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Ancient Stone Tools in Brail - Humans arrival

Discovery of ancient stone tools in Brazil challenges belief about human arrival in the Americas

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Archaeologists have announced the discovery of stone tools in Brazil which they say prove that ancient humans arrived in the Americas long before the Clovis people, upending the predominant theory of how the continent was settled.

According to current perspectives, the Clovis people arrived in the Americas from Asia about 13,000 – 15,000 years ago. However, researchers found stone tools embedded in a rock shelter where prehistoric humans once lived, which have been dated to 22,000 years.

“If they’re right, and there’s a great possibility that they are, that will change everything we know about the settlement of the Americas,” said Walter Neves, an evolutionary anthropologist at the University of Sao Paulo.

The stone tools were found in Serra Da Capivara National Park, Brazil, a region steeped in history with thousands of rock art paintings across 945 separate sites. The tools were dated using thermo luminescence, a technique that measures the exposure of sediments to sunlight, to determine their age.

Rock shelters in Serra Da Capivara National Park

One of the many rock shelters in Serra Da Capivara National Park. Photo source.

The finding adds to the growing body of research which challenges the ‘Clovis-first model’, which supposes that human settlers arrived in the Americas by walking over a land bridge across the Bering Strait from Siberia to Alaska around 13,000 to 15,000 years ago.  Last year, for example, palaeontologists in Uruguay published findings suggest that humans hunted giant sloths there about 30,000 years ago.

However, as with all prevalent views, contradicting the Clovis model which has been espoused for more than half a century, has fuelled a heated debate, and scholars in the dwindling Clovis-first camp were quick to reject the findings.

Gary Haynes, an archaeologists at the University of Nevado, Reno, argued that the stone tools were not tools at all but were simply stones that became chipped and broken naturally when they fell from a rock ledge, while another archaeologists from the Louis Berger Group, an environmental consulting company, claimed that monkeys probably made the tools instead of humans.

Having their findings disputed is nothing new for the archaeologists working at Serra de Capivara. Dr Guidon, the Brazilian archaeologists who pioneered the excavations, asserted more than two decades ago, that her team had found evidence in the form of charcoal from hearth fires that humans had lived in the region about 48,000 years ago. Prior to that, her team had found remnants of ancient fires dating back 100,000 years. Her theory is that the first humans arrived in the Americas not overland from Asia, but by boat from Africa.  But that is just too much for some scholars to swallow.

Featured image: Rock art in the Serra Da Capivara National Park, Brazil. Photo source: Wikipedia

By April Holloway

 

Comments

The article mentions a theory that 100 millennia ago, people arrived in America from Africa. This might be possible if there is merit to the Expanding Earth theory. See it on Youtube.

There may be many more sites like this but they absolutely refuse to dig past the 12-14 Ft level. There are hundreds of Digs that need to be reopened and dug deeper down to strata dated before the possible deluge. I think we might be very surprised at what will be found!

I know one thing… There are just too many pieces found at Calico with the very classic three linier lengthwise flakes removed to create the tell tale triangle cross profile shape unique to man. I have seen a couple geofacts close to this shape at the bottom of mountains in alluvial fans after being tumbled down ravine water courses for miles but NEVER with sharp edges.

But the Calico site is at the top of a hill, so how did all these happen without being washed downhill and tumbled around against other rocks? It’s Impossible! In your work you may want to also consider the fact that the whole Great Basin up to North East Utah over to Eastern Oregon was once an extension of the Gulf of Baja.

This would have been the timeline of the Calico sites earlier habitants, when it was a shoreline along this huge inland trapped sea. So this particular elevation is where any future true paleoindian sites will be found all through the Great Basin!  Looking forward to reading your blog posts!

Roberto Peron's picture

Thank you for your kind reply JR.  I was not aware that the Calico site had shut down the dig site but I am not surprised.  Unsupported walls 30 ft high can be very dangerous and do tend to collapse rather easily at times.  What amazes me is that here we have a dig site that has been dug out about 30 ft and artifacts are still being found.  So how far down do we find these things beyond 30 ft?  The 30 ft mark alone reflects thousands of years if not millions of stone tool making and that is absolutely astounding!  I don't believe all that is found at Calico are geofacts either.  Of course, there are some but from what I've seen they appear to be hominid made ARTIFACTS.

I agree with you, in that, most likely many of these finds are "blanks" discarded by the maker(s) for whatever reason.  No nature does not flake a stone and discard the flakes in a pile all in the same place LOL.  Yet, that is what the "powers of academia" would have us believe.  

Personally, I think the Calico site is a highly important site and I think it attests to a separate evolution of man in the Americas.  It is a site that needs to be taken more seriously by academia but, of course, it is also a site that would upset the mainstream thinking of academia too as it would prove many of their theories WRONG!  Yet, when we consider sites like Calico and other evidence of ancient human ancestors found in the Americas we get a whole new picture of human prehistory and one that, in my mind, is much more logical.  

I will be blogging about this and Calico on my blog soon and present some of my own theories of what Calico actually is and human development in the Americas as well.  Again, thank you for your comment.

Peron

Right inline with my discoveries and thoughts. Mentioning the Calico dig is very important, not sure folks realise how significant this particular dig truly is. I have been fortunate enough to be closely involved with this dig through a very good friend. The Calico dig was just shut down a few months ago.

Why it was shut down is quite interesting. It was shut down because the dig trenches were getting far to deep to safely work in and there was a fear of the walls collapsing, like 30 Ft deep!. Why is this interesting? Because they were still finding these “Geofacts” that are impossible for nature to produce in this very old deep level strata when it was shut down.

Even though most of these artifacts are crude and basic and there might have been a few true Geofacts found in the mix, there are many samples that just cannot be ruled out as artifacts. There are angles that nature just cannot reproduce period. And far too many of these are just impossible to be Geofacts.

I think many of these were blanks that the maker started to work on and then decided the piece wasn’t going to finish out as planned and discarded it. From what I understand flakes that were removed from differing pieces well removed from each other were found in a discard pile together. Nature could never do this. 

Calico was a known quarry where stone was worked for thousands of years. In any quarry you will find a few geofacts that might be “Shaped” a bit like a man made artifact. But in all the ancient quarries I have investigated, I have never found one geofact that shows micro-notching along blade edges or long lengthwise linier flaking like these “Geofacts" found at Calico.

Another interesting feature is that there is no "River Polish" on most of these. so how did nature micro-notch these blade edges all at one time without showing some natural river wear in between the sequential impact notching events? It’s impossible, but please take a look for yourself and tell me what you think?

http://www.calico.earthmeasure.com/

Thank you for the great comment and I too think that there might have been a totally separate evolution of man in America.

 

Roberto Peron's picture

Human progress along with human evolution is a twisted bush and is NOT a consistent upward evolution.  In fact, there was even retrobreeding going on.  How else does one explain why later Homo erectus is more archaic than earlier H. erectus?  And how else do we explain more sophisticated civilizations coming BEFORE earlier less sophisticated ones?  That said, this is an amazing find but not unexpected as artifacts and stone tools have been found throughout the Americas dating back to prehistoric human occupation.  Our concept that the Americas were isolated is incorrect!  Prehistoric humans were here as were high civilizations and it’s time to stop covering it all up and abandon the “isolated Americas” fairytale!  As for Anthropology having gone astray I agree even though it is my field of study and practice.  Sadly, much of the field is now motivated by politics and funding (money).  I guess I am in the “old school” as my belief is that we anthropologists should follow the evidence WHEREVER it might lead but I am in the minority today.  

In past times ancient coastlines were different than they are today and for all we know the continents themselves may have been in different positions than they are today making it easier for our ancient ancestors to migrate into the Americas.  Arrival by boat is certainly probable in my opinion.  Arrival by other landbridges besides the one in Alaska is also very probable in my opinion.  The Clovis people were NOT the first Americans and there’s plenty of evidence to prove this is so.  In fact, we find what appear to be Clovis points on the East Coast of the USA. How did they get there is the Clovis People came across the landbridge out of Asia?  Personally, I think there is something to the Solutrean Theory that holds some ancient peoples came from the coast of Europe to the Eastern Coast of North America either by boat or some unknown land or ice bridge.  We cannot and must not simply dismiss such a theory out of hand as we have done, sadly.  

Many researchers professional and amateur have been marginalized and shut down for their finds in the Americas that go against the “party line.”  Yet, there evidence continues to be found and here’s something else.  The famous Dr Louis Leakey left his work in Africa and came to America because he believed he’d find evidence of ancient human ancestors there.  He went to the Calico Hills in California.  What made Leakey suspect ancient human ancestors were in the Americas?  And what about all of those “geofacts” found at the Calico Hills site?  Geofacts or Artifacts?  There is much debate over this issue.  I myself have found what appear to be Oldowan Stone Tools in the Americas and NO they are not “geofacts.”  For myself, Leakey and such finds are proof enough for me that ancient humans were indeed here!  And I’m far from being alone in this!  It’s time we face TRUTH and discover that TRUTH by following the evidence WHEREVER it leads us and stop with the pet theories notions!!  After all, that IS true science is it not?  

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April

April Holloway is a Co-Owner, Editor and Writer of Ancient Origins. For privacy reasons, she has previously written on Ancient Origins under the pen name April Holloway, but is now choosing to use her real name, Joanna Gillan.

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