The history of the people of America, a story that dates back to the last ice age, has been upended by the battered bones of a mastodon found under a freeway construction site in California.
Archaeological sites in North America have led most researchers to believe that the continent was first reached by humans like us, Homo sapiens, about 15,000 years ago. But inspection of the broken mastodon bones, and large stones lying with them, point to a radical new date for the arrival of ancient humans. If the claim stands up, humans arrived in the New World 130,000 years ago.
It is my sincere desire to provide readers of this site with the best unbiased information available, and a forum where it can be discussed openly, as our Founders intended. But it is not easy nor inexpensive to do so, especially when those who wish to prevent us from making the truth known, attack us without mercy on all fronts on a daily basis. So each time you visit the site, I would ask that you consider the value that you receive and have received from The Burning Platform and the community of which you are a vital part. I can't do it all alone, and I need your help and support to keep it alive. Please consider contributing an amount commensurate to the value that you receive from this site and community, or even by becoming a sustaining supporter through periodic contributions. [Burning Platform LLC - PO Box 1520 Kulpsville, PA 19443] or Paypal
-----------------------------------------------------
To donate via Stripe, click here.
-----------------------------------------------------
Use promo code ILMF2, and save up to 66% on all MyPillow purchases. (The Burning Platform benefits when you use this promo code.)
Thomas Deméré, curator of palaeontology at the San Diego Natural History Museum which led the project, said: “Of course extraordinary claims like this require extraordinary evidence,” adding that the team believed “the site preserves such evidence”. Anticipating the disbelief of many experts in the field, Steven Holen, another project scientist at the Center for Paleolithic Research, said: “I know people will be sceptical about this.” That caution was summed up by one scientist who preferred not to be named: “They are going to face a shitstorm,” he said.
The partial remains of the American mastodon, a long gone relative of the modern elephant, were discovered in San Diego in the winter of 1992 during a freeway expansion project. When researchers moved in they found layers of fine sediments deposited by streams, bearing shells, rodent teeth, and wolf and horse bones. In one layer they found the mastodon, a beast that could reach a height of three metres and weighed eight tonnes when fully grown. The animals had roamed North America for millions of years.
The bones posed an immediate puzzle. The pattern of the fossilised limbs, the obvious damage, and stones found alongside them raised enough questions that the scientists brought in other experts and launched a detailed analysis of the remains and surrounding site.
The results of the investigation, reported in the journal Nature, build a case for the mastodon bones being “processed”, a term that translates into more frank terms such as smashed, cracked and snapped. Unlike the wolf and horse bones found in other layers at the site, the ends of some of the mastodon bones had been broken off, as if to extract nutritious bone marrow. Others had been battered. One of the animal’s tusks poked upright in the ground, perhaps by chance, or perhaps to serve as a marker for the remains.
Intriguingly, the bones were found in two rough piles, each with two or three large rocks measuring 10 to 30cm across. The scientists believe the stones are too heavy to have been carried there in the flow of a stream, and instead suspect they were carried by humans for use as hammerstones and anvils to break the bones apart. “What is truly remarkable about this site is that you can identify particular hammers that were smacked on particular anvils,” said Richard Fullagar, a stone tools expert on the team from the University of Wollongong in New South Wales. Pieces knocked off the stones and bones were found too.
“We have no evidence that this is a kill or butchery site, but we do have evidence that people were here, breaking up bones of the mastodon, removing some of the big, thick pieces of mastodon limb bones, probably to make tools, and perhaps extracting some of the marrow for food,” said Holen.
Most remarkable of all is the apparent age of the bones. Carbon dating and another procedure did not work in this case, so the scientists turned to a method that infers age from the radioactive decay of natural uranium which infiltrates the buried remains. The tests dated the bones to 130,700 years old, give or take 9,000 years. James Paces, a researcher at the US Geological Survey who performed the dating, said it was a “robust, defensible age” for the materials.
If the scientists are right and the bones were broken by humans while fresh – rather than by other animals, natural processes or bulldozers building roads – and the dating is sound, it raises major questions about the peopling of the Americas. Who were these pioneers? How did they get there? What happened to them? There is little to suggest that Homo sapiens had dispersed from Africa 130,000 years ago, but Homo erectus, the Neanderthals and the little-known Denisovans had reached Eurasia.
The usual assumption is that humans came to America from eastern Asia across the Bering strait. The crossing itself would have been easiest in the cold period that ended 130,000 years ago when sea levels were low and a land bridge formed. But could these early humans have survived the harsh conditions at that latitude? “It’d be bloody cold up there,” said John McNabb, a palaeolithic archaeologist at Southampton University.
Emboldened by claims that human ancestors reached Indonesian and Mediterranean islands by raft more than 100,000 years ago, the authors suggest that instead of walking to America, the humans, perhaps archaic Homo sapiens, arrived from east Asia on “watercraft” and followed south what is now the coastline of California.
It will take more evidence to convince many scientists, however. “This is a really extraordinary claim. There are questions about everything,” said Jean-Jacques Hublin at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig. “Let’s imagine it happened. We have humans in America 130,000 years ago. What happened to them? They disappeared? When humans arrived in Australia, they were immediately very successful because they had no competitors. In the Americas, there is a huge range of environments where humans could be very successful. But to this date we have nothing in America until modern humans arrive.”
Another question lies with the dating. The uranium method works well on stalagmites and stalactites found in caves, because uranium around at the time is locked into their crystal structure. But it is far harder to date bone with uranium, because bone is porous, and uranium can seep in and out with water all the time. “I personally would never use uranium series dating of bones alone to assign age, it needs to be supported and consistent with other dating results,” said Dirk Hoffmann, an expert on uranium dating at Leipzig. “I am not saying the presented age range is wrong, but I am very cautious with this dating method on bones.”
David Meltzer, professor of prehistory at the Southern Methodist University in Dallas, is even more wary of the claims. “Nature is mischievous and can break bones and modify stones in a myriad of ways,” he said. “It is not enough to demonstrate that they could have been broken by humans. One has to demonstrate that they could not have been broken by nature.”
To test their theory that humans smashed the bones with stones, the scientists smacked large rocks onto elephant bones and found that the violent impacts produced similar fracture patterns as seen on the mastodon bones.
“If you are going to push human antiquity in the New World back more than 100,000 years in one fell swoop, you’ll have to do so with a far better archaeological case than this one,” Meltzer added. “I’m not buying what’s being sold.”
Chris Stringer at the Natural History Museum in London said: “If the results stand up to further scrutiny, this does indeed change everything we thought we knew about the earliest human occupation of the Americas.” He added: “Many of us will want to see supporting evidence of this ancient occupation from other sites, before we abandon the conventional model of a first arrival by modern humans within the last 15,000 years.”
We know nothing “for sure.”
But I read ‘Clan of The Cave Bear’ thus I have a feel
for it. 🙂 One thing we know…fake science is rampant.
HSF,
did you get your stone back from the teacher?
I don’t have a lot to add other than I think this is a fascinating topic, on a level far more interesting that anything the modern political or financial world has to offer and love reading the comments on this topic as much as the articles themselves. The biggest questions are the most difficult to answer and probably, if we knew or understood them better, the most important.
Keep it all coming.
Rob….disagree with your analysis; throughout history, once history/science is ‘known’, anyone that states otherwise is belittled and shamed, with their careers in jeopardy. One might even be burned at the stake.
There is plenty in this article that opposes the results.
Also agreed
Look how completely dominant the black gene is over the white gene. You never ever see a mulatto that isn’t instantly identifiable as black. But the white gene certainly pretties up black people. Most pretty black people are half white, the famous ones, anyway
In the early 1900s some very unusual events began to transpire right here in Chicago. Over the following 25 years a small group of people gained privy to some very enlightening information. Eventually, a book resulted. After a short period, the group was given permission to publish.
Up until the publication, the book could only be referenced at the foundation, no one was allowed to take it from the building. Then, they were told if they received no further word for the next five years, they could publish it. You can imagine the excitement of this small group who were about to see their study these many years finally available to everyone…
The first books were delivered and they waited for the world to respond in amazement… and waited, and still they wait. But even now the world remains…
Not all though. It’s been translated into a dozen or more languages, study groups the world over have changed peoples lives. One by one, just as Jesus practiced, the people know. It will be hailed, sometime in the distant future, as the most important book ever published. Most are not ready to accept its words… too bad really because it’s knowledge will lead to heaven on earth.
And I did not intend to add more, those who are sincere will find it.
Ed said
The land bridge idea looks to me like it’s just a construct aimed at justifying the European conquest of the two western continents now known as the American continents.
I never thought about it that way before. You have something there Ed!
As to the scientific method. It is good in theory but corrupt in practice. Careers of academics will always create inertia that will resist change. As such scientists will always push away from a radical change in narrative in which they believe. In many ways science has replaced theism as the go to dogma of choice to frame one’s life.
My sentiment exactly, Rins, about the dogmatic nature of scientific belief. It is a belief, isn’t it? It looks like one to me, which kind of lays it up on the same pile as religion, the acceptance of an idea on faith, without any proof other than a theory here that jibes with a theory there.
Ever since I heard a speaker say that belief is a con you run on yourself, I’ve been reminding myself to say “I think” instead of “I believe”. I do that when I’m writing a comment on a board somewhere because on the subjects I discuss with other people online, my idea of something that’s happened in politics, business, or whatever, is just my thoughts being given voice.
I think that scientists would do better to think, rather than to believe.
Maybe it has always been so but Scientists these days, it seems, have convinced themselves to believe rather than think by pivoting their vanity on a consensus rather than the scientific method.
RiNS – I have seen some shitfests up close re this type of thing. These “scientists” spend their lives studying minutae, and come up with hypothesis for what they find, despite severe gaps in their data. They then defend these hypothesis to the death.
It is understandable, given it is their life work, concentrated on very specific issues.
Eventually, one of the hypothesis will be generally accepted. And the next lot of scientists will build their research and career off of that hypothesis.
If someone comes along and refues the base hypothesis that they are working from, they will resist it tooth and nail forever.
Why? Becase if the base hypothesis is flawed, they can flush all the years, even decades, of research they have done that was based on the flawed hypothesis, down the toilet. Their careers and research are over.
Their lives and careers are at stake. And they by nature are very vain. They will not accept the loss of all they have worked on easily. It is that simple.
Agreed. The current Climate Debate, or lack there of, being a great example of how this works in real world.
Agreed. It’s also why “credible scientists” will never ever debate knowledgeable flat earth proponents. Their careers would be finished.
The church of scientism is a pretty tight bunch, and the propaganda has flowed thick for too many years. Oh how I’d love to see their lies come crashing down around them…
I thought the annunaki were gods. If they were gods, then that’s a matter of religion, which to me is like a matter of opinion, in that there’s no verifying it. Were they gods or actual people?
I think you’re right about how little we really know. I can look at my family history as an example. I know the names of ancestors quite a few generations back, but I’ve never seen an image of most of them and never heard their voices, or seen their handiwork.
Trying to work out what strangers did 100,000+ years ago is, as Mark Twain said in one of his books, “too various for me”. Trying to decide when someone made something from jasper, which is not a material that will decay or change noticeably over millions of years is just foolish, IMO.
Ed- I have written about this before and I don’t know what tribe from which you come (I am Cherokee) but the Cherokee have anomalous mitochondrial DNA of Greeks, Sumerian and Heebs. The great Cherokee nation was trading with Egypt and Greeks 15,000 years ago when our nation covered a large part of the eastern US. Cherokee spoke Greek back then in addition to thier language.
http://www.theepochtimes.com/n3/831180-geneticist-traces-mysterious-origins-of-native-americans-to-middle-east-ancient-greece/
This is a link I found recently. Also UNC unearthed proof of injuns living in NC 45,000 years ago.
BL – you do not have papers. So you ain’t fucking Cherokee. You really should stop saying so. It is a lie, and the real Cherokee do not appreciate it, I assure you. You wannabee Indians give us the fucking shits.
Kinda like those palefaces that identify as black. They are a joke. So are you palefaces identifying as Indian. Same difference.
Loopey- Who asked ya !! I can’t help I am not full blooded and don’t have papers, I can’t help my momma played mattress polo with whitey.
Bite Me….
This is not accepted. Maybe true, but not accepted. Re the lion head disappearing – one hypothesis is that a ruler wanted his head on the Sphynx, so ordered the revision. There are several hypothesis to explain the the erosion that have been put forward.
The one thing that seems to me to debunk the 12,500 year old theory is that the Sphynx is an integral part of a larger complex that can be accurately dated.
But time will tell. It may take a long time. A lot of scientists have a lot to lose if the hypohesis re erosion proves accurate. They will resist it for a long time. It will take a new generation of archeologists to settle the question.
My grandfather times 100 was a Solutrean who taught the Indians how to make arrowheads.
The many types of Homo creatures prior to about 1,000,000 Y.A. had 24 primate chromosomes and probably didn’t breed with us (23 chromosomes: #2 and #24 fused). Primitive Homos like Heidelbergenesis that we supposedly evolved from about 200,000 Y.A. were primitive beasts (more like Neanderthals, Denisovans, Red Deer People, and Almas than us). There was a huge change from the primitive Homos to Homo Sapien Sapiens (who evidently picked up about 30 extraterrestrial genes somehow). There were many back crossings giving individual Whites and Asians about 3% of that primitive DNA (all totaled, humans have preserved only about 20% of the primitive DNA). Primitive Humans spread to every continent but Antarctica (and so did Humans) and my guess is that the races resulted mainly from back crossings with various primitive indigenous 23 chromosome Homos. I believe that Ivanka Kushner has more alien genes than average and Nikolay Valuev has more Neanderthal genes than average. God somehow gave Humans eternal Souls (not nature or aliens).