Now that there are two sites suggesting early man was in North America more than 100,000 years ago, it all seems more believable.
Archeologists have been fooled and embarrassed many times in the past over-interpreting naturally broken and flaked stones, so now the criteria for an artifact are very strict. In the case of the Calico site, several analyses have been conducted (Haynes, 1973; Duvall and Venner, 1979; Payen, 1982), and they have all demonstrated that there is no conclusive evidence for human production for most of the “artifacts.”
SeaGypsy wrote:That looks knapped for sure, but the aging is suss. I learned the skills from aboriginal Australians 20 years ago. Eventually i made a set of sets- 5 of each, from small arrow heads, to spearhead, skinning knife, small & large axe heads. They were good enough to completely gobsmack experts. I was thinking to sell sets to schools, before i found out that is a big taboo, as such implements are used to authenticate aboriginal sites & cannot be accurately dated.
The Younger Dryas impact hypothesis or Clovis comet hypothesis originally proposed that a large air burst or earth impact of one or more comets initiated the Younger Dryas cold period about 12,900 BP calibrated (10,900 14C uncalibrated) years ago.[1][2][3] The hypothesis has been contested by research showing that most of the conclusions cannot be repeated by other scientists, and criticized because of misinterpretation of data and the lack of confirmatory evidence.[4][5][6][7] However, a more recent study lends support to the hypothesis, finding a layer of elevated platinum and other metals at numerous locales across North America and Greenland, levels associated with extraterrestrial bodies.[8]
The current impact hypothesis states that the air burst(s) or impact(s) of a swarm of carbonaceous chondrites or comet fragments set areas of the North American continent on fire, causing the extinction of most of the megafauna in North America and the demise of the North American Clovis culture after the last glacial period.[9] The Younger Dryas ice age lasted for about 1,200 years before the climate warmed again. This swarm is hypothesized to have exploded above or possibly on the Laurentide Ice Sheet in the region of the Great Lakes, though no impact crater has yet been identified and no physical model by which such a swarm could form or explode in the air has been proposed. Nevertheless, the proponents suggest that it would be physically possible for such an air burst to have been similar to, but orders of magnitude larger than, the Tunguska event of 1908. The hypothesis proposed that animal and human life in North America not directly killed by the blast or the resulting coast-to-coast wildfires would have likely starved on the burned surface of the continent.
1. Firestone, Richard; West, Allen; Warwick-Smith, Simon (4 June 2006). The Cycle of Cosmic Catastrophes: How a Stone-Age Comet Changed the Course of World Culture. Bear & Company. p. 392. ISBN 1591430615.
2. Firestone RB, West A, Kennett JP; et al. (October 2007). "Evidence for an extraterrestrial impact 12,900 years ago that contributed to the megafaunal extinctions and the Younger Dryas cooling". Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 104 (41): 16016–21. Bibcode:2007PNAS..10416016F. doi:10.1073/pnas.0706977104. PMC 1994902Freely accessible. PMID 17901202.
3. Bunch TE, Hermes RE, Moore AM; et al. (June 2012). "Very high-temperature impact melt products as evidence for cosmic airbursts and impacts 12,900 years ago". Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 109 (28): E1903–12. Bibcode:2012PNAS..109E1903B. doi:10.1073/pnas.1204453109. PMC 3396500Freely accessible. PMID 22711809.
4. Kerr, R. A. (3 September 2010). "Mammoth-Killer Impact Flunks Out". Science. 329 (5996): 1140–1. Bibcode:2010Sci...329.1140K. doi:10.1126/science.329.5996.1140. PMID 20813931.
5. Pinter, Nicholas; Scott, Andrew C.; Daulton, Tyrone L.; Podoll, Andrew; Koeberl, Christian; Anderson, R. Scott; Ishman, Scott E. (2011). "The Younger Dryas impact hypothesis: A requiem". Earth-Science Reviews. 106 (3–4): 247. Bibcode:2011ESRv..106..247P. doi:10.1016/j.earscirev.2011.02.005.
6. Pigati JS; Latorre C; Rech JA; Betancourt JL; Martínez KE; Budahn JR (April 2012). "Accumulation of impact markers in desert wetlands and implications for the Younger Dryas impact hypothesis". Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 109 (19): 7208–12. Bibcode:2012PNAS..109.7208P. doi:10.1073/pnas.1200296109. PMC 3358914Freely accessible. PMID 22529347. Retrieved 7 February 2017.
7. Boslough, M.; K. Nicoll; V. Holliday; T. L. Daulton; D. Meltzer; N. Pinter; A. C. Scott; T. Surovell; P. Claeys; J. Gill; F. Paquay; J. Marlon; P. Bartlein; C. Whitlock; D. Grayson & A. J. T. Jull (2012). "Arguments and Evidence Against a Younger Dryas Impact Event" (PDF). GEOPHYSICAL MONOGRAPH SERIES. 198: 13–26. Retrieved 7 February 2017.
8. Moore; et al. (2017). "Widespread platinum anomaly documented at the Younger Dryas onset in North American sedimentary sequences". Nature Scientific Reports. 7: 44031. doi:10.1038/srep44031.
9. Kennett DJ, Kennett JP, West A; et al. (January 2009). "Nanodiamonds in the Younger Dryas boundary sediment layer". Science. 323 (5910): 94. Bibcode:2009Sci...323...94K. doi:10.1126/science.1162819. PMID 19119227.
Essentially every scientist agrees the Calico Hills artifacts/geofacts are indistinguishable from human made tools. But the deniers then argue that they can't be human artifacts because they are too old and there are no other sites of similar age in North America.
After examining, for the sixth time, the Calico site and the specimens recovered from the lower Yermo formation, I find no evidence to alter my previous views- that is, that the evidence for artifacts remains uncompelling and that a natural origin cannot be precluded. In fact, normal natural processes are adequate to explain the origin of all of the phenomena observed at the Calico site.
By considering the results of our statistical testing that the Calico Tools were form selected and the other factors-that the site is located on an alluvial fan, that fractured siliceous materials are found throughout the fan, that the evidence for skeletal material and cultural structures is lacking, and that the 1970 international conference at Calico could not support the hypothesis that man was present at the Calico site-we must conclude that man had no part in the modification of the fractured siliceous materials. We also conclude that the materials labeled as tools at the Calico site were form selected and represent a biased sample of the naturally fractured siliceous rock population of the alluvial fan at the base of the Calico Mountains.
Thus, it would seem that no fire burned in the hearth feature during at least the past 400,000 years. This time span is twice the 200,000 years determined by uranium-series dating on CaCO, coatings of cobbles within the lower part of the deposit (Bischoff et al. 1981). These coatings are secondary and ground water-derived and therefore provide a minimum age for the deposit. However, because of the present aridity and tectonic elevation of the Yermo deposits high above modem stream channels, it appears that the carbonate-producing ground waters were moving through the sediments during or shortly after the time of fan deposition. If this interpretation is correct, the results of the present study would seem to preclude the possibility that a fire burned within the feature.
rockdoc123 wrote:We ... conclude that the materials labeled as tools at the Calico site were form selected and represent a biased sample of the naturally fractured siliceous rock population of the alluvial fan at the base of the Calico Mountains.
The scientists working at the Calico site identified some worked flint stones as human tools. OF COURSE these are a "biased sample"---these are the ones scientists picked out and identified as tools. Thats what is always done in archeological sites.
The paleo-Aleuts picked up rocks, worked some, dropped the ones they didn't liked, and left with a "tool kit" of the best ones. There were worked stones everywhere at the site. And Sea Gypsy has actually knapped stones himself to make tools. Its not a big mystery. The little flaking around the edges of sharp tools requires human working. Here in Alaska they would push off small flakes to make the edge. I can see similar flakes and edges on the Calico tools even in the pics.
The fundamental identification of flaked stone as artifact is critical to all that follows in archaeology. The identification of sites, interpretations of prehistoric behaviors, adaptations, land use patterns, settlement and subsistence studies, etc. can be distilled to the initial determination of an artifact as being “real” or the result of natural or accidental phenomena such as plow damage. In cultural resource management, artifact identification drives immediate field decisions to modify research strategies and ultimately forms the argumentative basis for research potentials and determinations of significance. Chert flakes and shatter discovered during a NYSDOT sponsored project conducted by New York State Museum-Cultural Resource Survey Program were subjected to a battery of lithic attribute analyses in an attempt to identify artifacts in an agricultural area blanketed by natural chert. With the exception of exotic material types, no single attribute can certainly identify human involvement. A cumulative score of multiple attributes affords greater levels of confidence for cultural vs. natural determinations for larger assemblages. In settings with the “background noise” of natural chert in cultivated soils, cultural genesis determinations of single pieces and very small sparse assemblages must be recognized as hunches or faith-based decisions yet worthy of measured continued investigation.
Thats seems smart to me. If man was in North America over 100,000 years ago, then sites with what appear to be artifacts may be early man sites even if they are more than 100,000 years old. You can't rule them out anymore by saying they are too old.
sparky wrote:.
Hey Seagypsy , did some knaping too ,
I wanted to reproduce the Acheulian hand axe , the very first Swiss army knife made by our knuckles dragging forebears
then went on to spear points ,
it's easy ..lot of cuts ,scratches and bruise later ,I'm confident I could give some hopeful idiot
the proper spear to tackle one ton of diner on the hoof while I cheer him for a distance .
the surprise was mounting it in a solid fashion , that was very tricky !
I gained a lot of respect for the ancestors
Synapsid wrote:the ages are far too old.....
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