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Humans in America 25,000 Years Ago?
Ephboy writes "A researcher in South Carolina has found stones that appear to be man-made stone tools that date from 25,000 years ago, about twice as old as the best documented evidence of human settlement in North America."
...that the loudest arguments will not be over how old these remains are, but there they came from, and if they are indian (native american) or not in origin...
Everything in the world is controlled by a small, evil group to which, unfortunately, no one you know belongs.
a proto-native american man picks up a nice looking stone in asia, on his way across the land bridge. when he dies, his son takes it as he migrates south. over the years it ends up in the location it was found.
there mystery solved.
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
The science may not be settled yet, but the burden of proof here still lies on the researcher.
Whenever a scientist gets experimental results that are far outside what was previously known and expected, the proper response is to either wait for independent verification (in this case, similar dating results from digs elsewhere in North America at the same depth) or subject the experimental procedure to intense scrutiny. Here, I would expect him to be able to justify
1) That the artifacts really came from the time he claims them to be from (probably easily doable via an independent dating test)
2) That the artifacts really came from the place he claims them to be from
3) That the artifacts are manmade.
Until each of these points is well supported, and barring the independent verification mentioned above, I'd hold out on adjusting the history textbooks.
More data is needed, no matter who is right. I do believe American civilization is a lot older than the previously-accepted figure, but 25,000 years means people discovered America about the same time they discovered northern Europe. Assuming that date is accurate, and there are some good reasons for questioning that, too.
Part of the problem is that archaeology is seriously underfunded. Where I grew up, they are currently conducting an excavation of a large Iron Age settlement (4000+ inhabitants) with evidence it was first built 12,000 years ago. The site seems to have been the center of commerce for the whole of the North of Britain from the end of the Ice Age through to the Roman Occupation. That's one big, important site. Total funding: $44,000 a year, to cover site surveying equiptment, excavation equiptment, preservation efforts, education of the locals, pay for the full-time archaeologists on-site, paying the farmers whose fields are getting dug up...
In South Carolina (where I lived for a while), things are a whole lot worse. The self-proclaimed "Holy City" of Charleston is definitely unlikely to fund work that contradicts the idea the world was created in 4004 BC. And that's one of the more liberal areas!
Nor is South Carolina a place filled with philanthopists. Charleston, Mount Pleasent and West Ashley are all fighting bitterly over who gets to keep the Civil War submarine "The Hunley". None of them want to pay for it, they just want to have it.
If they're not willing to pay for a serious conservation + museum for a part of history they are tightly intertwined with, they're certainly not going to pay some archaeologist to traipse across the countryside digging up fossil remains that largely serve to remind them that they are just a bunch of tourists in comparison to the settlers who were there first.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
My guess would be that they're performing the dating on once-living objects found in the same strata as the "tools". Since objects in the same strata are approximately the same age, carbon-dating those objects would provide an estimate to when the tools were first in existence.
... but I thought carbon dating only worked on organic matter (since its the death of the matter that stops the carbon cycle refreshing the C14 percentage in the tissue). How does this work on stone tools?
(As to the creationism / darwin debate, people forget that the fact that new evidence can make us throw away previous scientific belief is what's good about science, not what's bad)
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
"(see first biological warfare- also: pox ridden blankets)" No. At least as early as the middle ages people used to load dead, disease ridden bodies into catapults and hurl them into catles they were seiging.
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WHO ATE MY BREAKFAST PANTS?
> Being here THOUSANDS of years before they claim the nephites showed up, that's gotta hurt the ol' church.
Since when have contrary facts hurt religions?
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Many of the monotheistic sects like mormons, jehovas witnesses and others of the evangelical (in the menaing of "interpreting the bible literally") persuasion claim that the earth is only a few thousand years old and "prove" this by tracing the genealogy of the bible from a person that can be more or less accurately placed on the timeline and all the way to Adam&Eve. 6000 years is a number that keeps turning up.
Discoveries like this and others facts that disprove their theories are not going to change their views, as they claim that god created the world at $time with everything, including fossils, geological features and other dateable items intact.
I can however assure you that they are NOT correct, as I know that the giant creator-wombat created the world out of a can of spam and some duct tape, with people, rocks, birds, the thoughts in your head, absolutely everything intact only 5 minutes ago. Go on, try to disprove it.
-- Buzh
50,000 years is stretching carbon dating. That's a whole lot of half lives. Identifying it as a tool is also a stretch. Tools that old look a lot like cracked rocks. I have doubts about searfaring being that old. Where are the older cites closer to a land route?
Yah, and I'm still pissed at the Romans for enslaving my ancestors and feeding them to lions. Get over it buddy, the issue is buried and long dead. You're just another American just like me.
AccountKiller
Gravity is also a theory, not a fact, regarding the attraction of masses. The belief that you will not suddenly go flying off of the earth for no discernable reason should be approached with an open mind, studied carefully, and critically considered.
STOP MISUSING APOSTROPHES, YOU MORONS!!!
Civilizations rising and falling throughout the history of mankind is a common theme in Mormon literature. In fact, the lost book of Enoch has fragments that have survived to this day that detail the knowledge these civilizations had. Some of the apocryphal ones hint at ancient civilizations with strange technologies and polutions. Although that is fanciful even to Mormons, it is common belief that in almost every dispensation a prophet was shown all of the Lord's creations and how the worlds were made, thereby teaching the Lord's people about astronomy and the place the Earth has in the cosmos. This knowledge is lost when the Lord's people wane into carnality and reject the teachings of the prophets. Then they are wiped out by another, usually barbarous, civilization.
So discovering ancient people's in the Americas before the time of the Nephites really wouldn't hurt "the ol' church". However, they would take issue with the dating.
Fun with Inkwell | www.coo
So people came to South Carolina 25,000 years ago and left no traces on the rest of the continent for 12,000 years? Yeah right. Off the top of my head, here are several more likely explanations:
INAABMFWIARDL (I'm not an archaeologist but my friend works in a radio-carbon dating lab). People have been scouring the continents for over 50 years and found nothing earlier than ~13,000 BP and suddenly these guys stumble across something twice as old? Even if the site is legit it's gonna take a lot more finds to convince archaeologists people were here that early. People don't exactly confine themselves to small areas and leave no traces for thousands of years.
Sounds to me like more bogus science "journalism". Write about the crazy new theory to draw eyeballs and devote two paragraphs to the established consensus that this guy's a nut. The author oughta be run out of town on a rail.
Democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on lunch.
Humans of course are not descended from apes but from a common ancestor ... which was not an ape.
Bitter and proud of it.
A cursory glance at ape anatomy shows that it is impossible for man to have 'evolved' from one.
From my observations of both ape and human behavior, the only reasonable conclusion is that apes evolved from us. :)
Democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on lunch.
Who listens to creationists anyways?
The only way I even hear about them is in reference to their ridiculous assertions, usually by something along the lines of a slashdot post. No one takes them seriously, and really we should just stop discussing them altogether.
If they want to go start a neo-scientific coven in a mountain cave somewhere that is fine. Let them leave us scientific types to use our fancy nukes and blow ourselves to hell. They can come out then and take over, but no sooner.
Of blankness, I know nothing.
The ancient Americans did have a wireless network... smoke signals! :)
Scientists will argue endlessly whether a charcoal deposit is a hearth or natural fire, rock chips are artifacts or flood debris. There is a similar debate in Australia where some potential sites are nearly double the age of the oldest bones.
Anyone who thinks the American Indians were a universally "nice" people living in some sort of "one with nature" utopia needs to lay off the kool-aid.
They were and are humans just like everyone else and suffered from the same vices, power struggles, warfare and savagery as every other example of humanity throughout history.
You can tell a great deal about the character of a man by observing those who hate him.
Here's the problem as I see it: (short version) Theists want everyone to believe they know the One Absolute Truth Praise God. Scientists actively research That Which Exists And How It Works. Occasionally, science discovers something that doesn't fit with the posited "One Absolute Truth". I'm just going to step over how the hyper-religious react, because I could rant all day about that. The problem we face isn't so much in that they attack us for the discovery; that washes out with time. No matter how pissed off the religious are, they don't dare say that the sun orbits the earth. They'd like to, but they know that 95% of the world would laugh at them. The problem is that with each discovery, they retrofit their dogma, with God still the omnipotent creator, and gloss over the fact that they were wrong.
1000 years from now if this continues, the conversation about evolution/artifacts could potentially be unchanged; We could know an overwhelming amount of detail about what happened and when, and how; and the religious people, after being soundly beaten, will just respond "Oh, but that's how God wants it to be. He made it that way when he created the world because he wanted to test our faith/remain mysterious/because god is unfathomable". This is the argument that needs to be attacked. David Hume showed that all the proofs of God beg the question of God's existence. As long as they cheat and we play by the rules, ignorance will win out over wisdom, because ignorance will wear any mask, even pretending to be wisdom itself.
When the religious right attacks science, the debate needs to be held in a forum where proper rhetorical practices are observed, otherwise they'll always appeal to emotion, and we'll always have to back down so we don't get labeled.
Unfortunately, even if we beat them in debate, they'll still pretend they're right. We need to frame this issue in the popular mind, because there's no arguing with angry people. They ignore, then they attack. And at the extremes they cheat too: If you win, they get teary and ask why you hate the baby jesus, why you serve the devil, why you won't let them have their beliefs. In fact, none of that is true; they can still have their beliefs. But they make it look like you're attacking them, and so draw sympathy for their side. If you lose (as in, if they get public sympathy against you) then they attack you as a "sinner", and an "atheist", and insult and slander you for not being one of them. In other words, they try to force you to give up your beliefs (which is absurd when you've seen the evidence yourself, viz Galileo).
The reason I dislike the western church so much (the organization, not the teachings) is that the western church is basically a political organization predicated on greed, hate, fear, and studied ignorance. And personally, my personal opinion that God is more likely a verbal construct than a literal being comes from the continued bad behavior of the church; If God existed, "He" wouldn't let the church get away with all that crap in His name. When people tell me I "have to" believe in God, because He *is* real yadda yadda yadda, I want to hit back with "Oh yeah, well, ERIS is REALLY real, and predates your religion by 1000 years! so HAH!" But I haven't had a good opportunity. One time I told some evangelists that "I already have a deity", though :)
HEATHEN AND LOVING IT! :P
"A witty saying proves nothing." ~Voltaire
"d'Oh!" ~Homer
No it isn't. It's an ongoing problem that's tied up in courts, classrooms, bars, highways, and the wilderness. Genocide takes a while to fade.
Spoken like a true settler, though.
The existance of god cannot be argued
You can stop right there and have a true statement. God is pretty much unprovable by definition. Most athiest and thiest I know agree on this point.
Science cannot remove a possible theory [...]
Science is not an actor, it doesn't do anything and has no agenda.
Those who understand scientific practices know this, and wouldn't try. Science is the process of finding explainations that fit what has been observed, and that have predictive power. Thats it, there isn't anything more than that.
I have not seen any evidence that does not fit in the 6000 year old earth model.
Nor will you, because such evidence is impossible. You will also not see any evidence that the world is not 5 minutes old. However, these theories provide no predictive powers, and so are uninteresting to people who want to learn more about how the world works through observation, prediciton and empirical results(we usually call these people 'scientists').
Religious theories are uninteresting to these people because the are generally not predictive, and not replicable.
[...]I could probably show you a number of assumptions that have no basis in observation that would cast sufficient doubt on the "facts" of the evidence.
All knowledge rests on some set of assumptions. This is well known and is not in dispute. Most scientists are well aware of the fact that our theories are just approximations of the 'Truth' of how things actually work. But most also know that this knowledge is the best we have, and that there is no other known way to actually find the 'Truth'.
The practice of scientific methods of gaining knowledge and religious beliefs are not, and never have been, at odds. From your comments, it seems that you know this.
Personally, I choose to not believe in those things for which I cannot have, at least in principle, empirical evidence. There are too many things that are possible, but for which I cannot have evidence, and many of them conflict. Thats not to say I deny their existence, I don't claim that gods cannot exist, just that I have no evidence that they do, so until such time that I can have a rational test for their existance, that fits within my current body of knowledge, I will assume that they do not.