"Land Bridge" theory?

[Digit]

Hold on you chaps, could you back up a piece. All this is new to me. Tools 200000yrs old in the Americas, am I reading this right?
This is way, way, before the presumed beginnings of HSS, so who are we looking at? Erectus? Or are several reputations about to bite the dust and we find a new species?

[Manystones]

Here we have a classical case of does absence of evidence equal evidence of absence? Earlier the subject of fossil dating as evidence of the earliest colonisation of the Americas was raised, I don't think they are the final answer at present. When you think how infrequently fossilization takes place, and how many have survived to date, and how many still await discovery, I think it fair to suggest that we are still on page one of the history book.

I think Digit makes an apt and understated point here. Seems to me that a lot of weight for the RAO theory etc is based on the fossil evidence which we all know is subject to the vagaries of conditions being right etc for fossil formation. Combining the lithic evidence from digs such as Charlie's, Calico, and elsewhere appears to be a more sound rationale for coming to any firm conclusions about hominid movements.

[marduk]

This is way, way, before the presumed beginnings of HSS, so who are we looking at? Erectus? Or are several reputations about to bite the dust and we find a new species?

Erectus was a tool maker Digit as was Habilis
http://www.ecotao.com/holism/hu_habilis.htm
and HSA was around 250,000 years ago
http://www.msu.edu/~robin400/sapiensarchaic.html
Neanderthal is also a contender
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neanderthal
all were present in that time frame

its just not accepted that any of them were in America
yet

[Digit]

Thanks for the correction and info Marduk, seems I am way behind the times.

[marduk]

no problem Digit
you heard about piltdown man didnt you
hehe

[Digit]

You're a marked man Marduk!

[Cognito]

Hold on you chaps, could you back up a piece. All this is new to me. Tools 200000yrs old in the Americas, am I reading this right?
This is way, way, before the presumed beginnings of HSS, so who are we looking at? Erectus? Or are several reputations about to bite the dust and we find a new species?

Until bones are found in situ at one of these sites, they will remain controversial. The tool technology is Acheulean, but who made them is still a matter of speculation (the bane of Marduk). Thousands of ancient tools lying around the site and being removed in controlled excavation pits while being dated using uranium-thorium, thermoluminescence and beryllium-10 techniques is not quite the same as the Piltdown hoax, is it.

[Digit]

Not quite Cog, and as Erectus, HSN and HSS were all about the same size the size of the tools won't help much. Theoretically 200K is too late for Erectus, but who knows? Have you any map references for these sites Cog?

[Digit]

Correction on my last post. I said that 200k seemed late for Erectus but I've just read that fossils as late as 50k have been recovered in Java.
I tend to be a bit dubious about classifying tools into nice little boxes though as there are, after all, only so many ways to make a stone tool. Even modern hand tool, after thousands of years of development, still retain the same basic shapes regardless of their place of origin.

[marduk]

You're a marked man Marduk!

and not for the first time
probably not the last either

but who made them is still a matter of speculation (the bane of Marduk).

aaaaaaaaaaaaagggggggggggggghhhhhhhhhhhh
actually the most likely answer is that Homo sapiens made them
by that I mean that Charlie Hatchett and Patrick Lyons have both been out flint knapping for the same reason that the piltdown hoax was perpetrated by Martin A.C. Hinton

well at least its one that the palaeontological and anthropological community would have far less trouble accepting

[Cognito]

by that I mean that Charlie Hatchett and Patrick Lyons have both been out flint knapping for the same reason that the piltdown hoax was perpetrated by Martin A.C. Hinton

I just wish that I could flint knap that well. While many tools are very simple some of them are quite sophisticated, demonstrating impressive cognitive abilities.

[Cognito]

Hold on you chaps, could you back up a piece. All this is new to me. Tools 200000yrs old in the Americas, am I reading this right?
This is way, way, before the presumed beginnings of HSS, so who are we looking at? Erectus? Or are several reputations about to bite the dust and we find a new species?

Digit, first of all H. erectus may have survived in Indonesia far longer than anyone thought:

http://www.archaeology.org/9703/newsbri ... ectus.html

Bones of ancient hominids have been found in the Americas, but generally they are dismissed out of hand since they shouldn't be there in the first place:

http://209.157.64.201/focus/f-news/1242132/posts

I volunteer at the Calico site and plan to restore an outbuilding to a lab this spring:

http://calicodig.com/index.php

The site where I pick up and catalog tools is on the shore of an ancient lake that quickly drained circa 16,000bce ... although a geologist is currently working in the area and may revise that date to 20,000bce or earlier. The tools that I find are above shoreline ... there is nothing below shoreline:



Many parts of Southern California during the late Pleistocene were covered with freshwater lakes:

[Charlie Hatchett]

Bones of ancient hominids have been found in the Americas, but generally they are dismissed out of hand since they shouldn't be there in the first place:

http://209.157.64.201/focus/f-news/1242132/posts

Here's some more info on possible ancient skulls found in central Mexico:

http://cayman.globat.com/~bandstexas.co ... skulls.pdf

http://cayman.globat.com/~bandstexas.co ... enberg.pdf

http://cayman.globat.com/~bandstexas.co ... letter.pdf

http://cayman.globat.com/~bandstexas.co ... 20info.pdf

http://cayman.globat.com/~bandstexas.co ... 202004.pdf

http://cayman.globat.com/~bandstexas.co ... alotte.tif

Courtesy of Steen-McIntyre.

[Charlie Hatchett]

by that I mean that Charlie Hatchett and Patrick Lyons have both been out flint knapping for the same reason that the piltdown hoax was perpetrated by Martin A.C. Hinton

...

I only wish I could knapp. I'm gonna have to give it a shot sometime.



http://cayman.globat.com/~bandstexas.co ... %20368.jpg



http://cayman.globat.com/~bandstexas.co ... %20441.jpg

[Charlie Hatchett]

Hold on you chaps, could you back up a piece. All this is new to me. Tools 200000yrs old in the Americas, am I reading this right?
This is way, way, before the presumed beginnings of HSS, so who are we looking at? Erectus? Or are several reputations about to bite the dust and we find a new species?

It's a maddening, completely fascinating situation at Hueyatlaco.

Here's a bifacial spearpoint found in situ by Cynthia Irwin-Williams:



http://cayman.globat.com/~bandstexas.co ... biface.TIF

http://cayman.globat.com/~bandstexas.com/00043.png

Courtesy of Steen-McIntyre

The point was secured by strata dated between 250,000 B.P. (low end- USGS and Donelick) to 1.1 million B.P. (high end- Berkeley/ Renne).

I've never heard of Erectus possessing spear point technology. Puzzling, indeed...