Black's Fork River Wyoming Site

Continuing with this series on ancient pre Clovis sites in America, this post will cover the Black's Fork River site, located in Wyoming, USA, which I didn't know existed until I read about it in Hidden History of the Human Race by Michael Cremo and Richard Thompson, 1993.

Discovered in the 1930s

The site was discovered by Harold Marion Dunning (1891-1973) a local historian, businessman, and amateur archaeologist. He founded the Loveland Museum in Loveland Colorado and established the local Stone Age Fair.

Dunning, accompanied by his friend and former student, Edison P. Lohr, who also lived in Loveland, found some unusual stone tools, artifacts that were different from the usual Indian arrow points. They came from the terraces along the Black's Fork River.

The river has its sources in the Uinta mountain range in Utah, and is an affluent of the Green River. It heads east across Utah, into Wyoming and then curves south into Colorado, to join the Green River and eventually flow into the Colorado River.

The Black's Fork River has eroded a plateau that has slowly been rising over millennia, and formed terraces. The region was not glaciated, and although it is arid nowadays, in the past it harbored grasslands and open forests.

The two men showed these stone implements to Etienne Bernardeu Renaud (1880-1973), a Frenchman, who was a professor of anthropology at the University of Denver. Renaud was immediately interested, as he had been trained in France, and recognized them as Early Paleolithic tools. Renaud set up an excavation in 1933, finding and collecting more tools along the Black's Fork River between Lyman and Granger, Wyoming (see approx. location in Google Maps).

Ruth Simpson, 1961, see p.32 describes the sites along the river citing three publications by Renaud (the 1936, 1938, and 1940 articles titled "The Archaeological Survey of the High Western Plains", seventh, tenth, and twelfth reports, respectively, University of Denver, Department of Anthropology).

The tools have a definite Lower-Paleolithic appearance, and were foiund in over forty surface sites. There were different types of artifacts grouped into three categories. The "Peripheral" kind, which were small tools, the "Sand Dune" material, which are more recent, and then came the "Typical" artifacts, the hallmarks of "Black's Fork Culture" or "Black's Fork Industry", the Lower-Paleoloithic tools.

These are made of chert and are the oldest of the three. They are mostly large-sized, heavy choppers accompanied by "large scrapers and many coup de poing-like implements", shown in the image below. The assemblies also include crude quartzite pebbles that have been shaped into flaked stone implements, with a dark patina covering their sufaces, which are "strikingly similar to the Pebble Industry placed at the base of the Lower Paleolithic culture sequence on other continents".

Black's Fork River, stone tools. Source, p. 33

Rejected by the Establishment

Renaud described them as "early and late Chellean, and early Acheulian coups-de-poing together with early Clactonian flakes is perfectly consistent and would suggest a cultural complex in America similar to that in Europe" (Source, p.86). These tools, in Europe are the mark of H. erectus.

As expected, the mainstream archaeologists, who had for decades stood beside the theory of a late peopling of America (championed by Ales Hrdlicka), and were now slowly embracing the Clovis First theory which was characterized by Neolithic tools, modern, delicate, and crafted by modern men, with an older arrival date in the Americas (~10 to 13 kya), but definitely not Paleolithic.

During the 1930s, E.B. Renaud explored and excavated the area finding more of these crude stone tools.

Despite Simpson's 1961 commentary quoted further up, the orthodox archaeologists refused to acknowledge these implements as real man-made tools. Renaud was surprised by these rebuttals and wrote in 1938 that his findings were "...harshly criticized by one of the irreconcilable opponents of the antiquity of man in America, who had seen neither the sites nor the specimens. After such subjective and unfair criticism, the best course to pursue was to do more extensive exploration, to collect more numerous specimens, to study them more closely, and to compare them directly with Old World artifacts of well-authenticated origin and established age and culture, and to obtain the expert opinions of qualified scientists not prejudiced on the subject of the antiquity of man in the New World." Source, p.87)

An amateur archaeologist, and art professor, Herbert L. Minshall (1912-1991), supported an early peopling of America, and in his book Buchanan Canyon: Ancient Human Presence in the Americas (1989) mentions the Black's Fork site. Below is an image showing one of the Black's Fork River tools, from his book.

Minshall says that a professor at the Colorado School of Mines, Dr. E. H. Stephens, in 1938, assigned an age of 125,000 to 190,000 years BP, or even earlier. However, by 1940 he had recanted.

The critics gave all tools found along the river a rectn age even though the tools from the older upper terraces are covered with desert varnish (an indication of great age) are have shapes similar to H. erectus crafted tools from the Old World and those from the recent lower terraces resemble Paleoindian tools or Upper Paleolithic, with no desert patina.

Renaud retired in 1948. The matter was ignored, Clovis First had prevailed.

Renaud had visite sites in France during his trips to Europe, including the key sites that gave their name to stone industries: Solutrewan, from Le Solutré, and Mousterian from Le Mostier, just to name two of them. He had seen Neanderthal and early Modern Human tools spanning over 250,000 years.

Yet, even in 1968, an article by Whitthoft and Eyman entioned Renaud's Black's Fork Culture, as "a controversial complex. Great antiquity has been claimed for it. It consists of crude massive tools of quartzite and flint, notable for their primitive character and large size. They have been compared with the most ancient stone tools from Eurasia and Africa" but, added that their survey considered the most recent artifacts that had a crude Clactonian appearance as the work of Shoshone natives while the oldest tools they found "are less than eight thousand years old on geological evidence."

Yet the geological evidence is incomplete because the tools are not embedded in deep stratigraphic layers that could be dated, they are superficial, and, as Minshall affirms "... weathering over long periods in a variety of environments can remove original surfaces by undeterminable amounts, particularly by blowing sand or dust, so that surface finds are usually subject only to personal interpretations based on geological provenience, typology, technological aspects, individual familiarity with similar industries elsewhere, and what might be called a "consensus" or current doctrine, whatever that might be... With the soils reduced by the actions of wind and rain and melting snow, the stone materials had been slowly concentrated into a desert pavement, a mosaic-like surface into which the artifacts had been incorporated as solidly as paveing stones." Minshall, 1989, p.88 & 90.

Schroedl, 1985 (see p. 16) states that "Even Renaud (1940:91) recognized some serious flaws with his chronology of the region. All of the artifacts of the Typical and Peripheral cultures were surface finds; Renaud was unable to locate any buried components from these occupations, components which he expected to produce Pleistocene fauna" (Typical and Peripheral were the oldest elements) and argue that they are in fact recen tools "(Sharrock 1966) has demonstrated that the bulk of the flaked artifacts from these reputed early cultures do not represent crude hand axes and flake implements, but are more parsimoniously interpreted as remnants of lithic reduction stages, e.g., cores, blanks and preforms, instead of paleolithic tools."

Closing Comments

This site is indeed controversial. Assigning an age is complicated, and the orthodox viewpoint has prevailed, assigning a recent, paleoindian origin to these crude Early Paleolithic-like tools. I am open to a Paleolithic peopling of America, but it can only be proven irrefutably with stratigraphic evidence, datable bones of animals and humans. Until then, the question remains open.

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2026 by Austin Whittall © 

Brazil, ancient sites and Homo erectus in America, a 1992 paper

An old article published in 1992, by Spanish archaeologist Gabriela Martin Avila, La antiguedad del hombre en el Nordeste de Brasil (The antiquity of Man in the northeast of Brazil, Rev. do Museu de Arqueologia e Etnologia, S. Paulo, 2:7-12, 1992), explores the possibilities, not only of pre-Clovis sites in America, but also even older dates.

Martin mentions that "...the most advanced theories even suggest the possibility that Homo erectus arrived in America 200,000 or 300,000 years ago." To support this statement, she cites Argentine archaeologist Juan Schobinger, and his 1988 essay "200.000 años del hombre en América: ¿Que pensar?" (200,000 years of man in America: What to think?). Schobinger, according to Martin analyzed several sites in North America, and suggested that there were "chances that Homo erectus had reached the American continent thousands of years before the Homo sapiens sapiens."

The sites are the following: Old Crow in the Canadian Yukon, excavated William Nathaniel Irving; Texas Street in San Diego (see my post on it), the Calico Site in California (I posted on it back in 2011), and Valsequillo (see my post), and Toca da Esperanca site in Brazil (more on this site below).

Pedra Furada Site

Gabriela Martin then mentions some more recent sites, equally controversial, dated to around 50 kya, like Piedra Furada in Brazil, and other more recent ones of pre-Clovis age, and concludes that:

"It is necessary to await for new evidence, always with an open mind to any new theory that may be confirmed. It is also valid to ask, "Why not?" If we know today that descendants of the Chou-Ku-Tien man, or those related to the Sinanthropus [here she refers to the H. erectus from China, the Peking man] adapted to extremely cold Siberian climates, nothing prevents them from crossing Beringia before the last interglacial period if they knew how to make fire. The case of the Australians who sailed great distances is also frequently cited when arguing for the possibility of reaching America via oceanic routes during the Pleistocene era.
An interesting theory, though still in the realm of conjecture, would be that if the [erectus] ancestors of Homo sapiens managed to reach America, they may have been small groups that became extinct, giving rise to the long gap that preceded the arrival of other waves around 50,000 years ago. These new groups, dispersed across different regions of the continent, may also have become extinct, which would explain the long periods of unoccupied sites observed at some sites that we could call strategic, indicating gaps of 10,000 to 20,000 years. This would be the case of Boqueirão da Pedra Furada, in southeastern Piauí, to cite the most important archaeological site in northeastern Brazil, in terms of chronological sequence.
Based on the data known today, it cannot be denied that northeastern Brazil was populated by humans at least 50,000 years ago. These people, without specialized projectile points, used crude stone tools, wooden points, and traps to hunt mastodons, giant sloths, horses, llamas, and other smaller animals, including a large number of rodents and birds. Further evidence of their presence is only a matter of time."

An interesting combination that proposes not only an Homo erectus migration into America or even a transpacific voyage from Australia, but also that the erectus became extinct before modern humans reached America much more recently.

Toca da Esperanca Site

Another research paper from that period gives a thorough review, country by country of the alleged pre-Clovis sites in South America. (Lynch, T. F. (1990). El hombre de la edad glacial en suramérica: una perspectiva europea. Revista de Arquelogía Americana, 141-185). In the case of Brazil, it mentions the Toca da Esperanca site:

"...now that it has been reported in South America [about] an association of primitive quartzite tools with Pleistocene fauna, dated between 204,000 and 295,000 years ago (Beltráo and Danon 1987; de Lumley et al., 1988; Weber 1989). The Esperança Cave was first explored and appropriately named by Beltráo in 1982 and has been excavated since 1985. The preliminary results were presented at conferences in Rio de Janeiro, Turin, and Mainz in 1987 and quickly published in France, as well as in Brazil. The depth of the deposit is given as only 1.0 to 1.5 m [3 to 5 ft], but it yielded dates ranging from 2020 ± 130 BP. (radiocarbon at the highest Level 1) to 295,000 years (by the uranium-thorium method, at the lowest level)...
The Franco-Brazilian team identifies two pebble tools and a chopper from Level IV, as well as a hammer and several fáo and Danon (1987) state that at least one is specifically Clactonian in type. They also mention molds of human teeth (?), bone tools, hearth structures, and charcoal at all levels, but do not mention these in the subsequent French publication. More significantly, both reports specify that the quartz and quartzite artifacts are from rocks found only within 10 km of the cave.
The deposit is thin and the artifacts are simple, but at first glance, there seems to be no good reason not to accept this discovery of Middle Pleistocene man in America (Homo erectus?).
According to these researchers, "It is therefore not surprising that the Homo erectus who occupied the Chinese continent at least 700,000 years ago... and who domesticated fire 400,000 years ago (Chou-Kou-Tien), crossed the Bering Strait repeatedly" (de Lumley et al., 1988:245). However, it is necessary to mention that there is a serious dispute about whether Middle Pleistocene man (and specifically Peking Man) was in systematic possession of the use of fire, which is thought to have been present at Cueva Esperança, and whether it was necessarily the man who had to cross the Bering Strait (Binford and Ho 1985; Binford and Stone 1986; James 1989). Thus, the discovery at Esperanca should have implications for the archaeology of the Old World, as well as for that of the New World."

There seems to be some hesitation in the text: charcoal and hearths which were reported but then omitted in the French language paper, or the fact that we aren't sure if H. erectus mastered the art of fire making. But the dates 204 to 205 ky for the lowest levels, with "Clactonian" tools, which some belive were made by H. erectus while others support the notion that they were made by H. heidelbergensis. The age of this industry is 420 to 380 kya, and it predates modern humans.

Schobinger in his work also expresses his doubts about this site: "Let's admit it's difficult to accept an age of almost 300,000 years for materials found at a depth of only about 1.30 m [4.3 ft]. It's true that they are sealed by a carbonaceous-calcareous layer (and in that sense, it's in situ material), but we are told that this layer formed not much more than 20,000 years ago (Lumley et al., 1987: 929). What happened before then? Is the association of the very few quartzite stone fragments with the bones on which the U/To dating was performed reliable? Is this method entirely dependable?"

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2026 by Austin Whittall © 

Eoliths: Siberia. 1.5 - 2.5 million year old stone tools

Continuing with my series on primitive paleolithic tools, ones that resemble Oldowan cobble pebbles, following yesterday's post on the 100 ky Texas Street, San Diego, California site excavated by George Carter (1940s-1970s), I will go back to Siberia.

Recently I posted about two sites there, Diring Yuirakh and Karama, today I will mention another one, on Ulalinka River dated to over 1.5 million years ago.

Ulalinka River site

Michael Cremo and Richard Thompson, in their 1993 work Hidden History of the Human Race mention the Ulalinka River site as follows: "In 1961, hundreds of crude pebble tools were found near Gorno-Altaisk, on the Ulalinka river in Siberia. According to a 1984 report by Russian scientists A. P. Okladinov and L. A. Ragozin, the tools were found in layers 1.5-2.5 million years old."

Little has been written about it in Western journals. The second source I encountered about it, is a travel agent based in Krasnoyarsk, Russia, that mentions the attractions in Gorno-Altaisk, and casually refers to the site on their website:

"Ulalinskaya Paleolithic site
Ulalinskaya Paleolithic site is one of the main sights in Gorno-Altaysk. It is situated on the bank of the Ulalushka River, after which the site took its name.
The site constantly attracts attention of archeologists. It was found during the excavations of 1960-1970s under the guidance of academician Alexey Okladnikov. Exactly that time more than 600 stone tools were found, referring to the age of Paleolith. It proves the fact that the territory was made habitable more than 1,5 million years ago. Although the views of geologists about this subject are still not common. Some experts determine the age of the site in the range of 100 - 350 thousand years; others indicate the date from 690 thousand to half a million years.
Unfortunately, only primitive tools, no other traces of sites of ancient people were found during excavations.
This sensational archeological find became the city’s pride. No wonder that exactly these tools are depicted in the coat of arms since 1996.
The debates over this discovery are conducted to this day - many scientists believe, it would a grand hoax of the 20th century."

Gorno-Altaysk means "Mountainous Altai" in Russian, note that (1) this article calls the river Ulaluska, and the site Ulalinskaya. (2) It suggests it may be a hoax. (3) And that the city adopted the tools in its coat of arms (pictured).

Details

The site is located in the twon of Gorno-Altaysk itself — 51°°57'20.7"N 85°58'25.5"E (see it in Google maps) which is 110 km (68 mi.) as the crow flies, from the famous Denisova Cave.

The megalithic.co.uk website has some pictures of the site.

There is an English language publication A. P. Okladnikov and G. A. Pospelova, 1982 (Ulalinka, the Oldest Palaeolithic Site in Siberia p. 710–712, Current Anthropology Vol 23, No 6 (🔒 paywalled, but you can read the first page of the paper). Which says that it was discovered in 1961 on the Maima River, at its confluence with the Ulalinka River by the cemetery of Gorno-Altaysk. It describes the sedimentary layers in the dig, which produced neolithic tools from its upper layer (younger than 25,000 years - 25 ky), and then, the one with the primitive eoliths:

"The main cultural level of this section, associated with the boulder-pebble horizon, differs from the upper one and from all other known Palaeolithic sites in Siberia principally in the strikingly archaic shapes of the tools and their primitive technology. The tools were made almost entirely from pebbles of yellowish-white quartzite, whole or split in half, and sometimes from pebbles of obsidian and quartzite fragments.
The finds include choppers, chopping tools, scrapers, a peculiar pebble core and tools with a spoutlike curved projection that might have served as cutting instruments. All these tools are nearly untreated pebbles, only slightly retouched (fig 1) [see it below]. All the artifacts are amorphous. They may sometimes have served as cutting tools, sometimes as scrapers, sometimes both functions at once. Their primitive diversity seems to reflect the pursuit of a useful and stable shape. The stone inventory and the techniques of manufacture are so primitive and peculiar that they cannot be classified in the framework of the classic Lower Palaeolithic typology. The nomenclature of the Western European schemes cannot be applied to them."

Below is Fig. 1 from this paper, showing these tools. The article adds that the "archaeological data alone were insufficient to estimate the age of these tools", and that they used other, geological, paleogeographical, and paleontological techniques. There were different opinions among the scholars, with some dating it at no more than 40 ky, while others, including the author of the paper in two articles published in 1964 and 1972, Gaiduk, 1968, and Ceitlin, 1979 placed it in the Lower Pleistocene.

The articles, in Russian, are:
Okladnikov, A.P., 1964. Ulalinka–the earliest Palaeolithic occupation in Siberia. Investiya AN SSSR 1/1, 131–133.
Okladnikov, A.P. 1972, Ulalinka – drevnepaleoliticheskiy pamyatnik Sibiri. In Paleolit i neolit SSSR, vol. 7. Moscow: Nauka, pp. 7–19. (MIA; No. 185).
Gaiduk, I. M. 1968. Kamenny vek basseina Verhnei i Srednei Obi. (paleolit, neolit). Avtoreferat dissertatsii, Novosibirsk.
Zeitlin (or Ceitlin S.M. 1979. Geology of the Paleolithic of Northern Asia. Moscow: Nauka. Yamskikh

Ulalinka is cited by Dennell, Rendell and Hailwood, 1988 "... the artefacts from the site of Ulalinka in Soviet Central Asia, that were dated to the Olduvai Event (Okladinov & Pospelova, 1982), but need not be older than the Brunhes- Matuyama boundary at c. 0.7 My."

Shunkov, 2005 gives it an old, yet more recent age "The available palaeomagnetic and radiothermoluminescence (RTL) dates suggest attribution of the lowermost layers at Ulalinka to a wide chronological range of c. 300 - 400 ka to 1.5 mya (Okladnikov et al. 1985). The lower chronological boundary seems doubtful, whereas the upper boundary is reliable, supporting the age estimates of the Ulalinka site as older than 300 ka."

However, an older dating is provided by UNESCO in History of civilizations of Central Asia, v. 1: The Dawn of civilization, earliest times to 700 B.C., 1992 (see p. 54), though with some reservations; highlights are mine:

"The site of Ulalinka, within the town of Gornoaltaisk in the northern Altai, gives rise to considerable controversy among specialists. Discovered in 1961, it was excavated overseveral seasons by A. P. Okladnikov. Beneath a four-metre layer of alluvial loam lies a stratum of multicoloured clays resting on boulder deposits. In the lower part of the clay, which geologists ascribe to the Kochorka Eneopleistocene suite, a series of hand-worked pebbles is to be found in a seam of yellow-ochre-coloured clay, containing quartzite boulders and pebbles. Palaeomagnetic analysis suggests that the yellow-ochre is in the Matayama zone of negative magnetization. The thermoluminescent date of the layer that contains the tools is 1.48 million years. [Note: Matayama reversal, or negative magnetization took place between 2.58 and 0.78 million years ago]
The archaeological material is restricted to quartzite tools scattered among the pebbles in the clay. Okladnikov identifies several groups: crude pebble ‘proto-axes’, ‘tools with anextended nose’, crudely made choppers and crude scrapers. Particular attention was paid to laterally split quartzite pebbles with dressed edges and tips. Although these artefacts are comparable in period with the Olduvan industry, their general appearance does not allow direct analogies to be drawn with that site or its typological series. The reason is that Ulalinka lacks both stable designs and, most importantly, the usual signs of deliberate working – the struck crest, surface cutting, precise spalling facets and so on. Okladnik overcomes this difficulty by explaining that the Ulalinka finds are unusual in that the pebbles were split not by striking but by being heated in a fire and then dropped in water. Analysing the formation about this site, it should be noted that until more convincing evidence is available, Okladnikov’s conclusions cannot be unreservedly accepted."

Another online reference (Novosibirsk State University (NSU) in Russia, in english) states that "Ulalinka which lies within the limits of today's Gorno-Altaisk, is the most ancient settlement of primitive man. During the excavation of the Ulalinka site some primitive stone tools were found. The fire technique, that is the heating and quick cooling of stones, was used when making the tools. Ulalinka's finds are dated within the limits of the lower Palaeolithic period - from 150000 BC to 1.5 million years."

The final reference is Zwyns, 2012: "The Ulalinka site was discovered in 1961 by Okladnikov and was intensively investigated starting in 1969. The dating of human occupation at theses sites varies depending of the authors (Maloletko, 1972; Okladnikov, 1972; Gayduk, 1973; Okladnikov and Pospelova, 1982; Ragozin and Shliukov, 1984; Tseitlin, 1986) and doubts have been raised regarding the authenticity of the lithic assemblage (Mochanov, 1976; Medvedev, 1983 quoted after Derevianko et al., 2001). Okladnikov admitted that evidence of percussion is not clear (Okladnikov, 1972) but other scholars observed and described nearly a hundred artifacts (Abramova, 1989)."

Conclusions

The site at Ulalinka is controversial, deemed very old by some, recent by others, or even a hoax. It is part of a trend that reveals several sites in Siberia, far older than accepted in the West, described in papers written in Russian, and therefore, ignored and not cited by Western archaeologists.

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2026 by Austin Whittall © 

Eolithic stone tools: Carter and Texas Street, 100 kya site in San Diego

In a recent post, Imentioned the primitive eoliths, cobble-like eolithic tools described by Florentino Ameghino in the late 1800s, and early 1900s, in deep sediments of the Pampas in Buenos Aires province, Argentina. They are paleolithic, but don't resemble the typical Acheulean tools found in the Old World, and used by Homo erectus.

In this post I will look into the eolithic tools in the San Diego area in USA.

Michael Cremo and Richard Thompson, in their 1993 work Hidden History of the Human Race discuss these early stone tools and mentions other sites besides the ones described by Ameghino. Below I will follow them, and add more references and expand on their comments.

Texas Street Site, San Diego

Eoliths were reported by George Francis Carter (1912-2004) department chair and professor of geography at Johns Hopkins University, who worked at this site when he returned to California after WWII. In 1947 he discovered a large pit on Texas Street in Mission Valley, San Diego, California, USA, and found coarse stone tools and the charred remains of ancient hearths buried under 50 feet (15 m) of alluvial sediments. The areas whith the hearths had stones that had been worked by percussion. Carter said they were cores and choppers, and these areas were identified as workshops.

Based on the geology of the area he realized they were very old. Finally, he published his investigations in 1957/58. The site produced crude cobble-like tools dating back to the interglacial period, and around 80,000 to 100,000 (80-100 ky) old.

He was attacked by critics who attributed natural causes to the formation of these stone tools: natural fires that cracked the stones, stones broken by the action of strong currents in streams, or fractures caused by geologic faults. Some called them "Carterfacts". Carter followed up with his book Earlier Than You Think: A Personal View of Man in America, 1980. And in his his Early Man at San Diego: A Geomorphic-Archaeological View, 1996, refutes these arguments, and adds that "Some have suggested that it could be older than my estimate of 100,000 years... Its history may be more complex than I thought, and if so. it is somewhat older." Carter describes the tools main features as "a cobble with either a natural or prepared platform from which long parallel sided flakes, technically blades. have been struck. There are other artifacts, notably cleaver-like heavy items. resembling a tool called a skreblo in Siberian archaeology, a resemblance noted by Herb Minshall (1974. 1975, 1976, 1986). And there is much use of sharp-edged flakes and cores. There is a total absence of manos and metates, bifacially flaked points, or any other tool typical of any of the later people."

Siberian Skreblos, large scrapers. Gunchinsuren, 2013

Carter and Homo erectus reaching America first

Carter also mentions the Siberian sites which are 1 million years old (see my post on them) and agrees that they can only be the work of Homo erectus, well adapted to the extreme climate of that region, with fire, clothes, and shelter: "We have never dreamed that Homo erectus had equipment such as I have noted above. But I am told that more such data is emerging in northwestern Europe on something like a 500,000 year time level. In southern California we have the as yet untested claim of the killing and dismembering of a mammoth in the Borrego paleontological beds at the seemingly incredible date of 400,000 years (L'Hommediu 1988)... The possibility of Homo erectus reaching America is very real, if these recent reports stand up. The absence of any Homo erectus skeletal finds is simply negative evidence, and given the American archaeologists' aversion to looking in early formations, weak evidence indeed."

He cited Helena L'Hommedieu, 1988, Evidence Indicates Man Was in Area 500,000 Years B.P. Borrego Sun 37(13):3-4. But this was a newspaper article in a New Mexico media, not in a scholarly journal. However, there is a peer-reviewed article on them: Miller, G. J., Remeika, P., Parks, J. D., Stout, B., & Waters, V. (1991). A preliminary report on half-a-million year-old cutmarks on mammoth bones from the Anza-Borrego Desert Irvingtonian. Imperial Valley College Museum Society, Occasional Paper No. 8. Which suggests the cuts on the bones were made by animals and not by human stone tools. Sounds similar to the Cerutti site (130 ky) where mammoths seem to have been butchered by humans 130 kya.

Reivindication

More recently, Curtis Runnels, 2014 wrote that he had read about Carterfacts, and seen poor photographs of them, and had the opportunity to examine the artifacts discovered by Carter:

"I examined two boxes of materials, a total of about 100 objects, and found that the majority were indeed artifacts of undoubted human workmanship" adding that one particular artifact called his attention: "This piece, which might be described as a proto- or atypical biface or chopping tool would not be out of place in an Old World Palaeolithic assemblage, and the same could be said for the rest of the materials from Texas Street and Buchanan Canyon.
What does this mean? My brief inspection is not enough. Although I am convinced that George Carter and his colleagues found artifacts, it is necessary to re-evaluate their contexts and to subject Carter’s sites and assemblages to more detailed study, preferably backed with radiometric estimates of age using techniques that were unavailable in Carter’s day. Did Carter find unequivocal evidence of humans in the San Diego region as early if not earlier than the last interglacial? It is still too early to tell, but this experience has convinced me that we ignore or discard the early work of the Pre-Clovis proponents only at our peril, and that a full re-consideration of the peopling of the New World must include an objective, unbiased, fresh, interdisciplinary review."

Clovis First suppression efforts

Interestingly, Cremo and Thompson write that Carter was asked to "submit an article about early humans in America. Carter did so, but when the editor sent the article out to two scholars for review, they rejected it. Upon being informed of this by the editor, Carter replied in a letter, dated February 2, 1960: "... I have another anonymous correspondent who as a graduate student found evidence that would tend to prove me right. He and his fellow student buried the evidence. They were certain that to bring it in would cost them their chance for their Ph.D.s. ... At another meeting, a young man sidled up to say, 'In dig X they found core tools like yours at the bottom but just didn't publish them.'""

This is in line with what I have mentioned in a previous post, a cover up to uphold the Clovis-First theory and supress anything related to older sites.

Carter was a pioneer in pointing out the obvious, that there is the possibility that humans, and not necessarily modern ones, reached America and lit fires, and fashioned paleolithic (eoliths) tools. They could have been Homo erectus. The established, formal, archaeologists don't look for these sites, they ignore them even if they spot them. He was an outspoken man who promoted controversial ideas in the days when pre Clovis sites were anathema.

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2026 by Austin Whittall © 

On the Lagoa Santa skull: fake / hoax?

While writing yesterday's post on the Diprothomo skull, I revisited an old post about the Lagoa Santa skull, a calotte with heavy brow ridges and a thick bone structure (pictured below). While reading it I came across its closing comments, that suggested it was a hoax. In this post I will delve deeper into that possibility.

Lagoa Santa, skull with thick brow ridges

The original comment read: "Notice how thick the bones are! Definitively primitive and erectus-like. Actually, comparing it with the photograph of Diprothomo they look very similar" And continued with the remark about the skull being fake: "I would love to end the post here but, the source that provides the photograph shown above goes on to mention another paper Investigation of a fossilized calotte from Lagoa Santa, Brazil, by EDXRF by Anjos, Lopes and Souza (2005) that reproduces a calotte from Lagoa Santa that is identical to the one in the photographe above and which, disclosed after an X-Ray study that it "had been mounted with pieces from different origins", meaning that it is a fake."

Some context and background: an unusual human skullcap discovered in Brazil was first described by Dr. Alan Lyle Bryan, of the University of Alberta. It had been found in the Lagoa Santa / Sumidouro region in 1958 by Harold Victor Walter (1887-1976) who was the British consul in Belo Horizonte, Brazil. Bryan examined it and took some photographs in 1970. Then the skull got lost. It has a primitive apparance ant the anthropologists who saw the pictures thought that it was a fake, or, alternatively it could have been a cast or a fossil from an Old World hominin that somehow had got misplaced with genuine Brazilian specimens in the museum. But Bryan said that he had seen it, and that it wasn't a fake, it was genuine. He did, however, note that it was very different from the other crania found in Lagoa Santa, suggesting perhaps an ancestor or older lineage from which the later Lagoa Santa people had evolved.

Update — 2026

A 1985 paper by Richard A. Rogers and Larry D. Martin (Paleoindian Studies and the Disappearance of Collected Material, Current Research in the Pleistocene, vol 2, p.58) addressed the issue of lost or misplaced archaological samples, especially Paleoindian ones. It mentions the Lagoa Santa skull: "An important question in Paleoindian studies is whether some of the Pleistocene human immigrant populations had "Neanderthaloid" features. A highly mineralized human calotte with extremely large brow ridges and thick skull walls, was recovered from the Lagoa Santa region of Brazil. The specimen was photographed, but later become lost at the museum where it was stored (Bryan 1978:318). The Yuha skeleton has also disappeared... It is apparent that loss of material due to theft is a serious problem in Paleoindian studies and has already contributed to the slowing down of the acceptance of new ideas and data. The loss of such important data in the Western Hemisphere points up the need for special precautions to be taken with Paleoindian material. The material is either easily misplaced or attracts thieves." A conclusion that does not include deliberate hoaxes with fake specimens, or destruction of inconvenient samples by Clovis-First supporters.

I came across a paper (Taylor, 2009, Six Decades of Radiocarbon Dating in New World Archaeology), which states that the skull was a forgery: "It has subsequently been determined that the large brow ridges on this specimen had been faked (Anjos et al. 2005). According to information provided to M Beltrão, as reported in Beltrão et al. (2005), the thick ridges had been modeled on the cranium using a mixture of glue and plaster mixed with ground bone fragments and the resultant modeled surface was then painted to approximate the original color of the bone. At the time, it was viewed by Bryan, the facts associated with how the specimen had acquired its brow ridges apparently had not been known to the museum personnel and thus was not communicated to Bryan. This Logoa (sic) Santa skull might thus be regarded as the South American example of a “Piltdown-like” specimen."

The work of Marí Beltrão cited by Taylor is also co-authored by him: Beltrão M, Taylor RE, Kirner DL, Southon JR. 2005. Historical context and radiocarbon age of Lagoa Santa human populations in Brazil. In: Dillon DB, Johnson KL, editors. Onward and Upward: Papers in Honor of Clement W. Meighan. Lancaster: Labyinthos. p 257–64.

The other source, is the one I mentioned in my posts, Anjos, M.J., Lopes, R.T., Mendonça de Souza, S.M.F. and de Jesus, E.F.O. (2005), Investigation of a fossilized calotte from Lagoa Santa, Brazil, by EDXRF. X-Ray Spectrom., 34: 189-193. https://doi.org/10.1002/xrs.783 🔒. Unfortunately it his locked behind a paywall, but it is mentioned in a more recent work by Pereira de Freitas, R., 2021 (O Uso de técnicas físico-químicas de análise como suporte na conservacão, catalogacão e investigacão forense de acervos museológicos. Museologia & Interdisciplinaridade, 10 (Especial), 182-195. https://doi.org/10.26512/museologia.v10iEspecial.36104) who comments on Anjos' paper: "Anjos et al. (2005) analyzed an ancient fossilized skullcap belonging to the collection of the National Museum of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro using XRF. In analyzing this artifact, which the researchers believed to be authentic and directly related to the ancient civilizations that populated Brazilian territory, it was verified that the concentration of elements such as calcium (Ca) and strontium (Sr), which are the base materials of the skullcap, vary between regions. The results confirmed that the skullcap was actually assembled from parts of different materials, unrelated to the soil of the region where it was found."

This agrees with Anjos' abstract: "The origin of the component parts of a fossilized calotte (skull cap) from Lagoa Santa in Brazil was investigated by using energy-dispersive x-ray fluorescence analysis. The specimen was irradiated with a miniaturized and low-power x-ray generator (2.25 W, tungsten anode). The calotte and rock samples from the two known sites have a similar chemical composition, especially rich in S, K, Ca, Ti, Mn, Fe, Cu, Zn, Pb, Br, Rb and Sr. These elements are associated with the geological constitution of the limestone complex where the archaeological samples were found. The small differences in the relative amount of each element, especially the Ca/Sr ratio, in different parts of the calotte reinforce the hypothesis that the calotte had been mounted with pieces from different origins."

But if Anjos analyzed the skullcap in 2005, was it lost? Are we sure it is the same skull mentioned by Bryan? Also, they don't mention the plaster and ground bone or darkening paint that were added to the skull according to Beltrão. Maybe the skull studied by Anjos was a composite, legitimate, genuine, pieced together by mistake, but not the one that Bryan reported as lost.

Beltrão is a firm believer in the ancient peopling of America, and wrote several articles on the subject (see, for instance O Homem Pré-histórico há 300 Mil Anos no Brasil. Revista Geográfica Universal, 84-91, 1992 — Prehistoric Man in Brazil 300 thousand years ago). So, why would she be so critical about the Lagoa Santa calotte?

It seems that there was not one calotte, but two, from different sites! George Weber, 1984 mentions a lost calotte and a fake calotte (George Weber, Lagoa Santa sites (Minas Gerais, Brazil).

Weber cites Bryan A.L., and Beattie O.B., 1984 who wrote about the calotte (A Fossilized calotte with Prominent Browridges from Lagoa Santa, Brazil. Current Anthropology, vol. 25, no. 3:345-346) as follows: They reported the excavations done by P.W. Lund in Sumidouro cave in the 1800s. Most of them were tinted red with ochre, but in a part of the cave he found black colored remains both animal and human, among them was the calotte that was later seen by Bryan and vanished by 1975. This is what Weber calls the Lost Calotte.

Then, separately, Weber describes the Fake Calotte which was reported by the EDXRF X-ray technique as "a fake. A very well-made fake cleverly put together from different pieces of unknown origin and antiquity, but still a fake. Seven different pieces were indentified through restoration marks."

Weber wonders if they are the same or different calottes: "What is not clear is whether the calotte outed as a forgery is the (very discreetly re-found) calotte reported as missing above, or another calotte that never wentd missing. Or what? The question one is left with in this confusion of calottes is: what IS it with calottes at Lagoa Santa and in Belo Horizonte Museums?"

What did Alan L. Bryan say about the calotte?

Alan Lyle Bryan, (1978) in his research article Early man in America from a circum-pacific perspective. Issue 1 of Occasional papers of the Department of Anthropology, University of Alberta. Archaeological Researches International, included photographs (below) of the calotte:

Bryan, after explaining the circumstances of his discovery (the calotte in the Belo Horizonte museum, and the reaction of his colleagues, who considered it improbable, and either a fake or a cast of a European hominin), adds that he discards the hoax option (see page 318 ) stating that "My wife Ruth Gruhn, and I have had considerable experience in handling human skeletal material and we are both positive that it was neither a fake nor a cast. It was a human skullcap, the frontal and both parietals, all sutures fused, highly mineralized, and stained black, the same color as a minority of fossilized animal bones in the Walter paleontological collection (most are stained red)."

Closing remarks

We don't necessarily need to imagine a hoax in the case of the mixed-bones skull. In fact the Sumidouro cave has a complex stratigraphy, which has been flooded many times over the millennia. Piló et al., 2005 mention that "Seasonal flooding reworked and mixed these two highly asynchronous assemblages [fauna and human remains] U-series and radiocarbon ages indicate that there are at least two distinct episodes of sediment input in the cave, at ˜240,000 yr B.P. and ˜8000 yr B.P. Human remains represent a later emplacement event, probably at ˜8400 cal yr B.P. Although the human remains are of considerable age, the cave's complex stratigraphy, flooding dynamics, and extensive removal of the cave's filling during earlier excavations do not allow the determination of an unequivocal co-existence between Paleo-Indians and extinct megafauna at the site" It could explain how different bones were mixed naturally inside the cave, and assembled as if they were of the same skull.

Finally, the use of ochre to stain the bones red in burials dating back to 9,400-9,600 years, as reported by Strauss et al., 2016 at Lagoa Santa, shows that Bryan was correct. The black-stained calotte must surely be older, when ochre was not used (or the ochre washed off the old bones). We should also point out that ochre was used, not only by humans, but also by Neanderthals (Roebroeks et al., 2012) 200 to 250 kya, and Homo erectus, as shown by Deino and McBrearty, 2022 reported its use at the Kapthurin site in Kenya, in sediments dated to 509-284 kya coexisting with Levallois stone tools during the transition from older Achulean ones (typical of Homo erectus) and of a similar age, reported by Watts, Chazan and Wilkins, 2016 in South Africa.

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2026 by Austin Whittall © 

The Diprothomo platensis

In a recent post, I mentioned the Diprothomo platensis, a hominin described by Florentino Ameghino (see his work online Le Diprothomo Platensis, (full title in French adds "A precursor of the Lower Pliocene man"), published in 1909 in Buenos Aires, in French.

I have mentioned this "hominin" in several posts over the years: Diprothomo and Lagoa Santa - Homo erectus? (2011) and more recently At the Buenos Aires Natural Sciences Museum (2025) where I got to see the skull.

Ameghino's book on the Diprothomo platensis

In his book he mentions how the upper part (calotte) of a skull was discovered during the construction of Buenos Aires' port, on the River Plate, at Dry Dock #1 on the north flank of the Darsena Norte (North Dock). Though built between 1887 and 1897, ths spot still exists even though the old port and docks have been recycled and revamped into a posh,expensive neighborhood (see Google map).

Ameghino stated that the skull came from the basal layer of the Pampean Formation of Pliocene age, 40 to 50 m thick (120 to 150 ft.), and that dips up to 20 m (60 ft) beneath the River Plate's water level. The lowest level was labeled "Pre-Ensenadan", 32 meters (66 feet) below ground surface.

Fig. 7. Diprothomo platensis seen from above, at natural size. The oval-shaped depression seen on the left side of the frontal bone is the imprint of an old wound

Ameghino also added two plates with top views of a Pithecanthropus (now known as Homo erectus) and and a Neanderthal, shown below.

He included a lateral view of it (below) and remarked about it being more primitive (inferior) than the (already inferior) Neanderthal: "The famous Neanderthal skull, whose inferior characteristics have been greatly exaggerated, differs profoundly in its lateral view from that of Diprothomme and by characteristics that indicate a much more advanced evolution than that of the latter."

Below is a front view of the skull cap and the browridges.

Ameghino provided a reconstruction of the complete skull, as he imagined it, a primitive, small-brained, low forehead, hominin with prominent brow ridges:

In the article, he fitted the Diprothomo into his evolutionary sequence for the first humans, originating in South America, and from there, expanding across the globe. Ameghino believed that humans had evolved during the Tertiary Period (see my posts on his theory). His phylogenetic tree, outside of America places the Diprothomo as an ancestor of both modern humans and the parallel branch of Neanderthals, and regarding the Pithecanthropus, he states they are different genra, and points out the lack of metopic crest in the Diprothomo (no mention of the saggital crest) adding: "These are two divergent morphological lines, the one that leads to Pithecanthropus is completely extinct. Based on the bestialization characteristics it presents, I declared in 1906 that Pithecanthropus was not and was the ancestor of Man." Below is Ameghino's phylogenetic tree:

Notice the progression from the Tetraprothomo to the Triprothomo (leading to the pithecanthropus or Homo erectus), diprothomo, prothomo, and the Homo pampaens, that leads to modern Homo sapiens!

The final part of the book includes some photographs of the skull.

But this theory, and the findings went against the dogma set down by the American (for U.S.A) school of thought that proposed the Beringian route for an Old World human to reach America relatively recently (3,000 to 10,000 years ago). This cause was championed by Czech - American anthropologist Alex Hrdlicka and his team. After visiting Argentina in 1910, and inspecting the bones (of Diprothomo and other specimens) they harshly refuted Ameghino’s theory, ridiculing it and effectively killing it (see a summary published in Science, 1912). Hrdlicka's legacy lives on in the Clovis First theory (see my post on it).

In 1912 Hrdlicka, Holmes and Bailey Willis published through the Bureau of Ethnology of the Smithsonian Institution a report, "Early Man in America". They say that the skull was not found embedded in the sediments, but that it probably fell down, into the excavation site of the dry dock from more recent sediments. That the workers had been playing "bochas" (bowls) with the skull (page 320). But, reading the arguments put forward to discredit the site, I am not fully convinced that they are impartial or that Ameghino was wrong.

Then, the authors state that Ameghino aligned the skull incorrectly, and this led him to conclude it had a small brain and slanting forehead: "In a detailed study of the specimen it soon became plain that almost the entire original description by Ameghino had miscarried by reason of the fragment having been placed and considered in a wrong position." Below is an image depicting the "correct" (upright - Hrdlicka) and the "incorrect" (slanting - Ameghino) positions for the calotte:

The American team concluded that "The sum of the results of the writer's study of the Buenos Aires skull fragment, regardless of its uncertain history, is that the specimen fails utterly to reveal any evidence which would justify its classification as a representative of a species of ancient Primates, premediate forerunners of the human being, the Diprothomo. Every feature shows it to be a portion of the skull of man himself; it bears no evidence even of having belonged to an early or physically primitive man, but to a well-developed and physically modern-like human individual" Categorical rebuttal of Ameghino's claims.

A Modern view on the Diprothomo

Schávelzon, 2018 argues that Ameghino's skull is recent, and was brought by the potent current of the Paraná River downstream, ending up in the sediments in Buenos Aires, he also states that it dates back to 1720, without providing a source.

Politis and Bonomo, 2011, review Ameghino's findings and theories, and regarding Diprothomo, they offers two explanations: the one given by Bailey Willis, or as a second option, a hoax; and they don't blame it on Ameghino but on the ones who discovered the skull perhaps with the intention of selling it, a common practice in those days.

The dating of the skull mentioned in both papers is unpublished, and Politis and Bonomo gives the following account: "In 1997, José Bonaparte, then director of the Vertebrate Paleontology Section of the Bernardino Rivadavia Museum of Natural Sciences, where the skullcap is currently housed, sent a sample of it to the University of California, Riverside laboratory for AMS dating. The age reported by Taylor on April 22, 1998, is 230 ± 40 14C years BP (Table 1). In the report, Taylor notes that the rest of the bone was in suitable condition for radiocarbon dating: “The analysis was taken on the total amino acid fraction by ion exchange chromatography after chemical and physical cleaning of the bone surface to remove any adhering contamination. The amino acid profile indicated that the bone still retained a considerable amount of collagen.”"

Conclusions

Despite his mistakes (earnest ones), which we can excuse due to the lack of adequate dating tools, other than sedimentary references, Ameghino may have been onto something. He also suggested that samples of "tierra cocida" or baked earth were primitive ceramics produced by these ancient hominins. (See Podgorny, 2015 who also gives a good summary on the Diproghomo). Ameghino also noted the "eoliths" or very crude stone tools found in deep layers, which he believed were pre-Acheulean.

I will be posting about Ameghino in the near future.

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2026 by Austin Whittall © 

Archaics and recent humans in Africa: the evidence from stone tools

An article published in Nature in February 2025 (Ben Arous, E., Blinkhorn, J.A., Elliott, S. et al. Humans in Africa’s wet tropical forests 150 thousand years ago. Nature 640, 402–407 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-025-08613-y) found that the belief that humans didn't enter the African jungles until recently was mistaken. The paper found "late Middle Pleistocene material culture and a wet tropical forest in southern Côte d'Ivoire, a region of present-day rainforest... demonstrat[ing] that Africa's forests were not a major ecological barrier for H. sapiens as early as around 150 ka."

I found it interesting because of the different papers (see the list at the end of this post) suggesting archaic admixture into modern humans in Western Africa, which does indicate that modern African humans did enter the jungles in that region. But, in this paper, the authors mention stone tool assemblages which in my opinion seem rather "primitive", lacking the refined appearance you'd expect from tools made by human beings 150 kya. After all, our species is said to have developed in Africa 300 kya, and left it in two waves, one, around 100 kya which is believed to have failed, and the second one that peopled the World, 60 kya. So, why would they produce tools that look so primitive? See below, an image with the upper "Unit C" tools dated to 20-12 ky and the older "Unit D" dated to 55-150 kya.

Figure S4: Stone tools from Units C and D at Bete I and III from Lioubin and Guede, and photos taken of the remaining artefact collection at the Institut des Sciences Anthropologiques de Developpement (ISAD) in 2021. Unit C: A) ‘end-scraper’, B) ‘point’, C) ‘end-scraper à museau’, D) ‘double-ended carinated end-scraper’, E) ‘small handaxe’, F) ‘fragment of a bifacial foliate piece’, G) ‘point Levallois’, H) ‘combination tool’, I) ‘end-scraper with spine’, J) ‘short foliate biface’, and K-N) ‘cores’. Unit D: O) ‘side and end chopper’, P) ‘biface - trihedral’, Q) bifacial LCT (our term), R) ‘pick with double-flat cross-section of the body and centred quadrihedral distal point’, S) ‘pick with double-flat cross section of the body and centred trihedral distal point’, T–U) bifacial pieces (our term). A-N and O, P, R and S are from Lioubin and Guede. Suppl. Mat.

The more recent upper layer exhibits, according to the authors Levallois flakes and points, while the underlying and older stone artifacts are more massive and coarse-looking: "The assemblage in Unit D, featuring large tools alongside a small tool component, may support long-held views that the diverse heavy-duty tool assemblages seen in Central and West Africa are convergent adaptive solutions to tropical forest habitation."

Sangoan toolage

In the Supplementary Material, the authors mention two types of stone industries present in Pleistocene Africa, the Sangoan and the Lupemban. Sangoan, first discovered in Sangoa, Uganda "described as late Acheulian adaptations, transitional between the Acheulean and the MSA, or as belonging to the early MSA. They are generally characterised as featuring ‘rugged’ or ‘heavy-duty’ core tools, dominated by thick bifaces, picks, choppers, and core scrapers, referred to collectively as large cutting tools (LCTs)."

The literature describes them as a transition from Early Stone Age Acheulean tool technology to Middle Stone Age tools. To me, as an amateyr un the field, this spells tools made by less advanced hominins. Acheulean tools were the mark of H. erectus, and these crude Sangoan tools are common in Central Africa during the Upper Pleistocene, and coexist with Modern Humans in West Africa 150 kya? Strange overlapping of superarchaic hominins with modern H. sapiens.

The coarse and heavy build of Sangoan tools is believed to be due to their use in forested environment, for chopping or digging for edible roots and tubers. They have been found at Kalambo Falls in Zambia and dated to 500-300 kya. Clearly not the work of Homo sapiens, we appeared only 300 kya. In Simbi, Kenya their age is between 50-200 kya, indicating a survival of an ancient technology overlapping the appearance of modern humans and possibly, the survival of the archaics that made the Sangoan stone tools.

Lupemban

The Lupemban, on the other hand, named for a brook in Zaire, is different it displays careful crafting using Levallois core and flake technology, resulting in refined lanceolate, bifacial points. The oldest Lupemban tools are 266-132 kya. Overlapping with the more primitive Sangoan, as if two different groups of less, and more advanced hominins created them to exploit the forests and jungles (see this source for a comprehensive text on this industry).

Closing Comments

Rather than showing that modern humans were living in the West African jungles 150,000 years ago, the paper by J.A., Elliott, S. et al. seems to suggest an overlapping of different people in that area, namely archaics with early stone age Lupemban tools and modern humans with Sangoan ones.

Why would archaeologists ignore the signal provided by the Acheulean-like Sangoan tools and attribute them to modern humans living in a forested environment? In Eurasia, stone technologies, like the Mousterian are a clear indication of Neanderthal craft, why wouldn't the Sangoan be taken as a lithic technology developed by non-sapiens people? It seems to me that archaeologists focused on Africa have the obligation to defend the antiquity of Homo sapiens in that continent and ignore facts that indicate the opposite.

Below are some posts on the admixture of archaics and moderns within Africa: ↺

• May 2018: Archaic hominins admixed with Pygmies in Africa, citing: Psing Hsun Shieh et al, 2016. Summary: at least one introgression of archaics into pygmies ~9 kya.
• May 2018: More on archaic introgression into H. sapiens in Africa: the source of African's genetic diversity, citing: Hammer et al., 2011. Summary: modern Africans' DNA has a ~2% introgression that took place ~35 kya, from an archaic that split from our lineage 700 kya.ed DNA, ) that introgressed ~35 kya from an archaic population that split from the ancestors of anatomically modern humans ~700 kya
• May 2019: Archaic Ghost population admixed with Modern Humans in Africa, citing: Lorente-Galdos et al, 2019. Summary: a divergent ghost archaic population that split from the ancestors of modern humans 528 kya introgressed into Africans at the following frequencies:~ 4.0% in Khoisan, ~ 4.3% in Mbuti Pygmies, and ~ 5.8% in Mandenka.
• June 2019: Archaic humans admixed with modern humans in Africa, citing: S. Langley, Miga, Karpen, C. Langley, 2018. Summary:a distinct, old introgressed archaic lineage (~1.1 MYA) consistent with recent admixture with an extinct archaic in Africa.
• February 2026: On the Diversity of Africans, citing: Durvasula and Sankararaman, 2020. Summary: introgression into four West African populations, with frequencies of 2 to 19% from an archaic population that diverged before the split of Neanderthals and modern humans. It took plase 43 kya (95% HPD: 6 - 124 kya).
• February 2026: Diversity in Africa. Some explanations on why it is so diverse, citing: Skoglund et al., 2017, Jakobsson et al., 2025 and Padilla-Iglesias et al., 2025. Summary: deep stratification in Africa may come from admixture with an unknown archaic African group predating the divergence of Humans from Neandertals and Denisovans. Western Africans may have introgressed with archaics.
• April 2026: A New March 2026: Paper on Archaic introgressions in Humans, citing: Zhang, Biddanda, Johnson, O’Dushlaine, Moorja, (2026). Summary: two introgressions with super-archaics. (i) inside of Africa with a ghost population that diverged from ours over 500 kya it is found in all humans, Africans and non-Africans.

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2026 by Austin Whittall © 

The Pampas, the ideal spot to look for Denisovans or Homo erectus

Following my post on the possibility of Denisovans expanding their territory and moving east, into America, one of the followers of my blog, Marcelo Bruyere wrote a comment to the post, suggesting that old sites such as those that would correspond to a Pleistocene peopling of America before the last glacial period would have to be located beyond the area scoured by the glaciers of ice ages that followed their migration 400,000 years (400 ky) ago. Sites located in temperate regions would be safe from the destructive effects of the glacial ice fields.

Marcelo mentioned the Cerutti Mastodon site which is 130 ky old which is in California, 32°S as an example and suggested that South America would also be a great place to search for such sites, but not in caves or rock shelters, which are the favorite haunt of archaeologists looking for ancient campsites. Instead, he says, these sites should be sought "in other environments; such as possible relicts of ancient plains bearing rivers and/or lacustrine systems, that could comply with the condition of having been originally developed in terrains well deep into the Pleistocene" and continues, proposing the Argentine plains known as the Pampean region as a suitable place to look for this type of sites.

The Pampa Region

The Pampas, whose name comes from the Native American Quechua language and means "plain", is a vast expansion of flat prairies originally covered with native temperate grasslands, with a very slight west to east incline, spanning 1.2 million km² (460,000 sq. mi.). The region is outlined with a red line in the map below:

Its western flank rises to about 200 meters (600 ft.) into an arid area with an open savanna-like region of "monte" and "espinal", with caldén trees, that then becomes even more drier as it blends into the Cuyo Andean Region, and the Northern Patagonia. The eastern part is more humid and is lower. Two ancient mountain ranges from the Precambrian and Paleozoic jut out of the lowlands in south-central Buenos Aires province, the Sierra de la Ventana which reach their maximum altitude with the Cerro Tres Picos (1,240 m - 4.066 ft) and the Tandil hills with 500 m (1,600 ft), these continue beneath the overlying silt, and form the basement on which the plains were formed during the Cenozoic period. Sediments originating in the Andes mountain range, were eroded and transported east by the wind (aeolian) and rivers (fluvial) and deposited on the granite bedrock over the past 12 million years (Zárate & Folguera, 2009).

Of the different cycles of sedimentation, the one we are interested in is the third one, which took place during the "...late Pliocene-late Pleistocene circa 3.2 Ma- 0.040/0.030 Ma [it] includes deposits bearing Marplatan, Ensenadan and Bonaerian fossil remains. They are distributed in the Salado tectonic basin, forming the bedrock in which fluvial valleys are excavated." Zárate & Folguera, 2009. Marcelo points out that the "undulating" Pampa, which is an area located in the northeastern corner of Buenos Aires province, with low-lying hillocks (a "gently rolling landscape" (Zárate, 2002) that break the flat plains " is a particularly good example of a suitable one for this purpose because; a) it overlies a massive (30 meters thick) Pleistocene substrate whose geological record goes all the way down (although with hiatus) from 12/13 Ka to the vicinities of Matuyama/Gauss boundary (ca. 2,58 Ma), b) it is crossed by many rivers whose valleys are deeply incised into this substrate, and c) also presents some relict landscapes outcropping subaerially (albeit, conditionally accessible), whose geological levels are within Matuyama magnetic ages (>0.78 Ma)."

This region has produced many megafaunal fossils and also human remains corresponding to Paleoindians. To clarify the text, the Matuyama boundary is a period that lasted from 2.59 to 0.78 Ma and marked a reversal of the Earth's magnetic field. During this time, a compass wouldn't have pointed north, it would have pointed south. Point c) mentions that some of the deeper layers are accessible in this region, on the surface, exposed ("Subaerial").

It was in the banks of the rivers that cut across the plains, that the first megafaunal fossils were recovered during the late 18th century and sent back to Spain from the Colonial Buenos Aires: the Megatherium americanum described by Cuvier in 1796. These were considered antediluvian creatures. The banks of these rivers still provide fossils (Scanferla, 2013, Chichkoyan, 2022).

The mid Pleistocene sediments are not that deep. For instance Tófalo, 2011 reports "Present day soil is found at the top of the section. Its parental material was sampled at 1.2 m [4 ft] where an OSL dating yielded an age of 30 ± 4 kyr. Another OSL age >126 ± 10 kyr for a sample taken at 7.3 m [24 ft]" Sediments that could potentially contain Denisovan or erectus remains would be at that depth.

Interestingly, current research has looked into these locations and found old pre-Clovis tools dated to 30 to 40 ky ago. See Marcelo Toledo, 2017, whom I quote below. Toledo reported finding a flint tool that "was unambiguous as well as embedded into basal sand of the Red Luján sequence (a geological sedimentary layer), which have been dated between 25 and 30 ky BP... These preliminary results prove human presence towards 25-30 ky BP in the Luján valley." These tools are obviously man-made because there are no sources of stone or rocks nearby (these plains span hundreds of kilometers, and the nearest rock sources are over 200 km away (125 mi) and couldn't have reached this area in any other way other than by human transportation.

One hundred and forty years ago, Florentino Ameghino, who proposed an autochthonous origin, in America, for humans, who then migrated across the globe (one of these ancient human specimens was the Diprothomo platensis) supported his theory with fossils and early, cobble-styled tools that he had found similar tools along the Lujan River banks, and also bones of megafaunal animals that bore clear stone cut marks.

Ameghino called these primitive tools "eolithic" (Greek for "dawn stones"), refraining from using the term "paleolithic" because they differed substantially from the Acheulean industry found in Paleolithic Europe. These stones were old, and different as you can see in the following image:

Some eolithic tools described by Amgehino in 1881, Frias II site . Source

And these sites are just scraping the surface, the most recent sedimentary layers, below are more, reaching down to almost 1 million years.

The idea that hominin remains from 50,000 to 800,000 years ago may be buried by tens of meters of silt in these open plains is exciting, and as we have seen, some proof has already been discovered.

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