Look at Göbekli Tepe as well. The general trend seems to be pushing human history back, which makes sense as the human species has existed in its near modern fo

Look at Göbekli Tepe as well. The general trend seems to be pushing human history back, which makes sense as the human species has existed in its near modern form for quite a bit longer than the history we know. There is no reason to believe these ancient humans lacked critical cognitive faculties that we have. From what I've read of the debate on humans in North and South America, it seems that both sides are ignoring the possibility of multiple colonizations and that earlier colonizations may have either failed entirely or resulted in only very small populations in limited areas. If genetic evidence suggests that Native Americans are descendants of a stock that migrated here around 10K years ago, maybe they were just a later migration that really "took" and expanded across the whole land mass (until Europeans). Or maybe the newcomers or their diseases exterminated the existing indigenous peoples? Maybe the story of the last colonization of these lands has occurred multiple times? If so, we're really screwed when the extraterrestrials arrive.