Early Humans in North America

"An archaeologist [Dr. Al Goodyear]from the University of South Carolina on Wednesday announced radiocarbon tests that dated the first human settlement in North America to 50,000 years ago -- at least 25,000 years before other known human sites on the continent."
--Excerpt taken from this CNN article. November 18, 2004.


In the last blog entry, I referred to this site in South Carolina. My memory served me wrong though as the archaeologists are going off only stone tool fragments and carbonized plant remains, not any bones. I'm glad I was able to track this old article down. In hunting for it, I also found this USC article, which is a much more reliable source where they explain radiocarbon dating methods and they actual dates that were returned.

I find this debate facinating, and I'm glad to see several well-known archaeologists jumping in to question Goodyear's findings:

"He has a very old geologic formation, but I can't agree with his interpretation of those stones being man-made," said Michael Collins of the Texas Archeological Research Lab at the University of Texas at Austin.

"It poses some real problems trying to explain how you have people (arriving) in Central Asia almost at the same time as people in the Eastern United States," said Theodore Schurr, anthropology professor at the University of Pennsylvania and a curator at the school's museum. "You almost have to hope for instantaneous expansion ... We're talking about a very rapid movement of people around the globe."

No matter what, more light has been shed on the possibilities of human arrival and migration. I'm glad to see this has stirred some controversy which will lead to signficant conclusions. We'll see just how well Dr. Goodyear's conclusions hold up at the October 2005 conference.

Stay tuned.