A scallop trawler ship called "Cinmar" dredged-up and recovered some prehistoric remains and an eight-inch stone blade (20 cm) back in 1970 while dredging in the Atlantic Ocean 47 miles (75 km) from the shores of Virginia, USA. They were sitting on the continental shelf 250 ft (76 m) below sea level. The mastodon tusk and stone blade were divided by the captain of the ship, Thurston Shawn, among its crew. Years later, in 2008, a geology student, Darrin Lowery, came across them in Gwynn's Island Museum, Virginia. They were dated as being at least 22,000 years old. (Source).
As with all old, pre-Clovis artifacts, it drewn fire from the Clovis first supporters. It was also used by those supporting the Solutrean migration (from Europe to America across the North Atlantic Ocean) during the Last Glacial Maximum.
An interesting analysis can be found in Stafford, Lowery, Bradley al., 2014 that describes the stone tool.
The Mastodon remains were carbon dated to 22,760 RCYBP so the stone tool was estimated to be of the same age. The tool itself is a bifacial rhyolite implement shaped like a laurel leaf (lanceolate) and this is why the Solutreans like it, because this shape is quite unusual. It shows that there were people hunting mammoths on the continental shelf during the Last Glacial Maximum, which was exposed at that time due to lower sea levels.
The rhyolite rock used to make the blade has been analyzed and its source was traced to the South Mountain Catoctin rocks of Pennsylvania, spefcifically to a spot close to Tom's Creek Railroad Tressle. This is 320 km (200 mi) from the Cinmar spot and reveals that these people had been there long enough to trek inland from Chesapeake Bay to find the stone quarry.
An interesting conclusion found in this paper is that the scarcity of site dated between 23 and 15,000 years ago suggests that they may be submerged. The coastal habitat, now underwater would have supported a rich ecosystem that provided these first inhabitants with plenty of food. When it became submerged due to the ice melt of glacial ice at the end of the Last Ice Age, some 14,500 years ago, and with a growing human population, they spread inland into the interior of the continent, resulting in the more abundant Clovis sites.
Solutreans
I have discussed the Solutrean people theory in previous posts (white supremacists like it, as it proves a first European settlment in America!) and mentioned that it is upheld by those who believe the X2 mtDNA haplogroup or the R haplogroup in the Y-chromosome found in America came from Europe; I don't support it. However, Stafford et al., are promote it:
"It is important to note that the manufacturing technology used to produce the Chesapeake Bay bifaces and the tool types themselves reflect the same technology as that used by the Solutrean people of southwestern Europe during the LGM (Stanford and Bradley 2012). Although more evidence is needed, it is not beyond the realm of possibility to hypothesize that this early settlement of the East Coast of North America resulted from a European Paleolithic maritime tradition."
The authors point out that the lanceolate shape of the point is unusual in this region, and they included the folowing image in the paper:
I must point out that Dennis Stafford co-authored a book with Bruce Bradley, with a revealing title: Across Atlantic Ice: The Origin of America's Clovis Culture. So we know where they stand when it comes to the Solutrean hypothesis.
Since we only have the version given by the trawler's captain and crew about the finding, and can't confirm if the bones and tool came from the same spot, or even pinpoint its location exactly, there are some doubts about the finding. Metin I. Eren, Matthew T. Boulanger, and Michael J. O'Brien, 2015 are very skeptical and question the story of its discovery, the uncertainty of the site's location (it was dredged up from the sea) and conclude " the reported inconsistencies in the blade's history, there is no confirmable evidence currently available that demonstrates that it was even dredged up by the Cinmar. Thus, even in the event that the same, original underwater mastodon site is eventually empirically proven to be re-located at some point in the future, this re-discovery would not provide context for, or validate, the stone blade's association with it."
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