Pre-Clovis South Carolina Site - Opinions?

[emperorchaos]

I searched for another thread about this but didn't have any luck finding one so I decided to start my own.

I've known about these "pre-Clovis" sites for sometime now but I never took much genuine interest into them until recently. From now until Saturday, the archaeologists who discovered the site are hosting a conference in Columbia, South Carolina. Only a mere 1½ hours away, althought I'd like to attend, I don't have the money, time, nor means of transportation.

According to my local newspaper, the conference will include:

Wednesday - Collections and vendor exhibits displayed, documentary on possible European

Thursday - more exhibits on display, lecture on a theory connecting spearheads to artifacts uncovered in France and Spain

Friday - more presentations, more discussions

Saturday - tours of the Topper and Big Pine archaeological sites.

-=-=-=-

What I wanted to know is... has anyone else had any experience with this stuff? Has anyone seen the artifacts uncovered? Some skeptics have claimed that the supposed tools discovered are nothing more than rocks.

Is there any truth to any of this or is this more hullabaloo purporting the existence of an ancient advanced civilization? Like the stuff Kilik likes.

-=-=-=-

More information can be found at:

This CNN article
Southeaster Paleo-American Survey

 

[MRC_Hans]

There is no mentioning of an advanced civilisation. The finds are indeed rocks, since this is a stone-age find. Publication has been through respectable channels, so I supose it is as valid as any other find. Which means till such time as somebody discovers something to invalidate it.

Hans

 

[emperorchaos]

There is no mentioning of an advanced civilisation. The finds are indeed rocks, since this is a stone-age find. Publication has been through respectable channels, so I supose it is as valid as any other find. Which means till such time as somebody discovers something to invalidate it.

Hans

I didn't mean to infer that it was in fact a discovery that is also attempting to link itself with "evidence" of ancient advanced civilizations.

I do agree that the publications have been going through respected channels, as you said.

The Post & Courier newspaper article I have also says that University of Tennessee professor David Anderson "will unveil a new online databse that creates detailed maps of artifact finds."

It will be interesting to see where this goes. I have a mild interest in archaeology, and I wish that I could attend the conference. I especially would like to be able to visit the site. The site itself is only about 2 hours from me.

It is nice for a change to find that there is something scientific going on in South Carolina in lieu of the usual religious crap that always happens here. (Like the dying Christian Coalition now based in my hometown of Charleston. *sigh*)

Thanks for your quick response Hans... I was hoping to see one or two before I have to get going.

 

[emperorchaos]

Let me just scratch out the part I said about the ancient advance civilization. It was a failed attempt at joking at Kilik who, with his "monoliths" thread" got me to come out from lurking and make my first post.

Maybe there will be another conference or something similar in the future that I might have the privilege of attending. I am a bit distraught that I didn't hear about this one earlier. It would be really interesting to see.

Oh well. C'est la vie, or whatever it is.

 

[MRC_Hans]

*snip* It was a failed attempt at joking at Kilik who, with his "monoliths" thread" got me to come out from lurking and make my first post.

*snip*

Well, that just goes to show us all that even folks like Kilik may serve some good cause .

Hans

 

[CBL4]

I would doubt this site but my knowledge is limited. The fact that the oldest known site is 13,000 year and this claims to be 50,000 makes it highly unlikely.

There is a lot of debate about the peopling of the Americas. Some studies (e.g. linguistic or DNA) indicate 20,000 years plus. Then someone else disputes the first study's methodology or uses another methodology and gets a much younger date.

From the CNN article:

Modern humans, or homo sapiens, most likely emerged between 60,000 and 80,000 years ago in Africa. They quickly fanned out to Australia and Central Asia about 50,000 years ago and arrived in Europe only about 40,000 years ago.

I think this makes a 50,000 year old date unlikely. Most of the well before Clovis claims have been based on alleged fire pits or tools. Until there are well dated human bones, I think the consensus will (and should) be a people via the Beringia land bridge roughly 15,000 years ago.

The skeptic motto is extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. This claim is not extraordinary but it is unexpected. Therefore it needs strong evidence but the current evidence is weak. It should not be summarily dismissed but it should not be accepted - yet.

That is my moderately educated layman's opinion. BTW, I am not knocking Goodyear. He appears to be doing science properly. It is a contentious issue with iffy data. There will lots of disputes until (if) a very well documented site is found. This is the nature of science.

CBL

 

[UrsulaV]

While I don't know anything about this specific bunch, various pockets claimed to pre-date Clovis and the fairly well accepted 15,000 date show up reasonably regularly. When I was in college, the current favorite was some site in South America that claimed to have 40kya fire pits--not having pursued anthropology as a career, I mostly fell out of touch with the field after that, but I'm not surprised that there are other such claims.

There's usually a lot of publicity attached to claims like this--it makes for good headlines--but I think the general scientific consensus still is "it's possible, but the data isn't solid enough yet to make any authoritative claim." It's not inherently a woo claim, the proponents aren't neccessary all Kilik-y with the Atlanteans and Mu and god knows what else, and some fairly reputable people do get involved, but we just don't have the evidence yet. If you did wind up at the conference, I suspect it should be taken with a healthy grain of salt, but not neccessarily dismissed out of hand as absurd.

 

[CBL4]

Originally posted by UrsulaV
When I was in college, the current favorite was some site in South America that claimed to have 40kya fire pits

This might have been Monte Verde.

Monte Verde consists of two cultural components. The youngest layer is radiocarbon dated at 12,500 years, while the older component possibly dates back as far as 33,000 B.P. However, the older dates associated with the site are still debated.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Models_of_migration_to_the_New_World

Any claim of settlement since the last ice age allowed the Bering landbridge to appear is not startling. According to Wikipedia the last ice age was at it maximum 17,000 years ago. This article also gives a brief explanation of the various migration theories. Anything older than around 20,000 years ago would take extremely strong evidence to be accepted.

CBL

 

[emperorchaos]

*snip*
That is my moderately educated layman's opinion. BTW, I am not knocking Goodyear. He appears to be doing science properly. It is a contentious issue with iffy data. There will lots of disputes until (if) a very well documented site is found. This is the nature of science.

CBL

I guess we'll know more within a few years after Prof. Anderson has published his findings.

I am somewhat of an amateur paleoanthropologist (by that I mean I'm too afraid of sunlight and the Olduvai Gorge to go do any digging, but I like reading about others that dig up stuff.) What I find most interesting is that even if modern Homo sapiens evolved 100,000 years ago(a generous amount of time ago), 50,000 years seems an awfully quick time for humans with their level of technology to populate the New World.

Then again, in Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs, and Steel, I believe he maintains that it was only a few centuries after crossing the Bering Strait land bridge that humans spread out through both North and South America.

Like I said, I'm interested in this because it is something relatively new occuring in my state, and I have a general interest in archaeology. I at time wish it was more Indiana Jones-like though.

 

[CBL4]

Originally posted by emporerchaos
Then again, in Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs, and Steel, I believe he maintains that it was only a few centuries after crossing the Bering Strait land bridge that humans spread out through both North and South America.

My memory was a few thousand year but I could easily be mistaken.

CBL

 

[Alphaba]

I think the consensus will (and should) be a people via the Beringia land bridge roughly 15,000 years ago.

Yes but geologists have recently rendered this venerable hypothesis, how to say, problematic:

There had been no ice-free passage south along the eastern margin of the Cordillera from about 21,000 YBP (perhaps earlier) to as late as 12,000 YBP. [...] Given the evident antiquity of South American Paleo-Indian sites, which predate the oldest Clovis site by a thousand years, the role of the ice-free corridor seems moot. Thus it would appear that evidence for the earliest human migrations to the mid-continent should be sought elsewhere...

http://www.geotimes.org/feb04/feature_Revisited.html

 

[emperorchaos]

My memory was a few thousand year but I could easily be mistaken.

CBL

You and I were both incorrect. I went and grabbed my copy and Diamond states that the Americas were populated in less than 1000 years, at a rate of roughly eight miles per year.

Guns, Germs, and Steel is a great book though. I thoroughly enjoyed reading it.