New evidence suggests Stone Age hunters from Europe discovered America
New evidence suggests Stone Age hunters from Europe discovered America
David Keys
Tuesday 28 February 2012
New archaeological evidence suggests that America was first discovered by Stone Age people from Europe – 10,000 years before the Siberian-originating ancestors of the American Indians set foot in the New World.
A remarkable series of several dozen European-style stone tools, dating back between 19,000 and 26,000 years, have been discovered at six locations along the US east coast. Three of the sites are on the Delmarva Peninsular in Maryland, discovered by archaeologist Dr Darrin Lowery of the University of Delaware. One is in Pennsylvania and another in Virginia. A sixth was discovered by scallop-dredging fishermen on the seabed 60 miles from the Virginian coast on what, in prehistoric times, would have been dry land.
The new discoveries are among the most important archaeological breakthroughs for several decades - and are set to add substantially to our understanding of humanity's spread around the globe.
The similarity between other later east coast US and European Stone Age stone tool technologies has been noted before. But all the US European-style tools, unearthed before the discovery or dating of the recently found or dated US east coast sites, were from around 15,000 years ago - long after Stone Age Europeans (the Solutrean cultures of France and Iberia) had ceased making such artefacts. Most archaeologists had therefore rejected any possibility of a connection. But the newly-discovered and recently-dated early Maryland and other US east coast Stone Age tools are from between 26,000 and 19,000 years ago - and are therefore contemporary with the virtually identical western European material.
More:
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/new-evidence-suggests-stone-age-hunters-from-europe-discovered-america-7447152.html
= new reply since forum marked as read
Now Sanford is back with a new book, coauthored with Bruce Bradley, and what they say is new evidence:
A remarkable series of several dozen European-style stone tools, dating back between 19,000 and 26,000 years, have been discovered at six locations along the US east coast. Three of the sites are on the Delmarva Peninsular in Maryland, discovered by archaeologist Dr Darrin Lowery of the University of Delaware. One is in Pennsylvania and another in Virginia. A sixth was discovered by scallop-dredging fishermen on the seabed 60 miles from the Virginian coast on what, in prehistoric times, would have been dry land.
Actually none of this evidence is new, and all of it has problems. Darrin Lowery's sites are hugely controversial, and as I understand it none of his radiocarbon dates is really in very close association with his stone tools. The Pennsylvania site referred to here is Meadowcroft, which I don't think proves anything, and anyway I am joining a boycott of discussing that site until they actually publish a report of the findings. (The excavation was finished 25 years ago, so the report is a bit overdue.) The Virginia site is Cactus Hill, which is a very interesting site, but I think the evidence from there (artifacts from below the Clovis zone) has the same problem as the Buttermilk Creek site in Texas, i.e.,the artifacts could have moved down through the soil. The artifacts dredged up by scallop fishermen consist of a fascinating stone tool and, separately, a piece of mastodon tusk that dates to 22,000 years ago, but there is no evidence that these two things are associated. They were found lying in a local museum years after their discovery, and all sorts of things might have happened to them in between.
Sanford is also pointing to what he says is genetic evidence of European genes in the Native American gene pool, specifically the mitochondrial DNA marker known as haplogroup X2A. Modern Asians don't have it, but a few Native Americans do. So? The Asians of 15,000 years ago were not the same as Asians today, and it is stretching the data very far to say that they cannot have had it. As most people see it, the genetic evidence actually points more firmly all the time to a single, Siberian origin point for Native Americans.
http://benedante.blogspot.com/2012/03/bah-to-new-claims-of-ice-age-europeans.html
And back and forth they go.
