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.
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Pingualuit (Chubb) Crater is young… But not young enough at 1.4 million years old.
“There is no archaeological evidence of Solutrean migration along the sea ice to the North America.”
The areas where migration would have occurred are at present, under about 300 feet of water.
Siberia and Beringia remained largely ice-free throughout the last glacial maximum (LGM). The Bering land bridge was open from well before the LGM up until ~13 kya. The Cordilleran and Laurentide ice sheets separated about 14.5 kya. Siberia, Alaska, Alberta and the Pacific Northwest are littered with archaeological evidence of the pre-Clovis migration. The only pre-Clovis human DNA identified to date (Paisley Caves, Oregon) “belonged to Native Americans in haplogroups A2 and B2, haplogroups common in Siberia and east Asia.”
While it would not have been impossible for the Solutreans to lay-over on sea ice during the long kayaking trip from France to North America and “an absence of evidence is not evidence of absence”… There were no ice-free coastal areas in Greenland, Newfoundland or Labrador 14.5 kya. Apart from some now-submerged islands on the Grand Banks, there were no ice-free coastal areas from Northern Europe to Nova Scotia 14.5 kya. There is no archaeological evidence of Solutrean migration (granted such evidence would most likely be underwater). Nor is there any clear DNA evidence tying the Solutreans to the pre-Clovis or Clovis.
I’m surprised this is new information…
I thought the now prevailing theory is that the Americas were populated many, many thousands of years ago by the Ainu (Japanese) long before people crossed the Bering by foot based on archaeological finds in South America and elsewhere.
At least, that’s what I learned in a freshman archaeology class like 8 years ago…
For another geologist’s take, I invite you to visit my blog at
http://suspectterrane.blogspot.com/
The Hopi say they arrived some 22/23 thousand years ago, and they came in from South America travelling through that continent in stages until arriving in the north, over thousands of years. And someone mentioned island hopping with lower sea levels, that’s how they tell it.
Tom G(ologist) says:
November 2, 2011 at 3:55 pm
For another geologist’s take, I invite you to visit my blog at
http://suspectterrane.blogspot.com/
_______________________________________
Tom, I can certainly understand why you dislike the word “Anthropocene” I hate the way the PC crowd keeps changing perfectly good words. It is idiotic.
My favorite nit to pick is the miss use of the word thoroughbred. Every time I here some one say the phrase “I have a thoroughbred doberman, for example, I want to ask how they managed to cross a horse with a dog. Heck a thoroughbred isn’t even purebred it is the descendant of a English mare crossed with one of three Arabian/Barb Stallions.
I did enjoy your blog.
Did you see the Discovery Channel documentary where a group of volunteers went out for a week and tried to live as stone age humans.
It only took about 2 minutes of actual hunting before they were able to take down an Elk with an Atlatl spear-chucker and long arrow/spear/dart. Elk don’t even budge when you hit them with golf ball at 150 miles/hr.
[Warning: disturbing images, violence and crying for the Elk killed by starving stone age humans]
http://www.yourdiscovery.com/video/curiosity-elk-hunt/
The speed of butchering with stone age tools is shocking. (Better than modern knives really).
As nearly as I can tell, your view of the Anthrpocene/Holocene is not too dissimilar from mine. Modern man is the only genuine distinction between the Holocene and previous Late Pleistocene interglacials and that Anthrpocene is an idiotic attempt to differentiate the industrial age from an already unremarkable interglacial stage.
Pull My Finger says:
November 2, 2011 at 2:00 pm
“Frankly I always wondered what mammoths could have lived on in a tundra environment. Something that big, and the other cool mega beasts, would have needed tons of vegetation.”
Wow, lots of great comments on this thread! In response to PMF’s question, I remember reading in Science News a while back, about informed speculation based upon ancient pollen. Apparently many thousands of years ago, a large part of Alaska was an extremely cold, semi-arid kind of landscape, not found in modern world. At that time, the mammoths could have feasted on the sagebrush and other delectable yummies. It wouldn’t have been necessary for them to have had specialized adaptations for browsing lichen in the tundra, as reindeer do.
Has anyone dated the mass graves of giant elk in Alaska or or mass graves of Mammoths in Siberian Islands. Has anybody done a detailed study of the Flora present with them. The Chesapeake sediments show dramatic change, Clovis below, French above.
The geology shows massive changes, the red layer. The formation of Niagara Falls, The extinction of the Bahamian Species and the associated massive clouds of Iron Dust from Africa. The massive temperature swings during the Younger Dryas. It is all there, it needs a closer look and data sought, such as sapling.
One issue not discussed very much is that CO2 levels were very low and the colder temperatures resulted in less precipitation.
Those conditions favor “grass” vegetation over broad-leafed plants. Ice age conditions were, in fact, grassland conditions. The US southeast was the only area forested in North America during the ice ages. The non-glaciated portions of North America were, in fact, the great plains. The megafauna were, in fact, mega-grass-herbivores.
When the climate warmed, and more rain fell, and more forests grew back, the mega-grass-herbivores were naturally less in numbers. Throw in a stone age hunter who could take down animals with ease (with elaborate fencing and fire concentration zones and elaborate cliff jumps and meat cut preferences given the large number of animals available, and eventually atlatls and clovis spearpoint weapons), the mega-fauna’s death rates eventually overwhelmed the slow birth rates that mega-fauna have.
I imagine a few other biological reasons like deseases brought in from Asia played a very large role.
Darn! You beat me to it! Can’t wait till we get a climate story with Puyallup, or Camano, or Steilacoom…
” Rob Crawford says: November 2, 2011 at 1:36 pm
“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. ”
One of the biggest issues is that no one’s ever identified a glacial-period “ice-free corridor” through Canada. That makes the coasts much, much more likely. ”
That was the gist of the book I mentioned Lost World. They went into detail about the 2 ice sheets covering North America and how there was no path down the middle. It doesn’t require a huge migration all at once just a coastal place where the food is good when the tide goes out. As more people arrive some move on to the next place and the leapfrog around the Pacific would be done in several thousand years.
There were other good reasons to avoid the interior such as walking takes a lot longer than drifting or paddling a raft and the giant bear mega critters that would make a grizzly run for its life.
Myrrh
November 2, 2011 at 5:03 pm
The Hopi say they arrived some 22/23 thousand years ago, and they came in from South America travelling through that continent in stages until arriving in the north, over thousands of years. And someone mentioned island hopping with lower sea levels, that’s how they tell it.
####
The Hopi also say that after many thousand of years, a hole formed in the ice wall to the north allowing them to meet relatives who had been trapped on the other side.
Bill Illis
November 2, 2011 at 7:39 pm
###
Another point is that all of the mega-fauna meat eaters were highly specialized hyper-carnivours. Man and the recently arriving grey wolf were not. Both are quite happy hunting big or small game, in woodland or on the plains. It is significant that man was quite capable of taking large game, but was not dependent on doing so.
DNA Evidence, Haplogroup X is very clear and well documented plus the stone tool matching. Crete was occupied by pre-humans who used boats, long before modern man. The Extinct people of Tierra Del Fuego, were not only Australian they needed no clothes or shelter to live in that wild climate.
It seems to me that using the best tools and databases we have now, so much more can be gained from the evidence that we have. For example, what exactly does frozen with grass in their stomachs mean? What grasses and plants and pollens, what environment does that indicate. What bacteria , that has an impact as well. These can all be accurately dated if the dating system is really strong.
The boneyards are well documented but I have found very little research on them. They must be a massive resource of real information.
Australia had at least two migrations. Old man, as evidenced by the non modern human bones at lake Mungo and modern man. Their cousins in Tasmania had very clear links with the South Americans. Not yet confirmed but the evidence is strong.
Even now they find South American Mummies from 500 A.D. processed with resins proven to be from New Zealand and South Pacific trees. How do you explain that. The presence of sweet potato in New Zealand long prior to Capt Cook.
I think the problem is that there is no money in it, i does not build a secure future as does globull warming research.
From 1981, there is a book entitled “American Genesis” by Jeffery Goodman, who asserts modern man originated on this continent based on what he claims to be evidence of human occupation of this continent before the Siberian land-bridge opened the way for contact between the continents. This author has been criticized for the practice of ‘psychic archaeology’ and entering the realm of pseudoscience.
Elsewhere, I have also seen proposals that the first Americans may have come by way of Australia, perhaps by Polynesian style island hopping. These people were presumably replaced during the wave of Siberian colonization. Recently I have seen a report that DNA analysis indicates that the Australian Aborigines appear to have reached eastern Asia first. “The researchers calculated that the first migration, which brought in ancestors of the Australian, might have entered eastern Asia some 62,000 to 75,000 years ago. The second” [modern human migration] “might have happened 25,000 to 38,000 years ago, they said.”
CBSNEWS TECH
Aborigines first humans to settle Asia
September 22, 2011 2:06 PM
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2011/09/22/scitech/main20110216.shtml
The paleo-Indians (whether from Oceana, France or Siberia) had sophisticated means of hunting. To this day in Rocky Mountain National Park you can see the animal runs they made by planting trees at or just above timberline. These focused the game into a ‘funnel’. A mastodon, smoked, could feed the whole clan all winter. Driving them off cliffs, with fire, and then getting the good bits is something that has been demonstrated to have been the pattern.
A significant reduction in population followed by the Younger Dryas could have reduced levels to those too small to sustain themselves in the face of continued human predation.
Kennewick Man, whose nearly complete skeleton was unearthed in Washington State in the 90s, is another fly in the ointment of conventional theories of archeology. Carbon-dating puts the age of his remains in the 9000-year range. And his bone structure does not look very much like that of modern Native Americans in the region. Three educated guesses put forth are Caucasian, Polynesian, or Ainu. How and when did KM’s ancestors find their way to Washington State?
We have some idea how he died. It may have had something the do with the spear point found in his hip bone. But why did others like him die out?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kennewick_Man
The Cordilleran and Laurentide Ice Sheets were fully separated by 14.5 kya. Beringia, including large areas of Siberia and Alaska, never glaciated. And, as you pointed out, the coastal route was also intermittently open enough for island/beach hopping long before the Alberta route opened up.
On the other hand, the Atlantic coastal route did not open up before 10-12 kya.
The only pre-Clovis human DNA identified to date (Paisley Caves, Oregon) “belonged to Native Americans in haplogroups A2 and B2, haplogroups common in Siberia and east Asia.”
The highest modern concentration of Haplogroup X is found in the Druze of Lebanon. Traces of Haplogroup X in some modern American Indians, concentrated in the US Southwest, only provides evidence of an ancient connection to a rare haplotype found in Europe. It does not provide evidence of a migration from France to North America… http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1180497/
The Mediterranean is not analogous to the North Atlantic. The lower sea levels of the LGM exposed and expanded many islands in the Mediterranean and the climate was relatively mild. There were no ice-free land areas along the Greenland or North American Atlantic coasts north of Nova Scotia and no glacially exposed islands from Iceland to the Grand Banks at the time of the Clovis/pre-Clovis migrations and the North Atlantic climate was a bit more harsh than the Mediterranean.
As I’ve previously posted, the data don’t preclude the Solutrean hypothesis; they just don’t support it.
There is no DNA evidence indicative of an Australian aboriginal linkage.
@Bill Illis, November 2, 2011 at 7:39 pm & DesertYote, November 2, 2011 at 8:51 pm…
Yep. That was the point I tried to make earlier… Unlike Africa and South Asia, the megafauna, including the predators, lacked the sufficient habitat to get out of the way of human predation.
@Gail Combs What article has been “purged” from the internet?
A search for “Frozen Mammoth” has your Graham Kendall link around 10th on the list of results while searching for “abrupt climate” has a link to a WHOI page in 3rd place (http://www.whoi.edu/page.do?pid=12455) titled “Abrupt climate change” with an article listing in reverse chronological order and includes your Gagosian article.
Searching for “abrupt climate change” puts the WHOI link above in 2nd place and a direct link to the Gagosian one in 3rd
One book that I found to be an interesting read was Harvard Professor Berry Fell’s “America BC” (1976) in which he argues that there was frequent trade contact between the west coast of Europe and the Americas in Pre-Christian times. He claims to have found and deciphered many interesting examples of an ancient form of European writing known as Ogam at various places in the Americas. Most archeologists dismiss these as random scratches. Dr. Fell claims that his interpretations would have been perfectly acceptable by academia if they were of European finds. Of course, that may mean that many of these European interpretations are also highly fanciful. I found the book, even if 100% bogus, to be a good read.
*****
E.M.Smith says:
November 2, 2011 at 1:11 pm
Also saw a fascinating article (which link I’ve since lost) that did a great job of showing evidence for a large rock fall from space hitting the ice shield of N. America as causal of the extinctions and with ‘facts on the ground’ including secondary cratering in the Carolinas pointing toward the impact site in Canada (with some smaller spalling having caused impacts in the southwest, giving a southwest to north east trajectory of the swarm, impact into the ice, and secondary ejecta landing as far away as the Carolinas.) Did in most of the Clovis people too.
*****
And there’s quite a bit of geologic evidence for an impact, too:
http://craterhunter.wordpress.com/notes-on-ignimbrite-emplacement/part-two/