Problematic Discoveries

[Tiompan]

“Once again the blanket designation of pareidolia to qualify my interpretation of subject matter in the rocks smacks of a cop out in its over simplified manner of dismissal. “
As I explained earlier “If you are suggesting that you can see the forms in the pics you have posted then it is obvious that it is a case of pareidolia . “ , there are no anthropogenic markings evident in these pics .

“If I did not see the forms and subject matter, why would I spend precious time claiming such, and how would I even know what to claim? “ That’s your problem , I can’t explain why you believe what you do .

my production of clear images and any permissions necessary to use other folks material, but I will work on it.

“The reason that Homo Erectus and Neandertal former existence in the Americas is not generally recognized is that no one has been looking for them, nor are archaeologists in North America trained to be able to look for them.” They have never been found and there is no reason to suggest that they were ever there . If the remains of either had been found they would have been recognised in exactly the same manner as their finds are recognised elsewhere .



“ Evidence with context has been found at Calico and Valsequillo, “ There is no evidence from either site of Neanderthals or homo erectus . Even if there were it has no impact on what you believe to be the case on your land .
Why do beilieve something so unlikely when there is a much simpler explanation ?

[circumspice]

The reason that Homo Erectus and Neandertal former existence in the Americas is not generally recognized is that no one has been looking for them, nor are archaeologists in North America trained to be able to look for them.
Springhead 84 19 Jan 2016, 06:50

Really? North American archaeologists aren't trained to be able to "look for" and/or recognize H. erectus & H. neanderthalensis?

Well then... Who the hell are Donald Johanson, Tim White & Milford Wolpoff???

That’s three prominent North American paleoanthropologists that I can name on the spur of the moment. There are many more. Look up their qualifications & where they were educated. You might be surprised.

You can't possibly make a blanket statement like that on an archaeological board & expect to be taken seriously.

[Springhead]

Circumspice,

Thank you for correcting me on this matter. Though I am unfamiliar with specific archaeologists in this specialty, my naïve blanket statement was spurred by a conversation with an archaeologist who opined that in general archaeologists in North America are not trained to recognize tool assemblages related to middle and later Pleistocene peoples.

I appreciate your comment and will endeavor to be more mindful that my layman's knowledge is incomplete.

[E.P. Grondine]

Well, Springhead, I do admire your politeness.

You remind me of one fellow who came to me at a powwow.
He had discovered one very nice "Andena" [Andaste} stone tool in his garden in Conneaut, Ohio.
The next year he brought and was showing every rock he found in his garden.

Fundamentally, we here question whether you have made any "Discoveries" at all,
and whether the "Problematic" part of this may lie with you.

As I advised you earlier, take them to a Knap-in.
If there are indications of human workings on them,
or of the transport of natural of natural formations,
there will be people there who are extremely knowledgeable in identifying them.

Personally, I'd rather be troweling through tsumani deposits on Crete,
though any dig at Cholula would be very interesting as well.

[Springhead]

Hello E. P.,

I do appreciate your advice, and I will try to gather my best rocks to seek further opinion. Yes, I could be the problem. Nonetheless, I am seeing large numbers of rocks with repeated forms and art. The repetitive nature of the subject matter is impressive to me as well.

I never made it to Crete, much to my dismay. The closest I got was Hydra.

I have been to Cholula many times, and the setting between Orizaba and Popo is nothing short of magical. Initially, my emotional response was incredulous indignation with the construction of a church atop the pyramid. Locals said there was a church for every day of the year in that area.......why couldn't they have refrained from the pyramid perch?

I know I may be ticking some folks off on the board, but I am playing catch up ball, and at my age this is a daunting task. That is not an excuse, just reality.

[uniface]

Really? North American archaeologists aren't trained to be able to "look for" and/or recognize H. erectus & H. neanderthalensis?

He's right. And it's worse than that, even. I'll let a friend explain what he encountered six years ago:

Had a note from Jack Hranicky, He wants to come and visit the site here in Indiana. Jack was the first one to recognize what I had found from the TN site. I had couple Tables at an artifact show in KY and when he approached he said, "Where in the world did you find this stuff?" "Tennessee." "You're kidding right? " "No." "Do you know what you have here?" I said, "No -- I was hoping someone here could tell me." He said , "Well, I can tell you this much: It's not your everyday Native American technology. This stuff is old world tech. Do you mind if I take some photos?" "Not at all," I said. Jack proceeded to get up on the table, up on chairs, and was going on about it like "See this, Indians didn't do this and that. I don't know who made this stuff." He then said "Al Goodyear is having a conferrenc on CLOVIS IN THE SOUTHEAST in a couple months. I'd like to sponsor you to take this stuff down to South Carolina. I think I can see to it that you have a few tables. He is going to show what he says are pre-Clovis tools from Topper. I can tell you this much : they are nothing like what this stuff is. I wouldn't doubt it a bit if this stuff ends up dating between 20 to 50 k yrs."

That is how this all began, I sat up right next to Goodyear's exhibit and it was a constant stream of viewers saying "What is this stuff? Where is this from?" Michael Collins stopped by and just shrugged his shoulders and said, "Well it's like the clouds son. Look at them long enough and you can see whatever you want to see. Just a bunch of natural geofacts." Goodyear's own assistants spent a great deal of time looking at them and one said to the other, "We need to call Al over and make him jealous. Do you believe the patina on this stuff?" I had no idea about what they were saying. They stood and discussed how long it must have taken for the pieces to "recordify" like that. They explained to me what that meant.

I was just amazed at the reaction for three straight days. Many of the attendees said it was the most interesting exhibit in the conference, saying "If you've seen one Clovis point, you've seen em all. Everything except this display is just arrowheads--boring."

Dennis Stanford did not even approach the table and Al Goodyear spent all of 30 seconds looking and looked at me and said, "I don't know who could have made these tools" and walked away. Of course it was his hour of glory to introduce his "bend break" "smashed core" technology. Not even a convincing sell to someone as amateur as myself. But maybe he was right. I wouldn't know.

After the conference was over and I was loading my van an old man came up to me and said "How do you feel now son?, after hearing what Collins said to me. I said, "Well, I don't know what to think." He said, "Let me tell you something, I am 82 years old and I have been collecting indian artifacts since i was 8 yrs old. i have seen it all and I have not seen anything like that stuff from this country. You are on to something different, Mike Collins is an arrogant ass -- I have known him for years. He's jealous and he was shocked at what he was seeing. I watched him very closely. You just keep doing what your doing, because you are onto what they are looking for. Don't listen to any of their discouraging remarks. This stuff will come into its own at the right time. You are on to it."

Jack said "Rick, this is what they are all looking for, but put your football helmet on because they are going to butt heads with you over this stuff, there is a lot at stake here." He was right.

Since then, we have been showing them what to look for and I know it. It will take them 20 years to see an assemblage like this from a traditional dig site and probably much longer than that. This is the most primitive yet clearly identifiable tool industry that has been found in this country to date, whether they like it or not and now with the Indiana stuff to boot, there is nothing to compare to it from here on this side of the pond. but much to compare with abroad, some of it mirror images of the Mousterian of Acheulean. It just is. The dates are all we lack, and they will come, I am sure. I don't expect acceptance from many but by the time they catch up we will be well documented as the first......time will tell.

[circumspice]

You have a friend uni? How nice.

As usual, you post stuff without citations because you don't want your story checked.

As posted, it's merely apocryphal hearsay bullshit. Why the secrecy?

[Springhead]

Uniface,

Thanks for that post. If I am not intruding, I think I know about your friend who has found the assemblage very similar to what I am finding on the mountain site. I read an excellent article by him in the Pleistocene Coalition Magazine:

"Avocational Archaeology"
Levellois Lithic Technology In USA
#34 March-April 2015
Volume 7 Issue 2 Page 10

Not that I am totally vindicated, but when I read this last year it reinforced my conviction that what I am finding is real and significant. As with Rick, my finds are surface ones with locational context but no in ground context that could allow dating. It is frustrating to have a potentially important site where I am unable to fund proper techniques and attendant professional analysis. Perhaps that day will come.

[Tiompan]

The Pleistocene coalition had a disclaimer ,
“Doninger’s collection is controversial and may indeed be a mix of genuine artefacts and geofacts.”
Accepting that some some or all of the collection is genuine , and it may well be , and there are examples similar to Levallois , it must be borne in mind that Levallois is not a culture or a horizon belonging to a specific period , it is simply a technique . The use of the technique does not provide a date e.g. examples of the technique from Kenya date to 540,000 YA ,while the European Aurignacian examples are found from c.35,000 YA .
Rick comments “ it is actually more advanced and complex than those who are assumed to have come later in history.” . As there is no date for the technique why assume it was earlier ?
The old bloke’s comment sums up the thinking “ This technology has only been found overseas and it appears to be much older than any of the known Native American artifacts. This material could very well date to 50,000 years old.” The “appears to be “ and “ could very well “ highlights the uncertainty of even the most superficial view of the assemblage .

[Springhead]

Tiompan,

Nice to hear from you. I don't think anyone is claiming absolute certainty with this assemblage as they wish to stay on relatively safe ground until a tight context can be proven whereby dating can be arrived at. As with any discovery, certainty is at the end of the process and not during investigation. The problem is that many folks totally discount the possibilities based on understandings arrived at without awareness of present evidence having surfaced, or worse, outright subjective dismissal.

Though levallois technology does cover large time spans, it nevertheless is clearly non Native American for analytic purposes in North America, and combined with observed patinas can be assumed to be older than traditional artifacts dating from the Holocene. The use of conditional phraseology ascribes to the nature of scientific investigation where one does not put the cart before the horse and is a courtesy to protocol.

[E.P. Grondine]

Why are the comparison always made to European technologies?

We know that in later times fishermen were blown off the coast of North West Africa,
and arrived in the Caribbean.

We also know with some degree of certainty that later the B and D mt DNA groups moved from South America to North America.

Hard data from South America is regularly ignored.

We do not know the actual date of C mt DNA emigration into he Americas

We know little about mt DNA haplogroup extinctions in the Americas.

We know little about the paloeclimate,
and geologically we do not have a firm date for the reversal of the Teays River.

As the data currently stands, making any broad statements is not warranted, in my opinion.

All of that noted,
extraordinary claims require extraordinary data.

In the end, hard data will win.

In closing, I will note that at least in North America, the knowledge of the "lithic artists" (knappers)
is usually better than that of most degreed field archaeologists.

The principle expert for Indiana and the mid-central areas, Tony DeRegnacourt, has passed on.
That leaves the lab in Pennsylvania.
Springhead, uni, as you know, my immediate interests lie 13,000 to 20,000 years ago.
It is difficult enough to work at that depth.

As to why people keep on constructing European empires in the Americas based on what at best may be a few artifacts from contacts ,
and I am definitively NOT saying that you have any, or that any exist, that is an issue well beyond me.

[uniface]

This is fatuous. Rick's artifacts were examined by one of the foremost authorities on Levallois technology and unhesitatingly identified as Levallois. The disclaimer is boilerplate that outfit should, if it's going to be invoked in Rick's case, precede every article they've published there. It would certainly be applicable to Valsequillo, the deep site in California (name escapes me) and others.

Levallois is not a culture or a horizon belonging to a specific period , it is simply a technique .

So is making fluted points. Which were the work of a specific culture in a specific time frame. Levallois technology -- in its pure form -- is a technological horizon marker. When you find it, anywhere, you know what time span you're in, be it in Europe, the Mideast, Africa or Asia. The embedded assumption of "American Exceptionalism" (ironic humor intentional) does not flush (in either application).

[Tiompan]

“ I don't think anyone is claiming absolute certainty with this assemblage as they wish to stay on relatively safe ground until a tight context can be proven whereby dating can be arrived at. “

Springhead ,
Considering the mention of the assemblage was in support of your comment “North archaeologists aren't trained to be able to "look for" and/or recognize H. erectus & H. neanderthalensis? “
There are few grounds for that conjecture , never mind certainty .

“ As with any discovery, certainty is at the end of the process and not during investigation. “ .
There is no date for the assemblage never mind acceptance . Even the P.C. have to put out a disclaimer .

Why is it always the case in these circumstances that the most obvious explanations are avoided in favour of the most unlikely . Extraordinary claims …..etc .
The first step is prove that the assemblage is genuine ,i.e. not geofacts .Then a suggested date might be forthcoming related to context and stratigraphy etc .

“ The problem is that many folks totally discount the possibilities based on understandings arrived at without awareness of present evidence having surfaced, or worse, outright subjective dismissal. “
Many folks discount the possibilities because they are aware of the evidence and more importantly the lack of evidence to support the fantasies . That is where the subjectivity is found , among the fantasists .

“Though levallois technology does cover large time spans, it nevertheless is clearly non Native American “
If the same technology is found in America , it would make more sense to think of it as American , independent inventions and discoveries are the stuff of different cultures and individuals in different periods , something the ultra diffusionists have difficulty accepting


“The use of conditional phraseology ascribes to the nature of scientific investigation where one does not put the cart before the horse and is a courtesy to protocol.”

The use of the conditionals is more to do with supporting a fantasy and not facing up to the reality . The “could well be “ is meaningless , it only gives us an insight into the his thinking and tells us nothing about the data . “appears to be much older “ only means he doesn’t know and prefers the older option , he may as well have said “appears to be much younger “ , which at least fits in with the what Rick suggests about the complexity .

[Tiompan]

"When you find it, anywhere, you know what time span you're in, be it in Europe, the Mideast, Africa or Asia. "
Now that is fatuous . Did you fail to notice "540,000 YA to c.35,000 YA . Half a million years is not much of a basis for providing a useful date .

[uniface]

Time Span = previous to the Aurignacian/Cro Magnon era.