Fossilised Feces and American Archaeology

[Steel Tiger]

From Science:

ARCHAEOLOGY:
DNA From Fossil Feces Breaks Clovis Barrier
Michael Balter

An international team reports online in Science this week what some experts consider the strongest evidence yet for an earlier peopling of the Americas: 14,000-year-old ancient DNA from fossilized human excrement (coprolites), found in caves in south-central Oregon.

http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/summary/320/5872/37


Of course, as is the nature of archaeology, and American archaeology in particular, the findings have been disputed.

However, there is a steady mounting of evidence that humans migrated to the Americas well before 12000 - 13000 bp, and hopefully people will begin to embrace new evidence rather than discount it is favour of probably outdated theories in the belief that it will protect their careers (most of these guys are tenured anyway).

 

[tellner]

The most prominent Oregon coprolites are on display in Salem. Some of them have been in the Legislature for a long, long time

Seriously, interesting article.

 

[Touch Of Death]

I saw a documentary stating that south America was already populated by pollynesians long before the Northern tribes descended and over-ran them.
Sean

 

[Steel Tiger]

I saw a documentary stating that south America was already populated by pollynesians long before the Northern tribes descended and over-ran them.
Sean

Yeah, the numbers coming out of South America are really old, maybe 20000 bp+. The problem is that there have been no comparable dates from the north. Of course, now most archaeologists accept that some form of migration from the Pacific occured in South America.

The big thing about tis information from Oregon is that there is evidence of exploitation of plants that newcomers to the area simply would noy have known about. It suggests that the coprolites come from a population that had been in the area for some time.

 

[Dave Leverich]

Wasn't the Clovis man genetically more similar to Caucasian as well? I remember the native nations requesting the remains back yet the archeologists saying in effect 'um, not one of yours' or such.

 

[Steel Tiger]

Wasn't the Clovis man genetically more similar to Caucasian as well? I remember the native nations requesting the remains back yet the archeologists saying in effect 'um, not one of yours' or such.

The general speculation is that there have been three possible waves of migration into North America. The first is old and these new discoveries may relate to that migration. The second is the Paleoindian migration. This is the one that has some links to the Clovis culture, but does not apparently continue through to a connection to modern Native Americans. They seem to be connected to a later migration, 4-6 thousand years later.

Of course, a major problem exists in that American archaeologists have fora long time considered the first migrations to have taken place with the opening of the passage between the glaciers in the Alaska area about 14-15 thousand years ago. This assumption really can hamper investigation. There are two reasons for this assumption. The first is that seemingly no evidence of prior migration has been found (but there are sites in Canada which call this into dispute), and the second is that the closest earlier opening of the passage is about 20-25 thousand years ago. No one was keen to stick their necks out for a long time and say a migration may hve occured at that time.

There is, of course, the coastal migration theory that is being suggested by the researchers in Oregon and a few other people (including the head of the Earth Sciences school at the Australian National University), but evidence for this theory is most likely underwater. This theory allows for migration at any time and does not rely on the periodic melting of enormous glacial icesheets.