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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.
...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.
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?
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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.
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.
...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
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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