Calico: A 200,000-year Old Site In The Americas?

ASA On Line ^ | unknown

[blam]

Calico: A 200,000-year old site in the Americas?

New World archaeological sites inferred to be even slightly older than the 11.5 ka Clovis complexes have been controversial; so claims for a 200 ka site in North America have heretofore been treated with substantial disdain. But the acceptance of Monte Verde and Diring may soon change that.

The classic "ancient site" in the New World is "Calico," located in the Central Mojave Desert of California (Shlemon and Budinger, 1990). Two issues have dogged acceptance of Calico by mainstream archaeologists: (1) the authenticity of the artifacts; are they truly the product of human manufacture, or merely naturally produced "geofacts?" and (2) the obvious pre-Clovis age of the deposits (see, for example, lengthy discussions in Leakey and others, 1968; Haynes, 1973; Bryan, 1978; Taylor and Payen, 1975; Carter, 1980; Meighen, 1983; Patterson, 1983; and Budinger and Simpson, 1985).

Thought to be about 200 ka old, the deeply buried chert and chalcedony tools of Calico are usually dismissed as being artifacts. However, if shown to respected Old World archaeologists, many Calico assemblages are readily described as typical Paleolithic implements. Regardless, when told that the ancient tools come from the New World, these same archaeologists then often reject their original interpretation! So much for unbiased reasoning in science! Nevertheless, although it will take time, the pre-Clovis Monte Verde site in Chile and the 260 ka Diring site in Siberia may well provide a "stepping stone" for mainstream archaeological acceptance of the Calico site.

[TruthWillWin]

JFK grad, 1967

BUHS 1964.

[investigateworld]

Ahhhh Riffian riff raff LOL
They are now the Aztecs (Truly impressed with your sign up date btw)

[blam]

Boat People?

[stockpirate]

bump

[ancientscribe]

NOT JUST OLD SITES BUT OLD THREADS MAY HAVE SOME LIFE IN THEM YET!

Sorry to drag this discussion back from such fascinating remeniscences of Calico/Barstow/various-desert-community youths, but since the following is the article that made me google up calico ancient man site and find Free Republic in the first place, I thought it might be worth sharing.

It's from the front page that greeted me on Yahoo this morning, and since this thread is nearly as old as the Calico finds themselves, I'll both give the url (http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070222/sc_nm/clovis_culture_dc_2)
and go ahead and slug in the whole article as well. Yes, I KNOW "Loose lips sink ships," so feel free to skim, especially if you're up to trifocals now. ;)

EXPERTS DOUBT CLOVIS PEOPLE WERE FIRST IN AMERICAS By Will Dunham -- Thu Feb 22, 6:42 PM ET

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Clovis people, known for their distinctive spear points, likely were not the first humans in the Americas, according to research placing their presence as more recent than previously believed.

Using advanced radiocarbon dating techniques, researchers writing in the journal Science on Thursday said the Clovis people, hunters of large Ice Age animals like mammoths and mastodons, dated from about 13,100 to 12,900 years ago.

That would make the Clovis culture, known from artifacts discovered at various sites including the town of Clovis, New Mexico, both younger and shorter-lived than previously thought. Previous estimates had dated the culture to about 13,600 years ago. These people long had been seen as the first humans in the New World, but the new dates suggest their culture thrived at about the same time or after others also in the Americas.

Michael Waters, director of Texas A&M University's Center for the Study of the First Americans, called the research the final nail in the coffin of the so-called "Clovis first" theory of human origins in the New World.

Waters said he thinks the first people probably arrived in the Americas between 15,000 and 25,000 years ago."We've got to stop thinking about the peopling of the Americas as a singular event," Waters said in an interview. "And we have to start now thinking about the peopling of the Americas as a process, with people coming over here, probably arriving at different times, maybe taking different routes and coming from different places in northeast Asia."

Waters and co-author Thomas Stafford, a radiocarbon dating expert, tested samples from various Clovis archeological sites to try to get a more accurate accounting of their age. Technological advances enabled them to more precisely pinpoint dates for some Clovis sites excavated in North America.

The theory has been that the Clovis people first migrated out of northeast Asia across the Bering land bridge from Siberia into Alaska and traveled through a ice-free corridor into North America, populating that continent while their descendants journeyed into South America.

Asked who were the first people in the Americas if not the Clovis, Waters answered, "That's a good question."

"I think that's what we've got to work toward -- a new model for the peopling of the Americas, and I think we need to create a coherent model that's based on genetic data, geological evidence as well as archeological data."

[blam]

Journey Of Mankind

[Publius6961]

How well I remember two things...

First, looking at a world map as a third grader and speculating how Africa and South America "just happened" to display such a perfect fit.

Many years later, the disdain that greeted the theory of continental drift.

Fast forward a few decades...

There is no mind as closed as the "expert" who fails to have seen the obvious first.

[blam]

"First, looking at a world map as a third grader and speculating how Africa and South America "just happened" to display such a perfect fit."

Yup. That 'drift' started 120 million years ago and continues (at the same rate as your fingernails grow) to this day.

[SunkenCiv]

(South Carolina) Fire Pit Dated To Over 50,000 Years Old (More)
AP | 11-18-2004 | Amy Geier Edgar
Posted on 11/19/2004 11:07:26 AM EST by blam
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1283899/posts

[blam]

2008 bump.

I notice that 'ancientscribe' made the one post on FR at post #105 last year and never another. I didn't see it until just now.

[blam]

"I notice that 'ancientscribe' made the one post on FR at post #105 last year and never another. I didn't see it until just now."

Never mind. I see now that I posted to #105, ahem.

[blam]

"this appears to be the oldest FR topic about Al Goodyear: "

Hmmm. I asked sarcasm to post this one because I hadn't yet learned how to post. I learned how to post articles, etc from folks on FR.

[investigateworld]

Actually, some of the structures were moved to Daggett about 1900. Then when Senator Clark put in his San Pedro - Los Angeles - Salt Lake Railroad, (Now part of Union Pacific) the rest of the structures went to the new town of OTIS, now Yermo, starting about 1907

[SunkenCiv]

· join list or digest · view topics · view or post blog · bookmark · post a topic ·
	Gods Graves Glyphs	Just updating the GGG info, not sending a general distribution. To all -- please ping me to other topics which are appropriate for the GGG list. GGG managers are Blam, StayAt HomeMother, and Ernest_at_the_Beach
· Google · Archaeologica · ArchaeoBlog · Archaeology magazine · Biblical Archaeology Society · · Mirabilis · Texas AM Anthropology News · Yahoo Anthro & Archaeo · · History or Science & Nature Podcasts · Excerpt, or Link only? · cgk's list of ping lists ·

[wardaddy]

it’s amazing how the more we learn the less we know

and with so much science today being so politicized, it’s like shooting ducks in a barrel

[Bender2]

Re: The classic "ancient site" in the New World is "Calico," located in the Central Mojave Desert of California (Shlemon and Budinger, 1990). Two issues have dogged acceptance of Calico by mainstream archaeologists: (1) the authenticity of the artifacts; are they truly the product of human manufacture, or merely naturally produced "geofacts?"...

Well, my eductaed guess... would be man made.

BTW blam, Your ASA On Line ^ (http://www.asa-online.org/library/fea_dating.html)link does not work

[SunkenCiv]

---

Site Sheds Light on Human Arrival

Culture/Society News
Source: AP via Yahoo
Published: May 26, 2001
Posted on 05/27/2001 06:25:12 PDT by sarcasm

ALLENDALE, S.C. (AP) - Some chipped tools and stone flakes found on a hill above a remote and wooded stretch of the Savannah River may show humans arrived in America about 3,000 years earlier than first thought.

Researchers have generally accepted that the first humans came to America as primitive hunters from Asia 12,000 years ago. But the South Carolina finds are the latest evidence that the continent was inhabited 15,000 years ago, well before the end of the last Ice Age around 10,000 years ago, archaeologists say.

"It is now reasonable to think of humans living on this landscape perhaps 15,000 to 20,000 years ago," said University of South Carolina archaeologist Albert Goodyear, who is helping to excavate the site. "It's the dawn of a new chapter in what was already a good book."

Coupled with mounting evidence of early human activity from scattered locations including a gravel pit in Virginia, a cave in Pennsylvania and a bog in Chile, the stone tools excavated in South Carolina suggest that human populations were spread across both continents 15,000 years ago.

Last year, a University of Oklahoma archaeologist suggested some broken stone tools found in the northwestern part of the state could be at least 22,000 years old.

The sites are so far apart that the earliest visitors could only have arrived earlier than once thought, or reached the Americas by more than one route, some researches theorize.

Goodyear and his team of archaeologists first uncovered the tools three years ago along a section of the river in Allendale County owned by Clariant, a Swiss-based chemical company.

Microscopic analysis of the stone chips confirmed that they could only have been created by human activity. The area may have served as a sort of workshop, where prehistoric people made the implements they needed for working wood and scraping animal hides.

---

1 Posted on 05/27/2001 06:25:12 PDT by sarcasm
[ Reply | Private Reply | Top | Last ]

---

[blam]

See post 112.

[SunkenCiv]

:’) When visiting this one, that September ‘09 facsimile message took me by surprise, must have either had it in a file, or pulled it out of the Wayback Machine.

[gleeaikin]

Some years ago I was talking with a woman archeologist in a bar. She told me about a site in California that was around 200 to 300,000 years old but was being rejected by the scientific establishment. I wonder whatever happened to that site.