Holy Cow...Baylor finds oldest North American Inhabitants - 15,500 years ago

[Laura PourMeADrink]

http://www.baylor.edu/pr/news.php?action=story&story=90916

Baylor, Texas A&M Researchers Find Earliest People to Inhabit the Americas

March 24, 2011
Study proves people inhabited the Americas earlier than previously believed

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WACO, Texas (March 24, 2011) - Baylor University geology researchers, along with scientists from Texas A&M University and around the country, have found the oldest archaeological evidence of human occupation in the Americas at a Central Texas archaeological site located about 40 miles northwest of Austin.

"This find really rewrites history, so to speak, and changes our collective thought on the early colonization of North, Central and South America," said Dr. Lee Nordt, professor of geology at Baylor and dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, who is an author on the study. "What sets this study a part is that we were able to show using geological methods that the buried artifacts dating to pre-Clovis times were in their original state. This demonstrates unequivocally that the peopling of the Americas occurred much earlier than previously thought."

The study appears in the April issue of the journal Science.

For the last 100 years, archeologists have believed that the Clovis people were the first to enter the Americas about 13,000 years ago. Artifacts found by this study now place that time back 2,500 years, or to about 15,500 years ago.

At the Debra L. Friedkin archeological site, located about 10 miles outside of Salado in Central Texas, the Baylor researchers, along with their colleagues, found nearly 16,000 artifacts that predated the Clovis people. Most the artifacts were chipping debris from the making and reshaping of tools, however, about 50 artifacts were tools themselves such as

[Romulox]

1. Interesting story, but wrong link.

Please correct if you are able. Thank you!

[Laura PourMeADrink]

4. done

[Berserker]

6. Great Name

Laura PourMeADrink
do you hear that a lot or am I taking it the wrong way?

[intheflow]

14. I think it refers to the marital bliss of

our former Pretzeldent and 1st Lady.

[Laura PourMeADrink]

19. thanks...It used to be more "current"...wish I hadn't picked

a DimSon era name. Yes, it's George asking Laura to pour him one. It used to be "Laura PackYourBags" - that was when I thought
he would be leaving in 2004.

that reminds me....DU hasn't had a name change period lately, have they?

[aquart]

2. Link is incorrect. And says so.

[MyrnaLoy]

3. Are

They Mormons?

[Manifestor_of_Light]

12. Baylor is the Vatican City of the Baptists.

[brooklynite]

5. The Mormons aren't going to like this...

[RandySF]

7. Heads are exploding at the Texas State Board of Education

[bananas]

8. That was during the last ice age

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wisconsin_glaciation
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocene

[EFerrari]

10. The funny thing is, the people have always said, we're from here.

And the anthropologists have said, okay, right, you only came here recently.

And ever since, the anthropologists have had to keep pushing "recently" further and further back. lol

[malaise]

27. Well the census suggests they're taking back their

land :evilgrin:

[Initech]

9. But... but... the earth is only 6,000 years old!

Fundies.... discredited! :popcorn:

[hfojvt]

22. of course not. Not if God is all-powerful

which they assume God is.

After that, it is quite easy for such a being to have created the entire universe just an hour ago. However, for some reason, of unreason, this being created it with people who have memories of yesterday, even though the world did not exist yesterday, and this being created it with historical evidence which would lead people to believe the planet is older than just an hour. Things like newspapers dated last week, my high school yearbook from 427 BC, and my baby pictures, and even older stuff, even though none of that stuff REALLY happened since the world is only one hour old.

In the same way, Jehovah can create the world 6,000, a world replete with false evidence making it seem older.

[BklynThirtyThree]

11. kinda off-topic

but has anyone heard about an archaeologist who found hand-made tools in Mexico dating back 250,000 years? really amazing stuff.

http://www.earlyworld.de/forbidden_archeology.htm

(scroll down to Hueyatlaco, Mexico)

[roguevalley]

13. along the coast of south america there are sites that show

evidence of occupation that are tens of thousands of years older and there is a cave in Pennsylvania that is apparently 400K old with evidence of fire pits. I never believed that Clovis was the baseline for exploration of this hemisphere. You can't stop progress. Wherever the animals went people did too.

[semillama]

20. You're referring to Meadowcroft Rockshelter

and you're off on your date by about 380,000 years. Still, the evidence for human occupation of the Americas prior to Clovis is pretty well accepted by professional archaeologists nowadays. But there's ZERO evidence that anybody except H. sapiens made it over, and likely not anywhere prior to 40,000 years ago at most, when we see a great radiation of the species across the globe.

[cliffordu]

15. ...And they yelled

"get off my lawn..."

[shraby]

16. The rock shelter in Pennsylvania that was inhabited 30,000

years ago is much older. Can't remember offhand what the name of it is.

[Blues Heron]

17. Meadowcroft n/t

[shraby]

23. That's the one!

Also evidence of early man in South America goes back to 30,000 years..I think in the Patagonia area, and they are working much farther north and finding evidence much earlier than previously thought.

[pampango]

18. Further proof that "immigration" goes as far back as human history.

Sure would be nice to stop it, though. ;) Humans have always been willing to travel and take chances for a shot at a better life or we would all be living in one part of Africa.

[sybylla]

21. Correction: Oldest "Known" North American Inhabitants

As someone who's studied archeology, I get really cranky when we act like this is the final bit of evidence we'll ever find on human existence.

Ten years ago I had professors tell me that new evidence of modern humans in South America 30,000 years ago couldn't be true and that certainly there was no one in North America before 8,000 years ago - all the while he was dishing out the history of of a certain people and the continued discoveries that kept rewriting what we knew about them.

Apparently the irony was lost on him.

[shraby]

25. Most of that "prattle" was caused by one of the pioneers in

American archaeology who squelched any young "upstarts" who found what they considered evidence of earlier man. His theory was that the "ice corridor" that was open 11,000 years or so ago was the ONLY way man could have entered the Americas. He would even go so far as to destroy careers to protect his theory. (his name eludes me without looking it up.)

[KamaAina]

24. It was just some of their early students

still waiting around at the prom for the slow dance. :evilgrin:

[Yavin4]

26. So, The First American Was A Texan?

From Austin no less.