 Three, large, erect stones in western North Carolina"> |
Row of three, large, erect stones in western North Carolina. |
Posted on 04/14/2002 3:07:04 AM PDT by Hellmouth
A North Carolina reader recently submitted the accompanying photograph of very large, vertically oriented stones that, if found in western Europe, would be quickly assigned to the megalithic culture. Although similar upright stones are known in New England, we have not heard of any in North Carolina before.
The stones in question are located in the Boone/Blowing Rock region of western North Carolina near Foscoe, very close to Grandfather Mountain (second highest peak east of the Mississippi).
Although they could well be a product of natural forces, they stand out like the proverbial "sore thumb."
(Davant, Charles, III; personal communications, July 2 and August 18, 1997.)
| Three, large, erect stones in western North Carolina"> |
Row of three, large, erect stones in western North Carolina. |
THE TOPPER SITE: PRE-CLOVIS SURPRISE
Excavations have revealed a deep stratum with apparently pre-Clovis artifacts at the Topper site on the Savannah River near Allendale, South Carolina. Albert Goodyear, of the University of South Carolina's Institute for Archaeology and Anthropology, was surveying chert sources in 1981, when a local man (named Topper) led him to this site, which is on a hillside near the Savannah River (500 feet from its main branch). Testing in 1984 revealed side-notched points, dated elsewhere to 10,000 (radiocarbon) years before present, were found at 70 to 80 cm and fluted blanks (Clovis preforms) were found at 80 to 100 cm. Later excavations never went beyond the one meter mark. At the time, no site had been accepted as older than Clovis (10,800 to 11,200 radiocarbon years), and there was therefore no reason to expect deeper culture-bearing deposits existed.
In 1998, inspired by potential pre-Clovis sites like Monte Verde, Chile, and Cactus Hill, Virginia, Goodyear decided to dig deeper. After some 40 cm of essentially barren deposits, the excavators began finding small flakes and microtools. Goodyear recalls that he "kind of went into shock. I had no idea we'd find artifacts." This year's excavations have confirmed that discovery.
The lower level, now exposed over a total of 28 square meters, has yielded some 1,000 waste flakes and 15 microtools (mostly microblades). The excavators also found a pile of 20 chert pebbles plus four small quartz pebbles, possible hammerstones.
The same yellow chert was used in the upper and lower levels, but apparently in the upper levels the people had access to large pieces of chert extracted from the hillside and cobbles of it from the riverbed, while in the deeper level only small pebbles of it were used. Because artifacts of the types in the upper level are not found in the lower level and vice versa, Goodyear does not believe the flakes and tools were pushed into the lower level by tree roots or burrowing animals.
For now, dating of the artifacts depends on the stratigraphy and comparison with other sites. There is little organic material preserved in the sandy matrix making radiocarbon-dating difficult. Samples for carbon-dating and OSL (optically stimulated luminescence) dating are now being analyzed.
Goodyear thinks the site was used for the exploitation of chert pebbles sometime between 12,000 and 20,000 years ago. No evidence of bifaces and unifaces typical of later Clovis have been found in the lower level, and Goodyear looks to Siberian microblade industries for parallels. Artifacts from possible pre-Clovis sites, including Topper, Cactus Hill, and Meadowcroft (in Pennsylvania), will be shown to Asian scholars at the Smithsonian this August. Plans call for excavations at Topper, which stopped at the end of May, to resume next spring.--MARK ROSE
Proven: Man in America by 15,000 B.C.
Most people probably wouldn't have noticed it, but farmer Harold Conover in 1988 happened to see a stone spear point in the sand on a logging road near his farm in Carson, Va. Conover is not an archaeologist, but he recognized it as a Clovis spear point because there is a known Clovis site on his farm.
He tracked the point to a sand pit owned by the International Paper Co. at the Cactus Hill site, about 70 km south of Richmond, Va., overlooking the Nottoway River.
That chance discovery triggered a decade-long excavation that eventually might resolve the ongoing, often bitter controversy over when humans first migrated to North America. The spear point itself wasn't unusually old, but it led archaeologists Joseph and Lynn McAvoy to a prehistoric campsite that might be as many as 17,000 years old — 5,500 years older than the Clovis sites previously thought to be the oldest on this continent.
About 57-75 cm below the surface they found a campsite containing an ancient hearth, scrapers, woodworking tools and several Clovis spear points. Radiocarbon dating of charcoal from the hearth showed it to be about 10,900 years old, appropriate for a Clovis site.
Digging further, they found a second campsite about 10-15 cm lower, again with hearths and stone tools. The tools were distinctly different. Instead of quartzite Clovis spear points, the tools from the lower camp were made of chert and were of a more primitive form called blade flakes or core blades. Radiocarbon dating revealed the hearth was at least 15,000 years old and perhaps as much as 17,000.
The findings indicate that humans have lived in North America much longer than most researchers believed, and hint that their origins might be different from what had been believed.
Other archaeologists have made claims for a number of sites in both North and South America, some apparently dating as far back as 35,000 years. The dates of those sites, however, and the validity of the artifacts found there, are disputed.
Data presented last month by Joseph McAvoy and a team of archaeologists at the Society for American Archaeology meeting in Philadelphia seem to have firmly established the age of the Virginia site, called Cactus Hill.
"This is probably some of the oldest material in North America, if not the entire New World," said archaeologist Dennis Stanford of the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History.
The Cactus Hill site is one of several that are overturning the long-reigning theory of how humans first came to the Americas. Archaeologists always assumed that the first inhabitants walked across the Bering Strait to Alaska when ice covered its surface about 12,000 years ago.
Those first migrants quickly moved south, expanding their presence throughout the continent within as few as 500 years. That population is termed "Clovis" because its characteristic fluted spear points and other tools were first discovered near Clovis, N.M. The distinctive Clovis spear points have since been found throughout the continent and, recently, in Northeastern Asia as well, affirming the origin of these nomadic hunters.
Some archaeologists have identified other sites, such as the Meadowcroft rock shelter in Pennsylvania and the Topper site along the Savannah River in Georgia, that appear to be pre-Clovis. Their dates, however, have not been authenticated to everyone's satisfaction.
Others have found evidence that other populations might have migrated to the continent as well. Recent studies suggest that a seafaring population worked its way down the Pacific coast, establishing villages and fishing grounds on land that is now submerged. Some archaeologists believe that the same process occurred along the Atlantic coast as well.
Still, the dates of such events are questioned, and that is why the Cactus Hill site has assumed such importance. The McAvoys and their colleagues have produced dating evidence that might well be irrefutable, thanks in part to Conover's discovery.
When skeptics scoffed at Joseph McAvoy's claim that the Cactus Hill spear points were possibly 17,000 years old, McAvoy organized a team of at least 10 specialists and spent three years "challenging the conclusions" of his original report.
Paleobotanist Lucinda McWeeney of Yale, for example, identified the species of trees that were burned in the hearths. The pre-Clovis hearth contained remnants of white pine, while the Clovis hearths contained hard Southern pine. Trees in the area now are primarily hardwood hickory and oak. That progression of species corresponds with the gradual warming of the region since the last ice age.
She also was able to show that the charcoal in the lower hearths was not produced by a forest fire.
Soil scientist James C. Baker of Virginia Tech used a technique called luminescent dating to show that the sand at the site had not been disturbed over the millennia, suggesting that perturbation of the site by water or burrowing animals had not occurred.
Others were able to demonstrate the presence of distinctive plant fossils, called phytoliths, produced when plants on the surface are damaged, as by human activity. The amounts of phytoliths spiked at the levels of the campsites. The team also found high levels of phosphates in the soil at the levels of the sites. Phosphates are the detritus of human wastes and garbage.
"To me, the evidence is irrefutable," McAvoy said.
So, who were the pre-Clovis settlers?
"My first answer would be paleo-Indians who came across the Bering land bridge" earlier than had been thought, he said.
The Smithsonian's Stanford, however, thinks the tools are remarkably similar to somewhat older tools recently discovered in Spain and France. He suggests that those proto-Spaniards might have sailed across the Atlantic 18,000 years ago or more.
Not everyone is convinced. Archaeologist David Meltzer of Southern Methodist University questions the fact that the two campsites discovered at Cactus Hill, separated in time by several thousand years, are separated in space by only 7-10 cm. "There should have been more soil-forming processes over that period," he said, so that the early site was more deeply buried.
So contentious have been the arguments about possible pre-Clovis man in the Americas that it appeared inevitable that acceptance would only occur if such a site contained skeletons or artifacts of unambiguous human origin, was well dated both by stratigraphic context and by unequivocal numeric dating techniques, and was excavated by highly regarded traditional archaeologists. Such a site has finally been found, not in North America geographically close to a presumed Beringia migration route, but at Monte Verde in Chile (Dillehay, 1966; Meltzer, 1997).
By 1997, some 80 earth-science specialists visited Monte Verde, many participated in the excavations, and still others collected samples and conducted laboratory analyses. The results are remarkable: now documented are 70 species of plants collected by Early Man, the remnants of mastodon meat, the remains of wooden canoes, mortars, and hundreds of stone artifacts including projectile points and cutting and scraping tools. Additionally, some 30 radiocarbon dates were obtained from abundant charcoal, wood and ivory found within the artifact-bearing strata. These dates indicate that Monte Verde was occupied about 12.5 ka ago, a full thousand years before Clovis (Meltzer, 1997). Now, perhaps, even the most skeptic, pre-Clovis non-believers may well have been converted.
But questions still remain: How long did it take for man to migrate from Beringia to Monte Verde? Did this occur thousands of years before 12.5 ka ago? If so, could such migration(s) have taken place during times of maximum ice extent, even though the environment would have been extremely inhospitable. Or did such migrations really take place before the last major glaciation, perhaps before about 20 ka, or even 35 ka ago? Prior to Monte Verde, the conventional answer would be "where is the evidence for such Early Man?" In reality, such evidence may well have been seen previously, but largely dismissed owing to the traditional dogma of "no pre-Clovis sites in the Americas." Accordingly, with Monte Verde now reasonably accepted, it seems likely that traditional archaeologists will soon "find" other pre-Clovis sites in the New World.
(There is another site near Monte Verde that is believed to date to 35-50,000 years old)
The Appalachian Mountains were formed in the remote past by collision of two continental crusts. During such mountain building, huge sheets of rock are pushed over each other. A rock layer called the Blue Ridge Thrust Sheet was moved over 60 miles to cover what is now Grandfather Mountain.
These mountains were once much higher (10 times as high!) than they are today. Erosion over hundreds of millions of years has carried away most of the rocks to form thick layers of sediment all across the Piedmont, Coastal Plain, and in the Atlantic Ocean. At Grandfather mountain, erosion has worn away the Blue Ridge Thrust Sheet from over top of the underlying older rock, allowing us to study them. Geologists call this a "window" in time.
These rocks are likely linked to mountain erosion.
OBTW, I was up that way last summer and saw those rocks. Although interesting in a geologic sense, that's about it. Beautiful scenery up in the Carolina High Country, however!
Scroll down and have fun!
These monoliths are found throughout Europe, particularly the Iberian peninsula.
The pre-Columbian anthopology and history of North America is rapidly being rewritten, based on DNA, archeology and linguistics.
There is DNA evidence and artifact evidence (Clovis spearpoints) linking Iberians with North American Indians.
My guess is it's because these rocks are very close to the attraction "Blowing Rock". 
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