The Oldest Known Human Remains In the Americas Have Been Found In a Mexican Cave (seeker.com)

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The Oldest Known Human Remains In the Americas Have Been Found In a Mexican Cave (seeker.com)

Posted by BeauHD on Thursday August 31, 2017 @10:00PM from the lost-and-found dept.

schwit1 shares a report from Seeker: An ice-free corridor between the Americas and Asia opened up about 12,500 years ago, allowing humans to cross over the Bering land bridge to settle what is now the United States and places beyond to the south. History books have conveyed that information for years to explain how the Americas were supposedly first settled by people, such as those from the Clovis culture. At least one part of the Americas was already occupied by humans before that time, however, says new research on the skeleton of a male youth found in Chan Hol cave near Tulum, Mexico. Dubbed the Young Man of Chan Hol, the remains date to 13,000 years ago, according to a paper published in the journal PLOS ONE. How he arrived at the location remains a great mystery given the timing and the fact that Mexico is well over 4,000 miles away from the Bering land crossing. For the new study, Gonzalez, Stinnesbeck, and their colleagues dated the Young Man of Chan Hol's remains by analyzing the bones' uranium, carbon, and oxygen isotopes, which were also found in stalagmite that had grown through the pelvic bone. The scientists believe that the resulting age of 13,000 years could apply to at least two other skeletons found in caves around Tulum: a teenage female named Naia and a 25-30-year-old female named Eve of Naharon. Gonzalez said that the shape of the skulls suggests that Eve and the others "have more of an affinity with people from Southeast Asia." He and his team further speculated that the individuals could have originated in Indonesia.

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Fake News by aevan · 2017-08-31 22:21 · Score: 3, Funny

Everyone knows the natives are native. That's why they call them Native! This is just trying to paint them as immigrants like everyone else in North America.
1. Re:Fake News by Vitus+Wagner · 2017-08-31 23:29 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  There is no such thing as native population. There are just descendants of previous conquerors.
2. Re:Fake News by K.+S.+Kyosuke · 2017-08-31 23:39 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  Everyone in the Americas is technically an immigrant or a descendant of immigrants. The only natives are in Africa.
  
  --
  Ezekiel 23:20
3. Re:Fake News by Paradise+Pete · 2017-08-31 23:50 · Score: 2
  
  There are just descendants of previous conquerors.
  And who did they conquer, and so on? Or are you saying it's conquerors all the way down?
4. Re:Fake News by jellomizer · 2017-09-01 00:20 · Score: 3, Informative
  
  It is Conquerors all the way down.
  They may not had conquered people. but they had conquered the elements, infections, wild animals, and unknown terrain.
  
  --
  If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
5. Re:Fake News by jellomizer · 2017-09-01 00:26 · Score: 1
  
  Actually we are probably repatriated depending on how the contents were shaped back when vertebrates first walked on land. A lot of Africa Continental plate was squished against other land masses.
  
  --
  If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
6. Re:Fake News by dfghjk · 2017-09-01 01:52 · Score: 1
  
  ...and, technically, all sex is incest. These are crucial observations.
7. Re:Fake News by Anonymous Coward · 2017-09-01 01:54 · Score: 1
  
  There is no such thing as indigenous population [of the Americas]; there are just [the] native descendants of the people who came to the Americas from elsewhere.
  FTFY
  In Canada the earliest peoples are referred to as "First Nations." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.... I like that term. I wish we would use it here (i.e. in the USA) as well.
8. Re:Fake News by cayenne8 · 2017-09-01 01:57 · Score: 1
  
  So...the original Mexican food was.......Chinese???
  
  --
  Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
9. Re:Fake News by Sperbels · 2017-09-01 02:14 · Score: 1
  
  Beringian actually.
10. Re:Fake News by liquid_schwartz · 2017-09-01 02:48 · Score: 1
  
  Sorry but for the Jews it was intentional for native Americans it was more of a by product of immigration. More native Americans died from European diseases than Europeans killing them. So yeah it was worse for the Jews.
  Actually there was both intentional and unintentional killing. The trail of tears was pretty intentional. I'd argue that injustuce is pretty bad no matter who it happens to. If you want to put metrics to it though I suspect that the natives had it worse than the Jews. A better approach would be to stop complaining about the past as both are currently protected classes and, in the case of "First Nations" they get a slew of government benefits. The past cannot be changed but it sure set up their descendants pretty nicely.
11. Re: Fake News by Anonymous Coward · 2017-09-01 02:52 · Score: 1
  
  The only problem is that evidence has now shown that the "first Nations" are actually the third to arrive in North America. The first being Vikings in north eastern Canada.
12. Re: Fake News by ceoyoyo · 2017-09-01 03:03 · Score: 1
  
  No... the first nations have been around a lot longer than the Vikings. They're not the first in North America, not even by blood, as this story indicates, but they're groups of currently living people who can trace back some (somewhat arbitrary amount) of their lineage to political and cultural groups that existed at the time of first contact with Europeans.
13. Re:Fake News by cayenne8 · 2017-09-01 03:16 · Score: 1
  
  Mu-Shu Carnitas?
  
  --
  Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
14. Re:Fake News by bhiestand · 2017-09-01 03:18 · Score: 1
  
  Everyone living on land is a descendant of immigrants. The only natives are in the ocean.
  Unless transpermiation is correct....
  
  --
  SWM seeks new sig for a brief fling
15. Re:Fake News by mysticgoat · 2017-09-01 03:50 · Score: 1
  
  Someone else mentioned the Trail of Tears. But what should also be mentioned, since it is directly relevant to parent post, is the Carter Extermination Policy and the use of blankets from the beds of soldiers dying from small pox as trade goods, which is one of the earliest documented forms of germ warfare. "Blankets for land, what a bargain indeed" as Buffy Sainte Marie sings it. There are numerous other examples that USA school history books gloss over.
  Genocide by germ warfare is still genocide. Much of the diseases that the First Nations tribes suffered were deliberately introduced by agents of the USA government.
16. Re: Fake News by darthsilun · 2017-09-01 04:00 · Score: 1
  
  Vikings were first? Seriously?
  AFAIK most evidence points to the Vikings being here around 1000 CE.
  The Bering land bridge was around 16,000 BCE. Even if you don't buy the land bridge theory, there's other evidence of humans in North America dating back to at least 10,000 BCE. If today's AmerIndian population, including Aztec, Mayan, Incan, First Nations, etc., etc., are descended from either of those peoples that still places them here long before the Vikings.
  And then who, according to you, were the second to arrive?
17. Re: Fake News by that+this+is+not+und · 2017-09-01 04:05 · Score: 1
  
  And most of them really weren't nations in the modern sense. They lived in a stone age culture, not having discovered and utilized things like the wheel, refined metal, etc. Other parts of the continents (North and South) did have social structures you could call nations, but many of the people were just hunter-gatherers.
18. Re: Fake News by that+this+is+not+und · 2017-09-01 04:07 · Score: 1
  
  The 'smallpox germ warfare' angle has been debunked.
19. Re:Fake News by Oswald+McWeany · 2017-09-01 04:08 · Score: 1
  
  So...the original Mexican food was.......Chinese???
  Sweet and Sour Tacos with a Jalapeños egg roll.
  
  --
  "That's the way to do it" - Punch
20. Re:Fake News by pthisis · 2017-09-01 04:18 · Score: 2
  
  In Canada the earliest peoples are referred to as "First Nations." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]. I like that term. I wish we would use it here (i.e. in the USA) as well.
  I'm not a huge fan; "First" is a Eurocentric label that's a little dismissive of pre-Columbian cultures in the Americas. It doesn't reflect the fact that there was a rich history of cultures rising and falling in North America prior to European contact. The natives at the time were really the latest in a series of different cultures in Canada (and the Americas), not the first. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... among many others.
  
  --
  rage, rage against the dying of the light
21. Re: Fake News by mysticgoat · 2017-09-01 04:29 · Score: 1
  
  Citation needed.
22. Re:Fake News by pnutjam · 2017-09-01 04:42 · Score: 1
  
  The past cannot be changed but it sure set up their descendants pretty nicely.
  Ask me how I know your white.
  Native people die at higher rates than other Americans from
  tuberculosis: 600% higher ? alcoholism: 510% higher ? diabetes: 189% higher
  vehicle crashes: 229% higher ? injuries: 152% higher ? suicide: 62% higher
  
  Income and Poverty
  $38,530
  The median household income of single-race American Indian and Alaska Native households in 2015. This compares with $55,775 for the nation as a whole.
  Source: 2015 American Community Survey
  http://factfinder.census.gov/bkmk/table/1.0/en/ACS/15_1YR/S0201//popgroup~006 http://factfinder.census.gov/b...
  
  26.6%
  The percentage of single-race American Indians and Alaska Natives who were in poverty in 2015, the highest rate of any race group. For the nation as a whole, the poverty rate was 14.7 percent.
  Sources: 2015 American Community Survey
  http://factfinder.census.gov/bkmk/table/1.0/en/ACS/15_1YR/S0201//popgroup~006 http://factfinder.census.gov/b...
  
  --
  Cheap storage VM.
23. Re:Fake News by pnutjam · 2017-09-01 04:44 · Score: 1
  
  I think your talking about this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/..., but I see no reference to a Carter.
  
  --
  Cheap storage VM.
24. Re: Fake News by Bing+Tsher+E · 2017-09-01 05:02 · Score: 1, Informative
  
  Here is one direct citation.
  You can just peruse the whole duckduckgo search if you wish.
25. Re: Fake News by mysticgoat · 2017-09-01 05:06 · Score: 1
  
  And most of them really weren't nations in the modern sense.
  
  True enough, if your mindset is limited to the "old stone age, new stone age, bronze age, iron age, steam age" mentality.
  Other measures of nationhood and civilization exist, such as intra-group, and inter-group cooperation, trade agreements, and treaties. By many of those measures, the precolumbian peoples of North America were much more advanced than European contemporaries, and arguably more advanced than contemporary euroamerican peoples. This is definitely true when it comes to the careful crafting and continued maintenance of treaties between tribal nations, such as those that supported a significant level of transcontinental trade for untold thousands of years.
26. Re:Fake News by Marxist+Hacker+42 · 2017-09-01 05:12 · Score: 1
  
  Also, given the clockwise nature of North Pacific currents, and the fact that drift rafts were well within the technology available to stone age man 13,000 years ago, is it not more probable that Indonesian people came from Mexicans who came from Eskimos who came from Siberia?
  
  --
  SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
27. Re: Fake News by ceoyoyo · 2017-09-01 06:15 · Score: 1
  
  There's good evidence that there was a fairly high level of civilization in both North and South America, with all of the accompanying alliances and wars that are familiar from European history. The Inca and Aztec empires in the south, and groups like the Iroquois Confederacy in the north. The Spanish ran into the Inca, but by the time Europeans started seriously exploring the north a lot of the agricultural civilization (and population) seemed to be gone. It's a reasonable hypothesis that what explorers found in North America was just the post-apocalyptic remains of pre-contact civilizations that had been destroyed by disease. Even so, many of the larger native groups were important allies in the European wars that followed. Perhaps most famously in Canada, the Iroquois and Huron fought on opposite sides in the Seven Years' War between France and Britain.
  Our impression of pre-contact American civilization as being stone age, or our romanticized notion of the peaceful noble savage are the fallacies.
28. Re:Fake News by pnutjam · 2017-09-01 07:51 · Score: 1
  
  sorry, I left a couple words out, I meant to say, "ask me how I know your micro-dick is white", you too, because your both men.
  
  --
  Cheap storage VM.
29. Re:Fake News by pthisis · 2017-09-01 09:21 · Score: 1
  
  Thor Heyerdahl is that you?
  This was essentially the theory that drove his Kon-Tiki expedition, exteded past Polynesia into Indonesia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
  It's a really good theory, but DNA and linguistic evidence suggest there's not much basis for it (though of course they can't do much to rule out isolated instances as opposed to larger trends).
  
  --
  rage, rage against the dying of the light
30. Re:Fake News by reboot246 · 2017-09-01 10:47 · Score: 1
  
  Damn, that actually sounds good! I may have to make up my own recipes for them, but it's worth a try.
31. Re: Fake News by mysticgoat · 2017-09-01 11:07 · Score: 1
  
  If you had read past the one paragraph abstract, you would have seen the last paragraph of the introduction:
  
  Given the politicization of this topic, it seems necessary to acknowledge at the outset that far too many instances of the U.S. Army committing outrages against various Indian tribes can be documented. A number of these were explicitly genocidal in intent. It is not the intention of this author to deny that simple fact. However, as the eminent Cherokee sociologist Russell Thornton has observed of Ward Churchill's fabricated version of the 1837 smallpox epidemic: "The history is bad enough—there's no need to embellish it" (Jaschik, 2005). That the U.S. Army is undoubtedly guilty of genocidal outrages against Indians in the past in no way justifies Ward Churchill's fabrication of an outrage that never happened.
  All that has been debunked is the shoddy scholarship of one "researcher". And while there are perhaps a dozen who, like you, are citing that one instance to whitewash the whole issue, that is merely one more example of the Internet acting as an echo chamber. It remains the case that the oral history of several tribes in both the USA and Canada agree that a man named Carter who was a functionary or possibly a policy maker in the US Office of Indian Affairs around 1870 arranged for blankets taken from a smallpox hospital to be distributed to Indians on at least one occasion.
  The problem with written history is that any faction with access to the records can erase it at any time. Which is probably why there are no Canadian records of General Gage and General Amherst arranging for smallpox infected blankets to be given to Indians in 1753, while in the USA one record of that correspondence, complete with request to authorize reimbursement for the blankets taken from the smallpox hospital, still exists. Oral histories have their own problems, but when the oral histories of several distinct tribes speaking different languages agree that something happened, then it most likely did happen.
32. Re:Fake News by mysticgoat · 2017-09-01 11:22 · Score: 1
  
  No, that article is talking about policies that began much later. About 70 years after the extinction policies that involved massive killing of buffalo and the deliberate efforts to cause smallpox epidemics in the First Nations populations. Vaccinations and quarantine were known, and effective, tools in controlling smallpox outbreaks, but no effort was made to provide these to the tribes.
  Trying to force kids to assimilate into the dominant euro-american culture through boarding schools and isolation from their families and social supports is also repugnant.
33. Re:Fake News by pnutjam · 2017-09-01 15:26 · Score: 1
  
  Point us at something relevant, is this the story your talking about?
  https://www.amazon.com/Empire-Summer-Moon-Comanches-Powerful/dp/1416591060
  
  --
  Cheap storage VM.
34. Re:Fake News by Marxist+Hacker+42 · 2017-09-02 12:03 · Score: 1
  
  Trouble is it all falls apart when you notice that the Bering Sea, even in summer, is too far north to be survivable on a raft....
  
  --
  SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
35. Re:Fake News by pthisis · 2017-09-02 15:07 · Score: 1
  
  The Bering Sea's typically not involved in the Indonesia raft theory. The Kon-Tiki route was all south of the equator. And the Bering Strait was a land route beginning c. 21,000 BP, though access along the coast was blocked by ice until about 17,000 BP and the interior route didn't clear up until about 13,500 BP. There's a pretty good history of the sea level in the area here: http://theconversation.com/fir...
  But like I said there's plenty of other evidence against the theory, at least as a significant driver of human migration.
  The OP's bizarre, too (I ascribe that to the media losing something in translation, not necessarily the original research); Clovis-first has been out of favor for decades now, and the timing on when the Bering crossing was open doesn't agree with anything I've seen espoused in recent years. The inland route probably de-iced c. 13,500 BP, and the coastal route by 17,000 BP give or take. And most mDNA evidence has suggested that the coastal route was used, so the timing's not only fine for humans in Mexico by 13,000 BP, but even a few millenia earlier.
  I'm guessing the research was phrased more as "here's additional evidence against Clovis-first and for an earlier date" and the reporters added some sloppy wording around it to sensationalize things.
  
  --
  rage, rage against the dying of the light
36. Re:Fake News by RockDoctor · 2017-09-03 23:16 · Score: 1
  
  And who did they conquer, and so on?
  
  The elements, and the wildlife. Which would be non-trivial accomplishments for your average lardball ultra-survivalist with a ton of hardware and no cellphone coverage, but is even more of an accomplishment for a man with a pair of hands and a brain.
  
  --
  Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
37. Re: Fake News by RockDoctor · 2017-09-03 23:23 · Score: 1
  
  Vikings were first? Seriously?
  Being unduly generous to the AC, she might be misremembering a speculation popular a few years ago which suggested that Neanderthal or early Cro-Magnons from the Lusitania/ Galicia/ Pays Basque/ Aquitaine / Brittany region could have possibly island- an iceberg hopped across the Atlantic by kayaking on fishing expeditions that went wrong. And that could have happened 20kyr ago. It's not impossible, but it is a big ask. And calling them "Vikings" is ... peculiar.
  
  --
  Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
38. Re:Fake News by RockDoctor · 2017-09-03 23:26 · Score: 1
  
  The only natives are in the ocean.
  Hydrothermal springs, if you ask me. Damn these eukaryotes and their choking oxygenic toxic waste !
  
  --
  Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
39. Re:Fake News by RockDoctor · 2017-09-03 23:32 · Score: 1
  
  the Bering Sea, even in summer, is too far north to be survivable on a raft....
  Do you have evidence to support this proposition? In particular, if your experimental set up starts with people who have spent their whole lives, for generations past, living in the glacial Siberian NE.
  You might not be able to survive on a raft in the Bering sea tomorrow. That doesn't mean that its impossible, only that you don't know how to survive in Bering sea conditions.
  
  --
  Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
40. Re:Fake News by RockDoctor · 2017-09-04 00:28 · Score: 1
  
  I'm guessing the research was phrased more as "here's additional evidence against Clovis-first and for an earlier date" and the reporters added some sloppy wording around it to sensationalize things.
  Why guess. Schwit1 provided a direct link to the paper. You can read it for yourself. In fact, this is the less interesting bit of what they say :
  
  The oldest closed system U/Th age comes from around 21 mm above the pelvis defining the terminus ante quem for the pelvis to 11311±370 y BP. However, the skeleton might be considerable older, probably as old as 13 ky BP as indicated by the speleothem stable isotope data.
  Which seems perfectly reasonable to me (I'm both a geologist and a caver. Allowing about 2kyr for 21mm of stalagmite growth is good for me. They have other isotope data to bolster this estimate, but I'm happy already.)
  But that is not by any means the most interesting part of the abstract.
  You mention that you like the coastal route prospect. So do I - have done for years. It's not credible to me that the people who populated the China-Korea-Russia-Kamchatka regions didn't do it without having at least fishing craft. And at that point, island-hopping along the Aleutians or across the Bering Strait becomes quite feasible (one summer, Ugh established a summer camp on that island on the horizon, and got good salmon. Next summer, Ugh, his brother and their wife started the camp earlier, stocked more, and over-wintered. Lather, rinse, repeat. Every so often, someone gets storm-blasted over the horizon, survives, lands to carry out repairs, then makes their way home ; an over-horizon link is made.) Once they get to the Alaska coast then essentially the same toolkit (material and behaviour) can carry them down the coast as fast as they want.
  The big problem with such a scenario is that at say 20kyr ago, the sea level was 50+m lower than today, so any intermediate camps they made along the coast are now 50m below sealevel. Hard for archaeology. But not impossible.
  Which is the interesting bit of the paper. The REALLY interesting bit.
  Have you read the abstract yet? No, go on, I'm teasing you. You've got the link. Do it!
  
  Here we use U-series techniques for dating a stalagmite overgrowing the pelvis of a human skeleton discovered in the submerged Chan Hol cave.
  Get that? "submerged".
  This skeleton was discovered by recreational cave divers, and came to the attention of researchers via social media posts showing a ~80% complete skeleton. (Props to the discoverers Valentina Cucchiara and Nick Poole (Liquid Jungle) and Thomas Spamberg for taking photographs not specimens.) Unfortunately between discovery and being able to organise a properly equipped excavation dive, someone robbed the site, stealing around 70% of the skeleton and leaving only small amounts (~10%) to work on. Since finger and fingertip bones were found, if it weren't for the robbery, there would be a hugely better dataset. Potentially even mDNA from within the teeth. Gone. Spilt milk.
  The encouraging sign is that recreational divers in the area are very aware of the potential importance of these discoveries, and responsible enough to report them. That means that eventually we will start to find better data from the region. and that eventually should provide the data to clarify if the "coastal route" hypothesis is correct.
  A complicating factor is that this discovery was made on the Caribbean coast of Mexico, in an area known for "blue hole" diving. That prospect isn't present on the Pacific coast. But eventually there will be exploration work on that coast too. Hell, if I could afford it, I'd be tempted to take my gags over for a bubble too.
  But that East Coast location simply means that the arrival of humans on the west coast (or inland even) must have happened even earlier.
  
  Clovis-first has been out o
  
  --
  Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
41. Re: Fake News by cowdung · 2017-09-05 10:40 · Score: 1
  
  The Inca and Aztec empires in the south, and groups like the Iroquois Confederacy in the north...
  You mean the Inca in the South and the Aztec in the North.
  You know the Aztecs lived in North America right? (Mexico is in North America)
  Aztecs -> North (some Central)
  Mayan -> Central (some North)
  Inca -> South
  Of course there were more civilizations in what today is US and Canada as well. Also further in South America.
42. Re:Fake News by Anonymous+Cow+Ward · 2017-09-07 04:14 · Score: 1
  
  Why are you listing statistics about American native people when the GP was talking about Canadian ones?
  
  --
  Examine even your most deeply held beliefs. Nobody is always right.
So within the error bars from the last one by drinkypoo · 2017-08-31 22:27 · Score: 4, Interesting

The skeleton of the Clovis childâ"which experts determined belonged to a young boy about one to one-and-a-half years oldâ"was discovered in 1968 in the Anzick burial site in western Montana. Dozens of ochre-covered stone tools found at the site were consistent with Clovis technology, and radiocarbon dating revealed that the skeleton was approximately 12,600 years old.

--
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
1. Re:So within the error bars from the last one by Attila+Dimedici · 2017-08-31 23:39 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  The sentence from the article which set off my "put this in the maybe column" reaction was this one "Only 1 to 2 percent of the collected DNA was human," When combined with my knowledge from other sources that, in general, DNA older than 10,000 years is unrecoverable makes me wonder how reliable these DNA tests were. The final thing which keeps this in the "maybe" column is the fact that the central argument for the Clovis people being from Europe is that there are tools with similar design features to the distinctive "Clovis" tools in Europe, but not in Asia.
  
  --
  The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
2. Re:So within the error bars from the last one by Freischutz · 2017-09-01 01:07 · Score: 2
  
  The sentence from the article which set off my "put this in the maybe column" reaction was this one "Only 1 to 2 percent of the collected DNA was human," When combined with my knowledge from other sources that, in general, DNA older than 10,000 years is unrecoverable makes me wonder how reliable these DNA tests were. The final thing which keeps this in the "maybe" column is the fact that the central argument for the Clovis people being from Europe is that there are tools with similar design features to the distinctive "Clovis" tools in Europe, but not in Asia.
  I beg to differ, one can recover DNA much older than 10k years. The Frauenhofer institute has sequenced Neanderthal DNA from fossilised bone and teeth that is at least 35-40k years old. The Frauenhofer team sequenced the Denisovan genome from a single finger bone not much bigger than a blueberry. Such old DNA is very fragmented and has lots of errors but if you sequence the same specimen often enough (IIRC they sequenced their first Neanderthal genome something like 30 times) you can eliminate the vast majority of errors.
3. Re:So within the error bars from the last one by ColdWetDog · 2017-09-01 03:17 · Score: 1
  
  Cool story, bro.
  You have to wonder about folks who know so little of the technology that they are using to try to up end history-as-we-know-it that they place the majority of their thesis on 'data' that is simply artifact from the data collection process (those linear lines you see all over towed sonar scans and the occasional square 'mountain' or 'structure' that the scans create due to limited resolution).
  Tart things up with a neat intro from a pilfered copy of After Effects and you have just upended thousands of hours of hard academic work.
  Science is easy!
  
  --
  Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
4. Re:So within the error bars from the last one by RockDoctor · 2017-09-04 00:31 · Score: 1
  
  I beg to differ, one can recover DNA much older than 10k years.
  
  The limit for recovery of sequenceable DNA is around 400kyr - from a horse(-ish), IIRC.
  
  --
  Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
5. Re:So within the error bars from the last one by RockDoctor · 2017-09-04 00:39 · Score: 1
  
  The sentence from the article which set off my "put this in the maybe column" reaction was this one "Only 1 to 2 percent of the collected DNA was human,"
  
  This can probably be assigned to the actions of one or two (presently unidentified) people.
  When the skeleton was discovered it was about 80% complete, including some lovely dense molar teeth in the skull. Between the discovery dive and the excavation dive programme (you need things like Teflon bags to avoid DNA contamination, and rigid boxes to protect the bones against impact with walls, floor or roof ; not part of a normal dive kit) someone (or sometwo ; I'd go for the two, despite the hazards associated) stole the skull and about 70% of the skeleton.
  That might make you angry. It makes me absolutely fucking livid, because the person who did it was a skilled cave diver - a category I attempted to join but wasn't up to scratch.
  
  --
  Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
Names by JaredOfEuropa · 2017-08-31 22:44 · Score: 1

So the guy is dubbed "young man of Chan Hol" (which sounds like the start of a bad limerick), but the two ladies are called Naia and Eve. Were they wearing dog tags or something?

--
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
1. Re:Names by dreamchaser · 2017-08-31 22:53 · Score: 2
  
  It is kind of like someone calling themself JaredOfEuropa. Names are all arbitrary and made up.
2. Re:Names by turkeydance · 2017-08-31 23:01 · Score: 1
  
  they had imbedded RFID. that's how the UFO aliens kept track of their slaves
3. Re:Names by Jack_the_Tripper · 2017-08-31 23:29 · Score: 1
  
  They named him Chico de Chan Hoi me thinks...
4. Re:Names by Anonymous Coward · 2017-09-01 00:00 · Score: 5, Funny
  
  There was a young man of Chan Hol
  Who went to the debutante ball
  He met Naia and Eve
  And said: By your leave
  My stalagmite will be doing it all
Re:Up your creationists! by jfern · 2017-08-31 23:25 · Score: 1

Young earth creationists say the universe is younger than some 9,550 year living tree roots.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Re:"How did he get there?" by Vitus+Wagner · 2017-08-31 23:30 · Score: 2

Sailing across Pacific.
Re:"How did he get there?" by K.+S.+Kyosuke · 2017-08-31 23:41 · Score: 1

by Vitus Wagner
User name almost checks out!

--
Ezekiel 23:20
Alternative explanation by Hognoxious · 2017-08-31 23:54 · Score: 3, Funny

stalagmite that had grown through the pelvic bone.
I reckon they found the world's first buttplug.

--
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
1. Re:Alternative explanation by RockDoctor · 2017-09-04 00:44 · Score: 1
  
  You would do. However, the actual data clearly shows that the stalagmite was formed after skeletalisation of the pelvis.
  
  --
  Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
Like the ex-President by Anonymous Coward · 2017-09-01 00:05 · Score: 1

You're saying the Young Man of Chan Hol followed the same path as Obama? Born in Africa, came to the US via Indonesia?
Re:Up your creationists! by Custard+Horse · 2017-09-01 00:22 · Score: 2

Or to summarise: Young earth creationists are wrong because, God! And you can't argue with God lest you disappear in a puff of smoke.
Re:How'd they get there? by jellomizer · 2017-09-01 00:35 · Score: 2

But what would drive people with enough population to all get into the boats and just boat to the east aimlessly in hope to find a large land mass to live on?
Columbus was finding an alternate route to India to avoid Italian taxes.
The vikings were further north, where they could travel to iceland without killing themselves. Both after had arrived had then traveled back.

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If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Re:One thing to do! by tbuddy · 2017-09-01 00:53 · Score: 1

Got a laugh. Who's wasting mod points on first posts?
Re:How'd they get there? by arpad1 · 2017-09-01 01:05 · Score: 1

Hunter-gatherers live at pretty low density so when the population of an area hits some critical mass the kids find out mom and dad would rather they get their own place. So you pack up your stone tools, shelters, clothes and preserved foods and go where you're pretty sure there aren't any other folks to dispute your desire to settle down.
If you're in Siberia that means going north and east until you get to where the land curves due east and you end up in Alaska. Getting there's no problem because you use boats to move along shore just like mom and dad do. If Alaska's free of folks who got there ahead of you well, you just keep going. Unless you can kill them of course and take the land they owned.

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Minutus cantorum, minutus balorum, minutus carborata descendum pantorum.
Pre Clovis, Pre-12.5k People in the Americas by Anonymous Coward · 2017-09-01 01:06 · Score: 1

When I took archaeology back in the 90s Tom Dillahay found archaeological remains of humans at Monte Verde, Chile, that dated from 14k to 18.5k years ago. The archaeological orthodoxy, nicknamed The Clovis Police, all defending their dissertations, attacked him for the pre-12.5k date. Dina Dincauze was the chief of the Clovis Police, and I mention her because she went down to Monte Verde and wrote a paper saying yes, Dillahay's work is sound and there were people here that long ago. Not everyone has abandoned their original position, so you're still seeing people attacking pre-12.5k dates. But if you've been reading the material for the last 20 years then this should not come as much of a shock.
Re:How'd they get there? by nospam007 · 2017-09-01 01:08 · Score: 1

"But what would drive people with enough population to all get into the boats and just boat to the east aimlessly in hope to find a large land mass to live on?"
Aimlessly?
Remember, you can see Russia from Sarah Palin's house. Also the sea was probably frozen at that time.
Re:How'd they get there? by Anonymous Coward · 2017-09-01 01:15 · Score: 1

Boats. It's been a known thing for a long time.
He has also heard he can get an authentic burrito if he goes further south.
Native = born there by Roger+W+Moore · 2017-09-01 01:32 · Score: 1, Informative

Everyone in the Americas is technically an immigrant or a descendant of immigrants.
No, anyone born in the Americas is a native. So while I am native to Europe my kids are native to North America. Native literally means a person associated to a place by birth and comes from the latin verb "to be born".
1. Re:Native = born there by K.+S.+Kyosuke · 2017-09-01 01:41 · Score: 1
  
  I got that covered by the "descendant of immigrants" part.
  
  --
  Ezekiel 23:20
2. Re:Native = born there by Roger+W+Moore · 2017-09-01 05:02 · Score: 1
  
  Yes, but what you get wrong is that the "descendants of immigrants" are natives by definition and it is completely wrong to say that "The only natives are in Africa...".
3. Re:Native = born there by Marxist+Hacker+42 · 2017-09-01 05:35 · Score: 1
  
  Depends where. In the Pacific Northwest, warfare had descended to the point of being celebrated with sports (Shiny Ball, a game played on a huge field, and it was a more violent game than rugby) and Potlatch (where chiefs would compete to see who was the most generous while everybody had a good feast, only to starve the next winter if your chief was TOO generous- the only form of warfare I know where the declared winners could suffer more than the losers).
  But you're right- Peaceful is not a word I'd use to describe the T'linket/Chinookan/Salish trade alliance. Uneasy bedfellows who needed each other to survive is more like it.
  
  --
  SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
Canada? by Roger+W+Moore · 2017-09-01 01:51 · Score: 4, Insightful

...to settle what is now the United States and places beyond to the south.
I'm now curious to know whether Canada's aboriginal peoples came from somewhere else or whether knowledge of geography in the US has declined to the point that you no longer know where even Canada is.
1. Re:Canada? by Oswald+McWeany · 2017-09-01 04:17 · Score: 1
  
  I'm now curious to know whether Canada's aboriginal peoples came from somewhere else or whether knowledge of geography in the US has declined to the point that you no longer know where even Canada is.
  Canada doesn't really exist. It's just a ongoing joke created by Hollywood. As if people would really live that far North surrounded by snow, Polar Bears and Elves making toys for Santa.
  
  --
  "That's the way to do it" - Punch
Oldest? by Humbubba · 2017-09-01 01:54 · Score: 5, Interesting

These are the oldest known human remains in the Americas? How about the "Arlington Woman", who's 13,000 year old bones were found in the 1960s on a Channel Island of Ventura County, Southern California. http://articles.latimes.com/1999/apr/11/news/mn-26401
Evidence of humans in the Americas go back further. A 14,000 year old village was found on Triquet Island, northwest of Victoria Canada. http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/one-oldest-north-american-settlements-found-180962750/
Controversially, James M. Adovasio, Dennis Stanford and Joseph and Lynn McAvoy; and on the wilder side, Albert Goodyear and Tom Demere say there is evidence for humans in the Americas that goes back much further. Their evidence and theories are not generally accepted. Good reads though.
Re:Up your creationists! by hey! · 2017-09-01 02:02 · Score: 2

Well, what difference would it make if it were yesterday?
Some theologians believe the universe is continually created, moment by moment, in the mind of God. On the other hand, some atheists believe we are living in a simulation being run in some kind of meta-universe, which is much the same thing. Every tick of the cosmic CPU clock creates a new universe according to some set of rules which use the prior universe as input. There is no logical need to have run the simulation from the postulated starting point.
From a scientific standpoint these are pointless ideas because they lead to no negatable propositions; the positivist philosophers would say they "contain no cognitive content". Except possibly not in the case of simulation. If the Cosmic Programmer is not infallible, it could in principle be possible to detect flaws in his initial conditions if he didn't start the simulation at the big bang. This would manifest itself in the realization that the universe is logically impossible as a consequence of the past.

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Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Brilliant! by Paul+Fernhout · 2017-09-01 02:33 · Score: 1

You provide a great insight: "This would manifest itself in the realization that the universe is logically impossible as a consequence of the past."
Of course, maybe that is what the debuggers in black are for? :-)

--
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
Re:How'd they get there? by angel'o'sphere · 2017-09-01 03:16 · Score: 1

Erm .... the sea level was 100m lower than now.
You could simply walk over on land, which was covered by glaciers, which added another few 1000m height.

--
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Re:How'd they get there? by HBI · 2017-09-01 04:45 · Score: 1

You mean "Portuguese and Ottoman taxes".

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HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
Re:How'd they get there? by Anonymous Coward · 2017-09-01 05:23 · Score: 1

Remember, you can see Russia from Sarah Palin's house.
You can see Russia from Tina Fey's house, not Sarah Palin's house.
Re:"How did he get there?" by Marxist+Hacker+42 · 2017-09-01 05:58 · Score: 2

Using common technology from 13,000 years ago? Not so much across, as around- the current would take you North to Japan, then east across the Bering Sea, then down the coast of North America to get you to Mexico.
In other words, the current is flowing very much the wrong way for the journey you describe.
The OPPOSITE journey, from Mexico to Indonesia, however, is quite short indeed.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/feb/04/castaway-story-backing-from-mexican/

--
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
Re:How'd they get there? by denzacar · 2017-09-01 06:17 · Score: 1

But what would drive people with enough population to all get into the boats and just boat to the east aimlessly in hope to find a large land mass to live on?
Well... considering the multiple females present together with a young and viral male, I'd say that there is plenty of evidence in favor of the "blackjack hypothesis".

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Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Re:How'd they get there? by denzacar · 2017-09-01 07:56 · Score: 1

Damn auto-correct. Virile not viral... Ah, screw the whole thing.

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Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
You say cave, but we all know it was a tunnel by TheOuterLinux · 2017-09-02 04:03 · Score: 1

El Coyote
Re:Quit Pushing the Land Bridge Theory by RockDoctor · 2017-09-04 00:58 · Score: 1

The Hawaiians got to Hawaii about (IIRC) 500 CE, after several thousands of years of well-detailed expansion of the Polynesian peoples across the tropical Pacific from Taiwan/ Formosa. (Settlement of PNG was much, much earlier.)
The postulated "land bridge settlement" of North America took place ten thousand years earlier, across Arctic (not tropical) waters. I'd suggest you review your Arctic marine survival training course and compare it with your tropical training course if you can't remember the difference.
As it happens, there are plenty of people who consider an island-hopping settlement route to be perfectly feasible. The big problem is that the sea level then would have been 50 to 100m lower, putting their "hopping" settlements, encampments and even broken boats that far below sea level. Archaeological evidence is almost completely lacking. (The Channel Islands evidence someone mentioned is not incompatible with a settelment over a land bridge and through central Canada, BTW. Just pre-Clovis.) It's also almost completely lacking in the "ice free corridor" and Bering Straits, but where these are on land, archaeology is far cheaper than needing to use "technical" diving to search for it.
This is probably not the story you'd get from watching TV programmes. Because producers like neat, simple stories. With answers.

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Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"