 |
Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 81: May-Jun 1992 |
|
| 
|
Long Before The Vikings And Polynesians
Scene: Orogrande Cave, New Mexico. R. MacNeish, a respected archeologist from the Andover Foundation for Archeological Research, has charted a 30,00040,000-year-old paleonotological record of ancient camels, horses, tapirs, and other fauna found while excavating this cave. Intermixed with the animal bones are layers of charcoal (easily carbondated) and hints of human occupation. But don't we all know that humans did not arrive in the New World until 12,000 years ago? Nevertheless, there they are: (1) rude human tools; and (2) a possible human palm print. Mainstream archeologists are stonewalling again; there must be some mistake! (Appenzeller, Tim; " A High Five from the First New World Settlers?" Science, 255:920, 1992.)
Scene: Inside Amerind cells. DNA analyses of the mitochondria present in the cells of North American Indian populations indicate that the Eskimo-Aleut and Nadene populations arrived about 7,500 years ago. The more geographically widespread Amerind population, however, seems to be descended from two separate influxes; the first about 30,000 years ago, the second about 10,000 years ago. D. Wallace, from Emory University, surmises that the sharply defined rise of the Clovis culture, conventionally dated from 12,000 years ago, may have resulted from the second Amerind immigration. (Lewin, Roger; "Mitochondria Tell the Tale of Migrations to America," New Scientist, p. 16, February 22, 1992.)
Comment. The 30,000-year date, however, is consistent with MacNeish's discoveries at the Orogrande Cave. Hang in there archeology anomalists, the 12,000year paradigm is melting in the warm spring sun!
Scene: In the Bluefish Caves in the northern Yukon.
"Arctic caves in the northern Yukon have yielded apparent bone tools carved 24,000 years ago, more than 13,000 years earlier than the earliest confirmed human habitation of the Americas, a Canadian archeologist [R.E. Morian] reported yesterday."
(Petit, Charles; "24,000-Year-Old Tools Found in Yukon," San Francisco Chronicle, February 10, 1992. Cr. D.H. Palmer.)
Comment. These bone tools "appear" to be worked by humans, but it is always possible that they were naturally frac tured; and this is what conservative archeologists routinely proclaim.