Clovis Primacy Disputed

And about time, too, as far as I'm concerned. :p

Seriously, thanks for pointing this article out, j. d. Always interesting to see another skirmish in the "how early" dispute over the peopling of the Western Hemisphere.
 
I'm new to these forums and am just now getting around to exploring some of the less prominent subjects. Due to my user name (a double entendre because of my education in anthropology) I just had to take a look at this thread. Unfortunately, the link in the first post is now non-functioning. But there is certainly plenty of controversy about the dating and authenticity of archeological finds in the Americas.

For a provocative look at many of the issues at hand, including repatriation, I would suggest reading the book by my old grad school classmate Dave Thomas, "Skull Wars".

Here's a link to some pages:

Skull Wars: Kennewick Man ... - Google Book Search

Regards,

Jim
 
j. d. worthington said:
In this case, here's another link for this one, if you'd like to read the article:

Experts doubt Clovis people were first in Americas | Science | Reuters
Click to expand...

Thanks. Yes, this pretty much parallels a lot of what Dave Thomas and others have been saying based on newer info (data gathered over the last 10 years or so). And this is what has fueled much of the repatriation debate, i.e., the fact that it is becoming more and more difficult to reliably assign any ethnic lineage based on fossil evidence.

Regards,

Jim
 
I'm not terribly surprised... though gathering the evidence is certainly fascinating. I've a feeling we're a long way from getting to the bottom of it all, and I expect we'll find a lot more connections ethnically as we go along....
 
I'm tired and hungry ATM, so I won't say much yet, but this is not new news. The basic argument has been around for some time, but my lecturer summed it up with this:
"the clovis people theory in america is like a religion, there are those who either do or do not beleave in them being the first"
This gets linked then to those in each group throwing slander at each other - though it moves more from the clovis beleavers to the non-beleavers. However he did say that the mounting evidence is begining to beat out all but the most die-hard clovis beleavers, though it has been an uphill struggle.
 
Overread said:
"the clovis people theory in america is like a religion, there are those who either do or do not beleave in them being the first"
Click to expand...

As much as I would like to believe that "I";) was first, I gave that idea up a long time ago. I really would suggest that anyone interested in the subject read "Skull Wars". First published in 1999, it is a great read with information and ideas that are still current today. Chapters 15 (Breakthrough at Folsom), 16 (Busting the Clovis Barrier) and 17 (What Modern Archaeologists think about the Earliest Americans) cover the issues well.

But I do think "I" make the very nicest scrapers. :D

Regards,

Jim
 
I am almost tempted to think that could be more going for controvasy than science. Why would only people be affected by such an event, surely if it was large enough to wipe out a successful human population there would be a multitude of extinctions in other species as well around that time.

I often wonder if they were just outcompeted by another human group(s) even though the clovis head was well made it is not all the tale and a larger population of different humans (A second migration) would have been a significant challenge/
 
Just to add complications, evidence along the WestCoast migration routes will have been drowned by sea-level changes, if not washed away by mega-thrust tsunamis...

Um, IIRC, the proposed event was supposed to have killed off most of the mega-fauna, starving their predators. Lack of crater(s)attributed to erosion, air-burst per Tunguska, and/or impact on ice-cap...
 
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