Guest Post by David Middleton
From The Seattle Times
SEATTLE (AP) – It’s not unusual for an archaeologist to get stuck in the past, but Carl Gustafson may be the only one consumed by events on the Olympic Peninsula in 1977.
That summer, while sifting through earth in Sequim, the young Gustafson uncovered something extraordinary _ a mastodon bone with a shaft jammed in it. This appeared to be a weapon that had been thrust into the beast’s ribs, a sign that humans had been around and hunting far earlier than anyone suspected.
Unfortunately for Gustafson, few scientists agreed. He was challenging orthodoxy with less-than-perfect evidence. For almost 35 years, his find was ridiculed or ignored, the site dismissed as curious but not significant. But earlier this month, a team that re-examined his discovery using new technology concluded in the prestigious journal Science that Gustafson had been right all along.
The pierced bone was clear evidence that human beings were hunting large mammals in North America 13,800 years ago _ about 800 years before the so-called Clovis people were thought to have migrated across the Bering land bridge from Asia.
The announcement came as sweet vindication for the now-retired Washington State University professor.
“I was pretty bitter about the whole thing for a long time,” Gustafson, 75, recalled last week. “I don’t like saying it. I never really admitted it except to my wife. It was so frustrating. But I’m very humbled and happy it turned out this way.”
20 October 2011
Old American theory is ‘speared’
By Jonathan Amos
Science correspondent, BBC News
An ancient bone with a projectile point lodged within it appears to up-end – once and for all – a long-held idea of how the Americas were first populated.
The rib, from a tusked beast known as a mastodon, has been dated precisely to 13,800 years ago.
This places it before the so-called Clovis hunters, who many academics had argued were the North American continent’s original inhabitants.
News of the dating results is reported in Science magazine.
In truth, the “Clovis first” model, which holds to the idea that America’s original human population swept across a land-bridge from Siberia some 13,000 years ago, has looked untenable for some time.
A succession of archaeological finds right across the United States and northern Mexico have indicated there was human activity much earlier than this – perhaps as early as 15-16,000 years ago.
The mastodon rib, however, really leaves the once cherished model with nowhere to go.
[…]
The timing of humanity’s presence in North America is important because it plays into the debate over why so many great beasts from the end of the last Ice Age in that quarter of the globe went extinct.
Not just mastodons, but woolly mammoths, sabre-toothed cats, giant sloths, camels, and teratorns (predatory birds with a nearly four-metre wingspan) – all disappeared in short order a little over 12,700 years ago.
A rapidly changing climate in North America is assumed to have played a key role – as is the sophisticated stone-tool weaponry used by the Clovis hunters. But the fact that there are also humans with effective bone and antler killing technologies present in North America deeper in time suggests the hunting pressure on these animals may have been even greater than previously thought.
“Humans clearly had a role in these extinctions and by the time the Clovis technology turns up at 13,000 years ago – that’s the end. They finished them off,” said Prof Waters.
“You know, the Clovis-first model has been dying for some time,” he finished. “But there’s nothing harder to change than a paradigm, than long-standing thinking. When Clovis-First was first proposed, it was a very elegant model but it’s time to move on, and most of the archaeological community is doing just that.”
First things first… This “discovery” does not alter the fact that the original human inhabitants of the Americas most likely migrated into North America from Siberia across the Bering land bridge. It remains the only viable pathway. Pushing their migration back in time a few thousand years into the Pleistocene just means that the first wave arrived before the Bølling /Allerød interstadials during the Oldest Dryas instead of during the Younger Dryas.
The Real Clear Science link to this article was titled, “First Americans Not From Siberian Land-Bridge.” The BBC reporter seemed to draw a similar erroneous conclusion… “In truth, the ‘Clovis first’ model, which holds to the idea that America’s original human population swept across a land-bridge from Siberia some 13,000 years ago, has looked untenable for some time.” The paper in Science is behind a pay-wall; but the abstract doesn’t seem to cast any doubt on the Bering land bridge theory. The significance of this discovery is that the Anthropocene may have begun much earlier than previously thought… At least several thousand years before mankind discovered capitalism…
Science 21 October 2011:
Vol. 334 no. 6054 pp. 351-353
DOI: 10.1126/science.1207663
•Report
Pre-Clovis Mastodon Hunting 13,800 Years Ago at the Manis Site, Washington
Michael R. Waters1,*, Thomas W. Stafford Jr.2,5, H. Gregory McDonald3, Carl Gustafson4, Morten Rasmussen5, Enrico Cappellini5, Jesper V. Olsen6, Damian Szklarczyk6, Lars Juhl Jensen6, M. Thomas P. Gilbert5, Eske Willerslev5
Abstract
The tip of a projectile point made of mastodon bone is embedded in a rib of a single disarticulated mastodon at the Manis site in the state of Washington. Radiocarbon dating and DNA analysis show that the rib is associated with the other remains and dates to 13,800 years ago. Thus, osseous projectile points, common to the Beringian Upper Paleolithic and Clovis, were made and used during pre-Clovis times in North America. The Manis site, combined with evidence of mammoth hunting at sites in Wisconsin, provides evidence that people were hunting proboscideans at least two millennia before Clovis.
A previous post of mine, Run Away!!! The Anthropocene is Coming!!!, drew some criticism about my assertion “that modern man migrated out of Africa and hunted the megafauna of Europe and North America into extinction.” My comment was at least somewhat sarcastic… And yes, I do know that the human migration out of Africa began long before the Holocene, but, it is a simple fact that mastodons, stegodons and mammoths had “weathered” all of the prior Pleistocene glacial-interglacial cycles just fine. The only major distinction between the transition from the Pleistocene to the Holocene and the previous glacial-interglacial transitions was the migration of humans out of Africa, across the world and the demise of most of the mega fauna that were in the path of that migration…
While I may profusely ridicule the notion that mankind’s industrial activities over the last 200 years have given rise to a unit of geological time, distinct from the Holocene… I fully believe that mankind’s conquest of Earth since the late Pleistocene is the only thing that truly distinguishes the Holocene from previous Quaternary interglacials.
The problems with the “Solutrean Hypothesis”
1) No clear DNA evidence.
2) The Laurentide Ice Sheet was in the way. Laurentide Ice Sheet, approximately 14,000 years ago. (Short, 2008).
“But there’s nothing harder to change than a paradigm, than long-standing thinking.”
As we are finding out regarding the flawed man made CO2 global warming belief.
Anthony,
“The only major distinction between the transition from the Pleistocene to the Holocene and the previous glacial-interglacial transitions was the migration of humans out of Africa, across the world and the demise of most of the mega fauna that were in the path of that migration..”
That is the only major distinction we know of. Maybe, but I don’t buy it as anything more than a possible theory. Hunting anything to extinction with the methods available in back then is a stretch. Climate, disease, volcanism, impacts, and their effects on food sources, etc. all are other possibles. Very large critters do not have the staying power when food is diminished and most that went extinct were replaced by smaller more efficient models of similar beasts. It’s like the coyote vs the wolf.
Jim G
Clovis man caused the megafauna of North America to go extinct?
I have great difficulty with the thesis that small fur-clad men with sharpened rocks on the end of tree branches managed to obliterate all the abundant, large, impressive animals at about 13,000 years before present. Especially the large cats that, unless their behaviour was uncharacteristically pusillanimous compared to modern felines – think taking on an African lion armed only with a pitchfork – would require an army of animal control officers with a great deal of time between hunting and gathering their food for such activity.
The extinction of the North American megafauna was most likely a true extinction event and the cause was extraterrestrial – like the influences that drive major climate fluctuations.
See Firestone et al. 2007,
OPEN ACCESS ARTICLE can be found here:
http://www.pnas(dot)org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.0706977104
The rib, from a tusked beast known as a mastodon, has been dated precisely to 13,800 years ago
Another piece of BBC rubbish reporting. They are just so so bad.
You can date nothing precisely unless it has the manufacturers mark and date on it. Sadly they were missing from this fossil.
2) The Laurentide Ice Sheet was in the way.
http://www.sciencephoto.com/media/165125/enlarge
Big glaciers can be surrounded by sea ice.
There has been a lot of work done using DNA to trace migration routes and the findings are fascinating.
This is a quick summary article:
http://www.ramsdale.org/dna10.htm
The first Article I saw suggested an Africa => Middle east => Asian =>Islands around Indonesia => Australia ???(disproved)=> S. America route.
REFERENCES:
the Neanderthal genome and the Denisova DNA
http://www.sciencenewsline.com/archaeology/2011092616060018.html
http://www.atkinslightquest.com/Documents/Science/Evolution/WhoWasEve.htm
It would seem the fight is heating up: Disscusion of latest Paper on Denisova DNA
Perhaps a ‘Clovis tax,’, or a ‘Clovis trading scheme’ with ‘Clovis credits’ would have saved the New World megafauna. We’ll never know.
A professor when I was in college had theorized that the ‘New World’ was populated by peoples in canoes following the west coast from Alaska south. Any evidence of landfall would have been on the shoreline then which is now 300 to 400 feet off the present-day coastline.
One of the first natural inlets during that time would have been Grays Harbor in Washington State. The newcomers could have followed the Chehalis River inland as it was south of the ice sheet. Unfortunately, last I knew, he had found little evidence to support his theory; although he was still researching.
As far as hunting mega fauna into extinction, North American humans also employed hunting tactics that resulted in many food animals dying at one time. They would run herds of animals (mammoths, bison, buffalo) off cliffs and would then enjoy a tremendous bounty of fresh meat. I don’t know that those hunting practices would be successful with deer or elk. With the hunting pressures on the large herd animals reducing their numbers, the number of large predators would also decline.
Summary here with graphics:
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=first-americans-researchers-reconsider-peopling-new-world
I remain curious about something. In Africa there remains a substantial amount of mega fauna even though humans have shared the region far longer with these beasts than they did North America. I don’t accept the idea that the local mega meat adapted. In fact the idea seems absurd.
In Africa or the new world the easiest way to convert mega fauna to food is to kill the newborns and infants. Spearing adults would likely have been self-defense or desperation, and possibly opportunism when dealing with geriatric giants. And if you know enough to go after newborns, why newborns of 5000 pound beasts when deer and caribou are handy and plentiful? There is far less risk to the hunters and nobody would have understood that better than the hunters. While this would produce seasonal abundance, the off-season provides a lot of manageable sized ungulates, fish, rodentia, seals, fowl, etc. All with far lower risk of injury to the hunter.
This would likely not apply to the pygmy mammoths found on the Channel Islands off California’s shores, but they disappeared around the same time that mega fauna disappeared everywhere in North America. Is it possible that people traveled coast to coast and south to California, and equipped themselves with the wherewithal to reach the Channel Islands in so short a time?.
Back to Africa – and India where mega meat continues to exist. This is so, I believe, because there were smart people there that knew you can get killed by mucking with rhinos and elephants.
I’m not yet ready to jump on the blame people first wagon. I think climate, disease, and parasites (mosquitoes and related diseases, particularly), were major contributors and opportunistic hunters a minor role player.
I took a number of Southwestern (US) Archaeology classes in the early 70’s . As I recall , my professor thought that humans had probably inhabited N America for some twenty thousand years . This is the first I have heard that archaeologists have been dating the earliest human inhabitation based on the Clovis point ! It would have taken humans hundreds , if not thousands, of years to migrate from the Bering land bridge to Clovis , which is on the New Mexico/Texas border .
David –
Thanks for pointing us to the article in the BBC, but I find your post pretty ill-informed about this subject. You don’t seem to know the juxtaposition of things in time or the gestalt of the whole thing.
You are wrong about your claim that
The mitochondrial DNA evidence showed that there were FIVE incursions into the Americas. The “original human inhabitants” came more than once. One even came from the Pacific islands. One came from Europe.
After the site in Monte Verde in Chile was vetted in 1997, the archeologists were all over themselves either trying to hang onto the “Clovis First” meme or (if they were smart and not just out-dated) they were out trying to find more sites and HOW the humans got here earlier. Cactus Hill, in Virginia, was dated to about 16,000 ya, which was ~3,000 years before this bone met this spear point. After the European mtDNA evidence was in, they were all trying to figure out how humans came across the oceans, and most concluded that they hugged the shores, which was not unreasonable, but still may have been wrong. Yet that has become the consensus.
And if hugging the shores in boats was tenable earlier, it was certainly tenable while the ice-free corridor was closed.
(formatting screw-up alert… Anthony, if you could add an appropriate “/” or
REPLY: With no clear idea where to place it, can’t help you. I have better things to do, so I’ve deleted the comment, you can repost.
hahaha! my blockquote in brackets got me there, too! Dumb, dumb, dumb…
Ever hear of the great , world wide , flood? Ever read the bible? I know, some of you so called scientist types are just too smart to accept the existance of a supreme being. As the bible said a long time ago, science falsely called so.
I can never really accept that humans caused mega fauna extinctions. Two main reasons.
1:Human population densities and populations were not high.
2:In the modern era even with extremely high human populations….Elephants, Rhinoceros, Hippopotamus, Giraffe, etc….. They are forms of mega fauna, and they are still with us…. Humans haven’t been able to drive them to extinction….. But change the habitat, and they are finished.
Consider the map of the world and the fact that north and south america appear to have broken away from the land mass that is europe and africa. The bible does claim that happened in the days of Peleg, and how can anyone say it didn’t? That would help to explain when and how this continent got populated. And by the way, when that statement was recorded in the bible we didn’t yet have airpalnes or satelites to take ariel pictures so the writer wouldn’t have known of the pictorial evidence.
Except, of course, that Africa remains full of large, tasty animals.
This fact has always bothered me about the humans driving the megafauna extinct meme. In some respects it parallels the AGW meme that since this happened and since humans are evil, 1 + 1 =2 and thus humans are responsible for the extinction of all of the megafauna.
I don’t presume to know what caused this extinction, but the anti-point that the cradle of humanity in Africa still has the highest high order mammalian species diversity should drive a reasonable scientist to question the assumption that of course humans did it.
A great read, if you have some time, is a book called “Lost World”. The Lost World being all the land that was shoreline when the oceans were 300-400 feet lower. It shows how island hoping around the rim of the Pacific from Asia to North America was quite possible even with extremely primitive methods.
I also found a very good peer reviewed paper that says that the LACK of CO2 probably helped to drive the megafauna extinction process in the northern climates.
A History of Atmospheric CO2 and Its Effects on Plants, Animals, and Ecosystems
Miocene were low enough (180-320 ppm; Pagani, Freeman, and Arthur 1999) to potentially cause a significant decrease in plant productivity, particularly in C3 species. Herbivores, such as browsers that fed almost exclusively on C3 vegetation, would have been especially susceptible to such changes. Janis, Damuth, and Theodor (2000) proposed that the decrease in species diversity of ungulate browsers during the Miocene was due to reduced plant productivity mediated by declining CO2 levels. Fruthermore, the decline in the diversity of grazing mammals, particular horses, at the end of the Miocene, may have been the result of declining plant productivity (MacFadden 2000). Low CO2 concentrations have also been implicated in the extinctions of the Pleistocene megafauna. Gutherie (1984) proposed that environmental change during the last glacial period caused a decrease in plant availability. Morever, they suggested that the predominant plant defenses (alkaloids, cyanide) selected for under this climactic regime would have been more toxic to the megafauna (mammals with primarily simple stomach digestion, e.g., mammoths) than to ruminants (i.e. caribou)
There have been several studies showing that the last mammoths survived longer on isolated islands that were the most difficult and thus the last places for hunters to reach. “Patterns of faunal extinction and paleoclimatic change from mid-Holocene mammoth and polar bear remains, Pribilof Islands, Alaska” (2008) Veltre et al
Long after the end of the ice age, mammoths still lived on the remote Pribilof Islands 5500 to 6500 years ago, while on Wrangel Island they lived as recently as 3600 years ago. To put that into historical perspective, the ice age ended 10-12,000 yeara ago and the Great Pyramid of Giza was built about 4600 years ago. Human hunting the BIg Kill is much more likely than extinction by climate the Big Chill. A related theory to their extinction by the Big Kill, is the Big Ill, where humans introduced disease while over-hunting. The very recent extinctions caused the by human spread of a chytrid fungus that has driven several frog species to extinction makes the Big Kill and Big Ill much more plausible than climate change when all those animals survived several glacial and inter-glacial events.
Humans may have been in North America as long as 50,000 years before present:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2004/11/041118104010.htm
Sounds like the same kind of attack as Tom Dillehay’s work at Monte Verde:
http://www.archaeology.org/online/features/clovis/thomas.html
There are lots of theories about the Biblical Flood, especially as some form of the story exists in practically every civilizations’ mythology. The one I found most convincing for North America is that the glacial melt was initially contained to the top of continenal ice sheet and a wall of ice and moraine basically created a massive inland sea on top of the glacier. When that wall came tumblin down all hell broke loose as thousands of cubic miles of water rushed over the continent obliterating all before it. That would explain the extinction of mega fauna and perhaps the sacarcity of pre-Clovis human sites in the north. Anyway…