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[Charlie Hatchett]

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[Charlie Hatchett]

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[Charlie Hatchett]

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[Charlie Hatchett]

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[Charlie Hatchett]

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[Charlie Hatchett]

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[Charlie Hatchett]

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[Charlie Hatchett]

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[Minimalist]

I don't know, Charlie.....that last one just looks like a big rock.

You know when Jesus talked about casting the first stone? THIS may have been it!

[Charlie Hatchett]

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[Charlie Hatchett]

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[Minimalist]

Well, the one thing is that you don't really have to figure out what it was used for. All you have to show is that it wasn't formed naturally and date it to a level of more than 11,000 BC.

It sure as hell does not look natural.

[ravenwing5910]

Ok, I have a dumb question....

Other than the tools/worked chert, is there any other evidence of short or long term settlement at the site? ie: charcoal, debris, ......

[Minimalist]

I'll let Charlie handle that question....meanwhile...Clovis takes another hit.

Study: Clovis-era humans not first to settle America

BY JIM MCBRIDE
For decades, the Blackwater Draw archaeological site near Clovis, N.M., stood out as perhaps the earliest documented evidence of human habitation in North America.
It was here that a band of Clovis-era humans hunted, killed and butchered at least one woolly mammoth. They also left behind distinctive Clovis spear points, lodged inside ancient bones.

Most archaeologists have believed for years that small bands of humans skirted ice sheets across the Bering Straits, made their way to North America and scattered to places like Blackwater Draw.

But a new archeological study suggests the Clovis-era peoples weren't the first in the Americas. The study, "Redefining the Age of Clovis: Implications for the Peopling of the Americas," was published in the Feb. 23 issue of Science.

"The old Clovis-first model would have people entering at around 11,500 radiocarbon years B.P. (Before Present), which would be roughly 13,600 calendar years B.P. Our new dates say that it's roughly 13,100 calendar years ago," said Michael Waters, who crafted the study along with Thomas Stafford Jr. "What it shows is we have people living in North and South America at the same time. As a consequence, Clovis could not be first."

Waters also is director of Texas A&M University's Center for the Study of the First Americans.

The authors cited emerging evidence begging another look at Clovis: Stone tools and butchered mammoth remains at three different Wisconsin sites and indications that Clovis-era humans also lived in Chile at roughly the same time. They used modern scientific dating techniques to re-examine seeds, ivory and bone at several North American archaeological sites.

"We've shown that Clovis is not as old as previously thought. It lasts for a much shorter time period than previously thought," Waters said. "The ages demonstrate that there are contemporaneous people living in southern South America, indicating that Clovis could not be first."

Jeff Indeck, chief curator of archaeology, paleontology, ethnology, geology and biology at Canyon's Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum, said Blackwater Draw has long been considered the "type" site, a site that helped define specific traits scientists associated with the Clovis culture.

"The date that they had gotten and the tools that it produced were the first that were recognized. That's what makes it important," he said.

Waters said Clovis and Blackwater Draw remain important aspects of archaeologists' knowledge of the earliest peoples in the Americas. But, he said, scientists must re-examine genetic and archaeological evidence to take a fresh look at earlier theories about when humans first came here.

"Now what we need to do is try to find out how we recognize the people who were here earlier," Waters said.

http://www.lubbockonline.com/stories/03 ... 7027.shtml

[Charlie Hatchett]

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