Pre-Clovis Find

[11KBP]

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/10/stone-spear-tip-may-have-belonged-first-americans?utm_source=newsfromscience%3Dflipboard%3Dflipboard2408205&fbclid=IwAR0-j0nBtjeEpbLUzp3-ycWMIDYs-NXIYWxpD8zjKKwkBnz5nF-A6bxh6ZI

[Ron Kelley]

Thanks Everett, I sure would like to see some cleaned up pictures to get a better look at the points. It would be interesting to see the flake scars.

Edit: Have we been calling these blades Agate Basin?

[Kentucky point]

Hmm... very interesting.

[Hoss]

Very interesting article Dick thanks for sharing. I wish they had shown all 11 points a cleaned up photo would be awesome as well.

[11KBP]

I agree Hoss more and better pics would be nice but unfortunately the professional community can be somewhat stingy with artifact pictures.

[Scorpion68]

Now that's what I call a find. Can imagine making a find like that - well maybe not. Personally - I wouldn't have known what I had. And the stories just keeps on coming.. Excellent article 11KBP.

[flintguy]

I think this one is from the same site.

[flintguy]

Newsweek take on the same story.

[Ron Kelley]

Thanks Flintguy, That is a much better picture.

[sneakygroundbuzzard]

very cool read,never been a big believer in clovis first theory

looks like hell gap point,which are found in texas

[Olden]

A link to a 2016 article from what may be the same site. The pre-clovis tools shown here
don't match the 'western stemmed point' from the newest article..

16,000-Year-Old Tools Discovered in Texas

http://westerndigs.org/16000-year-old-tools-discovered-in-texas-among-the-oldest-yet-found-in-the-west/

and unrelated, but interesting Clovis stuff..

Ancient Clovis Elephant (Gomphotheres) Hunting Camp Discovered in Mexico

http://westerndigs.org/clovis-elephant-hunting-site-discovered-in-mexico/

Wiki: Gomphothere
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gomphothere

[hudson]

The first link keeps taking me to a Walmart page

[Olden]

It's taking me to the Western Digs site: I'm running AdBlock Plus, which I highly recommend..

[SDhunter]

Not sure why these articles never show artifacts, to speak of. Interesting anyway, but would have liked to see the artifacts. Like Everett said, stingy!

[Olden]

I agree. One point doesn't exactly make a cross sample..

[Ron Kelley]

So People who have found Hell Gap points in Texas will be looking at their sites in a different light.

[Kentucky point]

It's almost like "who knows anymore?" We are discovering things often where something totally upsets a theory. Did it say how they know the points are so old? I would like to know.

[SDhunter]

The article said these “pre-Clovis “ points were found below the level they were finding Clovis points in the ground.
Thus they should be older, but as Charlie just alluded to in this other article, the soil was a type of soil that allows stones to shift up or down through cracks.

[CMD]

This article shows the artifacts, and the conclusions drawn are themselves drawing a great deal of flak.....

https://gizmodo.com/discovery-of-anc...rch-1829970738

"Stuart Fiedel, a senior archaeologist with the Louis Berger Group and an expert on pre-Clovis culture who also was not involved with the new study, argued that Water and his colleagues did a poor job with their interpretation of the projectile points.

“The newly reported bifaces from Friedkin are mostly nondescript tips and midsections as well as some broken preforms that are probably Clovis artifacts,” Friedkin told Gizmodo. “The two complete specimens are an elongated triangle and a fishtail-stemmed lanceolate. The triangle is similar to several types that occur sporadically throughout the late Paleoindian and Archaic cultural sequence in Texas, while the fishtail appears to closely resemble the Victoria variant of the Angostura type, which dates between around 8,500 and 10,400 year ago. Many Angostura points were found at the Friedkin site, within an 80-centimeter vertical spread. Are these obvious similarities between claimed pre-Clovis artifacts and later points found in overlying sediments merely coincidental?”

Importantly, Fiedel said the authors failed to mention that the soil at the Friedkin site is classified as a vertisol; the clay-like soil at the site is prone to developing long vertical cracks through which artifacts can move both up and down. These soil processes, he said, can result in the vertical distribution of small artifacts, such as the ones described in the new paper."

And the complete published study:

http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/4/10/eaat4505

[Kentucky point]

Thank you!

[Tam]

I still feel with our ever changing modern technology there is more . They just need to grant hese people it .
great article ?

[SDhunter]

If we are to trust carbon dating, wouldn’t that be the method to prove whether these points are older than Clovis, and not just at what depth they were found? I’m assuming they must have done that.

[Kentucky point]

The way Radio metric/Carbon dating works is the materials original elements (the "parent elements") break down into other elements (the "daughter elements") decay at relatively consistent rates, over time. The decay can be measured this way. Carbon Dating is usually used for biological artifacts, i.e baskets, leaves, etc. The potassium-argon method is used to date rocks. The problem is that we can know the present amount of decay, but not the original amount, and the ending amount. There is no way to measure how much there was, or how much there will be. Thus, scientist give "an educated guess."

The tour guide at Meadowcroft Park admitted this, as he said, that "there is no real way of knowing, only educated guesses. We can only estimate how old these things are, if we look at the present rate."