Hey Cabbie,

Any thoughts about the following? I was a bit surprised by the "shadow of a doubt" language.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/01/170116091428.htm


From the article:

"The timing of the first entry of humans into North America across the Bering Strait has now been set back 10,000 years.

This has been demonstrated beyond a shadow of a doubt by Ariane Burke, a professor in Université de Montréal's Department of Anthropology, and her doctoral student Lauriane Bourgeon, with the contribution of Dr. Thomas Higham, Deputy Director of Oxford University's Radiocarbon Accelerator Unit.

The earliest settlement date of North America, until now estimated at 14,000 years Before Present (BP) according to the earliest dated archaeological sites, is now estimated at 24,000 BP, at the height of the last ice age or Last Glacial Maximum."

One of my regular friends on the board sent me a link to the original paper for this one a few days ago...

http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0169486

The key is where Bluefish Caves is located in the Yukon Territory. I like the following because it "captures" the curvature of the Earth (and actual distances).

http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/bluefish-caves/

The artifacts have been around for a long time, and this simply represents a "new" look at them with AMS dating. I have no doubts about the age of the horse bones, etc., and I'm not at all qualified to speak about whether the markings originated from early humans. Last fall I corresponded very briefly with Gary Haynes, a scientist at the University of Nevada Reno, hoping to meet with him in person. Unfortunately, he had just retired and didn't feel he had much to add to the "Clovis-Pre-Clovis" debate. Gary Haynes is one of those who's particularly doubtful about pre-Clovis presence before around 15,000 years ago. He's diplomatic, of course--doubtless more so than I am--and when asked whether there were "Pre-Clovis in the Americas," said "Probably is the safest answer."

I would have no trouble with the view that there were probably no humans, other than in Yukon Territory, in North America before ~15,000 years ago. It's also possible they "continued eastward and then south," but there's no evidence I'm aware of for that route, either. Two sites in the Eastern United States, Meadowcroft and Cactus Hill, make pre-Clovis claims, but I've reviewed the evidence, and I'm not alone in thinking both sites have their flaws. I have a similar view of the Buttermilk Creek site.

The Bluefish Caves evidence is consistent with what molecular biologists are telling us, that there was a "Berengia standstill" in an isolated population. They arrived at that conclusion by calculating the mutation rates of mitochondrial DNA; those changes are why North American Native American DNA is measurably different from Eurasian populations. Native American ancestors probably originated in the Lake Baikal region of Siberia/Mongolia.

The key is the Bluefish Caves location and just how far north it is. It's actually above the Arctic Circle. To me, that makes it unlikely these people accomplished their journey southward before around 15,000 B.C.E., either via the "Ice Free Corridor" or followed a "Coastal Migration" route that's "popular" these days but one I regard as untenable. The corridor, according to all the evidence I've seen, was closed between 25 and 15,000 years ago. So I'm open to suggestions about possible "alternate routes" around the Laurentide and Cordilleran ice sheets.

As a homework assignment, I'll invite folks to look at the location of the two massive ice sheets; the dadburned links to the maps are a bit too long.

Finally, the DNA evidence from the "Anzick Clovis Child" that Eske Willerslev sequenced essentially proved that individual was related to all extant native poplulations in both North and South America.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/18/2017 07:54PM by SL Cabbie.

I suspected you might be able to bring some perspective to the issue...thanks!