CNN - Scientist: Man in Americas earlier than thought

[kysrsoze]

Archaeologists put humans in North America 50,000 years ago
By Marsha Walton and Michael Coren

(CNN) -- Archaeologists say a site in South Carolina may rewrite the history of how the Americas were settled by pushing back the date of human settlement thousands of years.

But their interpretation is already igniting controversy among scientists.

An archaeologist from the University of South Carolina on Wednesday announced radiocarbon tests that dated the first human settlement in North America to 50,000 years ago -- at least 25,000 years before other known human sites on the continent.


http://www.cnn.com/2004/TECH/science/11/17/carolina.dig/index.html

Ah say bullsheeit. Them bones cain't be anymore older than 5 ah 6,000 years. This here's a moral contraversion.

[VegasWolf]

1. can't be, according to the bibble readers, the earth is only 5K years old.

[mr_hat]

4. Also, it's turtles all the way down.

[VegasWolf]

7. Snicker, its been awhile since I heard that one!!!

[alittlelark]

2. There is a small cabal in Anth that keep trying to prove

N America was inhabited by humans for over 12,000 years. They always fail. Give them a modicum of respect for trying.

[aquart]

5. Fail? Dated a bone lately?

SCREW THE LANDBRIDGE!!!!!

[daleo]

30. I asked one out, but she said she preferred thinner men

She didn't appreciate being called a landbridge either.

Sorry, couldn't pass that one up.

[VegasWolf]

31. Ann Coulter was busy? n/t

[daleo]

32. Yikes! I had forgotten about her

So it is possible to date a bone.

[aquart]

3. 50,000 years???? YESSS!!!!!!!!!!!

[alittlelark]

14. Gotta be REAL

Got my degree in Anth. The cabal is formed around a teacher (whose name I cannot remember) that was CONVINCED that all other Anth was wrong.... lookin' for the spotlight.

[aquart]

17. Answer me one question:

Do you believe in savannah theory?

[alittlelark]

21. I'll be honest - got my degree almost 20 years ago

Savannah Theory.....I believe it is a H/G concept (as they are rich lands) but I am not familiar, and will do a little research if need be - should I?

[aquart]

26. It's a popular, albeit ridiculous, explanation for bipedalism.

And my anthro teacher never questioned it for a second.

[VegasWolf]

33. Isn't that where bipeds moved down out of the trees and migrated

to the savannas and there had to learn to stand up straight
to see out for prey and predators. I always thought
bipeds learned to stand up because they could dance better that way.

[Squatch]

6. Finally a front-page headline that's not about war or politics...

what a relief!

Check out CNN.com

[VegasWolf]

8. Problem is that the old fossils had elogonated, triangular eyes

and massive foreheads and that indicated advanced intellegince.
They are to be named homo exterralis.

[acmavm]

9. This is the truth, I swear it. I had a boss once that once said that

evolution was a sin, that mankind had only been on earth ten thousand years, and that he had never seen any believable evidence that dinosaurs ever walked this planet.

Needless to say, we had many an argument that I surely could have been shown the way to the door afterwards, but he let it slide for some reason unbeknownst to me. He always let me cool of, or he just told me to go away, then he just seemed to forget that I had told him that whatever statement he had just made beat his previous record for the dumbest remark I'd ever heard. Good old Don. He hated it when I pointed told him that George Carlin said that religion was the most toxic substance on earth. His ears would get red and he's start to stutter.

He was a Babtist I believe, from something called the Missouri Synod. What the hell ever that is.

I'll always remember Don L. and I have to say that the only fun I ever had while I had that job was saying something that I knew would send him into heart palpitations.

[Zynx]

11. Missouri Synod is a bunch of nuts for the most part.

Wisconsin Synod is the same thing. Both are extreme forms of Lutherans.

[tanyev]

22. Now, now, now.

I am Missouri Synod. I will admit that I once ran into a pastor who could not accept that dinosaurs existed. I was flabbergasted. Never before had I ever heard anyone say that, and I haven't heard anyone since. Any group will have a few nutsos that do not represent the group as a whole. The pastor got his just rewards when one of his young sons developed an obsession with dinosaurs.

[not fooled]

25. geez, I've never met or heard of a nutcase Lutheran...

...until now. this is a first. guess no aspect of religion is safe nowadays.

[jdj]

12. what's next, a constititutional amendment banning evolution?

wait, shhhh. They might think it's a good idea.

Something to stop that moral contraversion.

[DELUSIONAL]

10. Thanks -- this is good news

My physical Anthro prof was pushing the 10,000 year theory -- but the evidence is mounting for much earlier human habitation -- so far most of the evidence has come from South America -- somewhere around 35,000 years ago.

That makes my tiny bit of Cherokee genes very happy.

[aquart]

19. I'm not sure it should.

Because your people might have murdered the earlier ones. Gotta face it.

However, since anyone with Cherokee genes is blessed, particularly if the genes happen to be the ones for Cherokee bones, you are already so far ahead it doesn't matter whatever happened.

[DELUSIONAL]

23. When you study your history -- Genealogy

in the recent recorded history of my family -- two groups fight -- and two generations or so later the kids are marrying. Indian fighters two generations later -- marry an Indian, or Puritans two generations marry a Unitarian or a sect of similar belief.

Could be that the older immigrants married/mated/partnered with the newcomers. In fact the females of the territorial colony often move on with the newcomers. The migration patterns seem to hold over many generations.

50,000 years ago would be in the hunter gatherer era -- and it took women in Anthropology to take a closer look at old theories and give credit to gathering women -- as probably the primary provisioner. Also agriculture is often credit to women -- as the ones keeping the "home fires burning". There is also some discussion about the violence of that era -- some of the crushed skulls have been re-examined with the suggestion that the crushing may have other explanations than violence or warfare.

Yes I do have very strong bones -- perhaps due to survival of the fittest from the Trail of Tears -- and the memory of the old ones of the times before the whites -- because the Cherokees and other Indian groups were dumped in the Indian Territories without any supplies.

I think what we are seeing now is a fierce fight for resources and it will probably get worse. When we look at Archeology/Anthropology we see the same pattern -- fight for resources.

[daleo]

13. Satanic science

Satan put that "evidence" there to mislead decent Christians.

Although I have to admit, that stone tool in the photo looks pretty convincing.:evilgrin:

[RPM]

15. there were people here before columbus???

what kind of science is this!?!!?!

/sarcasm off

[leesa]

16. Ooh! This is Fundie sacrilege, ain't it?

[killbotfactory]

18. Scientists don't know shit! This is all lies!

What have scientists ever done for us? Nothing!

(please ignore the fact that I'm typing this on a computer which is the result of years of scientific study)

[Dogmudgeon]

20. Prepare for some mind-blowing anthropology!

The tools of physical anthropology are getting much better much faster. Within a few years, discoveries of this magnitude will be happening every few months.

George Carter made a name for himself as a hellraiser by proposing that human settlements on the west coast dated back 100 kY (kY = thousand years). His studies remain controversial, but the drift of history has been on his side.

I'm waiting for the first discoveries of Erect (H. erectus) cultures. Imagine finding remains of a town of tool-using Erects, dating back 500,000, 800,000 or 1.75 million years. I think it is possible (but by no means guaranteed) that those artifacts are still there for the discovering.

Few anthropologists seem to want to acknowlege, for example, that "Clovis" wasn't just one site, but a whole proto-civilization. While Clovis itself is only 13 kY old, its forebears may extend back as far as another ten kY. Clovis and similar sites are all examples of a mature tool-using cultures.

Here's another kick in the head -- there's an excellent chance that the Clovis folk came from Europe. Their artifacts bear an uncanny resemblance to Soulutrean artifacts from southern France (actually, the whole of modern Basque country). Soulutrean culture was incredibly advanced for its time. The proposal is that during the last Ice Age, coastal Soulutrean people were skilled mariners and followed the edge of the ice cap around to North America and settled here. If this is true, there are probably old Soulutrean-like sites to be found in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and as far north as NYC and Connecticut.

We already know that the Native American peoples are the decendants of no fewer than four groups of migrants, a figure that gibes well with many Indian legends. In a few years, it will be possible to construct a detailed map of late stadial (Ice Age era) migrations for every major ethnic group.

We'll be forced to think of these people not so much as ape-men and grunting brutes, but as US without TVs and cloth and electricity and metallurgy. If that racism thing hasn't died by then, this is going to drive the stake into its heart once and for all.

--bkl

[Roland99]

24. Some good books for everyone to read...

The Seven Daughters of Eve
http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbnInquiry.asp?userid=mHu1YJwxdC&isbn=0393323145&itm=1

FROM THE PUBLISHER
The national bestseller that reveals how we are descended from seven prehistoric women. One of the most dramatic stories of genetic discovery since James Watson's The Double Helix, The Seven Daughters of Eve reveals the remarkable story behind a groundbreaking scientific discovery. After being summoned in 1997 to an archaeological site to examine the remains of a five-thousand-year-old man, Bryan Sykes ultimately was able to prove not only that the man was a European but also that he has living relatives in England today. In this lucid, absorbing account, Sykes reveals how the identification of a particular strand of DNA that passes unbroken through the maternal line allows scientists to trace our genetic makeup all the way back to prehistoric times, to seven primeval women, the Seven Daughters of Eve.
Author Biography: Bryan Sykes is professor of genetics at the Institute of Molecular Medicine at Oxford University and was the editor of The Human Inheritance: Genes, Language, and Evolution.



The Journey of Man: A Genetic Odyssey
http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbninquiry.asp?userid=mHu1YJwxdC&pwb=1&ean=9780812971460

FROM THE PUBLISHER
"Showing how the secrets about our ancestors are hidden in our genetic code, Spencer Wells reveals how developments in the cutting-edge science of population genetics have made it possible to create a family tree for the whole of humanity. We now know not only where our ancestors lived but who they fought, loved, and influenced." "Informed by this new science, The Journey of Man is replete with astonishing information. Wells tells us that there was a real Adam and Eve, but that Eve came first by some 80,000 years. We hear how the male Y-chromosome has been used to trace the spread of humanity from Africa into Eurasia, why differing racial types emerged when mountain ranges split population groups and that the San Bushmen of the Kalahari have some of the oldest genetic markers in the world. We learn, finally with absolute certainty, that Neanderthals are not our ancestors and that the entire genetic diversity of Native Americans can be accounted for by just ten individuals." It is an enthralling, epic tour through the history and development of early humankind - as well as an accessible look at the analysis of human genetics that is giving us definitive answers to questions we have asked for centuries, questions now more compelling than ever.

[jokerman93]

27. I wonder if good patriotic scientists

I wonder if good patriotic scientists in this country won't start doubling their efforts to dampen the nascent theocratic hysteria that's taking hold -- by means of science!

Wouldn't it be great if in the next several years, the academy embraced aggressive research to counter the ascendancy of the new fake christian ethos?

What if radical new discoveries put these dumb dominionist bastards back on the rear burner where they belong! By all accounts, we really are on the edge of some truly radical breakthroughs in several sciences.

There may be some hope in this. I'll take anything I can get!

:beer:

[gauguin57]

28. Hey scientists! How about puttin' the ol' bones aside till you've invented

a fraud-proof voting machine?

If you don't work on the voting machine first, we'll never have a president who "believes in science" again! So, you'll all be screwed.

[IndianaGreen]

29. Not possible! The Earth is only 5,000 years old

How do I know? My Bible tells me so!

:evilgrin: