200,000 years, and they still were in the stone age, and that's despite the vast natural resources that they had access to in North America.
I have never been to the site, but I have seen some of the tools and several presentations on the data. The tools I saw were unquestionably of deliberate manufacture, not accidental from soil movement.
Don't know what to make of the early age claims yet. I have been following this for years, and am still not sure.
I like to keep in mind Clarke's First Law:
When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.But, I also have to remember Isaac Asimov's Corollary to Clarke's First Law:
When, however, the lay public rallies round an idea that is denounced by distinguished but elderly scientists and supports that idea with great fervor and emotion — the distinguished but elderly scientists are then, after all, probably right.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarke's_three_laws