Archaeologica.org

True Digit, but if I came in here, with a leap of faith and state (which I do believe) that the Genesis account of the flood and the Sumerian flood epic were both redactions of a common earlier, oral account, you guys would line up from end of the board to the other to slap me.

There is probably some validity to that. Just don't pretend that they are a) literally true and b) the word of god. That's when the slapping starts with me,

If I take your opening as written, though not necessarily meant, Cog, Charley should put his trowel into retirement because pre-Clovis artifacts can't exist. Take a point I raised earlier, Clovis tools are a sophisticated example of stone technology and must have a history behind them. From that I personally do speculate that either they are indigenous to America, in which case I would be looking for earlier examples, or they are an importation from another culture, and I would be looking for evidence to prove or disprove these speculations.
I cannot see how you can remove speculation from science.

However, the scientific method does not allow for speculation

Archaeology is not strictly scientific, however. Not only are its finds not repeatable by experimentation but investigation of those sites destroys them in the first place.

And let us never forget what a shit storm Schoch started (say THAT five times fast!) when he dared to introduce the hard science of geology into the soft science of egyptology.

When Charlie or Hardaker sends a sample out for dating by a scientific method and that date comes back outside the "accepted range" of dates for North America the archaeological establishment (a/k/a The Club) sticks its head in the sand (or, perhaps, up its ass) and reverts to a festival of denial.

'Accepted Range', that's techno bull for 'shut up and go away', isn't it? Fortunately Min, people like Charley do neither.

And Michelle finds one that is right on the mark!

Good work, Luv!

http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/metro/ ... 6a138.html

But mounting evidence is slowly turning that story to fiction, said Michael Collins, an archaeologist with the Texas Archaeological Research Laboratory at the University of Texas at Austin.

For more than 20 years, Collins and other scientists have been digging up artifacts from Chile to Texas that convince them the first Americans didn't walk here at all, but came by boat, and arrived much earlier than previously thought.

The Club is on the run!

Am I naive or can a 'professional' archaelogist NOT tell the difference between a rock and a tool? I could cut down a sapling with a sharp rock but that doesn't make it a tool.

If it shows signs of human alteration ie. shaping, scraping, boring; you think maybe a tool. After this you date it and if falls outside some norm, you ask ask questions. This is science. Throwing it away. This is ignorance.

There are none so blind as those who do not wish to see Monk.

I cannot see how you can remove speculation from science.

Digit, speculation is not part of the scientific method unless it is formed as a hypothesis. I see nothing wrong with it as long as it is overtly admitted as such and not interlaced with established evidence. And I am in the same boat as Charlie ... a pre-Clovis site which apparently dates to 16,000bce or earlier. It could be as old as 50,000bce or more. I don't know. To make matters more confusing someone was producing Acheulean hand axes at that site. That technology is far older. There's nothing wrong with speculating that a form of H. erectus made the tools, but there is no evidence. Until bones are found, it is simply speculation. The makers could have been archaic H. sapiens instead. When bones are found, we should know who made the tools. Until then, it's a nice chat by the fire.

Am I naive or can a 'professional' archaelogist NOT tell the difference between a rock and a tool?

FM, yes. It's easy to tell the difference. That's why the tools can be taken to archaeologists in Europe and they'll tell you they're Acheulean, etc. until it's mentioned they came from America ... then, they clam up. The technology of production doesn't lie, but there is no accepted chronology for ancient hominids in the Americas and you would be getting the same result by telling them the tools were left by Atlantean spaceships from Alpha Centauri.

Until bones are found, it is simply speculation.

It is the speculation that fires the mind. If you did not have the tool would you be looking for bones?

Agreed Cog. You summed up my viewpoint better than I did.

It is the speculation that fires the mind. If you did not have the tool would you be looking for bones?

Actually, my motivation is curiosity as opposed to speculation. For me, it is a problem unsolved, an answer to the question, "Who made these?" to which the answer is, "Nobody knows." Speculation, although loads of fun, will only bring bias to the situation for me at this point. And that, might I add, is how we got here in the first place.

A group of scientists speculated that Native Americans were too primitive to do anything other than walk across a land bridge at the end of the Pleistocene, following big game. There was never any evidence that the Bering Land Bridge was the only way and oral traditions to the contrary were summarily ignored.

That's a great example of racial bias, isn't it. The Hopis' oral traditions talk about wandering through North and South America before finding their home. They even traveled to the Great White Wall in the north but it was forbidden to cross over ... that tradition is simply ignored.

So is the evidence of the tooling Cog. Correct me if I'm wrong, but as I understand it the stone tooling of NE Asia is micro-lith based, whereas Clovis obviously isn't. In fact the home of bi-facial working seems not to be in Asia at all. Am I correct?

So is the evidence of the tooling Cog. Correct me if I'm wrong, but as I understand it the stone tooling of NE Asia is micro-lith based, whereas Clovis obviously isn't. In fact the home of bi-facial working seems not to be in Asia at all. Am I correct?

Digit, the first part is definitely correct. Clovis does not resemble anything being found in Siberia. However, the second part is close. There are bifacial tools in China similar to the Acheulean tradition that have been recently discovered; however, those are very primitive compared to Clovis. Fred Budinger believes the Calico tools are similar to those found in China from 300,000 years ago (with bifacials) and believes they will eventually find H. erectus remains. I cannot tell you when bifacial working made its way to China, but it appears to have originated to the west.

"Who made these?"

That's my definition of "speculation." It's asking a question. Too many members of the Club seem to be afraid of asking questions because the answer might upset their tidy little apple cart.

Now, if you take the question and provide your own answer without some evidence to back it up then you are wandering into uncharted territory and deserve to get smacked down, as Von Daniken did. Still, Von Daniken was one of the first to ask the questions and he should be given credit for that...much as Columbus gets credit for "discovering" America because even though he didn't know where he was he still made it back to report his 'find.'