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> Some of the oldest human remains (possibly the oldest) in North America are actually on Santa Rosa Island There are several sites indicating human presence i

by sampo 4y ago

> Some of the oldest human remains (possibly the oldest) in North America are actually on Santa Rosa Island There are several sites indicating human presence in North America 20 000 - 30 000 years ago, inferred from campsites and broken animal bones. And in one case, human footprints: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/article/fossil-footprints-challenge-theory-when-people-first-arrived-americas https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/article/fossil-fo... And then there is this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cerutti_Mastodon_site https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cerutti_Mastodon_site But none of these very old sites contain remains of human bones.

BigCryo 4y ago
And don't forget whatever hominin was responsible for the cerrutti Mastodon site near San Diego... Almost certainly this hominin live near the coast and the evidence of it is almost all gone now
- Baeocystin 4y ago
  The shell midden I'm linking to is much, much more recent, but I do wonder if something like a buried-in-sediment offshore midden of similar type is the sort of evidence that would could theoretically find (relatively) easily if we started looking at submerged historic coastline in earnest. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whaleback_Shell_Midden https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whaleback_Shell_Midden
- AlotOfReading 4y ago
  It's incredibly unlikely that any hominins were responsible for Cerutti. McNabb [1] wrote a good article looking at what hominins could plausibly have created the site given what's known from elsewhere and the evidence that's been presented. The short answer is that there weren't any plausible candidates and most of the technologies necessary wouldn't be invented until modern humans did so long after the site is dated. The academic consensus on the original paper is is that it presented a genuinely ambiguous site where the authors simply overstated the strength of their argument because they were unfamiliar with modern analytical methodologies at the time. [1] https://doi.org/10.15184/aqy.2019.52 https://doi.org/10.15184/aqy.2019.52

by sampo 4y ago

BigCryo 4y ago

And don't forget whatever hominin was responsible for the cerrutti Mastodon site near San Diego... Almost certainly this hominin live near the coast and the evidence of it is almost all gone now

Baeocystin 4y ago
The shell midden I'm linking to is much, much more recent, but I do wonder if something like a buried-in-sediment offshore midden of similar type is the sort of evidence that would could theoretically find (relatively) easily if we started looking at submerged historic coastline in earnest. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whaleback_Shell_Midden https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whaleback_Shell_Midden
AlotOfReading 4y ago
It's incredibly unlikely that any hominins were responsible for Cerutti. McNabb [1] wrote a good article looking at what hominins could plausibly have created the site given what's known from elsewhere and the evidence that's been presented. The short answer is that there weren't any plausible candidates and most of the technologies necessary wouldn't be invented until modern humans did so long after the site is dated. The academic consensus on the original paper is is that it presented a genuinely ambiguous site where the authors simply overstated the strength of their argument because they were unfamiliar with modern analytical methodologies at the time. [1] https://doi.org/10.15184/aqy.2019.52 https://doi.org/10.15184/aqy.2019.52