Archaeologica.org

On November 24, 2005 there was a story on the Archaeologica news about
the Calico Dig in California. Check it out!!
This was the first I had heard of it, although it has been
excavated and open to thepublic for a long time.
The tools found there are the oldest I have everheard of in North
America...in excess of 100 thousand years.
So why haven't these been brought to bear in
all the "pre-clovis" discussion?
Thank you. Archaeologica is a great site and service.
Stan Gilliam

Can you give us some links, Stan?

Here's the story about the Calico Dig.

http://www.sbsun.com/news/ci_3247286

If this link doesn't work, just go the Archeologica website, and click
on Archeological News, and scroll down to Nov. 24 for a link there.

I hope to see some replies tomorrow...I'm going to bed now.
Thanks.
Stan

Hmmm....

Well. My recollection is that modern humans (those pesky Cro-Magnons, Frank!) arose 100,000 years ago in Africa and spread from there. So, a find dating to 135,000 years ago in California means these were not Homo Sapiens or the "Out of Africa" theory needs some serious work. I don't seem to recall any Neanderthal finds in the Americas.

Mini, I understand the emergence of homo sapiens is currently considered to have been about 195.000 yrs ago in Africa (I'll try to find a link). So, those ancient Californians must have been some mighty fast walkers to get there that soon.
Or maybe they took a train?

Some doubt the accuracy of Leakey's Calico finds. They are said to be geofacts, meaning created by natural processes and not by man. The "artifact" called the "calico cutter" is the only really debateable one. It apparently shows signs of bifacial flaking and wear from actual usage. Very few archaeologists have taken calico seriously, though. I was very excited when I first heard of this site, but it is very questionable and the jury is still out on it.

They've been digging at Calico since sometime in the 50's if I remember correctly, I had the chance to visit a college friend who was majoring in anthropology at UCLA. That's when I fell in love the the subject. Leakey visited at a later date and was very enthusiastic about how old he thought the site was, but the "experts" gave him a really bad time. But he went back and established the area as an honest to goodness archaeological site.

As i mentioned in an earlier post Leakey wasnt to accurate with the calico finds and as i said before blind faith in Leakey is really not justified in fact in the real world of archaeology he is a bit of a joke .Have you ever read Bones of contention? cheers Terry

http://dsc.discovery.com/news/briefs/20 ... print.html

May 12, 2005— The first modern humans to leave East Africa and populate Asia may have not traveled through the Middle East, as the traditional model suggests, but along a southern coastal route, a pair of new genetic studies conclude.

Writing in the current issue of Science, Vincent Macaulay of the University of Glasgow and colleagues propose that it was a single, rapid event that could have led to the subsequent peopling of Europe and Asia

"The traditional 'out of Africa' model for modern human origins posits an ancestry in sub-Saharan Africa, followed by a dispersal via the Levant about 45,000 years ago.

"However, the suggestion of an earlier 'southern route' dispersal from the Horn of Africa about 60,000 to 75,000 years ago, along the tropical coast of the Indian Ocean to southeast Asia and Australasia, has recently gained ground," wrote the researchers.

[/quote]

Thanks for the replies, everyone.

I know people are skeptical about the Leakeys. But one of you says
Leakey went back to Calico and, with greater discipline perhaps,
verified the tools at the site.

I looked at several specimens pictured on the internet, and a few of
them looked like tools to me...but I am not an expert.

They seem to be the right shapes for tools, and the edges seem to have
been reworked, although not in a very systematic way. I always thought the
reworking of edges was the key.

Thanks.

Hello Stan this is a rather simple site though you may find it helpfull as a start point cheers Terry.http://arts.anu.edu.au/arcworld/resources/stone.htm http://www.hf.uio.no/iakk/roger/lithic/sarc.html

Read the article on the Archaeology Magazine site. If true, even remotely, it will serve to vindicate Leakey. Maybe then people will ease up on him, after all he was just a very enthusiastic old man who honestly believed what he said. Can't wait until the results are announced later this winter.

Thanks to all of you for giving me an informed perspective on the
"Calico Early Man Site"
I have read several articles on it since yesterday, when I got this little
topic started.
Including the excellent link from fossiltrader on lithics. It is more complex than
I thought..But I am going to look at my North Carolina "arrowhead" collection more carefully.
As a parting thought, i will say that I believe there must have been early
sea journeys to the N and S american West Coast, hints of which seem to be coming to light
these days.
Thanks again. I will probably not return to this thread.
Stan

I was a newspaper editor in the area when the Leakeys were completing their return visit to Calico - and I hung out with the local geologists, anthropologists and archaeologists.

The evidence is rather compelling that the Calico (or "Yermo" site, as it was also known) is certainly no less than 20,000 years old. According to the geologists familiar with the area, the site was a village of dwellings erected on raised structures - stilts, basically - around a vast prehistoric body of water today named "Lake Mannix."

The gologists say that about 20,000 years ago, Lake Mannix covered a huge area from the western edge where the Calico dig is located to the edge of what we know now as the Grand Canyon. This ancient lake formed a bed of impermeable clay that today underlies the upper California Mojave Desert - the Mojave River plunges under that clay seal to run all the way to the Colorado.

However, one sunny day in paradise, hell erupted.

A massive earthquake helped further erect the fault-block mountain range to the west, and tilted the entire floor of the valley where Lake Mannix lay. The western end raised up, the eastern end dropped and some slip fault lines displaced along the way.

The lake literally cut its way thrhough any obstacle between its waters and the lower ground to the east at the Colorado River. The cataclysmic flood carved a feature now known as Afton Canyon, and by the end of 24 hours the last waters of this massive inland sea were in the Colorado River, adding new features to the Grand Canyon.

Whatever water-based civilization was at Calico stopped that day. The shoreline eventually was buried along with the middens of shellfish shells and other debris of an ancient people and their stranded homes.

And even today, the tale of Calico challenges many assumptions about the dates of human civilization in North America. These don't have to be descendants of Polynesians or Asians blown off course across the Pacific, or remnants of some "prior" civilization "when the world was young" or other such oddball theories. It just means people were pretty adventuresome long ago, when the Ice Age made the seas smaller and folk made their way to Australia, New Zealand, the Indonesian archipelago, and other parts of the world - including what we now call Alaska. They weren't all seafarers, then - but they weren't all on foot, either.

Thanks for your post, guest. I saw a PBS documentary about that
flood, but I didn't realize it was the same one that buried the calico material.
You say the professionals on hand were satisfied that the site was a human habitation with tools. Did you get a look at the artifacts?
Some people think they were just interesting rocks.