Oldest American artefact unearthed

[L. Coyote]

Source: Naturenews

Archaeologists claim to have found the oldest known artefact in the Americas, a scraper-like tool in an Oregon cave that dates back 14,230 years.

The tool shows that people were living in North America well before the widespread Clovis culture of 12,900 to 12,400 years ago, says archaeologist Dennis Jenkins of the University of Oregon in Eugene.

Studies of sediment and radiocarbon dating showed the bone's age. Jenkins presented the finding late last month in a lecture at the University of Oregon. His team found the tool in a rock shelter overlooking a lake in south-central Oregon, one of a series of caves near the town of Paisley.

Kevin Smith, the team member who uncovered the artefact, remembers the discovery. "We had bumped into a lot of extinct horse, bison and camel bone – then I heard and felt the familiar ring and feel when trowel hits bone," says Smith, now a master's student at California State University, Los Angeles. "I switched to a brush. Soon this huge bone emerged, then I saw the serrated edge. I stepped back and said: 'Hey everybody — we got something here.'"

................

Read more: http://www.nature.com/news/2009/091105/full/news.2009.1058.html

---

A friend was working this dig, so I got the news during the summer when they found it.
My friend had a really exciting day when he found ancient coprolites! LOL.
They had to suit up and wear masks to prevent DNA contamination of the ancient substrates.
This cave is the most exciting Paleoindian dig in the Americas now.

[depakid]

1. If the dates are good- that's the last nail in the Clovis coffin

[L. Coyote]

2. Clovis-First is definitely dead, just ask the coprolites. That's a DNA source

and really settles the argument for the doubters that were still hanging on to Clovis-First.

[pipoman]

38. I sure do loves me some clovis arrowheads for sure...

[stubtoe]

51. me too! lovely pic.

[L. Coyote]

47. But Pennsylvania’s Meadowcroft Rockshelter dates to 16,000 years ago.

Pennsylvania Site Contains Evidence of Earliest People in North America
By Erika Celeste - http://www.voanews.com/english/AmericanLife/2009-11-04-voa45.cfm
Avella, Pennsylvania
04 November 2009


On November 12th 1955, as Albert Miller took a walk through his Pennsylvania property, named Meadowcroft, he noticed a freshly dug groundhog hole. Upon seeing the disturbed earth, the amateur archaeologist saw a chance to confirm his theory that Native Americans once lived on his land. He expanded the hole until he found evidence to support his theory. Eighteen years passed before archaeologists took a closer look at the site, but when they did, they discovered the oldest evidence of human habitation in North America.

What they found were artifacts from pre-Paleo-Indians who had arrived in North America long before the Gauls conquered France, before the Great Pyramids of Giza were built and before farming began in the Fertile Crescent. Dennis Stanford, head of Paleo-Archaeology at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History in Washington, DC, explained that these people were big game hunters. " extinct animals such as mammoth, giant bison, camel, horses and we find evidence of them from the Chesapeake Bay all the way to San Francisco and down into South America. And they lasted until about 9000 years ago when they were replaced by other peoples that came in and began to be gatherers more than hunters," Stanford said.

Pushing back North American habitation by 4,000 years

For many years, the oldest evidence of human existence in North America dated back 12,000 years. But when Albert Miller's property was excavated in the early 1970s, Smithsonian archaeologists made a remarkable discovery. Radiocarbon dating showed that several artifacts were 16,000 years old.

...............

[freethought]

54. WIll it be Clovis Second or Clovis Third.

My understanding is that the Clovis First Theory was put into doubt with the discovery of the Kennewick Man out in the Pacific Northwest. If I remember correctly the dates of Kennewick man correspond pretty nicely to this find.
Now, I guess there is some find that there might have been a wave of people that came from the east.

I find this whole subject fascinating. Let's keep the information coming!

[roguevalley]

10. half of my family were born in Paisley. Its sheep country and some

of the most beautiful transitional desert country on earth. Bly and Lakeview are our other towns. THis is exciting news.

[XemaSab]

16. I've been to Paisley

:D

[roguevalley]

44. bwahahaha! little isn't it. But beautiful.

[guitar man]

3. Impossible

It couldn't possibly be that old since the earth is only 7,000 years old :crazy:

[liberation]

27. I thought the earth was only 5000 years old

[TroglodyteScholar]

41. As far as I can tell, it's only 29 years old

:crazy:

[daleo]

34. Satan planted this stuff to fool us

God let Satan do this, to test our faith. The creator of the universe has nothing better to do.

[POAS]

4. Damn, I was wondering where the hell I left that scraper!

Always losing tools that way!

[Blue State Blues]

5. If you had just put it back in your tool box!

[Tikki]

6. Don't you remember!!!...they guy in the next..

cave over borrowed it during the Spring cleanup.


Tikki

[L. Coyote]

7. And I was expecting scatological humor!

Extinct camel bone scrapers are difficult to find, I guess! :rofl:

[Dont_Bogart_the_Pretzel]

56. Were their ever camel's in North America?

[Mari333]

8. They found my first trainer bra!

I knew it would last forever. Playtex.

[catzies]

9. I was gonna make a Strom Thurmond joke but realized he never worked w/his hands/ n/t

[8 track mind]

11. but but but

surely this was planted by Satan to deceive us! the earth is only 6000 years old.


:sarcasm:

[tomm2thumbs]

12. thought Lieberman had just been playing in his sandbox

[valerief]

13. Fundy heads are exploding like firecrackers now! nt

[caseymoz]

22. I don't know why. They could deny all other evidence without cranial detonation.

They'll just say it's a trick by satanic liberal archeologists.

[gtar100]

43. Yea, those archeologists always have some hidden agenda behind their finding stuff.

[caseymoz]

49. Just like the Global Warmers. We're just after power.

That's all we want. The power to tell people what to do with their oil and coal. There's just nothing more desirable in life.

[liberation]

28. Don't you need to have a brain for it to explode?

.

[valerief]

31. Ah, correct. My bad. I guess it's just their arsenal of guns exploding. nt

[EFerrari]

14. (We told you we came from here)

lol

:hi:

[xchrom]

15. love it -- this is fascinating. nt

[Demeter]

17. And Here I Thought They Uncovered the Constitution

from whichever corner W threw it.

[thelordofhell]

18. Silent Bob is an Archaeologist?

Who knew?

[svpadgham]

20. I can imagine that.

He doesn't say anything during the entire expedition, then at the very end...

[On the Road]

26. LOL --

OK, that was good.

Those archaeologists are all just chasing...amino-acid racemization.

Made up for the -- not one, but two -- comments "But the earth is only six thousand years old." I almost don't click these these threads anymore to avoid those.

[bluedigger]

19. Thanks for posting this!

Very cool. I'd like to see some lithics or other artifacts from the same deposit. I wonder what "the Dark Lord" has to say about it?

[FarLeftFist]

21. Caves were all the rage 14,000 yrs ago.

[caseymoz]

23. There's a jinx on the New World.

First, the camel-bone people came here. Two thousand years later, they were replaced by the Clovis people. Two thousand years after that, the Clovis and most larger mammals in North America were wiped out by an unknown cataclysm. Probably a small asteroid-like object that broke up and crashed into an ice-age glacier. Then the American Indians came here across the Bearing Straight, only to be wiped out with a combination of European genocide and epidemics.

And now the Euro-American diaspora nation has to survive the legacy of George W. Bush.

[liberation]

30. Technically, that can be said for pretty much every continent and nation on earth...

... waves of invasion, settlement, and disappearance of whole civilizations all over this earth of ours.

Heck, other countries had to suffer the disastrous hubris of their very own inbred boy king, before we got to experience the joys of Bush the Lesser.

[caseymoz]

53. I don't think there was another continent where people just disappeared.

They find Clovis artifacts all over at 12,000 years ago, but by 10,900 years, all evidence of human life disappears.

[bikebloke]

50. It was necessary to evict them.

An off ramp for the planned intergalactic highway was to be constructed. But a prolonged labour dispute nixed that and they built it elsewhere.

[dgibby]

24. I was sure that I was going to find a picture of John McCain when I clicked on this thread! lol! n/t

[AtheistCrusader]

25. I was expecting Cheney's heart..

[GrilledCheeses]

32. hahaha.

Just had a laugh from a good healthy place. thanks.

[Tab]

29. Strom Thurmond is back???

They just don't die easily, do they?

[PfcHammer]

33. Britney's long lost panties

[dysfunctional press]

35. what if the clovis people brought it here with them from the old country...?

:shrug:

[L. Coyote]

37. Which, the coprolites?

Good thing there are coprolites or the skeptics could have a field day with that point!

We archaeos know they didn't bring the coprolites :rofl: basic graduate course info, you know :rofl:

[dysfunctional press]

42. the tool.

just because something is found somewhere doesn't mean it came from there.
maybe it was a family heirloom that grandpa brought across with him...and then a clovis archeologist lost it while studying a pile of 2,000 year old animal shit.

grandpa probably had a stroke when he found out.

[applegrove]

36. Cool!

[hedgehog]

39. I wonder how the tool got there. Can you imagine some poor person all those years ago

getting to a new camp site and saying "Now, damn! i left my favorite scraper behind!"

[mikekohr]

40. Clovis has been discredited for quite some time, Entry into the Americans predates 30,000 BC

reccommended reading from International Brotherhood Days:
http://www.brotherhooddays.com/reading.html


THE FIRST AMERICANS, in pursuit of archeology's greatest mystery
Written by J.M. Adovasio with Jake Page
This book is an insider look at the archaeological community and the eventual acceptance of the error and inaccuracy of the "Clovis First," theory by all but the most rabid and extremist elements within that community. This work lays out the compelling proof that the earliest verifiable evidence of man into the Western Hemisphere points to dates as old as 32,000 years or more and makes clear that the search for man's entry date into this half of the world is an ongoing work and argument that will continue for some time.

[philly_bob]

45. REC cuz I'm glad DU keeps up on science. So much I don't know. /nt

[eridani]

46. The difference between an archaeologist and a biochemist

One finds and artifact and it's a wonderful day.
The other finds an artifct and it's a shitty day.

[No Elephants]

48. Camels in Oregon in ancient times? I never knew that. Fun,

[stubtoe]

52. Thanks. I LOVE this kind of stuff.

[L. Coyote]

55. NGBPP Research at the Paisley Caves =w/ Summary and Conclusions

This from before the Summer 2009 Field School:

===================================
NGBPP Research at the Paisley Caves
by Dennis L. Jenkins
Director, Northern Great Basin Field School
Museum of Natural and Cultural History
University of Oregon
http://www.uoregon.edu/~ftrock/paisley_caves_description.php


The Paisley Caves are located in the Summer Lake Basin north of Paisley in south-central Oregon. The site is composed of 8 caves and rockshelters in a west facing ridge of scoriacious basalt.

Cut by waves at the height of the Pleistocene, these caves lie at an elevation of 4520 ft. above two prominent beach lines cut into the talus slope. As lake levels fell at the end of the Pleistocene the current Summer Lake Basin was hydrographically separated from the Chewaucan Basin sometime between 17,000 and 18,000 cal. BP. Water levels in both basins continued to fall until about 14,500 cal. BP when a resurgence in the Chewaucan Basin caused lake levels to rise above the 4388 ft. sill separating the two basins. The Chewaucan River then breached the gravel fan separating the two basins and began flowing north into the Summer Lake Basin. Over the next 2000 years high lake stands established prominent shorelines at elevations of roughly 4330, 4360, and 4380 ft. During much of this period water stood within one mile of the Paisley Caves, making occupation of the caves substantially more attractive than it has been since.

Luther Cressman had a crew test the Paisley Caves in 1938, trenching caves 1, 2, and 3 from the mouth to the back wall in each case. His crews returned the following year to complete the excavation of the cave interiors. They removed the deposits in three stratigraphic units: sediments above Mazama ash, in the ash, and below the ash. In the pre-Mazama deposits of Cave 3 they recovered the remains of late Pleistocene camel, bison, and horse in apparent association with artifacts. Cressmen returned to the site one last time in 1940 to verify this apparent association of megafauna and artifacts. While Cressman believed he had demonstrated the association of artifacts with extinct Pleistocene fauna, few other researchers have formally accepted his interpretations due to the lack of adequate documentation for these finds.

To test CressmanÕs theories, the UO field school conducted new excavations ......

...............

Summary and Conclusions
UO field school excavations were conducted in Paisley Caves numbers 1, 2, 3, and 5. Field methods were intensively focused on recovering cultural materials and faunal remains in situ within stratigraphic context. Lithic debris was generally found to be very sparse and the proportion of tools to debitage unusually high. This pattern suggests that occupations were generally limited to very brief stays and that the site was not generally a destination camp. The pattern changes somewhat for the lowest terminal Pleistocene/Early Holocene cultural component, where lithic debitage is much more common though never truly dense.

The majority of the faunal assemblage is comprised of microfauna deposited by raptors and carnivores between human occupations of the caves. Fish and waterfowl are most common in the Late Pleistocene/Early Holocene deposits at the bottom of the caves though they also occur in smaller numbers in the Late Holocene deposits. Large mammal bones are most commonly confined to deposits which also include artifacts. However, they may occur practically anywhere throughout the deposits due to various kinds of disturbances.

Consequently, establishing the true associations of materials recovered within the caves is absolutely vital to our analysis. We have responded to this challenge by restricting our radiocarbon dating efforts to the sampling of artifacts and bone that is identifiable to species. AMS dates indicate that the Pleistocene cultural deposits range from ca. 12,000 to 14,340 cal. BP. Camel, bison, horse, and extinct artiodactyl remains have been recovered in deposits with perishable items of human manufacture.

Dry desert caves, like those at Paisley 5 Mile Ridge, are wonderful repositories for perishable items that do not ordinarily survive in open sites. Unfortunately, humans are not the only process by which remains come to be deposited in caves. Rats, squirrels, raptors, carnivores, wind, water, and gravity all contribute to the formation and alteration of cave deposits. This fact makes it extremely dangerous to assume that items found together in caves belong together, or that they even date from the same time period. Cressman failed to adequately account for this fact in his analysis of the oldest deposits in the Paisley Caves. Consequently, his interpretations have not been widely accepted. To verify the association of Pleistocene mammals with humans at the Paisley Caves we will have to proceed much more cautiously with our analyses and interpretations. At this point we have proven that people occupied the caves during the time that camels and horses were present in the region. We have not yet demonstrated that people had anything to do with the deposition of their bones in the Paisley Caves. That remains for future analysis.