Posted on 04/03/2008 3:34:56 AM PDT by BGHater
Hold the potty humor, please, but archaeologists digging in a dusty cave in Oregon have unearthed fossilized feces that appear to be oldest biological evidence of humans in North America.
The ancient poop dates back 14,300 years. If the results hold up, that means the continent was populated more than 1,000 years before the so-called Clovis culture, long believed to be the first Americans.
"This adds to a growing body of evidence that the human presence in the Americas predates Clovis," said Michael Waters, an anthropologist at Texas A&M University who was not involved in the project.
DNA analysis of the dried excrement shows the people who lived in the caves were closely related to modern Native Americans. Their genetic roots reach across the Bering Strait to Siberia and eastern Asia.
"These are probably the ancestors of some of the Native Americans living in America now," said Eske Willerslev, director of the Centre for Ancient Genetics at the University of Copenhagen. He co-authored the report that appears in today's online Science Express.
The age of the finding also calls into question the theory that people who crossed the Bering Land Bridge to Alaska migrated south through ice-free corridors as glaciers began to break up. Geological evidence suggests the corridors weren't open 14,300 years ago, though the glaciers had pulled back from the coasts.
"People probably came either by boat or maybe even walking along the West Coast," Willerslev said.
Before the Oregon discovery, the oldest human remains in North America were two sets of bones about 13,000 years old from California and Nevada. Kennewick Man, the skeleton found on the banks of the Columbia River in Eastern Washington, dates to 9,400 years ago.
(Excerpt) Read more at seattletimes.nwsource.com ...
There was a time not too long ago when one with a scientific mind would have read this statement and in humility would agree how truly small our knowledge is in comparison to that which we do not know and would have marveled at what was yet to be learned.
Each discovery shows that science is able to assimilate more evidence as it appears. Unlike religion, which pretends that new knowledge doesn't mean anything at all; the 'facts' have already been decided in dusty old books written by people whose imaginations couldn't have grasped the scientific method...
Today the scientific mind reads the same statement and in it's arrogance sees it as an attack, and lashes out against the inferior ideology that launched it. All the while marveling at it's superior knowledge and intellect.
Have they ruled out the possibility that these may just be fossilized Baby Ruths?
Archaeology makes a pretty exciting discovery and all you can do is show your hatred for that field and for science in general?
http://www.mnsu.edu/emuseum/archaeology/sites/northamerica/meadowcroft.html
[snip] Dr. James Adovasio is the man who meticulously excavated this large shelter between 1973 and 1977. The archeological remains were found as deep as 11.5 feet below the ground. Adovasio revealed no less than 11 strata, the lowest of which contained traces of human occupation... the lowest sublevel (which also is sealed by the pieces of rock from the walls and roof of the shelter) contains radiocarbon dates from 19,600 to 13,230 years ago... The site has yielded the largest collection of plant and animal remains in a single site in North America. [end]
http://people.delphiforums.com/MCCONAUGHY/meadowcroft/meadow.htm
[snip] The sample dated to 19,600 B.P. +/- 2400 years or 17,650 B.C. (SI-2060, uncorrected) and was recovered in an appropriate stratigraphic location relative to the other early dates from the shelter. If it was from a Paleoindian fire and was contaminated with coal, as some have suggested, how much coal would have to be added to the sample to make it date to 19,100 B.P.? Lets presume that the bark sample should have dated to ca. 11,000 B.P. (and the artifacts recovered from the lower levels at the least demonstrate a Paleoindian presence at the site, they were stratified below Early Archaic materials) and was contaminated by coal to produce 19,000 B.P. dates. Nearly 40% of the sample must have been composed of “dead” carbon to result in this date. Particulate coal contamination would have been readily noticeable to the Smithsonian Radiocarbon lab that dated this sample... particulate coal can be eliminated as a contaminate in this and all the samples from the site. [end]
I hope you’re not suggesting they wound up getting wiped out... ;’)
The toughest part is, their paleo-diet was so crude that the feces came out of them already fossilized.
three recent related topics:
Americas Settled 15,000 Years Ago, Study Says
National Geographic News | 3-13-2008 | Stefan Lovgren
Posted on 03/13/2008 2:12:58 PM PDT by blam
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1985250/posts
Bison Bones Bolster Idea Ice Age Seafarers First To Americas
The NationalPost | 3-24-2008 | Randy Boswell - Can West News Service
Posted on 03/24/2008 5:14:57 PM EDT by blam
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1990882/posts
A Three-Stage Colonization Model for the Peopling of the Americas
Plosone.org | 2-13-2008
Andrew Kitchen, Michael M. Miyamoto, Connie J. Mulligan
Posted on 02/13/2008 10:45:46 AM PST by blam
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1969791/posts
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Thanks BGHater. The Adovasio |
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In any case, from what I was able to gleen from the excerpt, the article appears to be contemporary poop. Seems like we've been down this road before, but I still have difficulty understanding how DNA can be extracted from fossilized anything.
“the lowest sublevel...is sealed by the pieces of rock from the walls and roof of the shelter...”
Are you saying that they dug all the way to the rock floor, or that they were stopped by a layer of rocks from the walls and roof? If they did not dig all the way to the bottom, perhaps the layer of rocks was caused by a major catastrophe/earthquake, and there might be some very interesting stuff underneath all those rocks that fell from walls and roof.
Eske Willerslev
University of Copenhagen
The voyage to America
Fossilized human feces reveals the first immigrants
Professor Eske Willerslev was surprised by the results of the DNA tests conducted by himself and his colleagues on samples of what turned out to be fossilised human faeces found in deep caves in the Oregon desert. The oldest of the droppings have been carbon-dated to be approximately 14,340 years old. Willerslev’s faeces samples clearly contain two main genetic types of Asian origin that are unique to present-day North American Indians. Not only is this proof that the American Indians are descendants of the first immigrants to the continent, it is also proof that immigration took place approximately 1,000 years earlier than otherwise believed.
The American continent was the last of the world’s continents to be populated. There are many contradictory and more or less well-founded scientific theories on when this occurred and from where the first immigrants came. These theories span from immigration via the icy Atlantic Ocean to Thor Heyerdahl’s papyrus boat expeditions from Africa to America. The most accepted theory is based on findings of stone tools from the Clovis culture in soil layers dating back to approximately 13,000 BC. According to the theory, people from Siberia migrated, perhaps in search of mammoth, across the land bridge that once connected Siberia and North America. From there, they continued south and spread out across the American continent. The migration passed through a corridor that opened up approximately 14,000 years ago in the giant glacier that covered the American continent. But these new findings call this immigration theory into question.
“Our findings show that there were people south of the ice cap several hundred years before the ice-free corridor developed. The first humans either had to walk or sail along the American west coast to get around the ice cap,” explains Eske Willerslev, and concludes, “That is, unless they arrived so long before the last ice age that the land passage wasn’t yet blocked by ice.”
“Unlike religion, which pretends that new knowledge doesn’t mean anything at all...”
Actually, when ancient religious texts and myths were created, this was an honest attempt by people to explain large and incomprehensible events, and help pass on this information to future generations. In “The Cycle of Cosmic Catastrophes” by Firestone et al., a number of myths of Amerindians are quoted, which correlate quite well with the scientific hypotheses presented in this book. However, this book also goes into great detail about how modern scientific methods were applied to validating the hypotheses. Thanks to SunkenCiv and blam to bringing this fascinating book, which shows the scientific method in understandable detail, to my attention.
The unfortunate thing is that there are groups of the religious, in this country and overseas, who cannot comprehend that if they are right about God, then he would have given us the capacity to grow and understand ever greater complexities of anything he might have created or planned.
Are you saying that they dug all the way to the rock floor, or that they were stopped by a layer of rocks from the walls and roof? If they did not dig all the way to the bottom, perhaps the layer of rocks was caused by a major catastrophe/earthquake, and there might be some very interesting stuff underneath all those rocks that fell from walls and roof.
My take on this is that roof fall occurred at some time in the past, isolating layers below from layers above. A good rock layer would reduce intermixing by rodents and subsequent habitation. This is what they meant by "lowest sublevel" I would think.
Those kinds of isolated layers or features are particularly valuable. If you have a well-defined layer, and you can date either that layer or what isolates it from above, you have much better temporal control.
This find sounds pretty interesting. But I wish the article specified which of the ancient mtDNA types were found!
The DNA testing indicated that the feces belonged to Native Americans in haplogroups A2 and B2, haplogroups common in Siberia and east Asia....
Exactly who these people living in the Oregon caves were is not known, Jenkins said. In their conclusion, the authors wrote: "The Paisley Caves lack lithic tool assemblages, thus the cultural and technological association of the early site occupants, and their relationship to the later Clovis technology are uncertain."
"All we're doing in this paper is identifying the haplogroups," Jenkins said in an interview. "We are not saying that these people were of a particular ethnic group. At this point, we know they most likely came from Siberia or Eastern Asia, and we know something about what they were eating, which is something we can learn from coprolites. We're talking about human signature.
"If our DNA evidence and radiocarbon dating hold up on additional coprolites that are now undergoing testing at multiple labs, then we have broken the Clovis sound barrier, if you will," he said. "If you are looking for the first people in North America, you are going to have to step back more than 1,000 years beyond Clovis to find them."
...
During the two summers of fieldwork, Jenkins, colleagues and students, working in four of the caves, retrieved manufactured threads of sinew and plant fibers, hide, basketry, cordage, rope, wooden pegs, animal bones, two forms of projectile point fragments and diverse kinds of feces. These items were found "in an unbroken stratigraphic sequence spanning the late Pleistocene and Holocene," the researchers wrote in the study. Some of the thread is narrower than that holding buttons on many shirts today and date back 12,750 years, Jenkins said.
"To find these threads was just incredible," said Jenkins, who directs the Northern Great Basin Archaeological Field School. "We found a little pit in the bottom of a cave. It was full of camel, horse and mountain sheep bones, and in there we found a human coprolite. We radiocarbon-dated the camel and mountain sheep bones, as well as the coprolite, to 14,300 years ago."
With radiocarbon dating adjusted to calendar years, the materials date back to about 14,400 years ago, he added. Such a dating puts the Oregon site into about the same time period as Chile's Monte Verde site.
Must be some old crap from a liberal.
Must be some old crap from a liberal.
“haplogroups A2 and B2, haplogroups common in Siberia and east Asia.”
I was under the impression that A2 and B2 were subgroups of the Asian sourced haplogroups A and B and exclusive to the Americas.
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