Homo Erectus in North America.

[Minimalist]

It's not THAT lonely, W/A.

[FreeThinker]

HE in North America is a possibility but not a probability as far as I can tell. We know HE populated East Asia and we know in the past there has been a land bridge where the Bering Strait currently is. So we have HE in place and a route that HE could have taken into the Americas. So it is possible.

Now for some other stuff to think about. How far north has Asian HE been found? Have any fossils been found far enough north to be in a position to spread across the Bering land bridge? I also wonder if HE had the sophistication to stay warm at such northern latitude. HSS is able to weather such conditions, but we use clever tricks like blubber oil lamps and carefully crafted skin clothing to pull it off. HE had a brain about 1/2 way between the brains size of HSS when compared to a chimp's brain. The toolkit employed by HE is rather crude and it makes me doubt they had the brains to make the crossing.

My doubts go further when I consider that not even a single HE fossil has ever been found in North America, not even a tooth. Fossil remains of HE (and other archaic humans) have been turning up in Asia, Africa, and Europe for a long time now, often found not by experts but by random finds (think Boxgrove Man or the Mauer mandible). Absence of evidence does not necessarily mean evidence of absence, but it often does.

To date the evidence for a North American HE consists of possible Oldowan tools found in places like the Calico site. These "tools" in question are so crude they could arguabley not be tools at all but rather be products of natural forces. Far too thin a line of evidence to constitute anything close to a proof.

Now for the real far out line of evidence: Reports of a large hominid (aka "bigfoot") wandering around the North American wilds. Could it be HE?

[Digit]

I agree with that FT, but it does not address the point I made about the differences in stone tech between north and south America.
In 1996 a worn blade was found in Mongolia dated at least 10000BP, otherwise the normal find in that area is micro lithic, which appears to be unheard of in north America but is the norm in south America.
This represents a massive cultural divide that is most easily explained by different groups of colonists and suggests that SA was colonised by bypassing NA completely.
HE was numerous in areas of Asia that have certainly been very cold in the past, and remember that HE used fire.
Finding early artifacts in NA is always going to be difficult due to its size and the small early populations, also any traces pre the last glaciation are gone.
If any one can offer fresh ideas to the north/south divide on stone tools please help!

[FreeThinker]

The lithic tool kit used by HE is so crude that a comparison to the lithics American HSS employed is a stretch I think. The differences in the toolkits between North America and South America is striking and curious, and has led to speculation of a possible European HSS (Solutrean) incursion (which is the subject of another whole debate), but clearly both North and South American tool traditions are the product of HSS, not HE. Not only that, but the differences in dates between HE and HSS is very large, over a million years. That is a hard gap to overcome.

Also, a point on the use of fire. The area in question is very cold, cold to the point that mere use of fire is not enough to stay alive. In addition to fire, a whole host of other sophisticated techniques are needed (sophisticated clothing, complex shelters, animal domestication, blubber oil extraction, and others) to stay alive that are the hallmarks of HSS behaviour only. I just don't see any evidence that HE was up to the job.

[Digit]

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/e ... andaxe.jpg

I wouldn't call this crude FT and HE made it to the Malay islands so his technology was pretty good.
(Hope my computer work is up to it as this is the first image I've posted.)

Frank posted this earlier and sums up what I have been suggesting.

Has anyone ever brought up that the Aztecs, Mayans, and Incas all used microlith technlogy. It is possible that the people from the bering strait passage became the central and south americans and the solutrean bunch stayed in the north.

And the similarity between the image I posted and what Charlie has been recovering is striking. All that I have read suggests that stone tools like the above are HE, not HSS.

[FreeThinker]

Digit, that is indeed a fine hand axe, but it looks to me to be from the later Acheulean era...most likely the product of the later Homo heidelbergensis, not the earlier HE. As fine as it is however, it still is a rather crude tool. For over a million years the handaxe was the swiss army knife of Homo. They are produced simply by knocking off flakes from around the edges of a suitably sized cobble. Ultimately the handaxe was refined towards the end of the Acheulean era and these more finely made tools represent an improvement on the earlier cruder examples, but again, this occured under the craftmanship of HH, not HE. However, even the finest examples are still crude when compared to the toolkits of HSS. Handaxes are not compound tools (ie: hafted) and they are materially wasteful in their production. Later tool traditions such as Mousterian and and the wide array of HSS tool types are compound tools and were much more efficient in the use of materials. There is a big gap in the sophistication of Acheulean tools when compared to later tool kits.

All that said, the biggest barrier I see to HE in North America is how they made it through the cold to get here. That is a feat that goes well beyond the technological abilities of HE to overcome. I just don't see any evidence to the contrary.

[Digit]

Two points FT, the image came from Wiki and just lists it as HE. If HE became HSS the whole distinction becomes blurred at some point anyway.
My point though is that the very lack of refinement in Charlie's samples suggest that they pre-date HSS.
If Charlie's samples are HSS then at some point HSS's ability as a tool maker regressed!
To sum up. In NA we have a collection of somewhat crude stone tools, followed by much later more refined stone tools, whilst in SA we have an entirely different technology.
In Europe and Asia where similar disparity occurs the differences are accorded to different peoples. Not in America?

[FreeThinker]

Digit, I live in Virginia outside of Washington DC and have for years combed the stream beds for early American tools and can report that tools, choppers, scrapers, and corestones such as the ones Charlie has until recently been sharing are quite common here. I am talking tools that are crude enough that in another context, say in Africa, could be mistaken for the handiwork of HE. I know they are not, however, because I have also found mixed in much more modern and sophisticated tools that are clearly the work of HSS and in fact can be traced even to specific cultures. I have worked with the local archaeological community to have areas declared as archaeological preserves and have had the good luck to find sites that truely are in situ where flakes found fit perfectly into nearby cobbles. This is key because in association with more sophisticated and identifiable tools I can assign a date to the authors of the crude cobble tools, in this case about 7,000 years old.

I must admit that I did not follow all of Charlie's posts too carefully. Too many pages! That said my biggest concern with finds is assigning a firm date to an artifact. This can be especially difficult when combing beds of river cobbles in fluvial deposits. Obviously a river can meander back and forth over thousands of years moving artifacts out of context. Unless there is proof like fitting flakes that the artifact truely is in situ, dating can be problematic.

[Minimalist]

Charlie would be the first to acknowledge this his finds are the result of flooding and therefore the term "in situ" really has no meaning. However, he was looking for tools which show a carbonate coating in the flaked channels as geologists had told him such conditions which could cause that coating to form were last present during the Sangamonion Interglacial.

http://www.bioone.org/perlserv/?request ... &page=0313

Important artifacts have been found in situ (i.e., not redeposited) within lacustrine deposits in the Valsequillo region. These deposits contain many diatoms which indicate an age corresponding to the Sangamonian Interglacial sensu lato (80,000 to ca. 220,000yr BP).

Now, I'm not a geologist but I have seen some of the correspondence back and forth with various universities and the idea has not been dismissed.

[Digit]

Well that seems to answer my problem FT, thanks. Mind you, you did beat me to the punch as I was going to say that Charlie's offerings, shown to a museum over here, would almost certainly suggest that they were HE or Heidelbergensis.

[Digit]

That opens the whole debate again Min as dates of that calibre predate HSS of course and again suggests colonisation of America over and over again.

[Manystones]

..Charlie's offerings, shown to a museum over here, would almost certainly suggest that they were HE or Heidelbergensis.

I doubt it Digit, most of them would have difficulty recognising them as the result of human agency - if they didn't dismiss them as the result of fluvial processes first. Not because Charlie's rocks don't look like the business but because by and large they really haven't got at eye for it. Let's not forget our inhouse expert FossilTrader couldn't see it either.

The problem(s) I can see with FreeThinker's thoughts and indeed others are primarily that they are often based on taphonomic remnants. Skeletal remains are few and far between and the "differences" often over-emphasised in importance in order to further careers rather than develop understanding. The conditions really have to be "right" for skeletons to survive - especially over hundreds of thousands of years and perhaps the conditions just were not favourable often enough? Basing hard and fast theories on these few taphonomic remnants seems a little foolhardy - though I can't blame anyone for trying.

Equally I have great difficulty assigning flint "industries" to particular ages let alone species and this is more true the further back we look.

With reference to braincase size which I think FreeThinker mentioned earlier, again my understanding is that capacity had increased all along the line but that there has eventually been a decrease seen in modern homo sapien sapien in addition to gracilisation? I don't think "intelligence" was something exclusive to HSS, certainly there is plenty of evidence that HE was indeed sophisticated. Bednarik has shown that the prerequisite to sail involved long term strategies that would have necessitated organisation of a very complex nature.

"Efficient" use of materials is another debateable assumption - and how is efficiency measured? HE (and indeed others) often had abundant stone material to work from - circumstances didn't always necessitate our modern concept of efficiency. Besides by all accounts HE was adept at adapting to using whatever rock/stone source was at hand.

Anyhow - good to see Fossil Trader back

Perhaps he's got another test for us?

[Digit]

Point taken MS but the point I was trying to make is that there has been a steady improvement in 'fineness' of stone tools from the Olduwan towards the modern, and the overall appearance of Charlie's stuff is to date it quite early, certainly pre-Clovis.
At the present time the opinion on HE is that he never reached far enough north to have used the land bridge into NA, that may change of course, but in itself that doesn't preclude his arrival by water for example.
If he could make it to Indonesia the rest is simply a matter of degree. Journey TIME is often more important than simple distance.
Using Occam's razor there has to have been at least two migrations into NA and an one into SA.

[Manystones]

Digit,

I wasn't really disagreeing with you - only over the ability of our museums to recognise "difficult" material

[Minimalist]

That opens the whole debate again Min as dates of that calibre predate HSS of course and again suggests colonisation of America over and over again.

Precisely.