OOPArts

[Beagle]

http://www.sjsu.edu/faculty/kojan/page3 ... 0mexico%22

This is the best I can do right now, the 5th paragraph down making reference to additional sites being found with the footprints.

The only point being that the investigation is ongoing and so far there is no final resolution on the datology. So the site remains an OOPart.

I think the 1.3 MYA date was put to rest.

[Minimalist]

These ages were regarded as impossible and widely rejected by the scientific community as they were regarded “too old” for the existing models for the settlement of the Americas.

Ah, yes....the old "defend-the-existing-models-to-the-death" syndrome!

[Beagle]

This site in Mexico is very close to the same site that Virginia Steen-McIntyre made her controversial discoveries in the 1960s.

[oldarchystudent]

These ages were regarded as impossible and widely rejected by the scientific community as they were regarded “too old” for the existing models for the settlement of the Americas.

Ah, yes....the old "defend-the-existing-models-to-the-death" syndrome!

The Clovis-first model is being attacked pretty regularly these days, and I argued against it in my paper. There are still a lot of scholars that don't want to see it messed with though. They are calling for extraordinary proof to support an extraordinary claim. Not a bad thing, I guess.....

[Minimalist]

Why should they not be required to supply the same standard of proof to support their claim?

This is what I mean when I talk about "the club" which drives some people up a wall.

[oldarchystudent]

Well to be fair -

The Clovis culture is established and recognized, and for a long while was thought to be the earliest lithic culture going hand in hand with a Beringia migration of 10.000 - 13,000 BP. Nobody is really disputing that. The challenge comes to the idea that Clovis was indeed first, so the onus is on the pre-Clovis theorists to produce supporting evidence. I think they have done it, but there are still a lot of hold-outs for Clovis first (although I think the ranks are thinning out a little....)

[Minimalist]

"Clovis-first" has the support of Native Americans. It has become a political football.

I still maintain that if "extraordinary proof" is required for "extraordinary claims" then the original claim should be subject to it as well. Failure to make such a requirement leads to situations where it becomes dogma that Khafre built the Second Pyramid because they found a statue of him nearby.

Defenders of the status quo get lazy. They need to keep working on their theories. Science is supposed to be an on-going process.

[oldarchystudent]

"Clovis-first" has the support of Native Americans. It has become a political football.

I still maintain that if "extraordinary proof" is required for "extraordinary claims" then the original claim should be subject to it as well. Failure to make such a requirement leads to situations where it becomes dogma that Khafre built the Second Pyramid because they found a statue of him nearby.

Defenders of the status quo get lazy. They need to keep working on their theories. Science is supposed to be an on-going process.

I didn't know Clovis first had the support of First Nations. That's interesting.

[Minimalist]

They are very invested in maintaining the belief that they were here first.

If you ever read some of the stuff that was going on in the Kennewick man lawsuit or the NAGPRA you'll get a flavor of it. Senator McCain even proposed to toughen NAGPRA so that Indian tribes would have a virtual automatic claim on old bones but fortunately that seems to have died down in the wake of the scientific finds after the body was examined.

http://www.usbr.gov/nagpra/


The irony, of course, is that no matter what happens, the native american tribes were still here before substantial European colonization. I heard Pat Buchanan the other day, hawking his new book, saying "the Indians had a liberal immigration policy and look where it got them!"

[Minimalist]

I didn't know Clovis first had the support of First Nations. That's interesting.

Oddly, I read a disucssion one time in which the author was disputing the idea of immigration at all....taking the position that Native Americans had always been here as a matter of religion. So, he would take the position that Clovis was a locally developed phenomena.

I wonder if I can find that site again. It was a very interesting point of view. Of course, there doesn't seem to be any archaeology to support it.

[oldarchystudent]

They are very invested in maintaining the belief that they were here first.

If you ever read some of the stuff that was going on in the Kennewick man lawsuit or the NAGPRA you'll get a flavor of it. Senator McCain even proposed to toughen NAGPRA so that Indian tribes would have a virtual automatic claim on old bones but fortunately that seems to have died down in the wake of the scientific finds after the body was examined.

http://www.usbr.gov/nagpra/


The irony, of course, is that no matter what happens, the native american tribes were still here before substantial European colonization. I heard Pat Buchanan the other day, hawking his new book, saying "the Indians had a liberal immigration policy and look where it got them!"

I did read up on Kennewick Man and that was a near miss for science. I just don't understand how finding out that the ancestors of the current Native population came across the same landbridge earlier than first thought would damage them in any way. If anything it would make the connection to the land even more ancient and venerable.

[Minimalist]

I just don't understand how finding out that the ancestors of the current Native population came across the same landbridge earlier than first thought would damage them in any way.

It's an emotional argument, not a rational one, although I think you make a good point right there. In a sense it suffers from the same motivation as the Israeli/Palestinian digs or the Bosnian pyramid. People want to misuse or at least mis-state, the past to effect the present.

[Minimalist]

This is enlightening on the subject.

http://www.tri-cityherald.com/tch/opini ... 4481c.html

Two little words could ruin any chance scientists have for further study on 9,400-year-old Kennewick Man.

After years of delay, scientists recently had the chance to examine the ancient skeleton that was discovered along the banks of the Columbia River in 1996. Their hopes of continuing their analysis may be dashed, however, if U.S. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., gets his way.

But even more enlightening is the rest of the legislation, of which those two little words, are an insignificant part. As the cops know, in any crime, follow the money.

http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/D?c ... 09fvarIp::

Pressure for this bill evaporated after the Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal hit the fan, showing once again that science only gets saved by random events.

[Beagle]

As an OOPart, we shouldn't forget the Phaistos disk, although now that some people claim to have translated it, it might be better described as a regular artifact.

[Essan]

Beagle, why would 40,000 ya be an anomalous date according to the mainstream chronology of human history? If human history really goes back many hudreds of thousands of years, then why couldn't they have migrated to the "New World" hundreds of thousands of years before 40,000 ya?

There were humans in Australia at least 60,000 years ago. IMO there is no conceivable reason why they could not have reached the AMericas by 40,000 years ago. Albeit maybe in only small numbers so that little trace of theuir presence has been discovered.

Subsequent small migrations continued through the ice age (probably during the warmer interstadial periods) ending with a larger migration around 10-15,000 years ago.

Such a scenario would IMO explain most of the enigmas regarding early human presence in the Americas.