Scientific News

R. Richard

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It is unfortunate that this annoucement comes after the cowardly attacks in greater London. However, this is incredibly important scientific news. It tells us totally new information about who we are and where we come from. Comment?

Ancient footprints in Mexico shatter human migration theories: scientists

Tue Jul 5, 3:11 PM ET

LONDON (AFP) - British scientists said they have found 40,000-year-old human footprints in central Mexico, shattering theories that mankind arrived in the Americas tens of thousands of years later from Asia.

The discovery was made in September 2003 near the city of Puebla, 130 kilometers (88 miles) southeast of Mexico City, said Silvia Gonzalez, from Liverpool John Moores University (LJMU), who led the team of researchers.

The footprints, which were found in an abandoned quarry close to the Cerro Toluquilla volcano, were subsequently studied and dated by a multinational team of scientists.

"The footprints were preserved as trace fossils in volcanic ash along what was the shoreline of an ancient volcanic lake," Gonzalez said. "Climate variations and the eruption of the Cerro Toluquilla volcano caused lake levels to rise and fall, exposing the volcanic ash layer."

She said the discovery challenges the traditionally held view that settlers first crossed the Bering Straits, from Russia to Alaska, at the end of the last ice age, around 11,500 to 11,000 years ago.

Evidence for this theory comes from "Clovis Points" tools used to hunt mammoths found in many locations in the American continent.

But the discovery of footprints provides new evidence that humans settled in the Americas as early as 40,000 years ago, Gonzalez said.

"We think there were several migration waves into the Americas at different times by different human groups," she said.

Working with Gonzalez were LJMU colleague David Huddart and Matthew Bennett of Bournemouth University.

She said the early Americans would have been curious about the volcano erupting and walked across this new shoreline, leaving behind footprints that soon became covered in more ash and lake sediments.

The trails became submerged when the water levels rose again, so preserving the footprints.

Now as hard as concrete, the ash is used locally as a building material.

The team was able to see the footprints without carrying out any excavation as quarry workers had already removed between lake sediments that had been deposited on top of the volcanic ash.
 
Doesn't surprise me too much. That 10,000-15,000 years ago theory always seemed much too conservative to me, and was based on finding some primitive spear points.

10,000 years ago they were already farming in the Fertile Crescent. It just seems improbable to me that there was no one in the Americas at that recent date.
 
I'll bet they were just in Mexico on Spring Break. A fossilized condom and Coors can were also found nearby.
 
dr_mabeuse said:
Doesn't surprise me too much. That 10,000-15,000 years ago theory always seemed much too conservative to me, and was based on finding some primitive spear points.

10,000 years ago they were already farming in the Fertile Crescent. It just seems improbable to me that there was no one in the Americas at that recent date.

Many of the people here in Literotica are not aware of "the Clovis Police." They are a goup who make sure that all who stray from the archeological mainstream are held up for censure. The "law" that the Clovis Police will enforce says that humans did not enter the New World before 12,000 BCE -- the oldest date of the artifacts attributed to the Clovis people.

Somehow, the following two important articles escaped the Clovis Police.

Meadowcroft Rockshelter, Pennsylvania. Radio carbon dating to 14,000 to 15,000 BCE.

Monte Verde, Chile. Radio carbon dating to at least 12,000 BCE. If the people of Monte Vede, Chile crossed the land bridge in Alaska, they made very good time getting down to Monte Verde.

Now there is evidence of new world habitation as early as 40,000 BCE. The careful reader will not that the discovery was made some two years ago and that undoubtedly lots of research has been done in the meantime to counter the criticism sure to come from the Clovis Police.
 
I live in Clovis, NM, and the police are a joke.
 
Dar~ said:
I live in Clovis, NM, and the police are a joke.

The "Clovis Police" are not the law enforcement officers of the town of Clovis, NM. The "Clovis Police" are a group of people who have taken it upon themselves to try to suppress any and all evidence that human beings inhabited the new world prior to about 12,000 BCE. The reasons that the "Clovis Police" do this are based in both religion and archeology.

I spent some time in the White Sands area. If you consider the local police a joke, it is a sick joke IMNTHO. Actually I may be too hard on them. If you like moronic, power-hungry, incompetents they are not all that bad.
 
YOu mean the 12,000 year date is still held too? I thought it was long considered debunk.
 
Jesus... there's a lot of crime in towns called Clovis.

Did a Clovis Police google search.

Sincerely,
ElSol
 
erm

R. Richard said:
The "Clovis Police" are not the law enforcement officers of the town of Clovis, NM. The "Clovis Police" are a group of people who have taken it upon themselves to try to suppress any and all evidence that human beings inhabited the new world prior to about 12,000 BCE. The reasons that the "Clovis Police" do this are based in both religion and archeology.

I spent some time in the White Sands area. If you consider the local police a joke, it is a sick joke IMNTHO. Actually I may be too hard on them. If you like moronic, power-hungry, incompetents they are not all that bad.

I think that Clovis NM thing was a joke :) power hungry? In Clovis? Now that I know had to be a joke.
 
BigAndTall said:
YOu mean the 12,000 year date is still held too? I thought it was long considered debunk.

The 12,000 BCE date [more or less] is the reason for the existence of the Clovis Police. It was originally considered necessary for religious reasons to have any inhabitant of the new world be a descendent of the primitives who crossed the land bridge. The actions of basically refusing to really consider alternate possibilities is an abandonment of the scientific method by the Clovis Police.

Any evidence that indicates a human new world presence before the settling of Clovis is subjected to demands that not a single pebble be disturbed until one of the Clovis Police are on hand. After the Clovis Police are on the scene, techniques including character assassination are used to discurage the idea that there just might have been human inhabitants pre-Clovis.

Up until now, the Clovis Police have been fighting a sort of rear-guard action over the matter of Monte Verde. The village of Monte Verde was swallowed by a peat bog. For reasons I do not understand, peat bogs preserve things that fall into them; they have been hauling historical evidence out of Irish peat bogs for centuries. There have been things found that indicate the Monte Verde has been occupied since well before 13,000 BCE. However, the evidence has been shouted down by the Clovis Police.
 
elsol said:
Jesus... there's a lot of crime in towns called Clovis.

Did a Clovis Police google search.

Sincerely,
ElSol

In all fairness, there is very little to do in many small towns other than get into trouble.
 
Yer damn skippy.

Or avoid getting into trouble, but do it anyway. :)
 
Black people from Austraria entred South America long before the injuns did.

So I've read somewhere.
 
I'll wait awhile before I get too excited. Remember the hoax about the human footprints next to dinosaur prints made by fundamentalists?
 
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