proof for 130,000-year-old human in California

Yet another great archaeological find..


news.nationalgeographic.com...

A new study has dropped a bombshell on archaeology, claiming signs of human activity in the Americas far earlier than thought. Picture of two mastodon femur balls View Images Two mastodon femur balls, one face up and one face down, are among the remains found at the Cerutti site in San Diego. Photograph by San Diego Natural History Museum By Michael Greshko PUBLISHED April 26, 2017 In an announcement sure to spark a firestorm of controversy, researchers say they’ve found signs of ancient humans in California between 120,000 and 140,000 years ago—more than a hundred thousand years before humans were thought to exist anywhere in the Americas. If the researchers are right, the so-called Cerutti mastodon site could force a rewrite of the story of humankind. “I realize that 130,000 years is a really old date and makes our site the oldest archaeological site in the Americas,” says study leader Tom Deméré, the paleontologist at the San Diego Natural History Museum, whose team describes their analysis today in Nature. “Of course, extraordinary claims like this require extraordinary evidence, and we feel like the Cerutti mastodon site presents this evidence.” To be clear, the team has not found human bones at the site. But as Deméré and their colleagues tell it, their evidence—a mastodon skeleton, bone flakes, and several large stones—shows that the area was a “bone quarry,” where an unknown hominin allegedly smashed fresh mastodon bones with stone hammers, perhaps to extract marrow or to mine the skeleton for raw materials.

original source
www.nature.com...

The earliest dispersal of humans into North America is a contentious subject, and proposed early sites are required to meet the following criteria for acceptance: (1) archaeological evidence is found in a clearly defined and undisturbed geologic context; (2) age is determined by reliable radiometric dating; (3) multiple lines of evidence from interdisciplinary studies provide consistent results; and (4) unquestionable artefacts are found in primary context1, 2. Here we describe the Cerutti Mastodon (CM) site, an archaeological site from the early late Pleistocene epoch, where in situ hammerstones and stone anvils occur in spatio-temporal association with fragmentary remains of a single mastodon (Mammut americanum). The CM site contains spiral-fractured bone and molar fragments, indicating that breakage occured while fresh. Several of these fragments also preserve evidence of percussion. The occurrence and distribution of bone, molar and stone refits suggest that breakage occurred at the site of burial. Five large cobbles (hammerstones and anvils) in the CM bone bed display use-wear and impact marks, and are hydraulically anomalous relative to the low-energy context of the enclosing sandy silt stratum. 230Th/U radiometric analysis of multiple bone specimens using diffusion–adsorption–decay dating models indicates a burial date of 130.7 ± 9.4 thousand years ago. These findings confirm the presence of an unidentified species of Homo at the CM site during the last interglacial period (MIS 5e; early late Pleistocene), indicating that humans with manual dexterity and the experiential knowledge to use hammerstones and anvils processed mastodon limb bones for marrow extraction and/or raw material for tool production. Systematic proboscidean bone reduction, evident at the CM site, fits within a broader pattern of Palaeolithic bone percussion technology in Africa3, 4, 5, 6, Eurasia7, 8, 9 and North America10, 11, 12. The CM site is, to our knowledge, the oldest in situ, well-documented archaeological site in North America and, as such, substantially revises the timing of arrival of Homo into the Americas.

another
www.popularmechanics.com...

Jaw-Dropping Study Says Some Human Relative Was in California 130,000 Years Ago The evidence points to humans — or some relative — invading North America long before we thought.Here's what we know: About 130,000 years ago, near modern-day San Diego, something or someone killed a mastodon. Whatever it was bludgeoned the creature's spine and jaw in a calculated fashion and harvested the bones for marrow and tool use. It sure looks like the kind of thing early humans would do. There's a problem, though. At this time, humans had not left Africa—at least according to today's dominant narrative of human migration. And the earliest migration into North America that we know about occurred around 12,000 to 13,000 years ago. Yet in a paper published today in Nature, scientists put forth the idea that a mastodon was killed and its bone marrow harvested in a matter only possible by humans, in the broad sense of Homo erectus on up to Homo sapiens.

a reply to: anti72

That is the most interesting thing I've read in months. Great find, thanks for posting.

yeah, very interesting for sure..


www.sciencemag.org...

Were humans in the Americas 100,000 years earlier than scientists thought?
What broke the 130,000-year-old mastodon bones in California? Most archaeologists would tell you it couldn’t have been humans, who didn’t leave conclusive evidence of their presence in the Americas until about 14,000 years ago. But a small group of experts now says that the fracture patterns on the bones, found during highway construction near San Diego, California, must have been left by humans pounding them with stones found nearby. If correct, the paper, published this week in Nature, would push back the presence of people in the Americas by more than 100,000 years—to a time when modern humans supposedly had not even expanded out of Africa to Europe or Asia.

“The claims made are extraordinary and the potential implications staggering,” says Jon Erlandson, an archaeologist at the University of Oregon in Eugene who studies the peopling of the Americas. “But broken bones and stones alone do not make a credible archaeological site in my view.” He and many other archaeologists say it will take much stronger evidence to convince them that the bones were fractured by ancient people.

Archaeologists first excavated the Cerutti Mastodon site in 1992, after the construction exposed bones. Over time they found more splintered bones and a smattering of large round rocks embedded in otherwise fine-grained sediment. More recently, Daniel Fisher, a respected paleontologist at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, took a close look at the fractures and found patterns he says are consistent with blows from a rounded stone, which leave a characteristic notch at the point of impact. Other chips of bone show what he calls unmistakable signs of being popped off by the impact. “Nobody has ever explained those [characteristic bone flakes] satisfactorily in any way not involving human activity,” Fisher says. He says humans were probably breaking the bones to reach the marrow, or to turn the bone itself into a sharper tool. The nearby stones, hefty and round, show wear patterns consistent with being smashed against bone, the authors say. In experiments, they used that method to break elephant bones and produced identical fracture patterns.

other sources:

www.wired.com...

www.latimes.com...

www.dailymail.co.uk...

HOLY CRAP


That is astounding, looks like Carter and McNeish werew correct after all.

This gives new life to such finds as texas street and calico hills..


ALL the stars to you for posting.

a reply to: anti72

In the '40's and '50's carter excavated several sites in or near san diego that were giving ages >80k, and one site was nearly as old as this one.
I mentioned this in a a couple of threads, thereis a distinctive, pimative pebble tool culture that persisted in coastal southern california, and scotty macneish linked that pebble tool culture to other instances of isolated pebble tool complexs in mexico and south america.

a reply to: anti72

Thank you for posting this potentially earth shattering discovery.

I found this brief video on the group who have uncovered the evidence:

Following National Geographic on Netflix and youtube, it seems their content is becoming much more .....suspect....

After all they have bills like everyone and have to keep churning out content. Again we are left with an enticing headline, that fails in the end and has to sidestep and recant to some degree.

However we DO have sites like La Brea Tar Pits in Los Angles, though much more recent. (Which I went to as a child with my first grade class) Perhaps a little less hyperbole and a bit more substance....

My response comes from the title, (proof for 130,000-year-old human in California) I find PROOF very misleading...

Never the less, stars for the effort and subject matter.

Sorry but there is already a consensus.

The science is settled.

Case closed, deniers.

a reply to: Plotus

What makes this find special, is that the cracked bones, bone flakes and hammer stones have all been found within an in place context.
There is only one animal that cracked the long bones of mammoth, humans. There are other animals that scavenge bones, pocupines, skunks, hyennas,canids and bears. Of all of those only one is big enough to scavenge mammoth bones, the short faced bear, but the way they knawed and cracked bones is very different from what one would find with a human using hammer stones to break the bones open.

a reply to: anti72

O .. M .. F .. G.

Well, it makes theoretical sense, since Homo species got to Australia, and such ... why not the Americas?

There is no 'shield' around the Americas that would have prevented *even accidental* travel, and it seems Homo Erectus and later Genera were around, and capable. Why not?

Just maybe this is the first potential proof.

I am waiting anxiously to hear whatever is said/found next

originally posted by: Plotus

My response comes from the title, (proof for 130,000-year-old human in California) I find PROOF very misleading...

What we have is a suggestion that something beat the hell out of a mastodon. That is all.

It shouldn't surprise us anymore when "scientists" jump the gun and trip over themselves to get more funding and/or notoriety. Their presenting assumptions as facts is worse than any religion I can think of.

Which, by the way, is part of what motivates "scientists" to push back the date of human migration--to destroy religious narratives and replace them with their own brand of bulls#.

a reply to: anti72
This is awesome, because I have relatives in San Diego, and I'm quite certain that one of them isn't quite a descendant of H.S.S.

But really, this is fascinating--often times I'll play devil's advocate to watch people get triggered when I argue against the known "fact" that Native American's were here in the Americas first, but I do actually believe that, as Europeans came over and conquered the occupying peoples of this land (basically because we had better technology--without gunpowder, the American story would be so, so different), the Native Americans' ancestors did exactly the same to a people who existed here before them. And often times, the oral histories and mythos of native tribes corroborate (well, and inspired) my line of thinking.

So, while the probability that there was a Homo Somethingorother hanging out on Coronado beach 130,000 years doesn't surprise me, the fact that we have decently corroborating, physical evidence discovered does--that's a long time ago for these things to have remained in such a state that our scientific standards accept them as tantamount to proof.

Also, "tantamount to proof" is not the same as proof, so while the evidence is highly suggestive of the claim, there's still enough wiggle room that the claim could be wrong. Still very interesting, though, because it seems to take a LOT for modern science to announce a finding like this.

It could have been neanderthals, or any other sort of Hominid that did this. We are not the only race of beings that made tools and had an artistic ability. This is just evidence of some hominoid being doing this.

The thing is, I am not so sure out of Africa is right anyway. I feel that South America would also be a viable human origin point, with some getting across the Ocean on the currents down there that lead to the Africa region the way they flow at some points..

a reply to: Deny Arrogance

Aw man, you beat me to my snarky science-ish response.

a reply to: anti72

The NatGeo article is (surprisingly) a very fair and well-written review of the evidence both for and against the idea. I'm open to the immigration of humans into the Americas far earlier than we think (30,000 - 50,000 years is not unacceptable to me (current estimates are around 20,000 years)) But pre-humans... that's a stretch for me.

I don't expect that we'll find evidence of another human ancestor, though that would be possible.

Interesting articles. reat find!

originally posted by: Plotus
It shouldn't surprise us anymore when "scientists" jump the gun and trip over themselves to get more funding and/or notoriety. Their presenting assumptions as facts is worse than any religion I can think of.

Did you read the article?

The scientists were surprised that non-scientists were hopping all over it the idea. They're still working on proving their case and problems with dating the site are making the effort more difficult. Right now they're in the debate stage with their peers (and with the right set of peers, at that) and it looks as though everyone's skeptical. They've got a lot of work to make a solid case here.

No one's really presenting any facts as you would think of them. They're presenting evidence and a conclusion and putting it out for discussion and argument and influx of any supporting evidence (from scientists, not from the world.)

originally posted by: punkinworks10
HOLY CRAP

That is astounding, looks like Carter and McNeish werew correct after all.

This gives new life to such finds as texas street and calico hills.

Not really; it's too early for that.

This is going to be an interesting debate in the paleontological communicty. Looking forward to it.

Nice find, can't wait to see more on it. It will interesting to see if there's something more to it, maybe a Neanderthal/Denisovan/ or other that flourished and bred with modern man in the North Americas. Even if not and yes might be out there thinking, still fascinating if they didn't.

Think I'll wait for some decent evidence and solid dating before I do a spit take on this one.

Harte