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New Study Suggests Humans Lived In North America 130,000 Years Ago (npr.org)

An anonymous reader writes: In 1992, archaeologists working a highway construction site in San Diego County found the partial skeleton of a mastodon, an elephant-like animal now extinct. Mastodon skeletons aren't so unusual, but there was other strange stuff with it. "The remains were in association with a number of sharply broken rocks and broken bones," says Tom Demere, a paleontologist at the San Diego Natural History Museum. He says the rocks showed clear marks of having been used as hammers and an anvil. And some of the mastodon bones as well as a tooth showed fractures characteristic of being whacked, apparently with those stones. It looked like the work of humans. Yet there were no cut marks on the bones showing that the animal was butchered for meat. Demere thinks these people were after something else. "The suggestion is that this site is strictly for breaking bone," Demere says, "to produce blank material, raw material to make bone tools or to extract marrow." Marrow is a rich source of fatty calories. The scientists knew they'd uncovered something rare. But they didn't realize just how rare for years, until they got a reliable date on how old the bones were by using a uranium-thorium dating technology that didn't exist in the 1990s. The bones were 130,000 years old. That's a jaw-dropping date, as other evidence shows that the earliest humans got to the Americas about 15,000 to 20,000 years ago. The study has been published in the journal Nature.

6 of 239 comments (clear)

  1. source by planckscale · · Score: 5, Informative

    Paper here http://nature.com/articles/doi... also, would not be surprised if humanoids made it to North America several times prior to 130,000 years considering they've been around since about a million years - that's a lot of time to find your way out of Africa to a different continent by one means or another.

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    Namaste
  2. Re:Unlikely by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

    "Everyone said carbon dating was accurate for decades, but it really wasn't."

    Actually it was, just "science" as it were involves a few setbacks, obstacles, mishaps, errors, errata, etc, and you failed to define "accurate" - it's damn accurate! It's way better than your guesswork and 99% of other possible methodologies. Is it perfect? Nope. That doesn't make it useless.

  3. Re: Unlikely by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Informative

    the dating is all but certain... they didn't use carbon dating, they used many more accurate methods, that all came to the same conclusion.

    We heard the same sort of claims made about climate 'science'. We were told that 'the science was settled'. Then it turns out that it actually wasn't settled at all. There was much to be doubtful about. The accuracy of measurement techniques became doubted. Questionable assumptions were made. Data had to be 'adjusted' to fit models. All in all, it left a bad taste in the mouths of people who strive to apply the scientific method rigorously and properly.

    Whenever somebody claims that 'the science has been settled' or 'the conclusion is certain', it should immediately raise red flags. Science is never 'settled' and it is never 'certain'.

  4. Seas were much lower by mi · · Score: 3, Informative

    The stupid humans crossed (what is now) Bering's Straits, started too many fires and melted too much ice. The ocean-levels rose and there was no way for them to walk back... The Shamanry was settled — it was all their fault.

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    In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
  5. Re: Political implications for "Native Americans" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

    They don't get special privileges for being first. They get it because European Americans more or less stole their land. It's a form of compensation colonial governments such as the US government voluntarily gave them. Also most tribes and the US BIA regulate based on quantum of blood for enrollment, I.e. too little native and you're out of the tribe because morons like you say these things.

  6. Re:Funniest comment by bongey · · Score: 3, Informative

    It's actually old and pirated off the internet.Funny the original author was making fun of himself. http://emganin.tripod.com/home...