by kpop 6 Replies latest social current
I think this will interest quite a few here.
In an announcement sure to spark a firestorm of controversy, researchers say they’ve found signs of ancient humans in California between 120,000 and 140,000 years ago—more than a hundred thousand years before humans were thought to exist anywhere in the Americas.
Everybody knows you can't trust that carbon-dating stuff.
I like firestorms of controversy
we all need to be hit upside the head once in awhile so we can cleanse our minds of wrong ideas
Not true Science, the proof is lacking, this is simply opinion.
In Sweden most science are skeptical. The proof are not just good enough. They are looking for DNA and verified carbon dating and Helium Argon dating... and that is very difficult to make...
I happened upon this interesting post at https://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/67qs7r/paleontologists_have_dug_up_a_130000yearold/
**EDIT 5: For all the folks that have wanted to evaluate the material from the site, this is a [link to the University of Michigan Online Repository of Fossils (UMORF)](https://umorf.ummp.lsa.umich.edu/wp/), which contains publicly accessible 3D models of some of the specimens found at this site (as well as many other plants, inverts, and vertebrates housed at the University of Michigan). I hope that you all find it useful :)!**
Paleontologist here,I'd just like to say a few things based on the comments I'm seeing here:
First off, my qualifications: My current advisor is the third author on this paper and I worked under (and collaborated with) the second author when I worked at the San Diego Natural History Museum (in fact, I re-prepared some of the material in this paper about 6 years ago). Furthermore, I am a doctoral student in the final months (hopefully) of my PhD. My dissertation work has been on proboscideans (elephants and their relatives), but I have also done a fair amount of work on cetaceans (whales) and other vertebrates.
As far as the dating methods go, this site was dated using multiple types of absolute dating methods, which all resulted in a very similar age. However, the Uranium-series dating (not to be confused with radiocarbon dating, which could not give you an accurate age this old) that was used here got results with a *very* high confidence. In fact there is essentially no evidence of alteration that might lead to an older date (which really would not be common anyways). The dates recovered are almost unimpeachable (and I don't say that lightly). I would be very surprised if a geochronologist or any other expert had a major problems with the dates themselves (in fact a geochronologist was a reviewer for this paper for just this reason). Also, to the people that are saying that it is perhaps time to reassess our methods of isotopic dating in general, I strongly suggest you spend more time researching and trying to understand these methods before you make a claim like this...
One other misconception that I keep seeing here are peoples' interpretation of what is meant by "human" in this paper. "Human" is meant here in the sense of a species of the genus *Homo*, not necessarily *Homo sapiens* specifically. In fact, because of the old age it seems fairly unlikely that this would be the modern species of human rather than some other [unknown] species.
I'm sure there will be other questions or comments here throughout the next day or so, and I will try to check in from time to time and update this post. I'm also happy to answer any questions that I can (to the best of my knowledge).
Hope this is at least somewhat helpful!
Edit 1: To the folks wondering if this site could have been scavenged by humans (as opposed to hunted), I would say that, that is absolutely possible. In fact there is really no evidence one way or another to argue for hunting over scavenging at this site, and I don't believe that this paper takes a stance on this either. In fact, I would say that the argument of hunting vs scavenging in association with this mastodon is somewhat irrelevant. What is important is that this extremely old site (relatively speaking, anyways) has fairly clear association with ancient human activity.
Edit 2: Several people have pointed out that the article discusses a lack of evidence of meat stripping on the specimen. This does suggest scavenging, as it likely means the soft tissue was at least somewhat rotted and not usable.
Edit 3: Many people are suggesting that this animal could have been scavenged or had its bones modified many thousands of years after its death (i.e., implying the tools are much younger than the mastodon). To that point 1) the type of breakage seen on these bones is indicative of damage while the bone was still fresh. Fresh bone (sometimes called "green bone") breaks in a very different "spiral pattern" than older dried out bone; and 2) you have to remember that the sediments that the tools and mastodon are found in represent the context in which they were buried. Therefore since these materials were all found within the same layer they must have been buried at the same time. It is possible that ancient humans exhumed old bones (though I know of no actual evidence of this), **but** we would see telltale signs of disturbance to the sediment (which was not observed here).
In other words, I don't think that arguments about this site will come down to whether the material is associated and coeval, but whether folks think that these artifacts are indeed stone tools. Those people who do not agree with this identification will then have to reconcile the crazy taphonomy at this site and attribute it to some other natural process (which will be no small feat, IMHO).
Edit 4: For the people asking why we don't have any evidence of humans (or human remains) in North America in the time between the age of this site and more generally accepted dates:
First off, I would just like to note that we are almost certainly not talking about a direct lineage of humans between the time of this site and those of Clovis times (in fact, as I've stated above, we are likely not even talking about the same species). This was likely a very small population of humans that made it to North America that probably died out long before the modern species of human ever made it over. In that sense, there isn't necessarily a gap of time to "bridge".
As for why potential sites might not be preserved: There are a couple of reasons that you might not have evidence of humans found from this time. First off, you may not have rocks of the right age readily exposed in the region where the individuals were living (which is somewhat the case on the west coast, as far as I am aware). Second, the individuals could be living in an environment that is not conducive to preserving fossils (e.g., organisms that live in montane environments tend to not preserve in the fossil record because sediments are not being deposited in those regions). Third, getting preserved in the fossil record (in general) is very rare, and if your study organism has a very small population size or is short lived (as we would expect in the case here) then you have a very very low probability of being preserved (let alone found and collected). Finally, even if these scenarios aren't the case, there is the possibility that scientists have just been looking in the wrong strata, region, or age.
I remember being at class at high school listening to dates as back as 20,000 or 30,000 BC and asking myself so many questions.
It was worst when we had to study the Neanderthal or even the last glacial period that ended at 11,000 BC.
Or how about those extinctions of animals that we have proofs of their existance?
But at the time I couldn't join the dots.
