Archaeology shocker: Study claims humans reached the Americas 130,000 years ago

[n2doc]

Some 130,000 years ago, scientists say, a mysterious group of ancient people visited the coastline of what is now Southern California. More than 100,000 years before they were supposed to have arrived in the Americas, these unknown people used five heavy stones to break the bones of a mastodon. They cracked open femurs to suck out the marrow and, using the rocks as hammers, scored deep notches in the bone. When finished, they abandoned the materials in the soft, fine soil; one tusk planted upright in the ground like a single flag in the archaeological record. Then the people vanished.

This is the bold claim put forward by paleontologist Thomas Deméré and his colleagues in a paper published Wednesday in the journal Nature. The researchers say that the scratched-up mastodon fossils and large, chipped stones uncovered during excavation for a San Diego highway more than 20 years ago are evidence of an unknown hominin species, perhaps Homo erectus, Neanderthals, maybe even Homo sapiens.

If Deméré's analysis is accurate, it would set back the arrival date for hominins in the Americas and suggest that modern humans might not have been the first species to arrive. But the paper has raised skepticism among many researchers who study American prehistory. Several said this is a classic case of an extraordinary claim requiring extraordinary evidence — which they argue the Nature paper doesn’t provide.

“You can’t push human activity in the New World back 100,000 years based on evidence as inherently ambiguous as broken bones and nondescript stones,” said David Meltzer, an archaeologist at Southern Methodist University. “They need to do a better job showing nature could not be responsible for those bones and stones.”

more

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/speaking-of-science/wp/2017/04/26/archaeology-shocker-study-claims-humans-reached-the-americas-130000-years-ago/

Interesting discussion and debate in the article

[Wounded Bear]

1. Subject to review, I assume, but...

Evidence of a single encampment and some hunting activities isn't evidence of permanent settlement. Could just be a visit. Ancient peoples keep turning up to be far more mobile than we tend to give them credit for.

We'll see, I guess. These kinds of stories tend to get over-sensationalized, especially in the non-scientific media.

[Ohioblue22]

2. stranded aliens would be my guess

not really

[Warpy]

3. Think about it, one of the first things we had to learn how to make was a boat

otherwise the first river in Africa would have limited our territory permanently while limiting our foodstuffs to plants and land animals.

I think there's a good case for far earlier human habitation of the Americas, but most of the territory they'd have settled would have been coastal, where food was plentiful. That coast is now part of the continental shelf, flooded at the end of the last Ice Age.

Evidence will have to be indirect, especially on the east coast, where the acid soil would destroy the oldest remains.

[Yo_Mama]

5. Home erectus rafted or used boats. They've clearly documented that.

This doesn't even have to be Homo Sap.

Hueyatlaco has never been explained:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hueyatlaco

[Warpy]

6. Right, though I made that clear

They had to, otherwise their range would have been severely limited.

One of the first things a kid does is a game of "will it float?" It's not much of a leap to hollow out a tree trunk or tie some logs or reeds together to make something that'll get you out in the water to where the fish are...or across it.

[Yo_Mama]

9. Yes, I think fishing explains a lot of early human history n/t

[left-of-center2012]

4. Very interesting

Perhaps a small group in a boat blown off course?

[Canoe52]

7. That was my first thought.

[cstanleytech]

8. Or simply animals with broken bones mixed in with some rocks.

We arent likely to know for sure unless of course someone happens to have a time machine handy.