Free Republic

Original Texans? Austin-area find adds to debate over early man By ERIC BERGER Copyright 2001 Houston Chronicle Science Writer The verdant Central Texas cove was Shangri-La for people living 13,000 years ago. Fed by permanent springs, the area between the Edwards Plateau and lower coastal plains offered ample game from both ecosystems, and its limestone held an abundant supply of flint-like rock, or chert, ideal for making Stone Age tools. "This is an absolutely special place," University of Texas archaeologist Michael Collins said as he recently surveyed the rolling ground occasionally pockmarked by meticulously terraced digs. It's special in bounty ...

New data from Greenland ice cores suggest North America may have suffered a large cosmic impact about 12,900 years ago. A layer of platinum is seen in ice of the same age as a known abrupt climate transition, US scientists report. The climate flip has previously been linked to the demise of the North American "Clovis" people. The data seem to back the idea that an impact tipped the climate into a colder phase, a point of current debate. Rapid climate change occurred 12,900 years ago, and it is proposed that this is associated with the extinction of large mammals...

New research challenges the controversial theory that an ancient comet impact devastated the Clovis people, one of the earliest known cultures to inhabit North America. Writing in the October issue of Current Anthropology, archaeologists Vance Holliday (University of Arizona) and David Meltzer (Southern Methodist University) argue that there is nothing in the archaeological record to suggest an abrupt collapse of Clovis populations. "Whether or not the proposed extraterrestrial impact occurred is a matter for empirical testing in the geological record," the researchers write. "Insofar as concerns the archaeological record, an extraterrestrial impact is an unnecessary solution for an archaeological problem...

Study suggests that Ice Age climate change did not pose significant challenges to first Americans Paleoindian groups* occupied North America throughout the Younger Dryas interval, which saw a rapid return to glacial conditions approximately 11,000 years ago. Until now, it has been assumed that cooling temperatures and their impact on communities posed significant adaptive challenges to those groups. David Meltzer from the Southern Methodist University in Dallas, USA, and Vance Holliday from the University of Arizona in Tucson, USA, suggest otherwise in their review of climatic and environmental records from this time period in continental North America, published in Springer’s...

For almost 80 years, one of the most enduring puzzles in the archaeology of the Americas has been the "Clovis culture," known for its elegant, distinctively shaped projectile points. Was Clovis the progenitor of all later Native American societies, as many researchers have long maintained, and, if so, how and when did it arrive in the Americas? On page 1122 of this week's issue, Michael R. Waters of Texas A&M University in College Station and Thomas W. Stafford Jr., proprietor of a private-sector laboratory in Lafayette, Colorado, use new radiocarbon data to argue that Clovis was a kind of brilliant...

Ancient Stone "Tools" Found; May Be Among Americas' Oldest Stefan Lovgren for National Geographic News February 15, 2007 Crude stone "tools" found in northern Minnesota may be at least 13,000 years old, a team of archaeologists recently announced. The discovery, if confirmed, would put the objects among the oldest human artifacts ever found in the Americas. The team found about 50 such objects during a routine survey for road construction in the town of Walker, about 30 miles (48 kilometers) northeast of Park Rapids. The finds include what appear to be a large hammerstone, beveled scrapers, rudimentary choppers, a crude...

The First Americans By Sharon Begley and Andrew Murr Newsweek, April 26, 1999 New digs and old bones reveal an ancient land that was a mosaic of peoples—including Asians and Europeans. Now a debate rages: who got here first? 'Skull wars:' Facial reconstruction of the 'Spirit Cave Man,' based on bones found in Spirit Cave, Churchill County, Nevada (David Barry--Courtesy Nevada State Museum; facial reconstruction by Sharon Long) As he sat down to his last meal amid the cattails and sedges on the shore of the ancient lake, the frail man grimaced in agony. A fracture at his left temple...

University of South Carolina archeologist Al Goodyear said he has uncovered a layer of charcoal from a possible hearth or fire pit at a site near the Savannah River. Samples from the layer have been laboratory-dated to more than 50,000 years old. Yet Goodyear stopped short of declaring it proof of the continent's earliest human occupation. "It does look like a hearth," he said, "and the material that was dated has been burned." ...Goodyear, who has worked the Topper site since 1981, discovered the charcoal layer in May.

Artifacts dated to 30,000 years ago tell of human resilience in an unforgiving environment, and they may provide new clues to the peopling of the Americas Primates are simply not primed for Arctic survival. A person lost on the tundra in winter will quickly perish, and even the sturdiest shelter atop the permafrost provides scant refuge without a supply of fuel. Yet somehow, at the height of the last Ice Age, humans endured a similarly unforgiving environment in northern Siberia, in the Yana River valley 500 kilometers above the Arctic Circle. That's the surprising conclusion from a trove of artifacts...

Ancient site hints at first US settlers 15:03 02 January 04 NewScientist.com news service Stone-age people lived in the lands north of the Arctic Circle before the last Ice Age - much earlier than had been thought, suggests new findings. The discovery of the site in eastern Siberia also hints that people might have moved from the Old World into the Americas at a much earlier date than believed. The site along the Yanu River, carbon-dated as 30,000 years old, is twice the age of the oldest previously known Arctic settlement, report Vladimir Pitulko of the Institute for the History...

As elusive as the Cheshire Cat, the first people to arrive in the Americas have tended to appear and vanish with each new twist in the archaeological record. The latest disappearing act may be taking place on page 501, where new evidence, some claim, casts another shadow over a once-cherished idea: that Asian big-game hunters crossed the Bering Land Bridge to give rise to the Clovis people, who were considered the first Americans. New dates show that a crucial Siberian site, thought to be a way station along the Bering road, wasn't occupied until after the Clovis had begun killing...

Area sites used to dispute Clovis/extinction link By MIKE STARK Gazette Wyoming Bureau It's time to stop pointing an accusatory finger at some of the earliest people in North America, researchers say. For decades, the Clovis people have been blamed for exterminating as many as 35 types of animals more than 11,000 years ago, including mammoths, mastodons, saber-toothed cats, camels and other mammals that roamed the continent during the Pleistocene era. A study published this month in the Journal of World Prehistory says there's no evidence that the Clovis people hunted big-game animals into extinction. "There's just absolutely no support...

Contact: Joel Schwarz joels@u.washington.edu 206-543-2580 University of Washington Evidence acquits Clovis people of ancient killings, archaeologists say Archaeologists have uncovered another piece of evidence that seems to exonerate some of the earliest humans in North America of charges of exterminating 35 genera of Pleistocene epoch mammals. The Clovis people, who roamed large portions of North America 10,800 to 11,500 years ago and left behind highly distinctive and deadly fluted spear points, have been implicated in the exterminations by some scientists. Now researchers from the University of Washington and Southern Methodist University who examined evidence from all suggested Clovis-age killing sites...

DALLAS — The skull of a teenage girl from the Gulf Coast could be the oldest human remains ever found in Texas. Scientists are debating the age of the skull, unearthed last year in a muddy ditch near Freeport, in Brazoria County. Preliminary analysis suggests that the fossil could date back nearly 11,000 years. If so, the skull would be among the oldest human bones known in North America, from a time when, the theory goes, the first Americans had just arrived across a land bridge from Asia. Some experts have questioned the 11,000-year date, based on a single radiocarbon...

DISCOVER Vol. 23 No. 5 (May 2002)Table of Contents The Amazon Trail Anna Roosevelt's ventures into the jungles of South America have turned up traces of human settlements far older than archaeologists ever suspected By John Dorfman Photography by Jennifer Tzar Archaeologists visiting remote sites in Brazil must rely on the skills of local pilots to locate—and land on—small airstrips in the rain forest. "The pilots here are very good," says Roosevelt, a veteran Amazon explorer, because the mining industry depends on them. "When I have a goal," says Anna Curtenius Roosevelt, her voice emphasizing the word, "everything else is...

American Neanderthal? Unearthed Native American Could Help Solve Mystery W A S H I N G T O N, Feb. 18 —The baffling 9,300-year-old Kennewick Man, whose skeleton was unearthed in 1996 in Washington state, looks so “European” because he had Neanderthal roots, a scientist said today. The National Park Service said earlier this month it would allow a genetic analysis of the skeleton, which some Native American groups claim as an ancestor and want buried. It has intrigued researchers because the features seem to suggest a more Caucasian than Asian origin. Others say he looks like an Ainu — ...

Images: Pamela Patrick MAMMOTH HUNTER OR FISH CATCHER? Archaeologists had concluded that the first inhabitants of the New World were fur-clad big-game hunters who swept across the Bering land bridge in pursuit of their prey. But recent evidence suggests that the first settlers may have been just as likely to hunt small game, catch fish or gather plants as they moved through more temperate environments. The leaf-shaped spearpoint I'm holding is surprisingly dainty--for a deadly weapon. I let my mind wander, trying to imagine life some 14,700 years ago in the marshes of southern Chile, where this relic was ...

Controversy over what sparked the Younger Dryas, a brief return to near glacial conditions at the end of the Ice Age, includes a theory that it was caused by a comet hitting the Earth. As proof, proponents point to sediments containing deposits they believe could result only from a cosmic impact. Now a new study disproves that theory, said archaeologist David Meltzer, Southern Methodist University, Dallas. Meltzer is lead author on the study and an expert in the Clovis culture, the peoples who lived in North America at the end of the Ice Age. Meltzer's research team found that nearly...