The reality of this work is thatwe now have a site in which the Clovis occupation has a two thousand yearprehistory in which a non Clovis tool kit wasused. At the least human occupation inthe Americas
That should end that debate.
I would like to see a geneticstudy done of the Indian populations of the Americas to determine the level of genetic variation as compared to Asia . We need to determine now small a population couldhave made the actual leap and if we can determine waves of contribution. I am likely asking for the impossible but weshould think about it.
Paleo-Indians settled North America earlier than thought: study
These are some of the artifacts from the 15,500-year-old horizon.Credit: [Image courtesy of Michael R. Waters]
New discoveries at a Central Texas archaeological site by a TexasA&M University-led research team prove that people lived in the region farearlier – as much as 2,500 years earlier – than previously believed, rewritingwhat anthropologists know about when the first inhabitants arrived in NorthAmerica. That pushes the arrival date back to about 15,500 years ago.
Michael Waters, director of Texas A&M's Center for the Study ofFirst Americans, along with researchers from Baylor University, the Universityof Illinois-Chicago, the University of Minnesota, and Texas State University,have found the oldest archaeological evidence for human occupation in Texas andNorth America at the Debra L.Friedkin site, located about 40 miles northwest ofAustin. Their work is published in the current issue of Science magazine.
Waters says that buried in deposits next to a small spring-fed streamis a record of human occupation spanning the last 15,500 years. Near thesurface is the record of the Late Prehistoric and Archaic occupants of theregion. Buried deeper in the soil are layers with Folsom and Clovis occupationsgoing back 12,000 to 13,000 years ago.
"But the kicker was the discovery of nearly 16,000 artifacts belowthe Clovis horizon that dated to 15,500 yearsago," Waters notes.
"Most of these are chipping debris from the making andresharpening of tools, but over 50 are tools. There are bifacial artifacts thattell us they were making projectile points and knives at the site," Waterssays. There are expediently made tools and blades that were used for cuttingand scraping."
Multiple studies have shown that the site is undisturbed and that theartifacts are in place and over 60 "luminescence dates" show thatearly people arrived at the site by 15,500 years ago, Waters explains.Luminescence dating technique is a method used to date the sediment surroundingthe artifacts. It dates the last time the sediment was exposed to sunlight.
For more than 80 years, it has been argued that the Clovis people werethe first to enter the Americas
"However, this evidence is not very robust," Waters observes.
"What is special about the Debra L. Friedkin site is that it hasthe largest number of artifacts dating to the pre-Clovis time period, thatthese artifacts show an array of different technologies, and that theseartifacts date to a very early time.
"This discovery challenges us to re-think the early colonizationof the Americas Texas and North America ."
Waters has been working at the site since 2006, and analysis of theartifacts collected from the site is ongoing. Waters says, "These studieswill help us figure out where these people came from, how they adapted to thenew environments they encountered, and understand the origins of later groupslike Clovis."
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