-------- Original Message --------
Subject: PRE-CLOVIS TOOLS IN MINNESOTA?
Date: Fri, 12 Jan 2007 16:36:57 -0600
From:
Topiltzin-2091@webtv.net
Organization: WebTV Subscriber
Newsgroups: sci.archaeology.mesoamerican
Tools Found In Walker, May Be 14,000 Years Old
(AP) Walker, Minn. Archaeologists have discovered stone tools atop a
hill in this northern Minnesota town that may be 13,000 to 14,000 years
old, according to a published report.
From the rough stone tools, archaeologists are speculating that
"we're looking at certainly the relatively earliest occupants of the
North American continent," biologist and archaeologist Matt Mattson said
in a Star Tribune of Minneapolis report Thursday night. He worked on the
project for the Leech Lake Heritage Sites Program, which is based near
Cass Lake.
Britta Bloomberg, Minnesota's deputy historic preservation officer, said
it may be among the oldest known archaeological sites in North and South
America. A half-dozen archaeologists, soil scientists and others who
have examined the site all said the artifacts are genuine, she said.
The stone tools were found while archaeologists were investigating the
path of a road where the city is planning to expand for a community
center, housing and businesses.
Archaeologists found 50 or more objects while digging through an area of
about 50 square yards. The artifacts ranged from large hammer stones to
small hand-held scrapers.
Mattson said the objects were found underneath a band of rock and gravel
that appeared to have been deposited by melting glaciers and then
covered by windblown sediment, Mather said.
David Mather, state archaeologist for the National Register of Historic
Places, said the find "is something off our radar. We didn't think it
was even possible in Minnesota."
"(This) could be a real watershed for understanding Minnesota's
history," he said.
Mather said the site appears to be "much older" than the Clovis era of
finely made spear points that defines the paleo-Indian period.
The find is "startling enough that appropriate response from every
archaeologist and glacial geologist is skepticism." But, he added, a
half-dozen archaeologists, soil scientists and others who have examined
the site all say the artifacts are genuine.
Human remains, wood or textiles, if there were any, would have dissolved
long ago in the acidic soil. The oldest human remains found in Minnesota
belonged to the Browns Valley Man, who lived about 9,000 years ago. His
remains were discovered in 1933 in a gravel pit near the town of Browns
Valley in western Minnesota.
Walker is about 190 miles northwest of the Twin Cities.
(© 2007 The Associated Press.
Topiltzin-2091@webtv.net wrote:
Another news article:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070113/ap_on_sc/archaeological_find
Ancient stone tools found in N.America
By STEVE KARNOWSKI, Associated Press Writer Sat Jan 13, 1:39 AM ET
MINNEAPOLIS - What appear to be crude stone tools may provide evidence
that people lived in Minnesota 13,000 to 15,000 years ago, which if
confirmed would make them among the oldest human artifacts ever found in
North America, archaeologists said Friday.
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Archaeologists in the northern Minnesota town of Walker dug up the items,
which appear to be beveled scrapers, choppers, a crude knife and several
flakes that could have been used for cutting, said Colleen Wells, field
director for the Leech Lake Heritage Sites Program.
"They don't look like much," Wells acknowledged. "They don't look pretty."
Several archaeological experts who weren't involved with the dig expressed
a healthy dose of skepticism, but they acknowledged they were also
intrigued.
Wells and other archaeologists discovered around 50 objects this past year
while investigating a route for a planned road that would serve a major
community development project in Walker. The items were found beneath a
layer of glacial deposits that had been covered by windblown deposits.
Based on what's known about the geology of the area, they believe the
objects are between 13,000 and 15,000 years old.
"The finding is intriguing but it really needs to have its precise age
nailed down and more needs to be known of the artifacts," said David
Meltzer, an archaeologist at Southern Methodist University in Dallas.
Much more research needs to be done to allow firm conclusions, Wells and
her colleagues acknowledged. "It's bound to be controversial," said Matt
Mattson, another archaeologist on the project.
Not only do the age of the items and the soil in which they were found
need to be confirmed, it must also be determined whether the objects are
really human-made artifacts or merely rocks that were chipped in
interesting ways by glaciers during the Ice Age. And it's not yet certain
if the items were left at the site by humans, or carried there by glaciers
or flowing water.
Other researchers have found that that part of Minnesota apparently was
something of an "oasis" around 13,000 years ago, an area free of ice cover
with shifting glaciers on most sides but with an access route to the
southeast, Mattson said.
Tom Dillehay, chairman of the anthropology department at Vanderbilt
University in Nashville, Tenn., was intrigued by the edge he saw on a
photo of one of the objects found in Walker, saying it could have been
chipped by a human.
"It's probably worth protecting the site and going back in and more
systematically excavating with the geologists and other disciplines to see
if it's a real site," he said.
Pat Everson, head of archaeology for the Minnesota Historical Society,
said she hadn't been to the site or seen the artifacts personally, but
she'd read the reports, knows the archaeologists involved and considers
them "perfectly credible." Still, she counted herself among the skeptics.
"It's an extraordinary claim and it requires some extraordinary evidence,"
Everson said. "But it's certainly worth pursuing."
Several experts agreed it is possible people were in Minnesota that long
ago.
"It seems to be there is an increasing body of science that there were
stone stools and people here in that time period in North America," said
Dan Rogers, chairman of the anthropology department at the National Museum
of Natural History at the
Smithsonian Institution in Washington.
The long-accepted theory was that people first arrived in the Western
Hemisphere 11,200 years ago — corresponding with the age of arrowheads
found in the 1930s near Clovis, N.M. — via a land bridge from Asia over
what is now the Bering Strait.
But a consensus is emerging that some humans arrived thousands of years
earlier, even if scientists disagree on just how much earlier. And several
agreed that if the Minnesota objects do turn out to be 13,000- to
15,000-year-old tools, they'd be among the oldest human artifacts ever
found in North America.
That's why the local archaeologists are hoping to get back into the site
after this winter, and hope to work out a way with the city of Walker to
preserve it for sometime in the future when more advanced testing methods
might be available.
"Once it's gone it's gone," Mattson said. "We're looking at absolutely
irreplaceable links in human history here. Once it's gone there's no
retrieving it."
