In the book *American Genesis]/i] by Jeffrey Goodman, Ph.D. (1981) the argument is made that the migration from Asia is actually reverse. That homo sapiens sapiens arose in America and migrated to Asia. The author notes much archaeological evidence to support this theory, and this was before the SC find. He notes the Del Mar (48,000 years), La Jolla (44,000 yers) skulls, and four other California sites dated in 1974 by Bada as being 27,000, 39,000, 45,000, and 70,000 years in age. (Incidentally, other finds in South America and Pennsylvania also indicate that Man was here long before 15-20,000 years ago.) Dr. Goodman opens Chapter 7 as follows:
This book was written almost 25 years ago. Surely it has been reviewed and dismissed by experts, I would imagine. Would Colibri or any other qualified person comment on this?
I just spent the last several months reading a great deal of the primary and secondary literature concerning the early colonization of the New World, including the most up-to-date stuff and articles dealing with major controversies, in order to write the text for a museum exhibition I am working on. I have never heard of Goodman, and I don’t recall seeing him referred to in any of my source material. This would lead me to believe that his stuff must be so completely flaky that no one even bothers to refute it.
FYI, it’s Homo floresiensis. I don’t see any possible relation to Bigfoot, but it does offer some tantilizing hint at the possible existence of Orang Pendek.
If you get the National Geographic Channel, you might be interested in this program, airing tonight: Search for the Ultimate Survivor.
The biographical sketch on the cover jacket says that he has a doctorate in anthropology, degrees in geological engineering and archaeology, and was Director of Archeological Research Associates, Inc., of Tucson, Arizona, "a company actively engaged in consulting and research related to the origins of man and civilization. A frequent lecturer on archeology and parapsychology, he is the author of We Are the Earthquake Generation.
What about the sites indicating the presence of homo sapiens (human remains) 70,000 years ago in Sunnyvale, Ca, 48,000 years ago in Del Mar, Cal., 44,000 years ago in La Jolla, Cal, 40,000 years ago in Taber, Alberta, Canada, etc? Since the publication of that book, a site in SC indicates homo sapiens have been here at least 50,000 years ago, and there have been other findings in Pennsylvania and South America, indicating the same.
There are lots of claimed “early early” sites, but usually there is some problem with them - the stratigraphy is dicey, there is suspected contamination from other layers, there is no direct tie-in of radiocarbon dates with undisputed human artifacts, etc., etc. AFAIK, none of those sites has generally been accepted by archeologists as being indisputably that old.
However, it has only been within the past decade or so that many archeologists have been prepared to accept any dates earlier than about 11,500-12,000 BP from the Americas, which marks the arrival of the widespread Clovis big-game-hunting culture. The breakthrough site was Monte Verde in southern Chile, an exceptionally well preserved site now reliably dated at more than 12,000 years ago, which demonstrates people must have been in the Americas long before Clovis. Many archeologists long questioned the dating of the site, but now so much strong evidence has been accumulated that even the last holdouts have given in. And this has opened the floodgates for re-evaluation and testing, and possible acceptance, of much much older sites. Monte Verde itself is supposed to have some remains more than 20,000 years old. Time will tell whether some of these other sites will pan out.
I would find it very remarkable if humans have been in the Americas so long without having had a more obvious impact on the fauna (since these dates long precede the main megafaunal extinctions), and without increasing enough in population so that they left more abundant remains. However, it’s looking more and more possible that this might have been the case.