A paper published in PLOS (Moreno K, Bostelmann JE, Macías C, Navarro-Harris X, De Pol-Holz R, Pino M (2019) A late Pleistocene human footprint from the Pilauco archaeological site, northern Patagonia, Chile. PLoS ONE 14(4): e0213572. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0213572) reports finding the "oldest human footprint" in America, North or South.
Pilauco, is close to Osorno, in Chile's Patagonian Lake District. This site is very close (60 miles away) to the Monte Verde site, where ancient remains (Pre-Clovis) were found, but their age was questioned.
The team's dating places this footprint at 15,600 years ago. And this is indeed older than any other human footprint in America.
The interesting part is that its age challenges theories about the peopling of America, which had suggested that modern humans entered America some 13,000 years ago.
Here we have a footprint far older than that date, and far, far away from Beringia!
Why should we assume that they were new arrivals? Couldn't these people have reached Chile 20, 25 or even 100 Kya?
See this video on the footprint:
More findings will clarify our doubts.
Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2019 by Austin Whittall ©
Who is still clinging to the 13,000 year date of entrance. No one, because most scientist know Naia, Arlington Springs Woman, Anzick, are all 13,000 yr or older. Their ancestors had to have been in the vicinity alot earlier.
ReplyDeleteVery interesting entry!. This footprint is an amazing and unquestionable proof of a somewhat earlier presence in the region, and the documentation of the hole site seems pretty well presented. It is evidence that will be hard to deny
ReplyDeleteAs you rightly point, this dating of 15,6 Ka (which is still post-LGM) is another one that violates the barricade built and defended by the orthodoxy (which since two decades or so, is at Monte Verde II, 14,5 Ka)…but this is a fact at which we are accustomed today.
Your open questions, precisely formulated, go directly to the point I would like to comment on;
…”Why should we assume that they were new arrivals?”…
At a first glance, I would say that we shouldn´t , but if the term “new ”refers to a recently arrived immigration, actually we can´t rule up this possibility… people who crossed Behring at terminal Pleistocene, travelled to the South via coastal route (perhaps the only feasible way to avoid the ice during the MIS2 peak of the Wisconsin glaciation), and arrived at Pilauco at 15,6 Ka…it would not be impossible.
But if they did so, I think that what we should assume, with minimal risks of being wrong, is that, simply …these people reached a land that was already inhabited since long before.
So, they perhaps could have been “new” immigrants…but not the first ones.
…”Couldn´t these people have reached Chile 20, 25, or even 100 ka ago?”…
I speculate that not only they could reach Chile well before 15 Ka… almost surely, they did.
An idea of this last can be inferred from some paragraphs into T. Dillehay´s papers, particularly “New archaeological evidences for human presence at Monte Verde, Chile” ,2015. In this paper (available free at PLOS ONE) he documents excavations of deeper strata at Monte Verde I and Chinchihuapi site, where he shows very suggestive findings, among them; two samples of wood charcoal associated with burned features, with datings of 23/22 and 33 Ka respectively, and a piece of animal skin, from the basal layer of MV I, dated at 43,5 ka. He also ensures that these C14´s were reliable, consistent with OSL´s, and that these sediments were not disturbed. But even so, he considered that the data in these deeper layers was still too meager and inconclusive in order to substantiate any serious evidence of human activity…(¿¿??)
So, it´s highly probable that old cultural remains, well beyond the 14,5 Ka dating of MVII, can be found in this region…a fact that Dillehay knows well.