
A 14,000-year-old campsite in Argentina - tambourine_man
http://arstechnica.com/science/2016/09/14000-year-old-campsite-in-argentina-adds-to-an-archaeological-mystery/
======
curtis
_For more than a decade, evidence has been piling up that humans colonized the
Americas thousands of years before the Clovis people._

It's actually been longer than that. The site at Monte Verde [1] in Chile
seems to have been widely accepted as a pre-Clovis site nearly 20 years ago
(1997 according to Wikipedia [2]). Awareness of the site, at least among the
archaeological community predates that (1989 [3]). The first radiocarbon dates
indicating a pre-Clovis origin for the site go back to 1982[4].

The idea that Clovis was not the earliest culture in the Americas, and the
commensurate theory that the earliest colonists must have been traveling by
boat [5] goes back decades. I know I've been reading about it (in the popular
press no less) since the 1990s. It seems like every article I read about it
makes it seem like some new and revolutionary idea. The only conclusion I can
draw is that archaeological science operates on time scales only slightly
shorter than those the archaeologists study.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monte_Verde](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monte_Verde)

[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monte_Verde#Acceptance](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monte_Verde#Acceptance)

[3]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monte_Verde#Diffusion](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monte_Verde#Diffusion)

[4]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monte_Verde#Discovery](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monte_Verde#Discovery)
(third paragraph)

[5] I'd like to give you a citation for this, but this theory, as far as I can
tell has no official name.

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r0muald
Adds up very well with almost contemporary evidence from Monte Verde in Chile
[http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal....](http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0141923)
so "mystery" is a non sequitur. But that's the headline.

The original research paper is worth a read (open access FTW).

~~~
raldi
Yeah, I came here to say the same thing. I think the use of "mystery" in the
headline was clickbait.

~~~
dang
Ok, we took that out of the title above.

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sandworm101
When I was at university (UBC) "pre-Clovis" was an almost forbidden word in
some classes. I saw a very heated debate in a geology class discussing land
bridges. Many First Nations students took issue with any suggestion that their
nations, their cultures, were not "first". Why that matters I don't know
(politics) but they were adamant supporters of the Clovis First hypothesis. It
has taken many years to etch away at the underlying land bridge assumptions
and properly credit the resourcefulness of ancient peoples.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clovis_culture#Clovis_First_.2...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clovis_culture#Clovis_First_.2F_Single_origin_hypothesis)

~~~
mootothemax
>Why that matters I don't know (politics) but they were adamant supporters of
the Clovis First hypothesis.

I imagine that it's less about "being first," and more about not wanting a
history of hideous exploitation to be washed out under the excuse of _you
weren 't first_.

I try to imagine what it must be like to only have had my family's history
recognised in _any_ meaningful way in very modern times - and then to have
people tell me "no no no, actually that's all changed, _this_ is your
narrative now."

Rightly or wrongly, I think I'd be on the defensive as well.

------
Steko
> The Clovis, who are _the_ early ancestors of today's Native Americans,

Emphasis added. One badly chosen word in an otherwise decent article. What we
know of pre-Clovis people clearly supports the idea of them also being 'early
ancestors to today's Native Americans.'

