130,000 years ago???

[SDhunter]

Interesting thread Charlie. Thanks for sharing

[CMD]

Thanks, but this is actually Greg's thread.....

[clambellies]

Whatever the case, the heads of the "Clovis First" deadenders are going to explode......

[CMD]

I have not yet watched this myself:

An evening with the Cerutti Mastadon scientists, put on by the San Diego museum:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=xvpwlnzzniY

[CMD]

This past weekend, I had the pleasure of attending the Fall meeting of the New England Antiquties Research Association(Neara). A chance to greet old friends and establish new friendships. And a chance to hear the keynote address by Dr. Steven Holen, the lead author of the letter and supplemental material dealing with the Cerutti Mastodon Site, which appeared earlier this year in the prestigious journal Nature. Dr. Holen's spouse, also one of the authors of the Nature letter, delivered a lecture during the afternoon section Saturday.

Dr. Kathleen Holen's talk was entitled "Evidence for human activity at large animal death sites". She and her husband have been involved in over 50 excavations of mammoth and mastodon remains, in the Great Plains and elsewhere. Of course, not all those have involved evidence of human activity, but some have, and have returned dates far older then Clovis. Her emphasis in her talk was on what fresh bone looks like when it is humans doing the work of breaking those bones open. Including experimentation using heavy hammerstones with fresh elephant bones in Africa. I cannot recapitulate her knowledge, and won't attempt it, but will say she convinced me that there are reliable clues that can be demonstrated when fresh bone has been fractured by hominids wielding large hammerstones for percussion operations.

Dr. Stephen Holen's talk was entitled "The Cerutti Mastadon Site in San Diego: 130,000 B. P."

Well, it was superb. I shook his hand afterward and told him I could not speak for Neara, but that I considered it an honor that he came to speak to us about what is grounbreaking(to say the very least!) research, to be able to hear the frontier research by the lead author of the Cerutti study. He replied that he felt honored to have been invited, and that it was wonderful to speak to an audience that was actually receptive to their study.

Indeed! The blowback against them has been nothing short of relentless and fierce. They told us of one grad student, who had no experience excavating a mastodon site at all, publishing a reply stating that heavy equipment driving above the Cerutti bones while they were still buried, was responsible for the fracturing seen. Both Holen and his wife were incredulous at this suggestion, having, as stated, not only so much more experience studying megafauna sites, but being able to easily demonstrate the difference between bones broken by percussion while fresh, and bones broken when dessicated(which the Cerutti bones would have to have been if broken by heavy vehicles driving over their burial sites. Even at 130,000 +/-9000 years old, the Cerutti bones are dessicated, not fossilized. In other words, they are still bones).

Regarding what I felt was one key observation I took away. European colleagues working on sites far older then sites in the Americas, as well as African colleagues working at the famous Olduvai Gorge Early Man sites, are near universal in being of the opinion that the Cerutti Mastodon Site is an archaeological site. Everyone, both old world and new world archaeologists, are of the opinion that the dates for the site are valid. 130,000 +/-9000 years old. The old world archaeologists and paleontologist recognize the fracturing as clearly originating in percussion blows by humans. American archaeologists, in sharp contrast, have been near universal in rejecting the findings. American archaeologists are of the opinion that the Cerutti site is not an archaeological site at all. But I felt the Holen's have effectively overcome these opinions. And that is why I thanked them for the honor of hearing from the lead authors regarding what I believe will lead to a major breakthrough in understanding the peopling of the Americas.

BTW, already two additional sites have been located in California, which may show evidence of hominin activity, and both have returned dates of 80,000-100,000 years old. They told us of occasions where other sites have been destroyed because archaeologists had simply assumed a priori that the sites were simply "too old" and therefore simply not worth saving.

In short, the Holen's won me over. I wish a tape of their talks were available, and that I could offer here more then my impressions based on memory.

[Kyflintguy]

Thanks for sharing that Charlie, that's pretty exciting stuff and you did good giving us a rundown of what you took in... So much we don't know but maybe, finally we are getting to see a little of what the future of archaeology holds, sounds like the start of a new chapter to me. Thanks for sharing!

[sailorjoe]

I ditto what Josh said. Many thanks.

[CMD]

Here’s an update on the Cerutti Mastadon site:

https://www.sciencenews.org/article/...first-settlers

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Full article(I hope): https://sci-hub.do/downloads/2020-11...bordes2020.pdf


——————————————————————————————————————

And the other earlier thread on the Cerutti site:

https://forums.arrowheads.com/forum/...e-academia-edu

[SGT.Digger]

From a reproductive standpoint thinking there was folks here wayyyyyyyyyyyyy back then there would have been tens of billions of folks here on this continent when Columbus and his fellow explorers arrived here. Just a marginal positive birth rate per year would have meant quite a population from that timeframe IMOP. If there was 1000 people on this continent and the population doubled every 100 years. I’m not a mathematician and can’t even do that figure but it doubles 1300 times conservatively

[tomclark]

Modern humans make recognizable tools. The more rabbit holey you have to go to get data off them the less likely they are imhop. Not saying can't be "people" that far back but these tools look like newbie rocks that are posted LOL. - Doubting Thomas Need to see more sites and some teeth!

[Mattern]

I love this kind of stuff. Controversial subjects bring out the best thinking in people. It took a long time to read and look at all this post. Anthropologist know that there has been influxes to these continents on more then one occurrence. Yes the land bridge. Polynesians, other oriental groups, Maritime people who may have come from Europe. I have believed in pre-clovis peoples for many years. I believe that there are more paleo sites around and near the Chesapeake Bay area. So where did they come from? It wasn't that long ago that the paleo date was at 12,000 years ago. Now we are at 15,000 + years. One day we will be at 18 or 20,000 BC. yes that is very far from 130,000. But we will continue to push these dates back further and further. I too am skeptical but I refuse to close my eyes. No one knows what the next thing we will find! That's why we keep hunting and studying. You are all great people, and I am proud to be part of this intelligent group. (not that I'm that smart) Kim

[CMD]

Recent sites confirmed at 30,000 years have been in the news lately, but they are not universally accepted...

[CMD]

From a reproductive standpoint thinking there was folks here wayyyyyyyyyyyyy back then there would have been tens of billions of folks here on this continent when Columbus and his fellow explorers arrived here. Just a marginal positive birth rate per year would have meant quite a population from that timeframe IMOP. If there was 1000 people on this continent and the population doubled every 100 years. I’m not a mathematician and can’t even do that figure but it doubles 1300 times conservatively

Yes, but we would not know which species of Homo such a site might represent, there were several human species at 130,000 years ago, and we also would not know if such an early entry, if this site reflects that, were humans that even survived. So we do not know that what you are describing would have occurred at all from what might have been, in effect, dead end entries.

[CMD]

Here’s one such example of assuming survival, when survival may not have been the outcome. Of course, this site is also disputed: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-02190-y

“ If there were people in North America so early, it’s unclear what happened to them. “There continues to be no convincing genetic evidence of a pre-15,000-years-ago human presence in the Americas,” says geneticist David Reich at Harvard Medical School in Boston, Massachusetts

Ardelean says there is a simple reason why genetic studies4 suggest that humans spread across the Americas only relatively recently: early groups such as the one he thinks was present at Chiquihuite Cave didn’t survive to contribute to modern gene pools. “I definitely advocate for the idea of lost groups,” he says.”

[Ron Kelley]

I have not read everything that there is to read on this archaeological site. With that said I have a theory that I have not seen in print:

The mastodon died of natural causes 130,000 years ago. That's why there are no cut marks on the bones. Many thousands of years later the mastodon bones were discovered by a Native American. There was no food value in these old bones but they could still be smashed apart with a large rock. Some pieces of bone were carried off to be fashioned into tools. This is why the rock tool is there. This is why the mastodon bones appear to have been broken by man: They were.

[Mattern]

Good point Ron! Even at 15,000 years ago Paleo man was here. And he knew where the lithics were. Sure they hunted lithics as they went along. Knowing where the lithics were should push that date back quite a bit. Altho we don't find that much paleo around my neck of the woods, I and perhaps many of us have found possible pre clovis material. It was mentioned about extinctions. Who is to say that there weren't Hominids here a hundred thousand years ago that went extinct!

[SGT.Digger]

I love this kind of stuff. Controversial subjects bring out the best thinking in people. It took a long time to read and look at all this post. Anthropologist know that there has been influxes to these continents on more then one occurrence. Yes the land bridge. Polynesians, other oriental groups, Maritime people who may have come from Europe. I have believed in pre-clovis peoples for many years. I believe that there are more paleo sites around and near the Chesapeake Bay area. So where did they come from? It wasn't that long ago that the paleo date was at 12,000 years ago. Now we are at 15,000 + years. One day we will be at 18 or 20,000 BC. yes that is very far from 130,000. But we will continue to push these dates back further and further. I too am skeptical but I refuse to close my eyes. No one knows what the next thing we will find! That's why we keep hunting and studying. You are all great people, and I am proud to be part of this intelligent group. (not that I'm that smart) Kim

Stuffs always being pushed back including age of earth was 1.2 billion when I was in 9th grade now it’s 4.5 .

[SGT.Digger]

I have not read everything that there is to read on this archaeological site. With that said I have a theory that I have not seen in print:

The mastodon died of natural causes 130,000 years ago. That's why there are no cut marks on the bones. Many thousands of years later the mastodon bones were discovered by a Native American. There was no food value in these old bones but they could still be smashed apart with a large rock. Some pieces of bone were carried off to be fashioned into tools. This is why the rock tool is there. This is why the mastodon bones appear to have been broken by man: They were.

Good point . My thought is after watching The Saqqara tomb thing on Netflix that the bone preserved in a desert climate turns brittle and almost useless and deteriorates without premium preservation of the mummy and that’s only 2-3500 years ago . If the mammoths bones somehow survived in a huge ice sheet for 115,000 before paleo man arrived they might be toolable but I would think the natural wear and tear of the elements would render them useless if they hadn’t turned to stone by that time . I’m a creationist so my timeframes are MUCH more compact but can visualize these things happening and I believe they did kill these big beasts because they are post diluvian remains.

[Lindenmeier-Man]

I’ll buy the 30,000 years ago. Always I’ve thought that if your tools were based upon bones/ ivory that the tradition would continue. Only problem is finding such tools/ spear points etc, that have not perished. After all, bones and ivory were continued in use.