Archaeologica.org

Idaho artifacts show humans came to North America via a water route, not land

Davis first went to Cooper's Ferry in 1997, after reading earlier studies that found spearheads and other tools in the 1960s, back when researchers didn't have the resources to date the artifacts.
Now, that's changed. 1997 was just a test excavation, and Davis returned with a team in 2009 to do some real digging, staying at the site until 2018.
The team basically uncovered a campsite, finding stone tools, the remains of a fire pit and broken up bones of medium to large animals, something like elk or deer.
It wasn't just a one-time stop, either. Davis said people returned to the site, and the team found newer artifacts closer to the surface and older ones further down. They dated the artifacts using radiocarbon dating, what Davis called the "gold standard" in aging things younger than 50,000 years. It's the most accurate dating method for archeologists, so the team is confident in their accuracy.

circumspice wrote:I've read articles & papers where 'Clovis Firsters' were working on Clovis sites... They stopped & dug no further after clearing the Clovis layers... instead of continuing until they cleared all the way to sterile layers... That, of course, was because there was 'nothing to find' below the Clovis layers...

I suppose that the world must wait for natural attrition (old age & death) before we can dispense with the Clovis First theory once & for all.

"science advances one funeral at a time"

Cognito wrote: ↑Fri Nov 08, 2019 4:05 pm I found the last paragraph in the Seattle Times article interesting wherein the archaeologist is comparing the tools found in Idaho to those extant in Japan at the time. The Japanese current takes boats directly over to British Columbia, Washington and Oregon. There are historical accounts of Japanese boats and sailors (mostly deceased, but not all) showing up on the Pacific Northwest coast after losing rudders, etc. and drifting along the current for months until landfall.

Seafaring boats were being used by ancient maritime Japanese at least from 30,000bce and quite possibly earlier to obtain deposits of obsidian more than 30 miles offshore in one case. Traveling along a current to North America while fishing along the way would be quite easy. Too bad most main stream archaeologists don't possess the ability to see that.