The report by a team from Mexico's National Institute of Anthropology and History exploits a new way of investigating the past. Most coastal settlements by early Americans now lie deep beneath the sea, which during the Ice Age was hundreds of feet lower than now.Researchers at the international "Early Man in America" seminar here also reported other ancient finds -- including a California bone that is a rival for the title of the oldest in the Americas.
The discoveries fall close to the start of the time that traditional theories say a so-called Clovis culture could have moved from Asia to Alaska over a temporary land corridor that began to open about 13,500 years ago.
Many academics argue that new discoveries, especially in South America, prove the Clovis people found existing inhabitants, who may have arrived by hop scotching past the northern ice fields in small boats.
Arturo Gonzalez said his team discovered at least three skeletons in caves along the Caribbean coast of Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula in 2001 and 2002. Photos showed two remarkably well preserved.[...]
Gonzalez said the bones must date from before the time that waters gradually seeped through the caves 8,000 to 9,000 years ago as Ice Age glaciers melted and sea level rose by about 400 feet worldwide.
Tests on charcoal found beside one female skeleton would place it at least 10,000 years ago. An expert at the University of California, Riverside, dated it as 11,670 radiocarbon years old -- which would translate to well over 13,000 calendar years.
If confirmed, "that would be the oldest" radio carbon date in the Americas obtained from a human bone, said archaeology textbook author Stuart Fiedel.
I can just see those hairy old bastards playing hopscotch in a small boat.
Posted by: dipnut on September 13, 2004