This subject has always interested me. When I lived in New Mexico, I used to visit the Bandelier National Monument, which contains the ruins of an Anazai Indian settlement, and I was astonished to see what was essentially a large city of a civilization obviously more advanced than the Indians that live in that area now, in the middle of nowhere. It was once thought the Americas were peopled by Siberians coming in from Alaska, some 13,000 yrs ago. The newer theories seem to suggest an earlier arrival of a more advanced people, probably from Polynesia, tens of thousands of years before that, who were the forerunners of the more advanced Indian civilizations such as the Inca, the Aztec and the Anazai. What makes it even more fascinating is other emerging theories on Egyptian civilization possibly originating from Polynesia as well, perhaps suggesting a common thread for ancient advanced civilizations throughout the planet. Today even more evidence emerged to support these theories, from South Carolina of all places:

Scientist: Man in Americas earlier than thought
Archeologists put man in North America 50,000 years ago
By Marsha Walton and Michael Coren
CNN.COM
Wednesday, November 17, 2004 Posted: 12:34 PM EST (1734 GMT)


(CNN) -- Archeologists say a site in South Carolina may rewrite the history of how the Americas were settled by pushing back the date of human settlement thousands of years.

An archeologist from the University of South Carolina today announced radiocarbon dating results of burned plant material dated the first human settlement in North America to 50,000 years ago.

"Topper is the oldest radiocarbon dated site in North America," said Albert Goodyear of the University of South Carolina Institute of Archaeology and Anthropology.

That would make it significantly older than previously discovered sites, which were thought by most scientists to be from man's earliest venture into the Americas, about 13,000 years ago.

CNN is gathering reaction from archeologists and others in the field to today's announcement.

Goodyear plans to publish his work in a peer-reviewed scientific journal next year which is the standard method by which scientists announce their findings

Until research is peer-reviewed, objective experts in the field have not necessarily had an opportunity to evaluate a scientist's methods, or weigh in on the validity of his conclusions.

But at least one other scientist said that the evidence - amassed over several years -- appears to suggest the artifacts are more than 13,000 years old.

"There have been a number of archeologists to see (the Topper site) and support it as a pre-Clovis site," said Theodore Schurr, anthropology professor at the University of Pennsylvania and a curator at the school's museum.

Archeologists will meet in October of 2005 for a conference in Columbia, South Carolina, to discuss the earliest inhabitants of North America, including a visit to the Topper Site.

Goodyear has been excavating the Topper dig site along the Savannah River since the 1980s. He recovered artifacts and tools last May that are expected to push the date of colonization back before most of the earliest known settlements on the continent.

Goodyear dug four meters (13 feet) deeper than the soil layer containing the earliest North American people, known as the Clovis culture, and began uncovering a plethora of tools.

Scientists and volunteers at the site in Allendale have unearthed hundreds of implements, many stone chisels and tools likely used to skin hides, butcher meat, carve antlers, wood and possibly ivory. The tools were fashioned from a substance called chert, a flint like stone that is found in the region.

These discoveries could push that date back thousands -- maybe even tens of thousands -- of years and demand a new explanation for how the Americas were first settled.

Since the 1930s, archeologist have generally believed North America was settled by hunters following large game over a land bridge from Russia during the last major ice age about 13,000 years ago.

"That had been repeated so many times in text books and lectures it became part of the common lore," said Dennis Stanford, curator of archeology at the Smithsonian Institution. "People forgot it was only an unproven hypothesis."

Land-bridge assumption challenged
A growing body of evidence is prompting some scientists to challenge that assumption.

A scattering of sites from South America to Wisconsin have detected human presence before 13,000 years ago -- or the first Clovis sites -- since the first groundbreaking discovery of human artifacts in a cave near Clovis, New Mexico in 1936.

These discoveries have led archeologists to support alternative theories - such as settlement by sea -- for the Americas.

Goodyear and his colleagues began their dig at the Topper Site in the early 1980s with a goal of finding out more about the Clovis people, long thought to be the earliest people to settle the Americas.

Goodyear thought that because of the resources available along the Savannah River and the moderate climate it would be a good place to look for even earlier human settlers than the Clovis people.

i thought this thread was about illegal aliens ...

Well, they weren't then, but they are now

They're from France

__________________
89 300E
79 240D
72 Westy
63 Bug sunroof
85 Jeep CJ7
86 Chevy 6.2l diesel PU

"The object of life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane."
Marcus Aurelius

Crash is right. I saw the PBS show last week. The clovis points and genetic studies show the early comers were French! This is sure to piss off the right wing.

__________________
1977 300d 70k--sold 08
1985 300TD 185k+
1984 307d 126k--sold 8/03
1985 409d 65k--sold 06
1984 300SD 315k--daughter's car
1979 300SD 122k--sold 2/11
1999 Fuso FG Expedition Camper
1993 GMC Sierra 6.5 TD 4x4
1982 Bluebird Wanderlodge CAT 3208--Sold 2/13

Why is this important today?

You can actually watch that PBS show online:

http://www.pbs.org/saf/1406/video/watchonline.htm

plus, they have a website devoted to the topic:

http://www.pbs.org/saf/1406/index.html

I am wondering if today's findings derail this French Connection. These theories are based on the presumption the South Carolina site is about 18,000 years old. Today's announcment pushes it back to an incredible 50,000 years old.

There are really interesting archaological sites in SE Colorado and NW Oklahoma which have 'writing' that looks remarkably similar to an old European script called Ogham. They raise questions about contact with Europe later than these new early dates, but much earlier than the Vikings or Columbus.

__________________
1977 300d 70k--sold 08
1985 300TD 185k+
1984 307d 126k--sold 8/03
1985 409d 65k--sold 06
1984 300SD 315k--daughter's car
1979 300SD 122k--sold 2/11
1999 Fuso FG Expedition Camper
1993 GMC Sierra 6.5 TD 4x4
1982 Bluebird Wanderlodge CAT 3208--Sold 2/13

Cool, I always wanted to see that, I have only seen it on tv. That and Macho Piccu (spelling)

__________________
Proud owner of ....
1971 280SE W108
1979 300SD W116
1983 300D W123
1975 Ironhead Sportster chopper
1987 GMC 3/4 ton 4X4 Diesel
1989 Honda Civic (Heavily modified)
---------------------
Section 609 MVAC Certified
---------------------
"He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you." - Friedrich Nietzsche

Petroglyphs, I think they are called. They are pretty common in Northern New Mexico as well. If you go hiking in the Carson or Santa Fe National Forests or out in the Ghost Ranch area, you see them all over the place. We came upon this one spot where some band had hollowed out what amounted to four or five little bunk beds in the soft tufa rock, I would imagine it was a military outpost of some sort in service to the large city at Bandolier. The petroglyphs were everywhere. I would liken them more to Egyptian hieroglyphs. I still like the theory that the cradle of civilization was not Africa, but the Borneo Islands. It spread from there to Egypt(then to Europe), China and the Americas, by people who became more advanced out of necessity. The need to depend on the sea and learn boat building and tool use seems to me a better theoritical basis for why these people were the forerunners of the advanced civilizations of the earth. It might also explain the DNA evidence presented on the PBS thing as well. I believe a book you mentioned, "Guns, Germs and Steel", makes this case as well.

Thanks for the info, Kirk. That's a very interesting topic!

But we all know the Americas were founded not by the French, but by one of my fellow Italians.

Right?

__________________

Current:
2014 VW Tiguan SEL 4Motion 43,000 miles.

2016 Hyundai Santa Fe Sport (wife's).

Past:
2006 Jetta TDI 135,970 miles. Sold Nov. '13.
1995 E-320 Special Edition. 220,200 miles. Sold Sept. '07.
1987 190-E 16 valve. 153,000 miles. Sold Feb. '06.
1980 300-D 225,000 miles. Donated to the National Kidney Foundation.
1980 240-D manual, 297,500 miles. Totaled by inattentive driver.

"humans have been in north america longer than I thought."

We north americans have come so far so soon.

Oh wait. Nevermind. I just remembered the recent election. Forget what I said.

__________________
The only thing we have to fear is fear itself!

Sorry, not by an Italian but by Amerigo Vespuci, a Spaniard. LOL It's all according to who you believe. When there is no written history, someone has to make it up. Anything to prove that Africans did not do it!!

__________________
N. Hodges
1994 S350
1987 300 SDL (for sale)

There is a lot of that down in dinosaur national park (name?) by Colorado and Utah. Very cool.

__________________
1994 C 280 117.5k, White (Good as new)
1997 Toyota Camry 149k Miles (Not so pretty anymore)

1990 190e 2.6 95k (Sold-Should not have)
1981 240d Stick ??? Miles...sold