Taxacom: earlier than previously thought - again

[John Grehan]

This web headline (USA Today) caught my attention: “When did humans settle
in North America? 20,000 years before we once thought, study says”. Of
course what ran through my mind was who is 'we'? The article references
work on a mammoth tusk in New Mexico, bashed-in mammoth skull and other
bones that looked "deliberately broken" and had blunt-force fractures.
Carbon dating analysis suggests the pieces are roughly 37,000 years old. A
researcher, Rowe, is quoted as saying “This site indicates that humans
attained a global distribution a long time ago, much earlier than once
thought."

Once thought by who? This type of phrasing is a common practice, and gives
the misleading impression of scientific progress, when the reality is that
science may often run in circles, regress, stall, or be suppressed. In this
case the statement is not really true. Croizat, in his 1981 book (which
builds on even earlier analyses) 'El océano pacifico en la prehistoria de
las américas” stated the following (my translation):

“(a) Due to the fact that the sector between Java and Peking was already
populated around the year 500,000 B.C., it is possible that at an early
date, say before the year 50,000, primitive human beings would have reached
the American territory; b) Anyway, Alaska was populated between the years
30 thousand and 10 thousand before our Era; by crude hunters who had
already arrived in Mexico around the year 20,000 and in Venezuela some
5,000 years later, thus anticipating the formation of the glacial barrier;
(c) Following the arrow a, groups of Siberian-Americans who lived on the
shores of the North Pacific, could well advance by sea to the South before
the year 10,000 B.C. Altogether, the facts are very simple and logical from
different points of view.”

In the past I have brought this to the attention of New World
pale-oanthropologists arguing for earlier origins, but it seems that no one
likes an academic 'intruder'. Whether or not the earlier origins for
Amerindians pans out remains to be seen. When I first read Croizat's
arguments it seemed quite a stretch, but I held my breath and waited on
future developments – some now coming home to roost.

And another lesson – again, fossil or paleo-anthropological remains, all
represent minimum ages for human origins. No one should have thought
otherwise in the first place.

John Grehan

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