
Mastodon Bone Findings Could Upend Our Understanding of Human History (2017) - curtis
https://www.nbcnews.com/science/science-news/mastodon-bone-findings-could-upend-our-understanding-human-history-n751406
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zipwitch
The answer is obvious: time-travelers on a 'paleo hunting experience' trip.

"We'll just target 100,000 years before the earliest known human presence."

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xenophonf
I'm skeptical. From
[https://np.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/9i7sta/til_pa...](https://np.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/9i7sta/til_paleontologists_have_dug_up_a_130000yearold/e6hpd5b/):

 _Professional archaeologist checking in. I hate to spoil the party, but the
argument this represents evidence of human occupation of North America 130
thousand years ago doesn 't hold water._

 _First, there isn 't even consensus that Homo sapiens left Africa by that
time. Additionally, the preponderance of evidence shows humans didnt occupy
fully glacial environments until 80+ thousand years later, which would be
necessary to make it to NE Asia and North America. The claim they were in
North America by 130 thousand years ago is inconsistent with all available
archaeological and genetic evidence (a whole other topic)._

 _Second, the argument that the "tools" and bone modification seen at this
site were made by people doesn't hold up either. There are many natural
processes that can mimic these types of breakage. There are diagnostic
features of stone tools and broken bones produced by humans, but none of them
are present on the objects Holen et al. point to._

 _Holen has a long history of making similar claims with no real evidence. He
consistently fails to rule out obvious natural processes at sites he works at.
I have personally seen him pick up a piece of naturally fractured fossil bone
from a flood deposit and say "see, people." This is science by press release
at it's worst, and there is good reason no other archaeologists accept his
arguments. Unfortunately flashy headlines with extraordinary claims grab the
press._

 _Don 't get me wrong, I would LOVE for this to be true. Finding evidence for
a much earlier occupation of North America would be super exciting. But as a
responsible scientist, I have to go with the evidence._

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rossdavidh
Idea for a research project: find as many "...could upend our
understanding..." and similarly titled papers as possible, that are at least a
few years old, and see what percentage of them actually do, in fact, upend our
understanding of the field in question. I'm thinking, uh, less than 50%.

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dmix
Move over tech, it seems every week archaeology/paleontology is completely
revolutionizing our understanding of the world on a weekly basis!

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d--b
Could it not be that some dudes 5000 years ago excavated the remains of the
beast, and decided to turn the tusk into a coffee table?

I mean... when they find 130000 year-old human bones, then we'll know... Until
then...

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dynofuz
could this be related to the younger dryas impact
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Younger_Dryas_impact_hypothesi...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Younger_Dryas_impact_hypothesis)
[https://cometresearchgroup.org/comets-diamonds-
mammoths/](https://cometresearchgroup.org/comets-diamonds-mammoths/) im not
sure what to think about that, as i just heard of this hypothesis recently.
Maybe north america was well inhabited and all the humans got wiped?

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nickbauman
I don't think so: the Younger Dryas interlude was well more than 100,000 years
after this even took place.

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dynofuz
previous research cited in this article says "The oldest widely accepted site
for the first Americans dates to just 13,000 years ago." this coincidences
well with the 12,800 years ago Younger Dryas event.

~~~
nickbauman
The site was dated over 100,000 years ago?

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sunstone
Hmmm, looking through the comments it looks very much like no one has read the
article as the comments assume that the humans were Homo Sapiens. In fact the
article speculates that the humans where either neanderthals or Denisovans.

The earliest neanderthals date to 400k years ago. And the high arctic at the
time of this find 130k years ago was pretty much one cold dry circumpolar
ecosystem as ocean levels were much lower than today. Given all of this
context it's not really insane to think this could have happened though of
course more evidence is needed.

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SmellyGeekBoy
Perhaps OT, but these discoveries never seem to actually "upend our
understanding of human history", they just refine it by changing our previous
assumptions about various timelines.

Discovering that we were put here by aliens 6000 years ago would be an
upending.

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fosco
any thoughts on having a 'clickbait' headline vote button?

Does anyone think this would be helpful? what can be done about headlines
written like this one and their relationship to HN

Any thoughts on what we cando to help journalists write better headlines as
well in newspapers etc?

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MaxBarraclough
I'd be in favour of a Clickbait button. Clickbait may be par for the course in
many parts of the web, but I expect better from Hacker News.

As it is, it _generally_ succeeds in keeping it out, but not always.

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aaaaaaaaaab
Off: I chuckle everytime I’m misled like this when skimming through HN titles.
Yesterday there was a piece about Kafka (the writer, not the event stream) and
now this Mastodon stuff.

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mywittyname
The title seems inline with the quotes from experts:

> _“My first reaction on reading this paper was ‘No. This is wrong.
> Something’s wrong, '” said stone tool expert John McNabb of the University
> of Southampton in Britain. “If it does turn out to be true, it changes
> absolutely everything.”_

And

> _“This discovery is rewriting our understanding of when humans reached the
> New World,” Judy Gradwohl, president and CEO of the San Diego Natural
> History Museum, said in a statement._

Those quotes were probably cherry picked and a little out of context, but when
experts in the field use such strong language, I think it's justified for
reporters to do the same.

~~~
brittohalloran
I believe the original comment was referring to being misled / confused about
the decentralized social network Mastodon
([https://joinmastodon.org/](https://joinmastodon.org/)), not being misled as
to the significance of the finding.

~~~
mywittyname
Oh, I get it.

