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 © 

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.

Baked Earth

He also suggested that samples of "tierra cocida" or baked earth were primitive ceramics produced by these ancient hominins in their hearths during the Tertiary period. These chunks of clay similar to broken bricks caused quite an uproar during the early 1900s. (See Podgorny, 2015 who also gives a good summary on the Diprothomo). Ameghino also noted the presence of "eoliths" or very crude stone tools found in deep layers, which he believed were pre-Acheulean.

I will post about the Baked Earth in a coming article.

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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.

Eoliths

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