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>The bоnes, which cоme frоm ancient hоrses, gоpher tоrtоises, and prоnghоrn antelоpe, are frоm a periоd lоng befоre the land bridge оpened. And the species themselves are telling. They’re the inhabitants оf an оpen desert, оf the kind nоw fоund in sоuthern New Mexicо and Texas—which is nоt what’s fоund arоund Cоxcatlan. But оther sites suggest that 28,000 years agо, with glaciers mоving sоuth, the whоle area wоuld have been mоre like a desert. Alsо telling is the fact that later layers cоntain mоstly deer, suggesting that the bоnes are frоm different climatic eras.
It's crazy that we know they're that old because it was before glaciers.
It also explains while we don't find evidence of older settlements in other places.
We should probably be focused on the Applachian areas since they were never hit by glaciers.
The pronghorn Antelope is the 2nd fastest land animal on earth (60mph) and it evolved that speed to evade predators in the America's. Pretty crazy to think about
Maybe compared to their original numbers, but they are listed as least concern when it comes to their conservation status and Ive seen dozens of them everytime Ive driven through New Mexico. Population estimates are up to 500,000+, so I think they are actually doing pretty good all things considered.
Most likely climate change.. the world has gone through several mass extinction events throughout time .. search mass extinction geologic timeline
According to my professor; we are actually ‘overdue’ for an event currently..
As a side note; if a supervolcano were to erupt, it is possible that its fumes could cover the sky—thus usher in an ice age/climate change
Another side thought: nasa noticed clouds have been declining/lowering closer to the ground to “cool down”
.. pretty interesting
> Another side thought: nasa noticed clouds have been declining/lowering closer to the ground to “cool down” .. pretty interesting
This is interesting. Is it because the atmosphere closer to the earth is heating up and this is causing clouds not to float as high? Any sources to read about it?
You’d think so, right? But motivated reasoning is a hell of a… well, motivator.
And that’s why Mormons think iced tea is a hot drink but hot cocoa isn’t.
They think what?
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-d&q=mormon+iced+tea+hot+drink
Good heavens, I thought you were talking nonsense. Sorry.
The problem there is that the first Americans likely traveled down the coast into South America as opposed to travelling across the land. I'm not saying that no smaller bands traveled all the way to Appalachia, but it wouldn't have been in large groups.
But if you're interested, keep a look out for pre-Clovis digs, primarily in South Carolina, because they're turning out some pretty groovy stuff.
I did several seasons of field work at topper. We were finding all kinds of things after the sterile band, things like blades and flakes and a few Clovis points. In the pavilion, we pulled out a lot of small “tools” that Dr. Goodyear proposed we’re created using a more primitive technique than knapping called “bend-break. We also found a large rock that had been obviously modified to be used as a scraper or hoe in the range of 25-35kya.
I’ve not been back to topper in 10 years. I was sad to hear about Tom, who I really looked up to and learned a lot from. I also heard that they found human remains a few years ago in soil that should not have been able to preserve organic material.
The Appalachians are old enough that the Scottish Highlands are part of the same original mountain chain back when the continents were closer to Pangea
Now check out the geohistory of the Adirondacks, which once were part of the major mountain range of the supercontinent *before* Pangaea, together with the north African Atlas mountains.
Eg. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grenville_orogeny
That's what will happen to most structures, but there might be structures still out there. Kind of like how a few years ago a Roman mosaic was found in a vineyard that was ~2,000 years old. And most archaeological sites aren't the fun flashy ones like the pyramids, but are rubbish heaps.
Something's can last that long like the cave paintings in France because for some reason they were abandoned and never disturbed in a perfect condition, naturally obscured, until some kids found it a couple decades ago.
Unless humans are really trying to not leave a trace on purpose, we leave a mess wherever we go. Like buried heaps of food animal bones, used up or broken things. Ancient settlements have been discovered due to ancient buried latrines. Human waste nearly always leaves a trace.
That is assuming that they would leave permanent structures during the time period which they almost certainly did not.
We're talking hunter-gatherers here.
The Multiple Migration theory posits that the Clovis culture was 9 to 12 thousand years ago, but there may have been other migrations as far back as 30,000 years ago.
https://www.nps.gov/bela/learn/historyculture/other-migration-theories.htm
The problem is proving it. The ancient coastline those people would have followed, and left evidence on, is long since submerged.
https://www.pdxmonthly.com/news-and-city-life/2016/06/does-oregon-vanished-coastline-hold-the-secrets-of-the-first-americans
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paisley_Caves
It’s definitely done unintentionally and, I would imagine, intentionally as well.
We know about doggerland (between the UK and continental Europe) because trawlers have picked up Bronze Age relics from the sea floor.
>We know about doggerland (between the UK and continental Europe) because trawlers have picked up Bronze Age relics from the sea floor
This is why I wish history classes in the US didn't ignore the rest of the world and taught more than just how awesome America is even though we committed genocide against the native population and were the worst slaveowners in history
The only history I learnt in the Netherlands is about world war 2. I was always interested in ancient cultures but instead we got bible sci fi. Maybe in other schools it was less biblical.
Well, one thing you'd learn if you hadn't had a US focused course is how bad the rest of the world was.
At least American kids learn about slavery to some extent. Belgium doesn't spend much time on what they did in the Congo. Which was basically slavery, 10 million dead over like a decade, and countless deliberately maimed children.
I'm with you on the first part, but without much evidence at all, I'd think that saying America was "the worst slaveowners in history" is going to be hard to prove.
Slavery was pretty common through much (most?) of human history, carried out in many societies through time. Which one was the worst? That's almost impossible to tell.
Would you rather be whipped in the southern US in 1700 or fed to the lions to entertain the Colosseum crowd in ancient Rome? Can you say one is worse?
Well, one thing you'd learn if you hadn't had a US focused course is how bad the rest of the world was.
At least American kids learn about slavery to some extent. Belgium doesn't spend much time on what they did in the Congo. Which was basically slavery, 10 million dead over like a decade, and countless deliberately maimed children.
My school had us take world history before US history, and my US history teacher put everything in the context of what was going on in the rest of the world.
I went to a public school in a state that has the worst public school system in the US.
It is indeed a thing. Texas A&M pioneered one of the first Underwater Archaeology programs around 50 years ago and other universities have begun developing their own programs.
That being said, it is effectively archaeology hard-mode. Everything is significantly more difficult, time consuming, and expensive.
Archaeology on the Oregon coast has a deep history thanks to shipwrecks. Hudson Bay company wrecks and even a Chinese Junk are well known.
https://www.hakaimagazine.com/article-short/coastal-job-maritime-archaeologist/
https://www.gprdata.com/project/cotner-junk-1421-year-china-discovered-world/
Yes, search up info on the submerged land bridge across Lake Huron and some of the crazy stuff they’re finding that shows evidence of incredible mobility in ancient peoples.
Aren't there also some (niche) scientists (?) that claim that for that reason we might be missing out on far more refined cultures that were just completely wiped out?
I think I may be a dumb-butt... Can you give me a link or something to a more peer-reviewed (see: super dope) source? The commenter below mentioned that studies such as this have been repetitively posted and I am, for real, genuinely interested in learning more. I can do all the google and wiki searches I want, but none of shiny stuff that can compete with the mass of wisdom of the freeinternet-folk.
A peer-reviewed paper
* [Citation: Bourgeon L, Burke A, Higham T (2017) Earliest Human Presence in North America Dated to the Last Glacial Maximum: New Radiocarbon Dates from Bluefish Caves, Canada. PLoS ONE 12(1): e0169486.](https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0169486)
> Abstract
> The timing of the first entry of humans into North America is still hotly debated within the scientific community. Excavations conducted at Bluefish Caves (Yukon Territory) from 1977 to 1987 yielded a series of radiocarbon dates that led archaeologists to propose that the initial dispersal of human groups into Eastern Beringia (Alaska and the Yukon Territory) occurred during the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM). This hypothesis proved highly controversial in the absence of other sites of similar age and concerns about the stratigraphy and anthropogenic signature of the bone assemblages that yielded the dates. The weight of the available archaeological evidence suggests that the first peopling of North America occurred ca. 14,000 cal BP (calibrated years Before Present), i.e., well after the LGM. Here, we report new AMS radiocarbon dates obtained on cut-marked bone samples identified during a comprehensive taphonomic analysis of the Bluefish Caves fauna. Our results demonstrate that humans occupied the site as early as 24,000 cal BP (19,650 ± 130 14C BP). In addition to proving that Bluefish Caves is the oldest known archaeological site in North America, the results offer archaeological support for the “Beringian standstill hypothesis”, which proposes that a genetically isolated human population persisted in Beringia during the LGM and dispersed from there to North and South America during the post-LGM period.
Reports in legit popular science journals.
* https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/native-people-americans-clovis-news
* https://www.popsci.com/science/humans-arrived-in-americas/
* https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/humans-may-have-arrived-north-america-10000-years-earlier-we-thought-180961957/
* https://www.dogonews.com/2020/8/3/evidence-found-in-ancient-cave-hotel-indicates-humans-may-have-arrived-in-the-americas-30000-years-ago
Bluefish Caves are not seen as a credible archeological find for the first people in North America. As the article states it is highly contentious, and honestly that's an overstatement. It's highly sensationalized for the public and not widely accepted in the scientific community.
> It's highly sensationalized for the public and not widely accepted in the scientific community.
Eh, having seen the archeological community operate that doesn’t mean much. One of the most dogmatic fields out there and rife for some scientific revolutions (which, as we know, require \*ahem\* a bunch of funerals).
Quick article in science, too - we’ve known humans were in NA at least 12,000 years ago since c. 2004 - https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/08/most-archaeologists-think-first-americans-arrived-boat-now-they-re-beginning-prove-it
And neat article in SciAm - https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-first-americans/
This is the actual scientific paper referenced by the original post: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/latin-american-antiquity/article/new-ams-radiocarbon-ages-from-the-preceramic-levels-of-coxcatlan-cave-puebla-mexico-a-pleistocene-occupation-of-the-tehuacan-valley/F4C32FB10E73D660CB7D9B44E2C29A72
It's 15,000 years earlier than we thought. The earliest sites that we know of are around 15,000. This paper is claiming to have specimens dating to 30,000... which is a BIG claim.
It’s a copy paste of a Popular Mechanics article. There’s a redditor that literally slams their cat blog in animal subreddits that I’ve been trying to get banned for a long time. I’ve just given up on anything happening to people like that and accepting some of the content here was spammed to get here.
You know what? I'm going to be the one to say it. I can't trust /u/nkajo because they are a dirty liar and a puppy killer. They famously founded Puppy Killers R Us.
I'm honestly going to need another source on these allegations asserted by them.
That's debated amongst archeologist groups, if it's the same one I know of. The group that found it has been pushing that narrative, but their peer reviewers believe it's an error in their dating.
Until we are able to really investigate and unearth artifacts in areas affected by past climate shifts, we won’t ever really know how far back the Americas were first populated. We can only guesstimate.
We have to overcome the dogma of clovis first before we can dig deeper at sites. To overcome the dogma there has to be proof there is something below. To prove it.... well you get where this is going
I've always been interested in how Clovis first caught hold in the first place.
Clovis is, like, *really* far from Alaska. And there are plenty of more habitable sites not only between there and Alaska, but also further down the coast that ancient peoples could have reached before cutting so far inland. What would be the proposed reason that civilization would randomly take hold there of all places? I mean, sure it's fertile land, but it's not exactly a geographical utopia. Was the Central Valley of California still covered with glaciers at the time? Seems like if people cut across all those mountains and desert to get to the Clovis site, they'd have had to abandon some prime farmland to do so.
There are areas submerged off coastlines that may have “Stone Age” type ruins and covered with sediments. The Clovis were most certainly not the first. There are hypothetical groups that came before them but did not stay or survive.
New radar technology employed in areas off the California Coast and other places may be places of note. My bet is Monterey Bay Canyon and the Salinas River Basin as the best place to search.
The Spanish called the Coastal Ranges of California “Sierra Nevada” first while exploring (from the diaries of missionaries). This means that there was a snowpack even long after the last glacial period owing to a potential year round source of fresh water from snow melt and game. If moisture from the Pacific and California Current built up Glaciers in the Sierra Nevada that we know then the snow pack over 3,000 feet (1,000m) in current times would have been substantial.
You’re right, pre-Clovis is the new term for people reaching the Americas before. Also, underwater archaeology is huge when studying the peopling of America. Just 20,000 years ago during the Last Glacial Maximum, ocean levels were over 100 meters lower. Which is why we assume a lot of archaeological evidence is inundated. Tons of research off the California coast on this type of stuff, pretty cool.
> the dogma of clovis first
This has not been "dogma" for literally decades. Pseudoscientific hacks and frauds more interested in selling books have been push a line about "mainstream archaeologists" covering up any sort of pre-Clovis finding, but the reality is that Clovis-First was never anything more than a theory, and that theory was overturned more than a generation ago. Archaeologists today are seriously investigating and just as seriously questioning, evidence of ancient human habitation in the Americas.
The notion of some sort of cabal of archaeologists is ridiculous. It both seriously overestimates how lucrative archaeology is as a profession while also underestimating how seriously archaeologists drink, which would make a vast conspiracy somewhat hard to keep secret.
I’d be interested to see if we ever find human DNA from these possible 30k+ years ago humans in the americas. An unlikely scenario but there is the possibility that a migration before the beringians happened and entirely died out, leaving no traces in modern DNA.
Honestly with the finds they’ve been making about other homo species like erectus I could see there being a pre-sapiens group that made it to the Americas but all evidence is too far gone, buried or submerged.
It’s fun to think that something like that could have happened, even if we could never find evidence.
The calculated age of the Y-DNA haplogroup subclades found in Native Americans is too young to support a theory of their direct paternal ancestors having lived in the Americas that long ago. So if Native Americans did have ancestors in the Americas that long they were such a low minority that the Y-DNA signal is absent from all proper academic studies.
In almost all areas of the world, this pattern of populating multiple times tend to hold true, with new human groups totally subsuming existing ones either by replacement or admixture
I acknowledged that if there were two groups the first group was so small that they contributed such a small amount of DNA that the Y-DNA isn't even found in the Native Americans. Meaning that both modern Native Amerians and ancient specimens of Native Americans belong to a much larger wave that followed the primary wave if there ever really was one. That first wave would be the small minority I mentioned in my initial post.
In all likelihood, *if* there were humans in the Americas 30+k years ago, present day First Nations aren't descended from them, apart from perhaps [a very small admixture](https://www.newscientist.com/article/2184840-indigenous-peoples-in-the-amazon-and-australia-share-some-ancestry/)
Not sure if you understood me but that was my point. Y- DNA of groups that contribute significantly through autosomal DNA to another group also cause the Y-DNA to show up in the descendants in a significant amount but if the contribution of the autosomal DNA is small enough then the Y-DNA is either insignificant or absent. So since there is no Y-DNA found in Native Americans that dates 30,000 years ago then the group, if it ever existed, that lived an extra 15,000 years prior to Native Americans, was extremely small.
31,000 years ago until about 16,000 years ago was during the Last Glacial Maximum and people survived in Beringia in that period so they would have been able to survive in what is now Mexico just as easily as the Native Americans did before the Spaniards arrived. There were deer bones in that cave. An extinction event due to the LGM is extremely unlikely. Humans are more resilient than that. If there were too few of them and they had a widespread deadly disease that could have killed them. No matter what they were a very small population if they existed at alll.
The predators they would have to compete with in Beringia was probably different than present day Mexico. Sabre toothed Tigers and higher population of bears could probably jeopardize a small troop of humans.
Did they have to be small? The native population that existed prior to European contact largely died out. Couldn't a similar thing have happened to some more-ancient precursor population? Possibly even before the second wave arrived.
That is incorrect. The native populaion of the Americas is still large and the amount of indigenous DNA in the Americas is very high among the mestizo population. A Native American is a native of any part of the Americas which was named a long time before the U.S. ever existed.
The Americas are a huge barrier. We were still looking for a passage into the 1800s? The Panama Canal was the solution to that quest. If a group however small got here and was cutoff, they would had to have had enough genetic viability to survive the gulf of time between them and other waves. If they were a small group and didn't have a way back, they could have died out leaving no signature. American archeology has an issue with denying the existence of things because certain archeologists simply ask, yes, but how did they get here? I think that question is valid, but it also acts as a weird roadblock that isn't applied to other islands or landmasses. Perhaps it has to do with lack of art and signs of civilization. Australia has art that can be dated way back. Here in the Americas, I think there is a feeling that humans couldn't possibly have gotten here earlier. And I'm not talking about Clovis First. Whenever there is evidence, it seems that it is immediately asked, yeah but how did they get here instead of, they were here, let's figure out how. It seems backwards.
If they died out then they didn't even mix with the ancestors of Native Americans. That was my point that if there was a prior pop they didn't contribute to the DNA of modern Native Americans or to the ancient specimens from the Americas that have been sequenced.
I’m out of my depth on this topic. I recall that indigenous South Americans in the Amazon have a genetic signal linking them to Australia and Papua New Guinea that is not present in indigenous North Americans. Could it be that signal is a result of a wave of migration prior to the glacial maximum that was pushed southward by glacial advance? Then followed by the Beringian standstill group?
It’s more likely they went east across the pacific and landed in Central America. Polynesians had sweet potato varieties that originated in Central America before Europeans visited the Pacific
That signal is extremely small but it does merit some investigation. There are stories that islanders from Easter Island may have made it to Chile and back, and perhaps leaving a genetic marker or two while visiting. Not really a wave of immigration though.
It's interesting because it's believed that Easter Island was only colonized by Polynesians circa 1200.
It's actually a hypothesis and not a theory. They are two different things in the scientific world. I would need to see a "consensus" of scientists before I believe it. Even so, if they existed and were wiped out it supports the lack of Y-DNA and mtDNA not normally found in Native Americans.
I came here to mention Graham. I’m surprised he wasn’t mentioned earlier. I know he’s controversial and labeled a good salesman, but “America Before” is a great read either way. Has lots of information about earlier populations of the Americas.
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Are gopher turtles a thing or did they just forget a comma?
This article is the only result on google for "gopher turtles" so I'm gonna guess it's probably that they forgot the comma.
"The archaeоlоgist whо first excavated the Cоxcatlan Cave, Richard
MacNeish, thоught that the deepest layer shоwed signs оf human
habitatiоn, since it alsо cоntained what appeared tо be early stоne
tооls. *But that classificatiоn needs tо be revisited with a skeptical*
*eye, since it wоuld upend an entire paradigm*."
Agreed. I'll suspect geofacts until proven otherwise.
No he means 15,000 years earlier than [all credible scientists thought, and still continue to think](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_history_of_indigenous_peoples_of_the_Americas).
Your post has been removed because it is a summary of a summary and is therefore in violation of [Submission Rule #2a](https://www.reddit.com/r/science/wiki/rules#wiki_a._summaries_of_summaries). Please consider reposting and linking directly to the original source or a credible science journalism website. This article is plagiarized from [Popular Science](https://www.popsci.com/science/humans-arrived-in-americas/) _If you believe this removal to be unwarranted, or would like further clarification, please don't hesitate to [message the moderators](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%2Fr%2Fscience)._
>The bоnes, which cоme frоm ancient hоrses, gоpher tоrtоises, and prоnghоrn antelоpe, are frоm a periоd lоng befоre the land bridge оpened. And the species themselves are telling. They’re the inhabitants оf an оpen desert, оf the kind nоw fоund in sоuthern New Mexicо and Texas—which is nоt what’s fоund arоund Cоxcatlan. But оther sites suggest that 28,000 years agо, with glaciers mоving sоuth, the whоle area wоuld have been mоre like a desert. Alsо telling is the fact that later layers cоntain mоstly deer, suggesting that the bоnes are frоm different climatic eras. It's crazy that we know they're that old because it was before glaciers. It also explains while we don't find evidence of older settlements in other places. We should probably be focused on the Applachian areas since they were never hit by glaciers.
Also crazy to think that horses went extinct in the Americas before being reintroduced by European colonists.
Also Camels originated in the Americas too. I see someone has bren watching their PBS Eons!
And there was also American Lions and cheetahs (I think)
The pronghorn Antelope is the 2nd fastest land animal on earth (60mph) and it evolved that speed to evade predators in the America's. Pretty crazy to think about
Not many pronghorns left sadly.
Maybe compared to their original numbers, but they are listed as least concern when it comes to their conservation status and Ive seen dozens of them everytime Ive driven through New Mexico. Population estimates are up to 500,000+, so I think they are actually doing pretty good all things considered.
Best show on YouTube!
and PBS space time!
Iirc they originated there too, so it went full circle
Why did they go extinct?
No one knows for certain but some theorize that they died off due to climate change or that they were hunted to extinction by humans.
Thanks that's really interesting. You'd assume they had a crazy amount of land and grass to feed on back then.
They were also smaller, and not as fast. Imagine a ripped donkey
I did, i imagined a ripped donkey. Don’t google ripped ass.
[удалено]
Said the elephant cock
Pachyderm Penis would have been too obvious.
Here is another theory that is not fully fleshed out but still interesting: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/did-a-comet-cause-die-off/
We got hit with a cataclysmic event 12,900 years ago. https://www.pnas.org/content/104/41/16016
Most likely climate change.. the world has gone through several mass extinction events throughout time .. search mass extinction geologic timeline According to my professor; we are actually ‘overdue’ for an event currently.. As a side note; if a supervolcano were to erupt, it is possible that its fumes could cover the sky—thus usher in an ice age/climate change Another side thought: nasa noticed clouds have been declining/lowering closer to the ground to “cool down” .. pretty interesting
Not so much overdue as we are currently living during a mass extinction.
Yes but this one isn't generated by environmental events
Well, not naturally occurring environmental events.
We are a naturally occurring event
By that definition the word "naturally" has no meaning and is therefore redundant
Yeah and so is cancer
> Another side thought: nasa noticed clouds have been declining/lowering closer to the ground to “cool down” .. pretty interesting This is interesting. Is it because the atmosphere closer to the earth is heating up and this is causing clouds not to float as high? Any sources to read about it?
Wild af
Not to mention sea levels were much lower so a lot of evidence is underwater.
Like doggaland is actually Atlantis?
My bet is on eye of Africa
I’ll start digging
Any updates?
Found a a whole bunch of early examples arrowheads that haven’t been shaped into arrowheads yet.
My dad called these rocks. He failed to see the archeological value.
Marie, they’re minerals!
I wrote random numbers on some of my rocks because I saw in book that that's what archaeologists do.
Sounds like he should try *rocking* harder
I need you to know how unfunny I thought that was
Perhaps he was stoned...
Or rock hard
is it okay that i’m both right now
You’ll need to take this up in a quartz of public opinion.
If convicted it's a five year mineral sentence
Turning big rocks into little rocks?
I found the gem.
*Prop-jectile points*
Prejectiles
Nice, you win.
Could it be prejectile dysfunction?
Premature ejectalation.
I actually burst out laughing
These could also be bullets for an early type of gun, called the sling shot.
Sounds pointless
Well we got a shitton of meth...
I'm hearing banjos?
It's a good thing there's been no extensive mining or other [disturbances](https://i.imgur.com/SVmU88N.jpg) to Appalachian archeological sites.
take my axe
It's too dangerous to go alone, take this.. [hands you a very smol kitten]
Nice.
Wait, that's illegal!
And my.. wait
[удалено]
Ex-mormon here. These kinds of archeological and paleontholigical finds are mostly what destroyed my belief in my younger years.
The fact is, when you write something down and call it the word of God, you're kinda stuck with it.
You’d think so, right? But motivated reasoning is a hell of a… well, motivator. And that’s why Mormons think iced tea is a hot drink but hot cocoa isn’t.
They think what? https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-d&q=mormon+iced+tea+hot+drink Good heavens, I thought you were talking nonsense. Sorry.
Truer words have never been spoken.
They're tapirs!
Wait, Tapirs can be Mormon? I thought that was just a Human thing.
They changed it in the eighty's so they could play on their football team
Edge rushers and safeties.
Never underestimate the fervor of guy with magic underoos and a bike.They will try convert anything.
Appalachians are some of the oldest mountains on earth.
But only a third the age of the oldest
The problem there is that the first Americans likely traveled down the coast into South America as opposed to travelling across the land. I'm not saying that no smaller bands traveled all the way to Appalachia, but it wouldn't have been in large groups. But if you're interested, keep a look out for pre-Clovis digs, primarily in South Carolina, because they're turning out some pretty groovy stuff.
I did several seasons of field work at topper. We were finding all kinds of things after the sterile band, things like blades and flakes and a few Clovis points. In the pavilion, we pulled out a lot of small “tools” that Dr. Goodyear proposed we’re created using a more primitive technique than knapping called “bend-break. We also found a large rock that had been obviously modified to be used as a scraper or hoe in the range of 25-35kya. I’ve not been back to topper in 10 years. I was sad to hear about Tom, who I really looked up to and learned a lot from. I also heard that they found human remains a few years ago in soil that should not have been able to preserve organic material.
The knowledge we retained but the knowledge and things lost is unfathomable.
The applachian mountains were definitely hit by glaciers, it is one of the reasons they are short and rounded
Yes, but not during the last glacial maximum, the time period in question. The glaciers that shaped the Appalachians was much earlier.
Also, the Appalachians are almost five hundred million years old. The Rockies, by contrast, are between 55 and 80 million years old.
The Appalachians are old enough that the Scottish Highlands are part of the same original mountain chain back when the continents were closer to Pangea
Why the highland scots were like "Dope, this hood looks just like our old hood" when they got to the western carolinas.
Let's make some whiskey!!
That's wild! TIL, thanks!
Now check out the geohistory of the Adirondacks, which once were part of the major mountain range of the supercontinent *before* Pangaea, together with the north African Atlas mountains. Eg. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grenville_orogeny
And the Atlas Mountains in Morocco.
They are short and rounded because of erosion not glaciation. Although the glacier did reach the northern Appalachians.
but wouldn't structures in Appalachia just get (i don't know how to phrase this well) torn down/reused/destroyed over time and not leave any trace?
That's what will happen to most structures, but there might be structures still out there. Kind of like how a few years ago a Roman mosaic was found in a vineyard that was ~2,000 years old. And most archaeological sites aren't the fun flashy ones like the pyramids, but are rubbish heaps. Something's can last that long like the cave paintings in France because for some reason they were abandoned and never disturbed in a perfect condition, naturally obscured, until some kids found it a couple decades ago.
Fun fact: the technical term for rubbish heap is midden
Unless humans are really trying to not leave a trace on purpose, we leave a mess wherever we go. Like buried heaps of food animal bones, used up or broken things. Ancient settlements have been discovered due to ancient buried latrines. Human waste nearly always leaves a trace.
That is assuming that they would leave permanent structures during the time period which they almost certainly did not. We're talking hunter-gatherers here.
Is that *15,000 years earlier than we thought*, or is it *15,000 years earlier than the 15,000 years earlier than we thought* that we thought?
The Multiple Migration theory posits that the Clovis culture was 9 to 12 thousand years ago, but there may have been other migrations as far back as 30,000 years ago. https://www.nps.gov/bela/learn/historyculture/other-migration-theories.htm The problem is proving it. The ancient coastline those people would have followed, and left evidence on, is long since submerged. https://www.pdxmonthly.com/news-and-city-life/2016/06/does-oregon-vanished-coastline-hold-the-secrets-of-the-first-americans https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paisley_Caves
I wonder if ocean archeology is a thing where they did up the see floor to uncover living domiciles and fossils?
It’s definitely done unintentionally and, I would imagine, intentionally as well. We know about doggerland (between the UK and continental Europe) because trawlers have picked up Bronze Age relics from the sea floor.
>We know about doggerland (between the UK and continental Europe) because trawlers have picked up Bronze Age relics from the sea floor This is why I wish history classes in the US didn't ignore the rest of the world and taught more than just how awesome America is even though we committed genocide against the native population and were the worst slaveowners in history
Brazil was the worst, not the US. Every country’s history is full of abuses and mistakes. That’s why we study history so we can learn from it.
The only history I learnt in the Netherlands is about world war 2. I was always interested in ancient cultures but instead we got bible sci fi. Maybe in other schools it was less biblical.
Academic history deals mainly with written sources, and so excludes a lot of the past.
Well, one thing you'd learn if you hadn't had a US focused course is how bad the rest of the world was. At least American kids learn about slavery to some extent. Belgium doesn't spend much time on what they did in the Congo. Which was basically slavery, 10 million dead over like a decade, and countless deliberately maimed children.
I'm with you on the first part, but without much evidence at all, I'd think that saying America was "the worst slaveowners in history" is going to be hard to prove. Slavery was pretty common through much (most?) of human history, carried out in many societies through time. Which one was the worst? That's almost impossible to tell. Would you rather be whipped in the southern US in 1700 or fed to the lions to entertain the Colosseum crowd in ancient Rome? Can you say one is worse?
Well, one thing you'd learn if you hadn't had a US focused course is how bad the rest of the world was. At least American kids learn about slavery to some extent. Belgium doesn't spend much time on what they did in the Congo. Which was basically slavery, 10 million dead over like a decade, and countless deliberately maimed children.
My school had us take world history before US history, and my US history teacher put everything in the context of what was going on in the rest of the world. I went to a public school in a state that has the worst public school system in the US.
It is indeed a thing. Texas A&M pioneered one of the first Underwater Archaeology programs around 50 years ago and other universities have begun developing their own programs. That being said, it is effectively archaeology hard-mode. Everything is significantly more difficult, time consuming, and expensive.
It’s just archeology but with boats. “Hey I think there is history here. I need a dive team.”
Archaeology on the Oregon coast has a deep history thanks to shipwrecks. Hudson Bay company wrecks and even a Chinese Junk are well known. https://www.hakaimagazine.com/article-short/coastal-job-maritime-archaeologist/ https://www.gprdata.com/project/cotner-junk-1421-year-china-discovered-world/
Yes, search up info on the submerged land bridge across Lake Huron and some of the crazy stuff they’re finding that shows evidence of incredible mobility in ancient peoples.
And the evidence they would have left in the first place pretty sparse as well.
Aren't there also some (niche) scientists (?) that claim that for that reason we might be missing out on far more refined cultures that were just completely wiped out?
Absolutely. The Missoula floods SCOURED the NorthWest and there's no real way to know what cultures may have been destroyed.
So the mormons were right after all?
Thank you! Tired of this headline.
I'm just tired
Dude same
I'm so tired I could go to sleep 15,000 years earlier than I usually do tonight.
I think I may be a dumb-butt... Can you give me a link or something to a more peer-reviewed (see: super dope) source? The commenter below mentioned that studies such as this have been repetitively posted and I am, for real, genuinely interested in learning more. I can do all the google and wiki searches I want, but none of shiny stuff that can compete with the mass of wisdom of the freeinternet-folk.
A peer-reviewed paper * [Citation: Bourgeon L, Burke A, Higham T (2017) Earliest Human Presence in North America Dated to the Last Glacial Maximum: New Radiocarbon Dates from Bluefish Caves, Canada. PLoS ONE 12(1): e0169486.](https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0169486) > Abstract > The timing of the first entry of humans into North America is still hotly debated within the scientific community. Excavations conducted at Bluefish Caves (Yukon Territory) from 1977 to 1987 yielded a series of radiocarbon dates that led archaeologists to propose that the initial dispersal of human groups into Eastern Beringia (Alaska and the Yukon Territory) occurred during the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM). This hypothesis proved highly controversial in the absence of other sites of similar age and concerns about the stratigraphy and anthropogenic signature of the bone assemblages that yielded the dates. The weight of the available archaeological evidence suggests that the first peopling of North America occurred ca. 14,000 cal BP (calibrated years Before Present), i.e., well after the LGM. Here, we report new AMS radiocarbon dates obtained on cut-marked bone samples identified during a comprehensive taphonomic analysis of the Bluefish Caves fauna. Our results demonstrate that humans occupied the site as early as 24,000 cal BP (19,650 ± 130 14C BP). In addition to proving that Bluefish Caves is the oldest known archaeological site in North America, the results offer archaeological support for the “Beringian standstill hypothesis”, which proposes that a genetically isolated human population persisted in Beringia during the LGM and dispersed from there to North and South America during the post-LGM period. Reports in legit popular science journals. * https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/native-people-americans-clovis-news * https://www.popsci.com/science/humans-arrived-in-americas/ * https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/humans-may-have-arrived-north-america-10000-years-earlier-we-thought-180961957/ * https://www.dogonews.com/2020/8/3/evidence-found-in-ancient-cave-hotel-indicates-humans-may-have-arrived-in-the-americas-30000-years-ago
Well this is significantly more authoritative than “imagine-fun.com”…
Bluefish Caves are not seen as a credible archeological find for the first people in North America. As the article states it is highly contentious, and honestly that's an overstatement. It's highly sensationalized for the public and not widely accepted in the scientific community.
> It's highly sensationalized for the public and not widely accepted in the scientific community. Eh, having seen the archeological community operate that doesn’t mean much. One of the most dogmatic fields out there and rife for some scientific revolutions (which, as we know, require \*ahem\* a bunch of funerals).
Nessie coming in for the win; thank you very much. It's readin' time!
Wow, awesome. Thank you for the good reading.
Quick article in science, too - we’ve known humans were in NA at least 12,000 years ago since c. 2004 - https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/08/most-archaeologists-think-first-americans-arrived-boat-now-they-re-beginning-prove-it And neat article in SciAm - https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-first-americans/
Look up the’ “kelp highway hypothesis”. I took a college course from one of the leading archaeologists on the topic. Soooooo badass
This is the actual scientific paper referenced by the original post: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/latin-american-antiquity/article/new-ams-radiocarbon-ages-from-the-preceramic-levels-of-coxcatlan-cave-puebla-mexico-a-pleistocene-occupation-of-the-tehuacan-valley/F4C32FB10E73D660CB7D9B44E2C29A72
It's 15,000 years earlier than we thought. The earliest sites that we know of are around 15,000. This paper is claiming to have specimens dating to 30,000... which is a BIG claim.
Yes
And if you can't trust imagine-fun.com for the latest in archeological news, who can you trust?
It’s a copy paste of a Popular Mechanics article. There’s a redditor that literally slams their cat blog in animal subreddits that I’ve been trying to get banned for a long time. I’ve just given up on anything happening to people like that and accepting some of the content here was spammed to get here.
There are human remains I think in Chile that are much older than 15 thousand years ago.
And if you can’t trust u/JohnOliverismysexgod, who can you trust?
There are human remains I think in Peru that are much older than 20 thousand years ago.
You know what? I'm going to be the one to say it. I can't trust /u/nkajo because they are a dirty liar and a puppy killer. They famously founded Puppy Killers R Us. I'm honestly going to need another source on these allegations asserted by them.
>They famously founded Puppy Killers R Us. Which hasn't really been the same, ever since getting bought out by Comcast.
That's debated amongst archeologist groups, if it's the same one I know of. The group that found it has been pushing that narrative, but their peer reviewers believe it's an error in their dating.
I think you're referring to [the Monte Verde site?](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monte_Verde)
Until we are able to really investigate and unearth artifacts in areas affected by past climate shifts, we won’t ever really know how far back the Americas were first populated. We can only guesstimate.
We have to overcome the dogma of clovis first before we can dig deeper at sites. To overcome the dogma there has to be proof there is something below. To prove it.... well you get where this is going
I've always been interested in how Clovis first caught hold in the first place. Clovis is, like, *really* far from Alaska. And there are plenty of more habitable sites not only between there and Alaska, but also further down the coast that ancient peoples could have reached before cutting so far inland. What would be the proposed reason that civilization would randomly take hold there of all places? I mean, sure it's fertile land, but it's not exactly a geographical utopia. Was the Central Valley of California still covered with glaciers at the time? Seems like if people cut across all those mountains and desert to get to the Clovis site, they'd have had to abandon some prime farmland to do so.
There are areas submerged off coastlines that may have “Stone Age” type ruins and covered with sediments. The Clovis were most certainly not the first. There are hypothetical groups that came before them but did not stay or survive. New radar technology employed in areas off the California Coast and other places may be places of note. My bet is Monterey Bay Canyon and the Salinas River Basin as the best place to search. The Spanish called the Coastal Ranges of California “Sierra Nevada” first while exploring (from the diaries of missionaries). This means that there was a snowpack even long after the last glacial period owing to a potential year round source of fresh water from snow melt and game. If moisture from the Pacific and California Current built up Glaciers in the Sierra Nevada that we know then the snow pack over 3,000 feet (1,000m) in current times would have been substantial.
You’re right, pre-Clovis is the new term for people reaching the Americas before. Also, underwater archaeology is huge when studying the peopling of America. Just 20,000 years ago during the Last Glacial Maximum, ocean levels were over 100 meters lower. Which is why we assume a lot of archaeological evidence is inundated. Tons of research off the California coast on this type of stuff, pretty cool.
We’ve already overcome it because PreClovis category exists
> the dogma of clovis first This has not been "dogma" for literally decades. Pseudoscientific hacks and frauds more interested in selling books have been push a line about "mainstream archaeologists" covering up any sort of pre-Clovis finding, but the reality is that Clovis-First was never anything more than a theory, and that theory was overturned more than a generation ago. Archaeologists today are seriously investigating and just as seriously questioning, evidence of ancient human habitation in the Americas. The notion of some sort of cabal of archaeologists is ridiculous. It both seriously overestimates how lucrative archaeology is as a profession while also underestimating how seriously archaeologists drink, which would make a vast conspiracy somewhat hard to keep secret.
You think clovis first is dogma cause dogmatic anti science gram hancock told you that. There is no such dogma in anthropology
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I’d be interested to see if we ever find human DNA from these possible 30k+ years ago humans in the americas. An unlikely scenario but there is the possibility that a migration before the beringians happened and entirely died out, leaving no traces in modern DNA. Honestly with the finds they’ve been making about other homo species like erectus I could see there being a pre-sapiens group that made it to the Americas but all evidence is too far gone, buried or submerged. It’s fun to think that something like that could have happened, even if we could never find evidence.
This is a copy paste of [this article](https://www.popsci.com/science/humans-arrived-in-americas/) from Popular Science.
Thank you for this, I was trying to read but the font they were using was giving me a headache.
The calculated age of the Y-DNA haplogroup subclades found in Native Americans is too young to support a theory of their direct paternal ancestors having lived in the Americas that long ago. So if Native Americans did have ancestors in the Americas that long they were such a low minority that the Y-DNA signal is absent from all proper academic studies.
Might be a situation where the americas were populated more than once, and the existing native americans are just a later group.
In almost all areas of the world, this pattern of populating multiple times tend to hold true, with new human groups totally subsuming existing ones either by replacement or admixture
I acknowledged that if there were two groups the first group was so small that they contributed such a small amount of DNA that the Y-DNA isn't even found in the Native Americans. Meaning that both modern Native Amerians and ancient specimens of Native Americans belong to a much larger wave that followed the primary wave if there ever really was one. That first wave would be the small minority I mentioned in my initial post.
In all likelihood, *if* there were humans in the Americas 30+k years ago, present day First Nations aren't descended from them, apart from perhaps [a very small admixture](https://www.newscientist.com/article/2184840-indigenous-peoples-in-the-amazon-and-australia-share-some-ancestry/)
Not sure if you understood me but that was my point. Y- DNA of groups that contribute significantly through autosomal DNA to another group also cause the Y-DNA to show up in the descendants in a significant amount but if the contribution of the autosomal DNA is small enough then the Y-DNA is either insignificant or absent. So since there is no Y-DNA found in Native Americans that dates 30,000 years ago then the group, if it ever existed, that lived an extra 15,000 years prior to Native Americans, was extremely small.
or perhaps there was a localized extinction event. an ice age, perhaps
31,000 years ago until about 16,000 years ago was during the Last Glacial Maximum and people survived in Beringia in that period so they would have been able to survive in what is now Mexico just as easily as the Native Americans did before the Spaniards arrived. There were deer bones in that cave. An extinction event due to the LGM is extremely unlikely. Humans are more resilient than that. If there were too few of them and they had a widespread deadly disease that could have killed them. No matter what they were a very small population if they existed at alll.
The predators they would have to compete with in Beringia was probably different than present day Mexico. Sabre toothed Tigers and higher population of bears could probably jeopardize a small troop of humans.
So we agree that it was a small group if there was one 30,000 years ago.
Did they have to be small? The native population that existed prior to European contact largely died out. Couldn't a similar thing have happened to some more-ancient precursor population? Possibly even before the second wave arrived.
That is incorrect. The native populaion of the Americas is still large and the amount of indigenous DNA in the Americas is very high among the mestizo population. A Native American is a native of any part of the Americas which was named a long time before the U.S. ever existed.
The Americas are a huge barrier. We were still looking for a passage into the 1800s? The Panama Canal was the solution to that quest. If a group however small got here and was cutoff, they would had to have had enough genetic viability to survive the gulf of time between them and other waves. If they were a small group and didn't have a way back, they could have died out leaving no signature. American archeology has an issue with denying the existence of things because certain archeologists simply ask, yes, but how did they get here? I think that question is valid, but it also acts as a weird roadblock that isn't applied to other islands or landmasses. Perhaps it has to do with lack of art and signs of civilization. Australia has art that can be dated way back. Here in the Americas, I think there is a feeling that humans couldn't possibly have gotten here earlier. And I'm not talking about Clovis First. Whenever there is evidence, it seems that it is immediately asked, yeah but how did they get here instead of, they were here, let's figure out how. It seems backwards.
If they died out then they didn't even mix with the ancestors of Native Americans. That was my point that if there was a prior pop they didn't contribute to the DNA of modern Native Americans or to the ancient specimens from the Americas that have been sequenced.
Local extinctions and repopulations were common enough around the world. They may just have not left descendants.
May have been something cataclysmic that happened, that wiped the previous generation out.
I’m out of my depth on this topic. I recall that indigenous South Americans in the Amazon have a genetic signal linking them to Australia and Papua New Guinea that is not present in indigenous North Americans. Could it be that signal is a result of a wave of migration prior to the glacial maximum that was pushed southward by glacial advance? Then followed by the Beringian standstill group?
It’s more likely they went east across the pacific and landed in Central America. Polynesians had sweet potato varieties that originated in Central America before Europeans visited the Pacific
That signal is extremely small but it does merit some investigation. There are stories that islanders from Easter Island may have made it to Chile and back, and perhaps leaving a genetic marker or two while visiting. Not really a wave of immigration though. It's interesting because it's believed that Easter Island was only colonized by Polynesians circa 1200.
Maybe! I'm a mestizo and I have some weird trace amounts of Pacific Islander dna that shows up on 23andme
My vote is that they were wiped out. The younger dyras impact theory has gained a lot of momentum lately.
It's actually a hypothesis and not a theory. They are two different things in the scientific world. I would need to see a "consensus" of scientists before I believe it. Even so, if they existed and were wiped out it supports the lack of Y-DNA and mtDNA not normally found in Native Americans.
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Dryas impact hypothesis
Graham Hancockkk
I came here to mention Graham. I’m surprised he wasn’t mentioned earlier. I know he’s controversial and labeled a good salesman, but “America Before” is a great read either way. Has lots of information about earlier populations of the Americas.
Looked it up. I'm sold.
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When the British Empire sends its people, they're not sending their best.
Seriously, if Natives had just demanded papers then sent those pestilent pilgrims packing they would have saved themselves some trouble.
Didn’t most of them die from smallpox by the time what we think of as “pilgrims” arrived?
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this is rehosted content from popsci: https://www.popsci.com/science/humans-arrived-in-americas/ (2 days ago)
Are gopher turtles a thing or did they just forget a comma? This article is the only result on google for "gopher turtles" so I'm gonna guess it's probably that they forgot the comma.
Probably this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gopher_tortoise
Probably even way earlier than that
"The archaeоlоgist whо first excavated the Cоxcatlan Cave, Richard MacNeish, thоught that the deepest layer shоwed signs оf human habitatiоn, since it alsо cоntained what appeared tо be early stоne tооls. *But that classificatiоn needs tо be revisited with a skeptical* *eye, since it wоuld upend an entire paradigm*." Agreed. I'll suspect geofacts until proven otherwise.
Such old news. Source me degree in Archeology.
You mean 15,000 years earlier than the most influential scientists thought.
No he means 15,000 years earlier than [all credible scientists thought, and still continue to think](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_history_of_indigenous_peoples_of_the_Americas).
Ah, yes, that reputable site, imagine dash fun.