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Abstract The timing and character of the Pleistocene peopling of the Americas are measured by the discovery of unequivocal artifacts from well-dated contexts.

Abstract The timing and character of the Pleistocene peopling of the Americas are measured by the discovery of unequivocal artifacts from well-dated contexts. We report the discovery of a well-dated artifact assemblage containing 14 stemmed projectile points from the Cooper’s Ferry site in western North America, dating to ~16,000 years ago. These stemmed points are several thousand years older than Clovis fluted points (~13,000 cal yr B.P.) and are ~2300 years older than stemmed points found previously at the site. These points date to the end of Marine Isotope Stage 2 when glaciers had closed off an interior land route into the Americas. This assemblage includes an array of stemmed projectile points that resemble pre-Jomon Late Upper Paleolithic tools from the northwestern Pacific Rim dating to ~20,000 to 19,000 years ago, leading us to hypothesize that some of the first technological traditions in the Americas may have originated in the region.

AlotOfReading 4y ago
I'll be honest, I don't know why this particular paper has caught HN's eye because it's not very sensational or anything. To contextualize this for those who may not follow the literature: This is a follow-up to a 2019 paper by the same authors detailing a new excavation that was conducted to address remaining questions/uncertainties that weren't resolved by the previous excavation. The dates are within their previous 2-sigma estimate, which strongly supports the prior results. Because the above isn't a very interesting argument, they go further and argue that this latest find has enough points to do something called typological classification and that analysis supports the long-standing argument that the "Western Stemmed Tradition" is related to a broader Pacific stemmed point tradition/complex. Other archaeologists have argued that the preclovis traditions were more likely to have been related to central asian / central siberian complexes, but there's been some issues with the predictions from that camp over the past few years. There isn't a definite answer, but most people lean towards the former.
- WaitWaitWha 4y ago
  To me this is interesting because it may further my nagging suspicion I had for quite some time (this is not my field of expertise). The Americas were discovered multiple times, from multiple direction, by multiple people. What order they were is only my vague guess except for the last one. Today children are taught that the Americas was settled by people crossing the frozen Bering Sea. But, this discovery further discredits this simplistic hypothesis. I think the Americas were settled numerous times from the Pacific Rim through boats, the Bering crossing on foot, and through more boats reasonably West Africa, and Northern Europe - all prior to Cristoforo Colombo.

AlotOfReading 4y ago

I'll be honest, I don't know why this particular paper has caught HN's eye because it's not very sensational or anything. To contextualize this for those who may not follow the literature: This is a follow-up to a 2019 paper by the same authors detailing a new excavation that was conducted to address remaining questions/uncertainties that weren't resolved by the previous excavation. The dates are within their previous 2-sigma estimate, which strongly supports the prior results. Because the above isn't a very interesting argument, they go further and argue that this latest find has enough points to do something called typological classification and that analysis supports the long-standing argument that the "Western Stemmed Tradition" is related to a broader Pacific stemmed point tradition/complex. Other archaeologists have argued that the preclovis traditions were more likely to have been related to central asian / central siberian complexes, but there's been some issues with the predictions from that camp over the past few years. There isn't a definite answer, but most people lean towards the former.

WaitWaitWha 4y ago
To me this is interesting because it may further my nagging suspicion I had for quite some time (this is not my field of expertise). The Americas were discovered multiple times, from multiple direction, by multiple people. What order they were is only my vague guess except for the last one. Today children are taught that the Americas was settled by people crossing the frozen Bering Sea. But, this discovery further discredits this simplistic hypothesis. I think the Americas were settled numerous times from the Pacific Rim through boats, the Bering crossing on foot, and through more boats reasonably West Africa, and Northern Europe - all prior to Cristoforo Colombo.