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New Evidence Suggests Humans Arrived in the Americas Earlier Than Thought

npr.org

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Re: New Evidence Suggests Humans Arrived in the Americas Earlier Than Thought

#131

Post by restalis »

icc97 wrote: post #65
meri_dian wrote: post #20

Notice that the article states the bones themselves are from 130kya, not that they were discovered in a layer of sediment deposited 130kya. This means that the age of the bones says nothing about the tools scattered around them at the site, or the ancient users of those tools. Taking this into account, I think a more plausible explanation is that ancient humans - Clovis ancient (13kya) or perhaps older (20kya) - disc…

The video in the middle of the story [0] says that they were found in a silt layer (which I'm guessing is aged at 130kya) [0]: https://youtu.be/HyfSsgCrjb0?t=1m21s

It pains me to see these scientists handling those ancient bones with bare hands. That's not a good practice.

Re: New Evidence Suggests Humans Arrived in the Americas Earlier Than Thought

#132

Post by restalis »

theprop wrote: post #119

New theory: they were a Hominid people (but not Homo Sapien or human) that came to America to escape marauding communities of humans attacking them.

That was pretty much my conclusion too. Homo Sapiens got out of Africa around 130-90k years ago. Here they found bones broken by tools. Those bone-breakers might have been humans (as Homo genus) but definitely not our species. Our species got in Americas much, much later.

Re: New Evidence Suggests Humans Arrived in the Americas Earlier Than Thought

#133

Post by azernik »

Balgair wrote: post #34
Retric wrote: post #3

It's only 50 miles by sea from Eurasia to the Americas. People got to Australia around 40,000–60,000 years ago by boat so it seems unlikely that people needed a land bridge to get to the Americas. Remember, the globe also looks like this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eskimo#/media/File:Inuit_conf_... PS: I suspect the Americas where well known in the 1700's, but nobody was talking to the Russian Far East when map ma…

Also, Beringia went through many cycles of land and sea coverage[0]. Our climate has been pretty up and down since homo sapiens came onto the stage. Aside: The land-bridge was not just a passing point, it was actually a nice place to sit and stay, due to the wind, sea, and glacial climatic issues. Also, the coastal-migration idea states that we just skimmed the coast all the way to at least Chile. The issue with that…

See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doggerland

Re: New Evidence Suggests Humans Arrived in the Americas Earlier Than Thought

#134

Post by restalis »

vivekd wrote: post #98

So lets look at the evidence: OUTLIER DATE: This site is an outlier among archaeological sites in terms of the date. The date given for Californians according to this research is 130 000 year ago. As far as I am aware, the earliest recorded human site outside of Africa is one in China 120 000 years ago. And even that site is an outlier because human migration into the middle east began happening 120 000 -100 000 year…

We're in the age of disruption and with your cold reason you've just crushed an attempt for disruption in history itself! How dare you wiping California off the middle paleolithic map?

Re: New Evidence Suggests Humans Arrived in the Americas Earlier Than Thought

#135

Post by nkoren »

Houshalter wrote: post #106
nkoren wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the traditional answer, but it's wrong. Göbekli Tepe[1] decisively pre-dates agriculture. Although it wasn't inhabited, it displays a level of technology and social organisation on par with city-building. But agriculture definitely had nothing to do with it. Not saying that I've got a good answer for what did happen -- just that agriculture wasn't it. 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6bekli_Tepe

So what? No one is claiming that prehistoric people couldn't build anything. But without agriculture you can't have dense cities or anything like civilization. The population that can be supported by hunting and gathering alone is tiny. That site isn't pre agriculture anyway.

> That site isn't pre agriculture anyway.

*Citation needed. Every source I've seen says that it is.

> But without agriculture you can't have dense cities or anything like civilization. The population that can be supported by hunting and gathering alone is tiny.

Göbekli Tepe says otherwise. It was a truly large-scale undertaking, requiring the highly-organised planning, engineering, and construction efforts of many hundreds, possibly thousands of people. And all the evidence points to these people being hunter-gatherers, not agrarians.

Re: New Evidence Suggests Humans Arrived in the Americas Earlier Than Thought

#136

Post by colomon »

tzs wrote: post #18

Given 1. a site that appears to have been used by humans to do some kind of processing of bones, and 2. very old (130k) bones at that site that have been processed, how would you rule out the possibility that the site was made and the bones processed by people that came much later (say, 15k years ago) who found a bunch of 115k year old bones from animals that died from natural deaths and used them?

"The bone fragments, some from a mastodon’s stout thigh, were scarred with marks and notches that are hallmarks of a violent blow on fresh bone. Old bone, the scientists say, shows different fracture patterns."

[1] https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2017/04/26/humans...

Re: New Evidence Suggests Humans Arrived in the Americas Earlier Than Thought

#137

Post by acdha »

gregn wrote: post #108
vivekd wrote: post #98

So lets look at the evidence: OUTLIER DATE: This site is an outlier among archaeological sites in terms of the date. The date given for Californians according to this research is 130 000 year ago. As far as I am aware, the earliest recorded human site outside of Africa is one in China 120 000 years ago. And even that site is an outlier because human migration into the middle east began happening 120 000 -100 000 year…

What bothers me is that nowhere in both articles I read do they once mention: "what if it wasn't what we are postulating it is." That tact of reasoning is never explored. The entirety of their position is foregone conclusion. I'm not saying they are wrong or right, but first of all, it seems entirely unlikely due to everything we already know. Second of all there are no human remains, just some rocks that _kind_of_ r…

The questioning you claim to be looking for starts in the second paragraph of the NPR piece and continues throughout the article. Trying reading it through and counting each time one of the scientists quoted says something like “if true”, “it's an outlier”, etc. or talks about the additional evidence they'd like to see or challenges yet to be explained.

Re: New Evidence Suggests Humans Arrived in the Americas Earlier Than Thought

#138

Post by peatmoss »

A slightly more skeptical look at the claims: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/ancient-bones-spa...

Still, I love any evidence that the world may be more complicated and strange than we previously thought. This is definitely a story that sparks the imagination.

Re: New Evidence Suggests Humans Arrived in the Americas Earlier Than Thought

#139

Post by mastax »

jlarocco wrote: post #72
Balgair wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, Beringia went through many cycles of land and sea coverage[0]. Our climate has been pretty up and down since homo sapiens came onto the stage. Aside: The land-bridge was not just a passing point, it was actually a nice place to sit and stay, due to the wind, sea, and glacial climatic issues. Also, the coastal-migration idea states that we just skimmed the coast all the way to at least Chile. The issue with that…

> It seems like we've been pretty smart for a long long time. There are civilizations all over the globe that rose, fell, and died, and we will never ever know of them. The idea of 'civilization' is ancient, it seems. I've wondered about that a lot, actually. If homo sapiens have been around for ~200k years (according to wikipedia), what were we doing for the first 185k years? What changed ~15k years ago that we star…

"Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind" is a great pop-anthropology book for anyone interested in this question.

Re: New Evidence Suggests Humans Arrived in the Americas Earlier Than Thought

#140

Post by ceedan »

nkoren wrote: post #135
Houshalter wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So what? No one is claiming that prehistoric people couldn't build anything. But without agriculture you can't have dense cities or anything like civilization. The population that can be supported by hunting and gathering alone is tiny. That site isn't pre agriculture anyway.

> That site isn't pre agriculture anyway. *Citation needed. Every source I've seen says that it is. > But without agriculture you can't have dense cities or anything like civilization. The population that can be supported by hunting and gathering alone is tiny. Göbekli Tepe says otherwise. It was a truly large-scale undertaking, requiring the highly-organised planning, engineering, and construction efforts of many hu…

If true, it might not be agriculture that lead to all cities, but the abundance of food that did (which is more common in agriculture-backed societies). Maybe this was just a particularly good spot for hunting and gathering over a long period of time.
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