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Published online 5 November 2009 | Nature | doi:10.1038/news.2009.1058
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Oldest American artefact unearthed
Oregon caves yield evidence of continent's first inhabitants.
Archaeologists claim to have found the oldest known artefact in the Americas, a scraper-like tool in an Oregon cave that dates back 14,230 years.
The tool shows that people were living in North America well before the widespread Clovis culture of 12,900 to 12,400 years ago, says archaeologist Dennis Jenkins of the University of Oregon in Eugene.
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"The only other American archaeological site older than Clovis is at Monte Verde in Chile"? WHAT???
Topper.
Meadowcroft.
Cactus Hill.
With all due respect, does EVERY site have to have a score or two American archeologists arrive to vet every single pre-Clovis site?
THE CLOVIS BARRIER IS BROKEN.
Why do the panicked Clovis get to be the arbiters of every site? They are clinging to an antiquated paradigm. Isn't it about time that we can read an article about an early site without having to fluff up the article with ten paragraphs dictated by the people that won't give up their defeated concept?
Nature only embarrasses itself by allowing these people to dominate the discussion.
Please, editors: Can't we just have an article that simply states – like in Europe or Africa or Asia – that a site is the oldest, without dragging in outdated and refuted concepts? I don't see any flat-earth people being referenced anywhere in your magazine. Why do these folks get special editorial air space? Could it be that they are grandfathered in and the magazine doesn't know how to get rid of them?
And the writer should have at the very least mentioned some of those OTHER "pre-Clovis" (please let's get rid of that term!) sites as having very strong evidence to pre-date Clovis. If Clovis is going to be mentioned, then submitting that Monte Verde is the only other "pre-Clovis site in the Americas" is not only misleading, but all but an outright in error – not to mention misleading (intentionally so? and if so, WHY???).
This PRO-Clovis attitude just oozes out of this article in almost every paragraph, and is completely embarrassing for your magazine. Please, if the Clovis clingers insist on hanging on to that concept, the magazine doesn't.
I could not agree more with Stephen Garcia's comment. The Clovis first notion is old news! Isn't about time that scientists such as Dr. Tom Dillehay received their just dues. Dr. Dillehay has been advocating a human presence in the Americas for a number of years now. Dr. Dillehay has found what he believes are human artifacts extending back as long ago as 32,000 BP. This also calls into question (and I hope puts to rest) the idea that early humans had much to do with animal extictions here in the Americas. Please see http//www.bcclimate.com
It would have been interesting to read about how it was determined that the object is a scraping tool. Was it studied closely for wear patterns? Does it compare to other bone tools found in other sites? I'm sure the researchers did all that but it is not communicated in the article. The object's definition as a "tool" is an accepted conclusion by the author.
Garcia and Chilton echo the comment you chose to pass on. NATURE's/Dalton's pro-Clovis stance is so thoroughly outdate and probably due to simple laziness or even feckless attitude toward the very important question of who were the First Americans? Next time, get somebody with at least a freshman's level education on the matter.
NATURE can do better.
While I agree with Chris Hardacker whole heartedly in his postion, I think that Nature's stance on some topics is fat too conservative. this in fact is the attitude shared by most Scientific journals. I even will go so far as to say such conservatism borders on dogma that perhaps even rivals religious dogma. I have found this to be the case in another topic area, and that is comet bombardments of our planet since the Last Ice Age.
And Gault.
Obviously, Mr Dalton hasn't done any homework, which makes this site of minimal value and not worth (my) future time.
Details of potentially the oldest site revealing the peopling of the Americas are extremely important for many obvious reasons. The discovery at Paisley Caves appropriately warranted an article in Science. Given there were technical comments questioning the original publication, it is of added importance to report new data that responds to or eliminates those questions, as the new findings do. The Clovis people and those of Monte Verde are seen as benchmarks for the peopling of the Americas. New genetic and dating techniques are allowing researchers to push back the time of such migrations and to describe these people. Yes, most archaeologists agree there were people in the Americas before the Clovis, but it is important to report on new, well-researched discoveries relating to those migrations, especially in light of the inland position of the Paisley Caves. A coastal route for migration from Asia is now also widely accepted. But likely sites associated with that route now would be under the Pacific Ocean, due to the sea level rise after glacial melting by about 12,000 years ago. This makes the Paisley Caves deposits even more precious – as their sediments are producing preserved human DNA and precise dating, which the other cited locations don’t offer.
Posted on behalf of Rex Dalton.
Rex, I am one of the co-authors of the 4th reference (Golberg et al., 2009) cited in your article. Please notice that we never suggested that the people of Paisley cave had a vegetarian diet. We stated something very different, much more simple and extremely important: in that paper we unquestionably show that one of the coprolite they extracted human DNA from isn't human. I repeat: One of the coprolite with human DNA is actually NOT human. It is in fact an excrement of some kind of herbivor (possibly a extinct camelide). The NON-HUMAN nature of that coprolite is unchallengeable (4 reviewers over 4 agreed with us) and we are prepared to demonstrate it again and again. So how do we explain human DNA on an excrement of a e.g. Lama-like animal? The ONLY explanation is CONTAMINATION. In fact in our article we never suggested the hypothesis of a vegetarian diet of the Paisly Cave people. On the contrary we state that our results can ONLY be explained with human material (DNA and protein) contaminating animal excrements. Although it is impossible to absolute date when the contamination had occurred, it is very probable that it happened in recent times. Bottom line: our results challenge dramatically the archaeological significance of all the DNA work done on the coprolites from Paisley cave and indirectly challenge all the other results coming from there. Especially if they come from people that interpret our results with an extravagant hypothesis of Paisley cave inhabitant being so vegetarian that ended up pooping like camelides! Since we have always been (and still are) open for serious scientific discussion with Jenkins, and with everybody else who wants to contribute to this fascinating aspect of the history of humankind I would appreciate very much if you could re-read our Science paper and rectify your article accordingly. Anyway I hope that in the future you will be more careful and cite other people works properly.
Sincerely,
Francesco Berna (fberna@bu.edu)
Editor's note: Given space and other constraints, the description of the contents of reference 4 were edited down dramatically. Dr. Berna has pointed out the implications and the technical comment itself can be viewed at https://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/325/5937/148-c for further detail.