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Forty years ago, an amateur historian discovered an engraved mastodon bone near Mexico City, showing a virtual bestiary from the Ice Age. Harvard University took notice and excavated nearby sites around the Valsequillo Reservoir. They found perfectly buried kill sites with the oldest spearheads in the world. Some archaeologists postulated their age at 40,000 years, three times older than the official 12,000-year-old date for the first Americans. Then the shocker--United States Geology Survey (USGS) geologists came up with the date of 250,000 years old! Even though these dates were published in peer-reviewed geological journals, archaeologists wrote off the geologists, saying they were mistaken and that their dates were too ridiculously old. Archaeologists never returned to the site and curiosity died out. Soon after, this once world-class archaeology region became off-limits for official research, a "professional forbidden zone." The Valsequillo discoveries were legendary, but regarded as "fringe" by professional archaeologists. Why this radical turn-about? What was found that was so unspeakable, so impossible? What happened to these artifacts--America's earliest art and spearheads, and why don't archaeologists seem to care? In the new book, The First American, archaeologist Christopher Hardaker tries to unearth the mystery. The book details the events of the discovery and its subsequent dismissal, as well as the attempt in 2001 by a wealthy outsider to find the truth about the Valsequillo discoveries. Included in The First American are photos of the original artifacts, and excerpts from reports, letters, and memos from the site participants themselves. Archaeologists will once again beforced to ask the same question their mentors asked: Are we too in love with our own theories to ignore the evidence of science yet again? And readers will hear the real story of the great Valsequillo discoveries, the greatest story of early American man never told.… (more)
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history I was taught in school regarding the peopleling of the "New World". We all know the story: American Indians came from Siberia about 14,000 years ago via the Bearing Strait. End of story.
That theory is called "Clovis first" because
group, who also came down from the north, and are the ancestors of native Americans today.
Now the rub: it seems the Clovis way of chipping stones into arrowheads and axes is very distinctive and has a traceable past. The most likely anticidents of this technology is not found amongst the chipped rocks left by Siberians but by people living in Iberia (Spain). It seems the Clovis people must have followed the glaciers
via the Atlantic Ocean, eating kelp and seals as they went, in boats, to the New World maybe 20,000 years ago. Sites such as Cactus Hill in Virginia are older than 14,000 years and exhibit
the same Clovis stone work as found in Iberia.
Now the real rub and theme of this book: The ice-age migration of humans to the new world is a repeat of migrations that happened in earlier (pre the last ice age) glaciations as far back as 250,000 years ago which is a time before modern Homo Sapians first evolved.
The book centers on a site in central southern Mexico exhibiting
traces of worked stone under hardened volcanic debris laid down
170,000 years ago or more. The site is controversial amongst archaeologists and geologists to say the least. A lot of apple carts
would be upset if the interpertations of the author are correct, if indeed evidence of 250,000 year old new world settlements are proved. The bottom line is this: no one really knows what happened day to day amongst people before the widespread use of writing ( which is only 10,000 years old), that it seems likely somebody or group would eventually end up on a American shore, that it is only a matter of when. The surprise is most anthropoligists don't think
earlier humans had the brains to construct boats. I guess they are wrong.