A Hundred Centuries Off…
April 4, 2017
Humans arrived in the Americas 24,000 years ago. A butchered horse mandible shows human activity in the Yukon circa 22,000 BC. This upends everything we know, and suddenly my camping at Blackwater Draw doesn’t hold the same meaning it once did. That tribe may have been stranded there for a hundred centuries, blocked by the […]
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View from the Left Bank: Rob Prince's Blog 
I didn’t write this..a blog “friend” whose stuff I try to read regularly did. It is a subject I am – or was – well versed in as I used to teach it…Anyhow, really good read…for those of you interested in human origins in N. America…or just interesting archaeology…
Hello Alan!
And there is a site in Pennsylvania that on several occasions has been dated back to 33,000 years, the main point being that our understanding of the history of humanity in North America is still rather sketchy with the date of “entry” in both Americas being constantly pushed back, and the early origins being more complex and interesting than previously thought. By the way, have you read Mukerjee’s “The Gene”? Pretty fine volume on the history of the little critter and our understanding of how it works and what are the limits of our ability to manipulate it. Cheers, Rob
Tom Dillehay (of Vanderbilt, though I knew him when he made the discovery and was a professor at university of kentucky) found solid evidence of people in Chili 14,500 years ago (extended now to 18,500). At the time, the accepted archeological date was 13,000, the Clovis people. When I congratulated him, he was not particularly gleeful. He knew that the find overturned generations of archeology and archeological theory–the same dates and theory that was in all the books written by all the silverbacks in the discipline. They said the dates were not sound. In fact, they proved and continue to prove solid (in fact, there is material at the site that is around 20,000, but the evidence is not quite strong enough). Then they accused him of planting evidence (when the reputations of the discipline’s silverbacks are threatened, they do not go gently). Essentially, we know how long it takes for hunter gathers to move 100 miles, and there was no way that Clovis people could have been the forerunners–they could not get all the way to Chili quickly. (We now have pretty solid evidence that they bounced down the coast on small boats). This find in Eastern Beringia substantiates the dates even more.
On Tue, Apr 4, 2017 at 5:33 PM, View from the Left Bank: Rob Prince’s Blog wrote:
> Rob Prince posted: ” Humans arrived in the Americas 24,000 years ago. A > butchered horse mandible shows human activity in the Yukon circa 22,000 BC. > This upends everything we know, and suddenly my camping at Blackwater Draw > doesn’t hold the same meaning it once did. That trib” >