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Oldest American Skull Found in Mexico
MaximumBob writes "While digging a well near the Mexico City airport, crews found this skull, believed to be the oldest human skull ever found in the Americas. What's especially exciting is that since it was found outside the United States, it's not subject to U.S. laws which allow local tribes to rebury remains and keep them from being studied. The skull will be studied by scientists and may shed new light on alternatives to the "land bridge" hypothesis of American settlement."
This find is being interpreted as (very preliminary) evidence for a newer theory - that the Americas were inhabited by people related to the Ainu, long BEFORE the people we now call "Native Americans" showed up.
What happens to that 'Native Americans get dibs on any old bones found in the U.S.' law if the earlier-Ainu theory pans out? This could get into some really interesting "politically unacceptable scientific facts"...
It's easy to make up & spread cool- and credible-sounding stuff. Finding & checking hard facts is hard work.
... it's only a matter of time until Strom Thurmond kicks the bucket and takes your crown.
Whatever happened with Kennewick man anyway?
I have to say the whole situation surrounding that. I remember an interview with one of the tribal elders where he stated that scientists shouldn't be allowed to study him to figure out where he came from and what kind of life he lived because their oral history made it clear that they were the first, and that there were no others, so he must have been one of them QED.
It's always a tragedy when, esentially, religion pushes science around and prevents us from expanding upon our understanding.
--Jimmy has fancy plans; and pants to match.
The "Peñon Woman III" -- which scientists believe is now the oldest skull from the New World -- has been sitting in Mexico City's National Museum of Anthropology since 1959.
They just re-dated it.
First off, this is not surprising, being that there is a lot of old crap in Mexico. What is surprising, however, is that they cite evidence of migration from a land bridge previously existing between Siberia -> Alaska. Everyone knows that humans have alway migrated out of Mexico, not in. I have seen this myself in the suburbs of San Diego. Furthermore, what's to say that this skull find isn't really a snitch killed by the mafia or somesuch??
One future, two choices. Oppose them or let them destroy us.
This is what we have to do. The behavior of the American aborigines is grotesque. We know that it is the result of special status and power plays and that they all know of Caucasian peoples were in America before them. Most people care little about science but enjoy its benefits, but the groups generated by liberals will destroy scientific treasures, teachings, religions, the constitution and any value of the Western world just to get their way for the moment. For them I do not think such corrupted minds should be shown any mercy. Just look at history-it is precisely such amassed groups who have destroyed every civilization during the last 100,000 years.
...in the head of Strom Thurmond.
Karma: Good (despite my invention of the Karma: sig)
I don't like the posters tone in saying that american natives don't 'get to rebury' the skull and stop all scientific progress. I am a big believer in scientific study but, I don't believe in desecrating a person's final resting place just to find out - He was old!!
This story seems somewhat confused and contradicts other things I have read on the subject. I am not convinced the actual interpretation of this find is very reliable.
The most modern theories about the origns of humans in north america, prior to this find, as far as I understand them are as follows. The first humans came across the land bridge between alaska and asia during the last ice age, about 17,000 years ago. They were caucasians, closely related to the Jomon, the prehistoric inhabitants of Japan, whose modern couterparts are the Ainu of Hokkaido. They penetrated throughout north and south america in a 1,000 years or so. Later, about 3,000-4,000 years ago, another group crossed the bering strait in boats. These people were closely related to the modern Chinese and Mongolian people and only penetrated north america. Their descendents are principly the Eskimo and Aleut, but some penetrated futher south such as the Navajo. See here for details.
This find seems to just seems to add extra conformation to the above hypothesis. Finding a 13,000 year old skull does not mean that there had to be human in the americas 25,000 years ago. Nor does the skull contradict the theory that the first humans used the land bridge to cross to alaska during the last ice age. The evidence of camps -- man-made tools, a human footprint and huts dating back 25,000 years are totally separate from this and obivously need explaining, but this find has no real bearing on that debate.
While digging... near the Mexico City airport, crews found this skull, believed to be the oldest human skull ever found in the Americas.
Perhaps *now* the airlines will admit that interflight delays are getting out of hand?
The BBC version of this story is more detailed and has somewhat less wild speculation.
..but don't let them bury their ancestors, if they want to. Surely, they let some remains be studied.
I agree man.....I agree with u!!!! thats for sure....
Too often, I find that these press releases result in a correction or retraction,(later, quietly buried on page 27) and they are usually tied to either a funding request for the project, or an ego trip. Just a skull does not a culture make. The skull, while it may be 13,000 years old, may not have been in place for 13,000 years. And as both "Native American" and a scientist, I think its a shame to let modern beliefs interfere with the discovery of where we came from.
Do you think that people carried around skulls for hundreds or thusends of kilometers then?
The most likely explanation is that the owner of the skull either lived or was travelling in today's Mexico City area long time ago, earlier than previously belived.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
.... we have other methods to corroborate if C14 dating is the right ball park.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
I wonder if you will ever learn... and I wonder if you realise that in any course on radiometric dating in universities, at least 80% of the time is spent on things like sample preparation, the elimination of sources of error, and where to expect alnomonous results.
You are of course aware that these 'problems' are no such thing; it has been explained to you countless times. The C14 content of the atmosphere at present day has been disturbed by nuclear testing; the level in the past is calabrated by dendrochronology; it is - as you well know - not assumed to be constant.
A sea organism will give the radiocarbon age of the water it lives in. Which you have been told many times. An organism buried in permafrost may partially thaw, and those thawed parts will exchange carbon with the atmosphere, thus giving a different age. Which you have been told many times.
Of course, in this case, none of these problems apply. The carbon in your bones is in equlibrium with your body - and hence the atmosphere - until death, when it is convienently locked in. Inorganic remains don't suffer from bacterial carbon transfer, which eliminates that problem, and 13000 years is within the range of dendrochronology, which means the timescale is well calibrated.
And how do you know what every moment of the last 17000 years (the time frame claimed to be the age of the skull under discussion) did? Was there enough water soaking for a few hundred years to alter the ratios of C14 in it? Was it ever exposed to the atmosphere during that time? That sample sat in a museum display case for 43 years prior to being re-tested. The article is silent on whether corrections were made to deal with that time of atmospheric (or whatever gas was inside the display case) exposure. Were the meticulous sample preparation steps you speak of followed assiduously that entire time? Which of the dating tests was correct, the test in 1959 when it was found, or the one now when it brought fame to the testers?
Got Wisdom?
Except that the "Native Americans" weren't native. They came over just like the Europeans. They stole the land, then had it stolen from them. They've just had better PR.
You fail to mention (most likely because you like to drive your science by your politics, not by facts) that there are many different isotope dating methods. C14 is just the best-known. The other isotope measurements do not have the same dependencies that C14 does for their generation, so your attempts to rewrite history by discrediting one technique to throw out all radiological dating is not very persuasive or scientific. But then again, that pretty much is the case for all arguments by Scientific Creationists, er, Flood Geologists, er, Intelligent Design advocates, er, whatever the hell you guys calling yourselves these days.
Significant contamination or atmospheric exchange would be detectable in the mineral structure of the skulls independantly of carbon dating. Additionally, the fact that five skulls all gave the same age in strong evidence against contamination, and shows that good techniques were used thoughout.
Atmospheric carbon does not exchange with bone minerals on these time scales.
The skulls had not previously been dated, unless you wish to show a link for that.
Whoa Bubba! Let's not throw in a bunch of facts here. The man clearly is correct because he cited some 30 year old journal articles. He's gotta be a bonafide scientologist, or at least play one on TV.
Its good to see that you are using journal references that are up to _30 years old_, and do not reflect current study with modern equipement.
Interestingly enough, in 1976 a trip was taken to simulate what a crossing like this could have been like. Check this out:
...the aboriginal americans gave tobacco to my ancestors.
Later, my relatives created an effective vaccine for smallpox.
What have the AAs done for tobacco?
Which has killed more since they met?
Good judgement comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgement.
- W. Wriston, former Citibank CEO
If you'd read the article, it only referenced C14 dating, hence it was on-topic only if that was discussed. But since you brought up other dating methods, let's answer that topic you brought up. K-Ar is a good one. Did you know that every time it's been used to test volcanic rocks of _known_ age, it's given wildly inaccurate results? The apologists then claim that you can't use the method on rocks that are so young; but hey - when you find a rock, it doesn't have a "don't date me, I'm too young" label on it. So why exclude only known young rocks, when unknown age rocks test in the same value range?
Well you see, the most important thing you need to do when performing radioisotopic dating is to make sure the person doing the test understands how to do it properly, and preferably understands nuclear physics. Just because the revisionists like to give themselves names with words like "geologist" or "scientist" in there doesn't mean they understand science. My favorites are the ones that get a Ph.D. in some field unrelated to what they're trying to discredit, but make sure that their name points out their Ph.D. so that people will be led to believe that they know what they're talking about. You know, people with Ph.D.'s in Education trying to shoot down geology, or people with degrees in celestial mechanics trying to discredit relativity. "Today we have Dr. Bib Lebasher, Ph.D. to explain why geologists and biologists are all wrong" when it turns out he has a Ph.D. in sociology and he is just reading off the same old list of "inconsistencies" in modern theories (those that have been long ago answered, but they still bring them up like they are new, unexplained problems); I guess if you repeat it enough then it must be true.
This summer I finally got my ass in gear and went back to school for those two credits I needed for my Anthropology major. Had to take an archaeology course and decided on one called Alberta Archaeology. I figured it would be interesting as Alberta really acted as the gateway to the Americas for early man entering through the Ice Free Corridor.
What I ended up learning was that the Ice Free Corridor hypothesis is growing more and more tenuous as the evidence piles up. The preponderance of new archaeological evidence is starting to suggest that the first known migrants to the Americas arrived via boat, making their way down the coast from Alaska all the way to Northern California or Oregon and then pressing inland.
One of the major problems facing Archaeology of the Ancient Americas is that it seems there has to have been Pre-Clovis people somewhere in the Americas, but there is NO definitive evidence of them anywhere. The Clovis people, where ever they came from seem to have exploded onto the scene somewhere between 13,000 and 11,000 years ago nothing yet has been discovered to definitively prove that people where here before that. Every find that suggests earlier occupation of the Americas has somehow landed in controversy. (Not to say that they're not valid data, just that they're not definitive data.)
However, with each new early find, it seems more and more likely that people didn't come down through the Ice Free Corridor. The timing for the corridor to have been open just doesn't add up to the times people seem to have been here. Further, with the Ice Free Corridor hypothesis, one would expect to find most of the really old evidence in Alberta, Montana and Saskatchewan and that just isn't the case.
And since there is a sordid history with dating being revised based on researchers' desires to see dates consistent with their pet theories (KBS tuff mean anything to you?), it's relevant to raise the question here.
You also mentioned (in your previous post) that C14 levels have been rising due to (your opinion) nuclear testing or (my opinion) the equilibrium level not yet having been reached. To do a quick calibration of your explanation, look at the rate of atmospheric nuclear testing by decade. From 1946-1962, the US set off 193 atmospheric nukes. From 1949 to 1962, the Soviets set off 142. After the Cuban Missile Crisis (October 1962), negotiations started on a test ban treaty. On July 25, 1963 atmospheric testing was banned by a treaty between the USSR and the USA. So if the amount of C14 has been increasing throughout that time period, it's not from atmospheric nuke testing. The figure I gave was that the C14 level has been steadily increasing for 40 years, during which an atmospheric nuclear test ban has been in effect. The Chinese setting off a few does not compare to the Bikini Atoll being destroyed by the US or the Steppes being made to glow by the Soviets. You'll need another explanation for the steady increase of C14 that has been observed.
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