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Giant Sloth bones may be evidence of humans in the Americas as early as 27k years ago
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this post was submitted on 14 Jul 2023
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Unlikely. The limited evidence presented for pre Clovis cultures in North America has some large margins for error and rely on big assumptions. This evidence is no different, and should be taken on context of it being a big maybe.
One of the biggest problems with the pre Clovis theory is that there should be waaaay more evidence of humans in that time frame like we see everywhere else on the world. It's highly unlikely that humans were in N America for more than 10, 000 years and left barely any trace across two continents.
Except that the coast from that time is often tens of kilometres out to sea now. I can imagine a very long period after people first discovered this new land, they would just continue living on the coast. I mean if you're part of a seafaring culture, looking for new space and resources, why go inland when for thousands of years you can just go a couple kilometers away and you're in a brand new space. All of that is lost now. I don't see how you get large enough established culture for surviving evidence now, deep within foreign continents, without an enormous amount of exploration and the existence of small groups long before anything with enough permanence for modern evidence is established.
That said, these bones don't look like some kind of jewelry to me. They look like natural polished wear from something like gizzard/gastrolith wear in my unqualified opinion.
Why go inland is answered by looking to every other group of people on the planet. Which is why there's so much evidence for those older cultures across the earth. It's not a brand new space after 10000 years. There's no reason for every group of people to hug the coast for that long.
Not to mention that the evidence being presented for that theory is primarily very very far inland. Like the new Mexico footprints that are supposedly 23k years old.
I don't think there is a parallel situation in human evolution and land exploration where traveling and expanding along a coast was an option, or where initial access likely involved a seafaring culture where the only motivation is simple expansion. Even today most small coastal communities can exist entirely within a few kilometers of the coast without expanding further. Early communities were probably no more than a few families that spawned an outcast group every few generations.
That's the majority of human migration. We follow water bodies, but not to the exclusion of all growth. By that logic we'd never have made it inland at all.
There's no logical reason for a supposed pre Clovis culture to not go inland. 10,000 years and you really think they stayed 10km from the waves that whole time? It makes no sense. They would be the only group in human history to do that and they'd have needed to do it for millenia
But we never had a circumstance like coming to the America's at any other time in history. Previously, it was never a seafaring culture able to expand, with the technology to be successful, and where their expansion ability was practically limitless. You're talking about a significant shift in culture to go inland. If a new technology gave you such freedom to find a place where no one else seemed to be, and if you were trying to escape a place where people were dangerous and could be found anywhere in small groups, why not stick to this great new thing that made your life better and the lives of those in recent memory? Large groups have complex problems. Maybe early people in the Americas had no reason to form large groups, and no motivation for anything more than a peaceful life, much like people seeking a rural lifestyle today. All of Eurasia and Africa would have had people scattering about long before homo sapiens were alone. I doubt there was ever a time anyone was confident they were the first or completely alone in a new place until the Americas. If for generations it became clear that no one was around, and that traveling a short distance meant fresh land and resources while still in possible contact with other humans, why would you risk going inland. If you knew how to survive on the coast with this great technology that made it possible for your ancestors to escape a bad place, why would you go back to being bound to the land when your technology could give you everything you need. It is likely to be part of an oral tradition that living on the land is a bad thing that leads to criminals and conflicts. I could picture myself making it to America and telling my descendants to avoid living like the people I had escaped from. That kind of experience and tradition is entirely plausible. It could easily become a situation where people don't want to push their luck and find more hostile people if they do exist. I'm not saying this is what happened, I am saying I find the ideas plausible especially thinking of the context of myself playing in large open old growth forests and how I limited my exploration and range in arbitrary ways. I expect prehistoric people to have a similar depth and development as a modern child.
Yes, we absolutely do. There are lots of other sea fairing cultures that managed to turn inland.
I'm sorry, it's just completely implausible that there were people in America for ten thousand years without making any movement inland. Not only does it not make any sense, all the evidence we do have that maybe they were already on America comes from sites very far inland. Following your logic they made it to New Mexico and then back leaving only a single set of footprints behind. And never left the sea shore again? No.
27k years may be a stretch, but there is widespread acceptance of preclovis people in the Americas. For example, Buttermilk Creek and Monte Verde are generally acknowledged as being older than the Clovis culture.
Those links flat out say that they are not generally acknowledged or have widespread acceptance. They are theories based on incomplete evidence.
Spectacular video by Stefan Milo on the current evidence of the First Americans: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UsnrdCdGs7o
He even sites his sources. Solid stuff.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s): https://piped.video/watch?v=UsnrdCdGs7o
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source, check me out at GitHub.
It can be a great YouTube video, but the evidence is still highly suspect. Nothing has successfully challenged the theory that the Clovis culture were the first humans in America