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Grisly Find Suggests Humans Inhabited Arctic 45,000 Years Ago (sciencemag.org)
sciencehabit points out this story which may rewrite the early history of humans in North America. From the Sciencemag story: "In August of 2012, an 11-year-old boy made a gruesome discovery in a frozen bluff overlooking the Arctic Ocean. While exploring the foggy coast of Yenisei Bay, about 2000 kilometers south of the North Pole, he came upon the leg bones of a woolly mammoth eroding out of frozen sediments. Scientists excavating the well-preserved creature determined that it had been killed by humans: Its eye sockets, ribs, and jaw had been battered, apparently by spears, and one spear-point had left a dent in its cheekbone—perhaps a missed blow aimed at the base of its trunk. When they dated the remains, the researchers got another surprise: The mammoth died 45,000 years ago. That means that humans lived in the Arctic more than 10,000 years earlier than scientists believed, according to a new study. The find suggests that even at this early stage, humans were traversing the most frigid parts of the globe and had the adaptive ability to migrate almost everywhere."
2000km south of the North Pole sounds like you'd be in a fairly warm area....
Around 71 degrees north (latitude).
So... northern alaska, greenland, northern tips of scandinavia, siberia... are all around 2000 km from the pole.
All of Iceland is further south.
The world is a big.
I am a sys admin and while I love learning about history, I definitely didn't pay much attention to it during my education days, so excuse my ignorance if this is a dumb question. How do they know that humans didn't just find the frozen, preserved carcass later on like this kid did, say 35,000 years ago. They find it and figure it's an easy way to harvest some tools which would explain the tool marks. Any science\archeology nerds care to shed any light on this for me?
The timing puts it in the last ice age. In 45,000 years ice does not stay still but moves about a bit and the end of the last ice age many interesting things would have been happening with regard to mass flooding, break down of debris and methane generation. Most of civilised human ice age history would be logically under water. The more ice melts, the more water rises and the more readily coastal civilisations are inundated. Do you want to invest in underwater front, go right ahead but don't expect the rest of us to bail you out when you investment quite literally goes under water. If you can hold your breath for long enough, don't worry the next ice age will dry out you land but damn, it wont be water front any more but a few kilometres away from the new shore line. You can waffle shit all you want but when we build cities on the coast we have to protect them and do what ever it takes to do so.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
The article mentions Siberia. Siberia is roughly 65 degrees north latitude, or 2,700 km from the pole. So they probably DID mean 2,000 km , which would be northern Siberia (not a warm place).
The three countries who claim territory at 2,000 km from the pole Russia, Canada and Greenland.
Yeah, only now we spend 90% of our energy trying to prevent it... Oy, the bureaucrats' burden is a heavy one.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
It's called a pun, son. You're supposed to grin and bear it.
Cities are disposable. Build a city, use it so long as it remains convenient to use, and when the water rolls over it, just abandon it.
WTF makes people think we need to defend cities? You've forgotten your nomad roots?
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
(facepalm) I hate you.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Probably more like gristly if it's cheap ham.
I have my suspicions that cavemen didn't suck on the tit of social services when they migrated somewhere, making the situation quite different indeed.
Pedantic point: It's redundant to say "2000 kilometers south of the North Pole". Any point on the Earth's surface that's 2000 kilometers from the North Pole is automatically 2000 km south of the North Pole. There is no way for something to be west or east of the North Pole, and definitely not north, so naming the cardinal direction is pointless. It's south by necessity.
"the more we learn about our distant ancestors, the more they turn out to have been resourceful and clever."
I get the point that putting back far away colonization from 30K to 45K years ago have an interesting impact on population demography or even sociology but "resourcefulness or cleverness"? The article also goes that line: "The find suggests that even at this early stage, humans were traversing the most frigid parts of the globe and had the adaptive ability to migrate almost everywhere."
What else would you expect? We have been basically the same for the last 100K years, so reaching far north or east or west 30K or 45K years ago says nothing about human evolution.
Thats because it has so much geothermal energy, you don't need to burn any fossil fuels, or nuclear or even wind turbines that might kill birds...
Food supply is a big reason, and infrastructure. Now if you want to completely revert to a hunter-gatherer society, where do you think we're going to find enough food for everyone?
Neither hunting nor scavenging is going to do it. Mass-production is where it's at.
Oh, and shelter? Sorry, but a tarp hanging off a tree probably ain't gonna cut it for most people. Especially if it's cold and winter'ish.
Cities are generally built around resources. This can include minerals, water, food sources, or access. Even the stuff we can make ourselves doesn't spring up overnight, and things like water aren't as readily available everywhere as you seem to think, or at least not in quantities needed for any modern sized civilization.
That's OK, you have a right to feel entitled to your own ignorance.
Maybe we deserve this world ?
That those prehistoric people were probably at least as intelligent as the average slashdotter, and they likely spent decades testing, reviewing, debating, and verbally sharing various hunting skills. It's likely that they had many ways of crippling or killing large game other than the ones we can see by marks left on old bones.
I've read TFS several times and not one mention of an inquisitive bear! Come on, editors; up your game!
Considering carbon dating has been shown to be about as accurate as a politicians promises, they should have just said they were guessing at how long it had been there.
(sniff) (sniff) .. I smell a creationist...
Or possibly a scientist, since a scientists point out that Radioactive Carbon Dating is only reasonably accurate for up to about 40,000 years.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
Or someone from further south tried and failed to kill a mammoth and mammoths are migratory, as some of the great Pixar documentaries claim.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
The world is a big.
- It's a me, Mario!
So, you're admitting AGW are using geologically short sighted view of climate. Got it .
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
You might try not getting your science information off of conservative politicians
You might try getting your science information from Science, not "consensus". Science doesn't require consensus. Yet that is the ONLY argument AGW people can actually use. "We believe global warming, because 85% of scientists believe it"
Please remember, Piltdown Man was consensus "science" ;)
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
That Eric the Red guy was a real estate speculator; yes, it was a lot warmer in the green land 1100 years ago (they had dairy farms on the coast!) but they still needed to convince people from Iceland to come over!