Posted on 08/03/2007 11:29:34 PM PDT by ForGod'sSake
June 28, 2007
Comet theory collides with Clovis research, may explain disappearance of ancient people
A theory put forth by a group of 25 geo-scientists suggests that a massive comet exploded over Canada, possibly wiping out both beast and man around 12,900 years ago, and pushing the earth into another ice age.
University of South Carolina archaeologist Dr. Albert Goodyear said the theory may not be such "out-of-this-world" thinking based on his study of ancient stone-tool artifacts he and his team have excavated from the Topper dig site in Allendale, as well as ones found in Georgia, North Carolina and Virginia.
The tools, or fluted spear points, made by flaking and chipping flint, were used for hunting and made by the Clovis people, who lived 13,100 to 12,900 years ago, and from the Redstone people who emerged afterwards. The two points are distinctly different in appearance, with Redstone points more impressively long and steeple-shaped.
"I saw a tremendous drop-off of Redstone points after Clovis," said Goodyear. "When you see such a widespread decline or pattern like that, you really have to wonder whether there is a population decline to go with it."
For every Redstone point, Goodyear says, there are four or five Clovis points. His findings are leading archaeologists from across North America to reexamine their fluted points, and their inventories are yielding similar results: a widespread decline of post-Clovis points that suggests a possible widespread decline of humans.
"What is interesting is that Redstone people came after Clovis people and may have lasted as many centuries as Clovis did, probably even longer, but there are fewer of these Redstone points than Clovis ones," Goodyear said. "That is really odd, because if the Redstone culture simply came right after the Clovis culture you'd expect at least as many Redstone points as Clovis ones. We just don't see that, and the question is why, and what happened to the people who made these tools?"
Archaeologists have long known that the great beasts of the age – the wooly mammoth and mastodon – suddenly disappeared around the same time period (12,900 - 12, 800 years ), but little was known about their demise. It was thought to be the result of over-hunting by Clovis man or climate change associated with a new ice age.
The notion that a comet collided with Earth and caused these events was farfetched until recently, when the group of scientists began looking for evidence of a comet impact, which they call the Younger - Dryas Event. They turned to Goodyear and the pristine Clovis site of Topper.
In 2005, Arizona geophysicist Dr. Allen West and his team traveled to Topper in hopes of finding concentrations of iridium, an extra-terrestrial element found in comets, in the layer of Clovis-era sediment.
"They found iridium and plenty of it," said Goodyear. "The high concentrations were much higher than you would normally see in the background of the earth's crust. That tends to be an indicator of a terrestrial impact from outer space."
The researchers also found high iridium concentrations at six other Clovis sites throughout North America, as well as in and along the rims of the Carolina Bays, the elliptically shaped depressions that are home to an array of flora and fauna along South Carolina's coast.
The Younger- Dryas Event suggests that a large comet exploded above Canada, creating a storm of fiery fragments that rained over North America. The fragments could have easily killed the giant mammals of the day, as well as Clovis man.
"No one has ever had a really good explanation for the disappearance of mammoth and mastodon," Goodyear said. "The archaeological community is waking up to the Younger-Dryas Event. It doesn't prove that these Clovis people were affected by this comet, but it is consistent with the idea that something catastrophic happened to the Clovis people at the same time period."
The comet theory dominated the recent annual meetings of the American Geophysical Union held in Mexico. Goodyear's Clovis-Redstone point study and West's research on the comet were featured at the AGU meetings and by the journal, Nature. The comet will be the subject of documentaries featured on the National Geographic Channel and NOVA television late this fall and in early 2008.
The Topper story
Dr. Al Goodyear, who conducts research through the University of South Carolina's S.C. Institute of Anthropology and Archaeology, began excavating Clovis artifacts along the Savannah River in Allendale County in 1984. In 1998, with the hope of finding evidence of a pre-Clovis culture earlier than the accepted 13,100 years, Goodyear began a concerted digging effort on a site called Topper, located on the property of the Clariant Co.
His efforts paid off. Goodyear unearthed blades made of flint and chert that he believed to be the tools of an ice age culture back some 16,000 years or more. His findings, as well as similar ones yielded at other pre-Clovis sites in North America, sparked great change and debate in the scientific community.
Believing that if Clovis and Redstone people thrived near the banks of the Savannah River, Goodyear thought the area could haven been an ideal location for a more ancient culture. Acting on a hunch in 2004, Goodyear dug even deeper down into the Pleistocene Terrace and found more artifacts of a pre-Clovis type buried in a layer of sediment stained with charcoal deposits. Radio carbon dates of the burnt plant remains yielded dates of 50,000 years, which suggested man was in South Carolina long before the last ice age. Goodyear's finding not only captured international media attention, but it has put the archaeology field in flux, opening scientific minds to the possibility of an even earlier pre-Clovis occupation of the Americas.
Since 2004, Goodyear has continued his Clovis and pre-Clovis excavations at Topper. With support of Clariant Corp. and SCANA, plus numerous individual donors, a massive shelter and viewing deck now sit above the dig site to allow Goodyear and his team of graduate students and community volunteers to dig free from the heat and rain and to protect what may be the most significant early-man dig in America.
Yes it is. Oddly enough(or not), I had never given any thought to how the Pleistocene/Holocene event(whatever it was) may have effected our ancestors. And we think WE live in interesting times!!!
Pleostocene, you say?
Nah, you don't want to go there.
Late Pleostocene Human Population Bottlenecks. . . (Toba)
"Genetic evidence suggests that Human population size fell to about 10,000 adults between 50 and 100 thousand years ago"
I wasn’t going to bring up the religion end of things. It’s a pretty touchy subject with some value on both sides IMO. I do agree this global warming thing is devistating to their credibility though.
In reality it’s not really a scientific theory to a certain extent. I think they know they are exploiting it for political gain. It’s more a wedge issue than anything.
It’s gotten so that I can hardly watch any scientific presentation on television. They weasle in the global warming thing and the idea that nature is going to disintigrate tomorrow over and over. It’s actually rather comical, but I do tire of it. “Oh brother, here we go again.” It’s just so lame.
The ozone hole is another. When it expands a bit they bitch and moan and when it closes up a bit they remain silent until the next expansion. Don’t they think people catch on to this?
Take care. Thanks for the comments.
LOL
Interestingly enough, most of what I've read place the P/H boundary at roughly the end of the last ice age ~10,000 years ago -- give or take.
The Toba eruption obviously created challenges for Man and beast alike, maybe moreso than the P/H event, but the PTB chose a later date for whatever reasons.
BTW, the "Pleostocene" threw me for a while til I discovered it was a typo from YOUR article -- FWIW.
I've always had problems with the way these periods are named. I went to some effort once to try and learn the exact dates of different periods until I realized (for example) that the Neolithic occurred at different times in different parts of the world. I think that's stupid.
Well now, I feel like I'm ahead of the game -- I never even tried. Figgered it was a lost cause since by the time I became interested in such things, my ROM was full, and RAM was getting harder and harder to access anyway.
I crack myself up sometimes ;^)
Probably so. There are any number here who are avid bookworms.
So, what's your best estimate of when "The Peopling of the Americas" began? AND, where do you believe they came from? Do you believe there was a single seed group that gave rise to what we see today? Or were there waves of groups over time? Were earlier groups displaced or destroyed by later arrivals?
Your thoughts might be enlightening.
BTW, welcome to FreeRepublic.
Think of them as cultural levels rather than time periods.
There are still some "lost tribes" living a true stone age existence.
Showing the earth from space, I can’t even see Los Angeles without magnification. Imagine seeing a single car or even millions of them. Then consider how small that speck is compared with the whole planet. And then realize that 75% of the planet is water.
The leftists have a globe that shows the oceans being about 10% of the earth’s surface. It also shows uninhabited lands as about 10% of the earth’s surface. The remainder is shown as one massive city that covers 80% of the planet spewing smoke in one giant column to the border of space. And of course, every person on the planet has five cars two trucks, one semi and at least one coal fueled power plant each of which are spewing at full capacity 24/7/365.
To my way of thinking it’s patently absurd to think we’re destroying the planet. Do I think it’s a wise idea to wean ourselves off certain negative practices? We’ll sure academically. Is there a crisis here? Well yes.
There is a very real danger that political groups will exploit a conversation topic into a fascist movement based on fear.
We already see that road development is frozen. Mass transit is the only thing the government will allow, for the most part. New tolls and raised fees are trying to move us out of our vehicles. Land is being wrapped up in tight little packages by conservancy groups too numerous to count. Cement is now becoming known as evil, joining oil and coal. River power production is evil. Even wind turbines kill those cute little birds...
I could go on, but I think just about everyone is beginning to see what’s just over the horizon, and I don’t think it’s going to be productive. There needs to be some major pushback if we’re going to put the fascists back in their cage.
Agreed. They seemed to have migrated to environmental movements after the collapse of the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe satellites.
To restrict carbon outputs along the lines Algore seems to be advocating now, well beyond Kyoto's limits, would require draconian restrictions and dictatorial powers. Some people seem to think that would be OK, so long as it's all in the name of being "green." Sigh.
I haven’t budged from where I left off over a month ago. I think there have been at least three (somewhat) distinct models from some of the same lines of evidence.
I agree. From my vantage point the mindset today seems to be, “I’ll stand back and not be critical of the greenies, after all it’s their pet topic and they must be experts on the subject.” In reality, they’re little more than psycho nut-jobs. When ordinary folks turn over control to the likes of these fools, look out.
I talk to people about this when the topic comes up, and hardly anybody is asking questions these days. They swallowed the ‘global warming is reality line’ and haven’t realized that is may be 100% unrelated to anything we are doing. It may be a problem cause solely by solar winds. We just don’t know. We may be fixing something that is completely out of our control.
I’d sure hate to see us relinquish our rights on that alter.
As I recall, Firestone had offered up the theory the earth was hit with a mega cosmic wave(gamma rays, x-rays, whatever) along about the same time period being discussed. Are you aware of any changes in his position? Seems he caught a good deal of flak over it.
The thing I wonder about is, what ever happened to our will to resist. Collectively that is. I'm led to believe trying to rally conservatives together in a common cause is much like herding cats. Seems conservatives are easily divided because of our basic independent nature. Leftists on the other hand seem to line up behind the latest fad, or feel-good cause. Useful idiots for the most part, but how do we resist their almost monolithic front?
Bump
Leftists are collectivists, joiners, etc. They identify with groups, and seem to treat everyone as part of one or more groups.
Conservatives are surly curmudgeons who prefer to be left alone. We treat people as individuals, and make herds of cats look organized.
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