I am a newbie, (I hate that word), and I would like some insight on the latest supposed human fossil finds in SC, VA and PA. Are they really 50,000 years old? Who knows for sure? What is the latest on fossil-dating technology?
Can you provide a link. I haven’t heard of this! It sounds very interesting.
Ever since the Monte Verde site in Chile finally won widespread acceptance a few years ago, there has been little question that people were present in the Americas before Clovis (11,500 BP). So “pre-Clovis” as such is pretty much considered a reality now. The question now is just how far back archeologists will be able to push it.
My sense of the field right now is that dates of 15,000 or so BP in the Americas would not be too controversial to most archeologists. Beyond that, most are still going to require a lot of convincing. I haven’t seen much on the finds you mention beyond the news accounts, so it’s hard to tell just how solid the evidence might be.
Thanks, Squink. I remembered I had seen something on that but had forgotten exactly where.
I’ll be interested to see how the Topper results hold up to peer review. I would expect that criticism might hinge on the possibilities that (1) the vegetation that the carbon dates doesn’t actually belong to the layer the tools are found in; and (2) as the second link indicates, that the “tools” may not be human artifacts at all but naturally chipped stones.
Personally, I would find dates of 20,000, maybe even 30,000 years BP to not be too far-fetched. Something like 50,000 would be absolutely mind-boggling. But at this point, who knows? Breaking the Clovis barrier has opened up all kinds of possibilities.
This isn’t time measured in relation to British Petroleum, is it? 
To clarify for those who might not be familiar with it, BP = Before Present. (Standard for early dates in archeology.) It saves having to do all those mental BC + 2005 years calculations when trying to figure out how long ago something was. Clovis was 9,500 years BC or 11,500 years BP.
Here are 2 that I looked at: www.srarp.org/index.html
and www.centerfirstamericans.com
Within a mile of where I live, a friend whom I call Eagle Eye, continues to find artifacts, mostly arrowheads and spear points. That is what has piqued my interest in Those Who Came Before, especially here in the Sandhills of NC.
Here is a previous thread about Clovis and Monte Verde. So is the ‘‘Clovis barrier’’ history now?. And don’t let my friends modesty fool you. He now has a job at a university in west Texas doing his thing.
Just a technicality. “Present” for these calculations is actually 1950. It doesn’t change with the year. This allows dates written in any year to be constant no matter how long after they are read. The error over 15000 years is below the plus or minus amount in all cases, so the difference isn’t significant.
Yes. It’s based on the year the calibration curves for radiocarbon dating were established.
Conveniently enough, it’s also one year before my birth, so that it’s very easy to convert it into years BMe.
I still wonder why 50,000 years would be so strange. After all, once you accept the fact that people made it to Australia 50,000 years ago, reaching any other point on the planet doesn’t seem that much more difficult (esp. as it doesn’t seem like it would be too hard for any seafaring culture–which clearly the early Australians and their ancestors throughout Indonesia, etc., were–would have such a hard time just following the coast of Asia all the way up to the Aleutians and back down south).
Modern humans don’t seem to have colonized Europe or northern Asia much before 45,000 years ago, so for them to have reached North America even earlier requires revising that date as well. Also, if humans were in North America for so long, it’s very surprising there is not more early evidence for their presence, or an indication of their impact on the megafauna or on ecosystems. There is plentiful evidence of the latter post 11,500 BP.
I posted to the previous thread you mentioned, Adam. Thanks for directing me. Hopefully I will get it right this time:
Thank you all for the great info–I find it all so fascinating. It is a shame that the Army Corps of Engineers covered the Kennewick site with tons of fill. It is my understanding that the remains until recently were not available for study due to Native American protest. I can certainly understand their feelings, but apparently it is not known for sure the ethnicity of Kennewick. I just wish there had been more time to investigate the whole area.
I am not familiar with the redhead from Nevada. Can you fill me in? Rather, I should say Will you fill me in. I am a humble interested party among the learned.
What’s the current thinking on Kennewick Man’s age? I remember hearing that he’s pre-Clovis, but I forget how far Before Present he lived. (BTW, I never knew that BP’s zero year was fixed at 1950. Cool.)
As for Kennewick Man’s ethnicity, the last I heard, they decided that he was related to the Ainu people of Japan, and was almost certainly not Native American.
All of this talk about pre-Clovis Americans has gotten all of the Indian groups up in arms, because it suggests that Native Americans are not the original indigenous peoples in this continent.
The estimates I have seen are mostly around 9500 BP; some sites say 8400 BP. So definitely post-Clovis. But that doesn’t mean he could not be the descendent of pre-Clovis colonists. And I am not sure, but I don’t think there is any conclusive evidence that Clovis peoples were necessarily the ancestors of modern Amerinds (although they have generally been assumed to be).
While Kennewick man does not seem to fit an Amerindian type of bone structure, there is no reason he needs to fit into any other contemporary “racial” category either. Some populations at that time might not have been different from any modern groups.
The most intriguing recent info IMO is the suggestion that some early groups in the Americas might have been related to Australoids, or at least have branched off from the rest of humans at about the same time. And that might make sense, if the first colonizations of both the Americas and Australia took place about the same time. However, early Ameri-Australoids don’t seem to have left any genetic markers in contemporary Amerindian populations.
Unfortunately, the political ramifications of these finds makes it rather difficult to search for reliable scientific information on the web - it’s nearly swamped by polemical articles on both sides.
Well for one thing, it would ruin the “man is responsible for the Pleistocene Mammal extinctions” theories… :dubious:
Not at all. A recent review has concluded that, in many places (including North America) it was the combination of human hunting pressure with climate change that had the greatest impact on most of the megafauna. (In some places there is more evidence for climate, in some places more for humans, but the worst effects were where both coincided.)
Even if humans were in the Americas long before Clovis, one thing we do know is that Clovis was a highly specialized big-game hunting culture, which could have had far more impact on the megafauna than previous cultures did.
Huh. I thought I heard that he was pre-Clovis. I saw something on TV where they said that a study of his skeleton revealed that he was more similar to the Ainu than anyone else. In any case, he is not Native American, but the local Indian tribe got his remains because the law assumes that any remains that pre-date white settlement must be Native American.
Time-wise, that’s not true. But as I said, it’s entirely possible than he belongs to a population that colonized the Americas pre-Clovis. And if you assume that Clovis = Amerindian (which is commonly believed, but probably not true), then if he’s not Amerindian he must be a descendent of pre-Clovis people.
Quite possible, but that doesn’t mean there is any direct relationship. The Ainu may retain characters present in ancient populations that have been lost in other modern ones, but may not be any closer to Kennewick in terms of genetic relationship.
Actually, the tribe (fortunately) never “got his remains.” Scientists won the rightin court to study the bones last year. They are currently held by the Burke Museum in Seattle. Appeals are continuing.
This site has news reports with updates on the controversy.