Posted on 07/23/2020 2:46:21 PM PDT by Candor7
Tools excavated from a cave in central Mexico are strong evidence that humans were living in North America at least 30,000 years ago, some 15,000 years earlier than previously thought, scientists said Wednesday.
Artefacts, including 1,900 stone tools, showed human occupation of the high-altitude Chiquihuite Cave over a roughly 20,000 year period, they reported in two studies, published in Nature.
"Our results provide new evidence for the antiquity of humans in the Americas," Ciprian Ardelean, an archeologist at the Universidad Autonoma de Zacatecas and lead author of one of the studies, told AFP.
"There are only a few artefacts and a couple of dates from that range," he said, referring to radiocarbon dating results putting the oldest samples at 33,000 to 31,000 years ago.
"However, the presence is there."
No traces of human bones or DNA were found at the site.
"It is likely that humans used this site on a relatively constant basis, perhaps in recurrent seasonal episodes part of larger migratory cycles," the study concluded.
The stone tools – unique in the Americas – revealed a "mature technology" which the authors speculate was brought in from elsewhere.
The saga of how and when Homo sapiens arrived in the Americas – the last major land mass to be populated by our species – is fiercely debated among experts, and the new findings will likely be contested.
'Clovis-first' debunked
"That happens every time that anybody finds sites older than 16,000 years – the first reaction is denial or hard acceptance," said Ardelean, who first excavated the cave in 2012 but did not discover the oldest items until 2017.
Until recently, the widely accepted storyline was that the first humans to set foot in the Americas crossed a land bridge from present-day Russia to Alaska some 13,500 years ago and moved south through a corridor between two massive ice sheets.
Archaeological evidence – including uniquely crafted spear points used to slay mammoths and other prehistoric megafauna – suggested this founding population, known as Clovis culture, spread across North America, giving rise to distinct native American populations.
But the so-called Clovis-first model has fallen apart over the last two decades with the discovery of several ancient human settlements dating back two or three thousand years earlier.
Moreover, the tool and weapon remnants at these sites were not the same, showing distinct origins.
"Clearly, people were in the Americas long before the development of Clovis technology in North America," said Gruhn, an anthropology professor emerita at the University of Alberta, commenting on the new findings.
In a second study, Lorena Becerra-Valdivia and Thomas Higham, researchers at the University of Oxford's Radiocarbon Accelerator Unit, used radiocarbon – backed up by another technique based on luminescence – to date samples from 42 sites across North America.
Using a statistical model, they showed widespread human presence "before, during and immediately after the Last Glacial Maximum" (LGM), which lasted from 27,000 to 19,000 years ago. Megafauna wiped out
The timing of this deep chill is crucial because it is widely agreed that humans migrating from Asia could not have penetrated the massive ice sheets that covered much of the continent during this period.
"So if humans were here DURING the Last Glacial Maximum, that's because they had already arrived BEFORE it," Ardelean noted in an email.
Human populations scattered across the continent during an earlier period also coincide with the disappearance of once-abundant megafauna, including mammoths and extinct species of camels and horses.
"Our analysis suggests that the widespread expansion of humans through North America was a key factor in the extinction of large terrestrial mammals," the second study concluded.
Many key questions remain unanswered, including whether the first of our species to wander across the frozen tundra of Beringia made their way south via an interior route or – as recent research suggests – by moving along the coast, either on foot or in boats of some kind.
It is also a mystery as to "why no archaeological site of equivalent age to Chiquihuite Cave has been recognised in the continental United States," said Gruhn.
"With a Bering Straits entry point, the earliest people expanding south must have passed through that area.
Everybody that has watched Battlestar Galactica knows the truth:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=55Gr65-iqGo
I never asserted they did. My point was they didn’t invent anything worthwhile.
Sort of like what leftists are trying to achieve by destroying our history.
and you can get a ballpark age by stratigraphy.
Artefact | Definition of Artefact by Merriam-Webster Search domain www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/artefacthttps://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/artefact Artefact definition is - chiefly British spelling of artifact
No link for you! ;-)
The horizon it’s recovered from provides the best dating reference. The time of formation of the rock utilized for the tool is possible, but that probably far predates humans. The bone fragments will have “locked” an isotope ratio in during their formation, as will the surrounding soil or sediment matrix with respect to cementitious material, pollens, or near horizon sea life (if the area was subject to rising and falling sea levels).
I recently read an interesting speculation that much of the copper found in mid east tools was carted over there from here in pre-historical antiquity. Apparently its pretty spot on chemically. That would indicate a serious setback to humanity at some point in the area of 20-10K years back...
Paleontologist aren’t actually certain that these tool makers were “based”, citing other models that suggest they may simply have been afraid of the rampant politically correctness.
They concealed their middens in the back where Clovis mobs would not find them. /s
Date the carbon in the soil which is encrusting the stone tool.
This is the USA.....jack ass
Thanks! I’ll add the usual when I get home. :^)
https://www.freerepublic.com/focus/chat/3867365/posts
Well you failed the humour test, the fact check test and the memory test as well.
I’ve seen your posts before and you lean on the jackass side and so I peeked at your posts. 4 or 5 were plenty here and there but I did note that we’d signed up the same day almost 20 years ago so I sent you a little joke post.
Big mistake. I apologize if you’ll just stay away.
Adios. Via con Dios. Adieu. Done. Jerk. ;-)
You are possibly wrong but unintentionally. Manmade artifacts, when found, are called “in situ” (in place), but that doesn’t mean they were originally there.
I found a beautiful Mayan probably ceremonial chalcedony/quart dagger-like item sitting on a house mound in the jungles around Tikal. (we were doing a 20 kilometer survey to find out where the workers of that ceremonial center lived).
Now, that item might have been made centuries before it was placed on that house mound (remains of a small hut build on raised dirt). Or it could have been contemporaneous to when people lived in it (I have no idea how old the site was but aging put it around 800-1,000 years old). Further explorations might have found more age-identifiable pottery/shards that could be tested for radiation information. I haven’t heard anything about it).
In caves, however, dirt/dust depositions over the centuries can preserve POLLEN which can be identified by plant species and often dated by carbon-dating methods.
If the artifacts mentioned in this article were buried in a cave, then the dirt covering and surrounding them could be tested for pollen and other carbon-bearing materials which would give archaeologists a rough time period in which they lived and were buried.
If the items were found on the surface, that method of dating becomes questionable.
One thing I learned in my archeological work, dealing with a site in Bainbridge, Pa. is that items from different tribes/manufacturing times and places can end up in the same place because of trading (i.e. NY materials, Snookskill and other broad projectile points, wee found in the Penn. site mixed with some more southerly tribes points/scrappers, etc. This was due to east coast trade which followed the rivers from north to south.
In another site in Maryland, I found more modern Indian artifacts, esp. projectile points that were contemporaneous to a colonial farm settlement there (and an Indian burial too).
However, I also found artifacts that were identified as being at least 3,000 years older lying on the same ground, and there were also Paleocene (60-65 million year old) fossils mixed in with them. Soil/sand deposition and vegetation had covered them all up over a period of thousands of years. We also found more modern pottery which allowed researchers to identify the type of pottery by tribe (Piscataways, etc) and a fairly accurate dating re their manufacturing dates range.
We have to be very careful about where and in what condition a site is when found. There are a lot of variables which can create false dating or which can help more accurately identified its timeline.
Hope this helps a little. I left anthropology (my professors were weird) and then archaeology but not paleontology due to a career change (journalist in Nam for a little while) which I loved.
They’re most likely 3rd or 4th nation.
Or dolls that say mama.
One thing I’ve always wondered about if it took mankind 10,000 years to go from hunter gather to walking on the moon and mankind has been on this planet 500,000 years have there been other civilization in that time?
Or in wars.
Read the Moon is a Harsh Mistress.
I'm not saying it's aliens, but.......
:o0
LOL...too funny! :-)
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