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  • #46
    Originally posted by Julie View Post
    Well, I found this very interesting and I'm going to post it. This excavation site is about 60 miles from where I live:

    Since 1998, archaeologists at a site in Allendale County have been making discoveries that have the potential to rewrite the history - or more precisely, the prehistory - of our state.

    The Topper site, named for a local resident who first found ancient artifacts at this location that borders the eastern shore of the Savannah River, has been the subject of major media attention because of the unearthing of evidence that human habitation in North America predates traditional estimates.

    One of the staple beliefs of paleoamerican research - the term "paleo" is derived from the Greek word for "ancient" - holds that the first Americans appeared no earlier than 13,000 years ago; these early humans, it is thought, originated in Northeast Asia and crossed over to our continent after the last Ice Age.

    Labeled the Clovis culture by scientists because the first evidence of these ancestors of the indigenous people of North America was found in the 1930s near present-day Clovis, N.M., these prehistoric humans were noted for their creation of distinctly shaped stone spear points used in the hunting of bison and mastodon and other early mammals.

    The Topper site offers rich evidence of Clovis occupation in the Central Savannah River Area; in fact, the team responsible for excavating the site, members of the South Carolina Institute of Archaeology and Anthropology, think that they have discovered at Topper an early quarry used by the Clovis people to gather the materials - in this case, a type of rock known as chert - for fashioning their stone tools.

    Just its identification as a Clovis site would have been enough to make Topper an archaeological location of intense scientific interest, but a decision made by Dr. Albert Goodyear, the founder and director of the Allendale Paleoindian Expedition, to dig deeper than is generally the case at most such sites led to hypotheses that have made headlines.

    In 2004, Goodyear and his team dug four meters below the surface and found artifacts in a layer of burnt plant remains that were subsequently tested via radiocarbon dating. The finding that this charcoal deposit is as old as 50,000 years may lend credence to the theory that human habitation on this continent dates much, much earlier than anyone supposed. Goodyear himself asserts that "Topper is the oldest radiocarbon-dated site in North America."

    The verdict is still out, however, as to whether this evidence alone contradicts the long-held belief that early humans first arrived in America from Asia 13,000 years ago.

    Many scientists argue that there is still not sufficient proof - incontrovertible material evidence - to support that contention.

    Still, this pre-Clovis claim is tantalizing - and the search for further proof is under way, thanks to the ongoing work of the S.C. Institute of Archaeology and Anthropology at USC. Excavation continues unabated, with the active encouragement of the Clariant Corporation, which owns 2,000 acres in Allendale County, including the Topper site.

    This Swiss-based company not only decided to provide camping facilities for the staff of the Southeastern Paleoamerican Survey but also made a significant financial contribution to the construction of a pavilion that shelters some of the most critical area of excavation - a viewing deck was added at this spot for the convenience of visitors in 2007.

    Anyone can take part in this history-making effort to rewrite our state's prehistorical past.

    Each summer, members of the public can join the "expedition" and participate in the dig by paying a largely tax-deductible fee; in return, they get to "work" the site and learn more about excavation techniques and artifact identification. For more information, visit TOPPER SITE- ALLENDALE-EXPEDITION REGISTRATION.

    Dr. Mack is a Carolina Trustee Professor at USC Aiken.

    Local site rewrites history of early humans in America | Aiken Standard | Aiken, SC
    Whoa! 50K is 'way pre-anything, including Solutrean. Off I go.

    Prof

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    • #47
      Off you go ? But...but...off you go where ?!

      Comment


      • #48
        I'm back. Took a look at photos of some of the artefacts associated with the 50K charcoal layer. A couple of them, one in particular, look like they could be chert tools, but very, very archaic; nothing like Clovis (or whatever) culture. Even the two good ones could just be rocks, & the others looked like plain old rocks to me.

        The stuff in the original dig (higher up & newer, but still older than 12000K) was much better. There were some fairly convincing zooform (in this case, bird) hand tools & one really terrific heavy-duty chopper-style cutting core tool with a clovis-style fuller that looked just set to take a haft & be ready ready for immediate use. Wouldn't consider myself underprepared with the thing on my bedside table.

        So, I'm feeling better about this Eastern pre-clovis business, but the 50K stuff isn't very convincing. Maybe an old forest fire?

        Prof

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        • #49
          I dunno, no confirmation on that data yet. I've been looking.

          And, the DNA I talked about shows that a recent analysis of several genomic loci, including mtDNA, suggested that the Americas could have been founded by as few as 80 effective individuals, and even the largest values in the credible interval only comprise a few hundred effective individuals.

          And I didn't want to reveal this last part....but I will....the 5th (x factor) DNA matches to....to.....France/Spain....arrrghh..

          Yes, that's right....I have little French genes floating around in my body.

          Comment


          • #50
            Originally posted by Julie View Post
            I dunno, no confirmation on that data yet. I've been looking.

            And, the DNA I talked about shows that a recent analysis of several genomic loci, including mtDNA, suggested that the Americas could have been founded by as few as 80 effective individuals, and even the largest values in the credible interval only comprise a few hundred effective individuals.

            And I didn't want to reveal this last part....but I will....the 5th (x factor) DNA matches to....to.....France/Spain....arrrghh..

            Yes, that's right....I have little French genes floating around in my body.
            Ms. Julie:

            Back awake now. I don't like the ultra-small population single migration stuff because it offends basic statistics & generations of redneck inbreeding jokes. Most Native Americans (I will not use that term ever, ever, ever again) don't have cleft palates & an eye in the middle of their foreheads. I might change my mind when I know more about the subject, but right now I reject it because I'm prejudiced in favor of ignorant worship of likelihood.

            There are tons of stuff on the Topper site available. Best gold mine so far is to google "Topper Site Archeology." My lovely bedside burglar-chopper is available at allendale-expedition.net/pubs; "A Probable Hafted Uniface from the Clovis Occupation at the Topper Site, 38AL23, AllendaleCounty, South Carolina" D. Shane Miller and Albert C. Goodyear

            Pictures of the 2 best 50K thingies found beneath the original dig are in an article "Impossibly Old America?" under the same initial search heading.

            Bah. You're frowning at Ligurian Cro-Magnon ancestry, not French. Wurnt no Frayunch bayuck thayun. Further, the French wouldn't have jumped into skin boats & floated the floes to North America. They would have surrendered. Go paint a cave, lady.

            Prof

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            • #51
              Originally posted by Prof View Post
              Ms. Julie:

              Back awake now. I don't like the ultra-small population single migration stuff because it offends basic statistics & generations of redneck inbreeding jokes. Most Native Americans (I will not use that term ever, ever, ever again) don't have cleft palates & an eye in the middle of their foreheads. I might change my mind when I know more about the subject, but right now I reject it because I'm prejudiced in favor of ignorant worship of likelihood.

              There are tons of stuff on the Topper site available. Best gold mine so far is to google "Topper Site Archeology." My lovely bedside burglar-chopper is available at allendale-expedition.net/pubs; "A Probable Hafted Uniface from the Clovis Occupation at the Topper Site, 38AL23, AllendaleCounty, South Carolina" D. Shane Miller and Albert C. Goodyear

              Pictures of the 2 best 50K thingies found beneath the original dig are in an article "Impossibly Old America?" under the same initial search heading.

              Bah. You're frowning at Ligurian Cro-Magnon ancestry, not French. Wurnt no Frayunch bayuck thayun. Further, the French wouldn't have jumped into skin boats & floated the floes to North America. They would have surrendered. Go paint a cave, lady.

              Prof
              Yes, I've been up half the nite reading about the Topper Site. My father was born and raised in Beaufort, SC.

              Reading this is much more interesting than painting a cave. ;)

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              • #52
                Originally posted by Julie View Post
                Yes, I've been up half the nite reading about the Topper Site. My father was born and raised in Beaufort, SC.

                Reading this is much more interesting than painting a cave. ;)
                Check this puppy out. Feeling telepathic now...

                Note that these are periglacial. I still like my E->W South Atlantic Passage, although I ought to revise the date to ~4K. Whatever culture involved oughta have monumental architecture.

                Prof
                Attached Files
                Last edited by Prof; 18 Jan 10,, 19:07. Reason: add-on

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                • #53
                  Originally posted by Mihais View Post
                  Prof,the Black Sea area remains important.On a side note our own scholars tend to give a frack about it.After all,we might be one of the oldest populations in Europe,but who cares.Now the next question about your Indians,did you find anything about the period when the presumed Europeans(mind you,not modern Indo-Europeans)mixed with the rest.
                  3% means that:a.the Solutrean were few(makes sense,their population base was small from the start,same as with the Scandinavians 1000 years ago)
                  b.a lil' genocide happened
                  Mihais:

                  Gloom. :(

                  I now find that there were two Black Sea flooding events. The first, which was apparently very large, occurred ~12-16K ago. The 2nd, which was smaller & submerged much less land, occurred ~7.6K ago. Apparently this is the one that drowned the architectural remains found by the "Raise the Titanic" guy. So, the big one happened late Pleistocene when people were wandering around here & there but without settled agricultural communities. The little one happened early Holocene when people were settling down & "hunting" their animals out of flocks & pens & "gathering" their plants from garden plots.

                  The first was big enough to be a cultural catastrophe that could displace organized communities but at that time there wasn't much of anything around sitting still enough to be displaced. The second apparently wasn't big enough to do much of anything on a large enough scale to get large stationary groups of folks moving.

                  Pooh. Another dream shattered.

                  Prof

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                  • #54
                    I still think Beringia should not go without closer analyzation. Isn't this the area that is under 300 ft. of water now?

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                    • #55
                      Originally posted by Julie View Post
                      I still think Beringia should not go without closer analyzation. Isn't this the area that is under 300 ft. of water now?
                      Well, Beringia is a name we haven't used yet. As a matter of fact some people have gone to the extreme of subdividing it into an East & West Beringia, apparently based on climate, or maybe predominent vegetation (I think that West Beringia was supposed to be more of a vacation spot). What Beringia really is (or, actually, was, since it ain't there anymore, being currently under a variety of oceans), is a fairly huge chunk of land about the size of Texas that constituted the "land bridge" from Asia to Alaska when sea level was universally lower due to glaciation.

                      To me, "land bridge" always conjured up this image of a narrow spit of land with some skin-clad folks on the western side of it saying something like "If we dare to cross this mysterious thing, will we be in a whole new world?", when they no doubt didn't see anything special about it at all. Just some undefined big-horizoned place they were wandering around in, straying back & forth witlessly into & out of what we now call America, & doing it all by accident.

                      I do think that's the route most of our PaleoIndians took. I just don't buy the "one small group just one time" scenario. What was there to keep everybody else out?

                      Prof

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                      • #56
                        Originally posted by Prof View Post
                        I just don't buy the "one small group just one time" scenario. What was there to keep everybody else out? Prof
                        With the evidence I've read, I'm tending more towards "why" than a "what." To figure this, you have to put their shoes on, and imagine those environmental condtions at the time.

                        What were they seeking to migrate in the first place? Other humans, or warmer weather, to survive, due to the severe weather changes taking place at that time? Would this expedition called upon more than 100-200 peoples at a time, to scout for whatever they were looking for? Maybe once they crossed, the conditions kept them from turning back, or they became lost? There are all sorts of variables to support a handful of people in this scenario.

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                        • #57
                          Originally posted by Julie View Post
                          With the evidence I've read, I'm tending more towards "why" than a "what." To figure this, you have to put their shoes on, and imagine those environmental condtions at the time.

                          What were they seeking to migrate in the first place? Other humans, or warmer weather, to survive, due to the severe weather changes taking place at that time? Would this expedition called upon more than 100-200 peoples at a time, to scout for whatever they were looking for? Maybe once they crossed, the conditions kept them from turning back, or they became lost? There are all sorts of variables to support a handful of people in this scenario.
                          Ms. Julie:

                          I like the "...put their shoes on..." idea. What I get when I do, though, is this:

                          The weather conditions were, to them, normal weather. I understand that an 80F day in England is a scorcher, but that's pleasantly balmy in our neck of the woods. These guys woke up in the icy wind & said, "Ho hum, another day at the office." The weather changes occurred over thousands of years. The words "expedition", "scout" & "...looking for..." probably didn't apply. What these folks did for a living at the time was wandering around in small groups looking for food & shelter. That was just their job, like a squirrel's job is to eat, gather food, make & curl up in nests, breed & so forth. Not too different from what we do now, just a little more out in the weather. But they didn't know that.

                          We describe the movements as migrations, but the people involved probably didn't, at least the folks taking the land routes. I also doubt that the groups ever thought of themselves as being lost. They were just doing more of the same old thing. No global or even enlarged regional perspective was possible. They were just wherever they were, & wherever that was had lots of food, good rocks & sticks, good water or it didn't. If it didn't, well, let's get movin'. Somewhere. Else. In some cases, "Else" was into Alaska. Or down the Western Seaboard.

                          I'm sure that they did trickle in in handsful. But I like to keep the plural ending attached. I find it inconceivable that only one of these small groups managed to stumble across an unmarked & undifferentiable border & survive the experience, since the experience would have been somewhat humdrum. At least for them.

                          Prof

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                          • #58
                            Originally posted by Prof View Post
                            Mihais:

                            Gloom. :(

                            I now find that there were two Black Sea flooding events. The first, which was apparently very large, occurred ~12-16K ago. The 2nd, which was smaller & submerged much less land, occurred ~7.6K ago. Apparently this is the one that drowned the architectural remains found by the "Raise the Titanic" guy. So, the big one happened late Pleistocene when people were wandering around here & there but without settled agricultural communities. The little one happened early Holocene when people were settling down & "hunting" their animals out of flocks & pens & "gathering" their plants from garden plots.

                            The first was big enough to be a cultural catastrophe that could displace organized communities but at that time there wasn't much of anything around sitting still enough to be displaced. The second apparently wasn't big enough to do much of anything on a large enough scale to get large stationary groups of folks moving.

                            Pooh. Another dream shattered.

                            Prof
                            Hmm,better solid knowledge than dreams.The one 12-16k ago looks suspect.But I presume it's in the global context of the end of the last glacial period.The end of the second coincides strangely with these guys:Cucuteni-Trypillian culture - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
                            Those who know don't speak
                            He said to them, "But now if you have a purse, take it, and also a bag; and if you don't have a sword, sell your cloak and buy one. Luke 22:36

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                            • #59
                              Originally posted by Mihais View Post
                              Hmm,better solid knowledge than dreams.The one 12-16k ago looks suspect.But I presume it's in the global context of the end of the last glacial period.The end of the second coincides strangely with these guys:Cucuteni-Trypillian culture - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
                              Mihais:

                              My lake->Black Sea flood->diaspora scenario is still wrecked but this is (oops, was) a really cool bunch of people. The wattle/daub houses fit just fine. I covet some of the pottery. I want wine cups like that. I will have wine cups like that. F*ck a bunch of crystal stemware. Those people obviously knew how to drink.

                              Prof

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                              • #60
                                Originally posted by Prof View Post
                                Mihais:

                                My lake->Black Sea flood->diaspora scenario is still wrecked but this is (oops, was) a really cool bunch of people. The wattle/daub houses fit just fine. I covet some of the pottery. I want wine cups like that. I will have wine cups like that. F*ck a bunch of crystal stemware. Those people obviously knew how to drink.

                                Prof
                                I believe that I will take this to a local potter & see what she can do with it. I have some that are similar made by a friend's son, but he's stopped making pottery, & wasn't much of a hand at anything but straight glazes, not patterns.

                                Prof
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