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Texas Site Pushes Back Known Settlement Date For North America
Velcroman1 writes "The discovery of ancient stone tools at an archaeological dig in Texas could push back the presence of humans in North America, perhaps by as much as 2,500 years. The find was located 5 feet below materials left by the well-known Clovis culture, which was once thought to have been the first American settlers around 13,000 years ago. It was 'like finding the Holy Grail,' Waters said in a telephone interview. To find what appears to be a large open-air campsite 'is really gratifying. Lucky and gratifying.'"
Too bad the Texas text books state that this is 7000 years before God created the Earth.
The Clovis kids were probably just playing a practical joke 10,000 years ago, burying pottery five feet under, to confuse the archaeologists.
So the Clovis culture was one day's easy digging away from being the first archaeologists?
Either /. commenter creativity has hit a new low, or Texas's reputation is so overpowering that such jokes are inevitable.
A little from column A, a little from column B.
Are you charging the archaeologists with falsifying data? Because it sure sounds like that's what you're doing, and if so, you'd better contact the Texas A&M ethics board with your allegations. If you're not willing to do that, and provide evidence, you should probably just STFU.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
It's nice to read about a settlement that has nothing to do with a lawsuit.
I use irony whenever I can, but my shirts are still wrinkled...
Either /. commenter creativity has hit a new low, or Texas's reputation is so overpowering that such jokes are inevitable.
A little from column A, a little from column B.
But does it run Linux?
XML is a known as a key material required to create SMD: Software of Mass Destruction
Does anyone in Texas still believe in science?
Lots of people in Texas believe in science.
It's the ones who don't believe in science who make the front page on Slashdot.
Well it's kinda impossible for new findings to push it forward. Any new findings will either be the same age or newer (and thus don't make the news) or they're older and push the date back.
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
Just throwing this out there, but archaeologists are probably making discoveries _all_the_time_. You just hear about the ones that news sources pick up as, well, news worthy. Kinda like ones that show us we were here thousands of years before we previously thought. Nothing odd about that, in my opinion.
Wow!! Mental note to walk on egg shells when ever Daniel Dvorkin is around.
Or better yet, as with any debate, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. As the claimant, the burden of proof is on you to show that a professional is falsifying data. If you're unable to do so, withdraw your claims.
I'm just saying that [logical fallacy]...
What are your credentials and what professional experience do you have as an archaeologist that you're able to make informed observations on the age of the artifacts that are uncovered?
This is getting a lot more hype than it should: Several other sites, as well as genetic studies, have pointed to the existence of pre-Clovis human habitation in North America, and it had long been a working hypothesis for a lot of archaeologists who had been studying early American habitation.
The only really interesting question is what these tools most resemble: If they look like they're related to a culture not from Siberia, that would be a much bigger deal, since it would suggest migration from Africa or Europe or Polynesia.
I am officially gone from
The Texas find is interesting, because it's dealing with settlement of North America, but to me the India find in the same article was much more interesting. Acheulian stone tool designs in India at 1.5 million years BC, saying humans migrated out of Africa at least 100,000 years earlier than we thought! That difference is a lot longer than the time modern Cro-Magnons have been around.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Yes, didn't some Europeans boat along the edge of the Atlantic pack ice during the last ice age (pre-Bering strait land bridge) and land in Eastern North America? I thought the found some ceremonial spear points somewhere that matched ones in France, but predated the land bridge migration.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
Bryan/College Station's worst disaster occurred when a small two-seater Cessna 150 plane, piloted by two Texas A&M students, crashed into a cemetery earlier today. Texas A&M volunteers have recovered 300 bodies so far and expect the number to climb as digging continues into the evening. The pilot and copilot survived and are helping in the recovery efforts.
I know it's old, but it never fails to get the goat of my Aggie buddies.
The US government have made it clear that we have no inalienable rights; any we do not defend vigorously will be taken.
The site isn't what did the pushing. It was the discovery of it.
Everything is conditional on knowledge. The site's existence is what pushed the date back, but we only know of its existence because we discovered it. In that sense, "known" in the headline is implied and thus redundant. But okay.
"Known settlement date" could be today. There is a settlement in North America today, right?
The settlement date would be today if someone was settling today. And indeed, someone probably is settling in North America as we speak. For them, that would be their settlement date. It would not be the settlement date for North America, as North America is already settled.
When talking about the settlement of a place, you only discuss it being settled if it was not already -- or at least wasn't settled by people you recognize as important if you're say Europeans settling America or other examples. But even in that case you wouldn't say Europeans settled America, after Europeans had already settled America. That makes no sense. The hypothetical people settling in North America today -- they settled in North America, they did not settle North America. Do you see?
So it is a good assumption that "known settlement date" implies the first known settlement, because after that it was already settled. The date of the previous oldest known settlement in North America is no longer the settlement date of North America -- by the time that settlement came around, North America was already settled.
Would it always be used that way? No, but such is language. But if you weren't using "settlement date" in that way, that's when you might want to take more care to make it clear what you meant.
Like if you told me that you believed that North America was settled only 400 years ago, and then when I expressed incredulity you went "Ha! I meant settled by Dutch immigrants!", that would be a case of being misleading and I might have to cut off your hand (erm... that was supposed to be an xkcd link but I can't find the right one... nevermind about the hand thing I wouldn't do that).
The enemies of Democracy are
And to make matters worse, it was an AP story! ZOMG!
Knee, meet Jerk.
That theory has been long ago discredited.
I don't think it has been as thoroughly discredited as you say. (Or maybe I should say, the discrediting isn't broadly enough accepted for you to state it as you did).
However, a steady sequence of anomalies has popped up, mostly in the past decade or so, so that people who argue for an earlier settlement are no longer dismissed as a lunatic fringe. I suspect there will eventually be a consensus on an earlier settlement, though it's too soon to say what the new mainstream view will state.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade