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Your rule of thumb makes sense to me. My own general perspective on it is that since Plato is the only source of our information (or at least the only detailed one--Richard Ellis' book mentions a few other possibly-related passing references by other Greek writers), any investigation has to take him as the starting point for interpreting archaeological data, and he as you know says Atlantis lay in the Atlantic just off the Pillars of Hercules 9,000 years before his time. That fits the locale and time frame we're discussing fairly well. One other thought I have on it is that Plato says his source of information was the Egyptians, and as far as we know the Egyptians' written historical records stretch back to about 3,000 BC, so the Egyptians seem to have thought Atlantis was considerably older than their own culture=older than 3,000 BC.

BTW, here's an article about a local find in my area which I think fits your comments on Lake Agassiz. If you click on the link there's some maps with more info.

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http://www.jsonline.com/alive/news/sep03/167945.asp

To find earliest North Americans, scientist follows ice
By SUSANNE QUICK
squick@journalsentinel.com
Last Updated: Sept. 6, 2003
Sometimes the answers to the most nagging questions are right beneath our noses.

And according to David Overstreet, director of the Center for Archaeology Research at Marquette University, that's the case when it comes to questions about the first people in North America.

Evidence scattered around Wisconsin shows that people could have lived in the state as far back as 14,000 years ago. And now, two new sites in Door County may add further support to this early occupation - confounding some long-held views of New World archaeology.

Not far from downtown Sturgeon Bay, these two sites are contributing proof that people were living at the margins of the retreating ice sheets anywhere between 11,500 to 14,000 years ago - hunting woolly mammoths and bison as they followed the advancing and retreating glaciers across the state, Overstreet said.

They may also have been the earliest occupants of the upper Great Lakes region, he said, although solid dates for the new sites are still pending.

And if that's the case, this new research could further erode a pillar of New World archaeology called Clovis-First, said Mike Waters, professor of anthropology at Texas A&M University in College Station, Texas.

This theory, etched into archaeology textbooks printed since the 1960s, hypothesizes that North America was populated by one group of hunters who crossed a land bridge connecting Siberia to Alaska 11,500 years ago. The principal site backing this theory was discovered in Clovis, N.M., in the 1930s.

But according to Waters, Overstreet's work in southeastern Wisconsin, where butchered woolly mammoth bones have been found with tools, has provided some of the most conclusive evidence that people were living here before 11,500 years ago.

And although Waters has not seen the Sturgeon Bay sites, he's confident in Overstreet's research and interpretations.

Overstreet, for his part, isn't much interested in debates over Clovis. "These are not important scientific questions," he said.

Instead, it's the artifacts and stories buried below the familiar soils of Wisconsin that strike this archaeologist's fancy.

Since his 1987 discovery of a paleo-Indian site near Pleasant Prairie in Kenosha County, Overstreet has been piecing together the early human history of the upper Great Lakes.

With the help of students from Marquette and the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, he is painting a picture of a people who clung to the outskirts of glaciers, adapting to radical swings in their environment as the ice sheets moved back and forth.

Within 200 years, the glaciers advanced southwest across the state only to abruptly recede back beyond Michigan's Mackinaw Island, Overstreet said. This created a highly unstable environment of flooding, drought and ice.

And while scenes like this have been documented in the ancient tundras of Europe and Asia, hunting woolly mammoths at the interface of ice and grass has not been documented anywhere else in North America, he said.

What was it about the glacial margins that these people found so pleasing?

According to Overstreet, it was the vegetation on the tundra that called to these migrants. Populated by lichens, mosses and sedges, this ecosystem was the buffet of choice for woolly mammoths and extinct bison species - the bread and butter for these early hunters.

"These people developed sophisticated scavenging, hunting, boat-building strategies," to deal with their fluctuating environments, Overstreet said.

And with a tool that looks like an adz - a kind of woodworking instrument - found at the Fabry Creek site off of Highway 57 in Door County, Overstreet feels pretty confident about his boat-building speculations.

But if he wants more evidence to substantiate this hypothesis, he will have to work fast; the site will be paved over in a few years. The Department of Transportation is paying for Overstreet's research before it widens Door County's central highway.

At the Cardy site, on a farm near downtown Sturgeon Bay, the discovery of a tool made from a rock material called Moline chert - found only in outcrops from Illinois - further demonstrates this in-step movement of people and glaciers.

Tools from mammoth sites dated between 13,000 and 14,000 years ago in southeastern Wisconsin and northern Illinois are made from this same material. This may mean that the Cardy site is as old as the Kenosha County sites.

Indeed, it suggests these early people were moving large distances - with their tools - following the fast-moving glaciers and their big game.

"I think the most important thing about the Cardy site is that it's a dead ringer for Aebischer," an early site near Lake Winnebago, Overstreet said.

If the dates of the two sites match, it would indicate that Overstreet's model is correct: people were moving in tandem with the ice sheets.

They were taking advantage of the landscape and hightailing it across the countryside, he said. "Their movements mimic the movement of their prey animal."

He remains resolute, however, in not speculating too much on its meaning for "first-people" theories, though he admits the dates throw doubt on Clovis-First.

If other people want to speculate about it, he said, that's fine with him.

They do.

Vance Holliday, professor of anthropology at the University of Arizona, in Tucson, thinks Overstreet's Wisconsin sites are exciting.

But he said the southern Wisconsin sites need national exposure to spur additional scientific investigation.

"These sites aren't that well-known," he said. "And they deserve a lot more scrutiny."

But Overstreet's new sites near Green Bay look promising, he said, and he's looking forward to what comes from them.

Overstreet has paved the way for a thorough reconsideration of Clovis-First, said Waters, the Texas archaeologist. "It's now up to us to figure out what really happened."

From the Sept. 8, 2003 editions of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

http://www.jsonline.com/news/state/sep03/167955.asp

Last Updated: Sept. 7, 2003