind people that they took this country from someone else, and when they were the victors, could and did do, whatever they wanted.

Now, the “white man” came and beat them, it’s the “white man”’s turn to do whatever they want. I can promise you that the Indians did not treat their opponents the way we’ve treated the Indians (set aside land for them specifically, and have them as a nominal separate entity within the country’s border).

To the victor goes the spoils, and the winner gets to write the history books.

I still celebrate COLUMBUS day, not whatever the hell they call it now. I still call it Washington’s Day (in January, that is now called MLK Day). I’m a young old curmudgeon, and getting prouder of it every stinking day.

[colorado tanker]

Clovis, shlomis . . .

[BobL]

“Three fingers, three toes, yeah, no chance of it getting normal.”

But Betty’s a babe.