Homo erectus in the Americas, some things I found on the Internet

I came across some short texts posted by Richard Thornton (his mini bio), in which he discusses a statue protraying an ape-like creature found in Mexico. Thornton suggests that it is the depiction of a captive Homo erectus.

In Homo Erectus in the coastal marshes of Tabasco State, Mexico? (October 25, 2024) he includes some pictures he took in the 1970s, including one that he describes as "...quite controversial after public exposure, since it does not portray a Homo Sapiens with typical Indigenous American features. However, mainstream archaeologists still refuse to admit the possibility that the millions of animals that crossed back and forth across the Bering Land Bridge over the past two million years were followed by primitive hominids."

A second post Homo Erectus in the Americas? (April 15, 2022) includes the following image:

Statue supposedly depicting an Homo erectus. Richard Thornton, 2022.

Thornton wrote: "It looked like a primitive hominid, such as Homo Erectus, not a New World Monkey. He is portrayed standing erect with his hands tied behind his neck. This is the typical way that Mesoamerican art portrays prisoners of war or people captured to be made into slaves. Monkeys were always portrayed with their arms and legs tied together, hanging from poles."

The final post is titled: Did Homo Erectus live in the Americas until fairly recently? (December 6, 2023) and includes this text "There are stories, both in the Lower Southeastern United States and in Southeast Asia of primitive humans with tails, who were capable of hurling rocks and sharpened sticks at Homo Sapiens humans. Those in what is now the United States disappeared soon after the arrival of Europeans. Apparently, they were extremely vulnerable to European diseases. During the Vietnam War, such creatures supposedly attacked both U.S. and Vietnamese soldiers, who ventured into an uninhabited mountain range in what was then South Vietnam."

Some comments

The spider and howler monkeys are common in the southern areas of Mexico. They represented good fortune, happiness, lust, pleasure in the Central American lore. They were sacred animals and were not used for sacrifices nor eaten (source). Below are some Mesoamerican depictions of monkeys (same source), they have a monkey appearance:

Thornton is right in his posts when he says the statue has been moved. It ended up in the Villahermosa museum and is known as "Monument 56", its name is "Monkey Looking at the Sky."

The sculpture although it is shaped as a column is believed to be a peg-like structure which was to be displayed horizontally. It shows a head and a torso of a simian (anthropomorphic) figure with its arms bent backwards, behind the neck. It has a round-shaped eye and a narrow bridged nose. The creature wears a hat or helmet, and the back of the hands have been lost. It has triangular ears. It is 1.36 m long (roughly 4.5 ft.) and 53 cm wide (21") and 48 cm thick (19"). It is made of a tough hornblende andesite.

"It is highly likely that this sculpture was originally embedded horizontally; that is, the section resembling the body is the tenon that secured it as part of a building's architectural structure." (Source, and also source of the following images):

Finally, the comments about Vietnam and sightings there during the war are new to me. I will look into it. The remark about them being vulnerable to European diseases makes sense. Illnesses like measles, human flu, and small pox would affect hominins but not monkeys.

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

Bolas - stone balls around the World: Oldowan / Acheulean tools?

In my previous post I mentioned the stone balls, or "bolas" found in Miramar, Argentina, originally claimed to be 2 or even 3 million years old in the early 1900s, they are now believed to be either a hoax, or later, Paleoindian tools. However, genuinre and uncontroversial stone balls h ave been unearthed in the Old World, dating back to Oldowan and Acheulean times, meaning that they are around 1.5 million years old, and were made by Homo erectus or even older ancestral hominins.

Red Crag Stone from Bramford, England

Pictured below, (Red Crag stone. Source) this stone is not a sphere, instead it has an elongated shape, and unlike the other Old World finds, it has been quite controversial.

J. Reid Moir wrote an article about the stone three years after it was found by one of his assistants, by the name of John Baxter. It came from Pliocene sediments at Red Crag, Bramford, a site near Ipswich, in England, UK. The 1929 article titled "A Remarkable Object from Beneath the Red Crag". It was roughly egg shaped. Henri Breuil, who was a witness of the discovery wrote: "While I was staying in Ipswich with my friend J. Reid Moir, we were examining together a drawer of objects from the base of the Red Crag at Bramford, when J. Reid Moir showed me a singular egg-shaped object, which had been picked up on account of its unusual shape. Even at first sight it appeared to me to present artificial striations and facets, and I therefore examined it more closely with a mineralogist's lens. This examination showed me that." Rather than a South American bola, this ovoid was thought to be a sling stone like the ones used in "New Caledonia". TWhe Pleistocene to Eocene sediments at Bramfored are over 2 million years old.

However, Keith Fitzpatrick-Matthews, 2011 warns that even thouth the age is correct, the setting may be wront: "the Red Crag deposits date from the Gelasian chrono-stratigraphic phase, 2,588,000 to 1,806,000 years ago during the earliest phase of the Lower Pleistocene, when this part of Britain was under a shallow sea, and it seems most likely that the “sling-stone” is a simple case of misidentification, its natural grooves being mistaken for human manufacture by an expert who was overtaken by his colleague’s enthusiasm for finding objects in the deposit in question."

Below is a Melanesian Sling stone , the resemblance is striking, yet this one is evidently manmade, and polished.

Sling stone from New Caledonia. Source

Olduvai stone balls, Tanzania

The Museum of Stone Tools shows the following image captioned as a quartzite spheroid from Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania, age: Early Pleistocene Oldowan-Acheulean 0.4 to 1.9 million years ago.

Another example can be seen here, online, at the British Museum, which in its description cautions, that although Louis Leakey suggested that these rounded stones were used as bolas, like the throwing stones from the Pampas, "experiments have shown that such pieces can be produced by repeatedly using the same quartz pebble as a knapping hammer"

The Oldowan tools, are crude, like struck pebbles, and believed to be the work of Homo habilis, manufacturing spheroidal stone balls seems to be beyond their cognitive abilities. Could primitive hominins like them fashion sinew cords or treat leather adequatly to be able to fasten them to stone balls like the bolas or boleadoras of the Pampas?

An excellent summary of the Olduvai spheroids can be found in Ignacio de la Torre & Rafael Mora, 2010, which I summarize below:

Clark reported them in 1955, and their deliberate manufacture by flaking and battering to shape the speroids. He suggested they were used as missiles, and also as hammerstones for stone tool manufacture and to crack nuts open.

Willoughby proposed in 1987 that they were the result of flaking that began with the typical choppers, and that ended up as speroids, or, altermtively that they were used as hammers, an unintentional outcome of their use was the shaping of rounded spheroids.

Texier and Roche (1995) consider them as deliberate objects that arose from a method of knapping flakes. A core is battered, through controlled reduction to produce flakes and this results in a polyhedron, or a spheroid.

Java stone balls made by H. erectus

Leaving Africa, and the Oldowan, stone balls were found in sites associated to Homo erectus, who has been in Eurasia for around two million years. Weidenreich, 1943 describes in Indonesia at the Homo erectus site in Solo: "The most interesting specimen illustrated by Oppenoorth is a stone ball from Ngandong. Similar stone balls have been found at several places in our excavations in the Solo Valley. They are made of andesite, are perfectly round, and are never polished. According to Oppenoorth, their diameters range from 67 to 92 mm... [2.6 - 3.6 in], and some may be even a little larger. They closely resemble primitive stone cannon balls as used in Java in medieval times for the old bronze cannons. They occur so regularly in the layers that they might actually represent "implements" used by Solo men." He attributes them a Mousterian, and therefore Neanderthal similarity, citing similar stones found in La Quina, France, Techik Tach, Russia. Adding that "Mousterio-Levalloisian of Florisbad, South Africa, Dreyer and Lyle mention "dozens of round balls" about 3 inches in diameter made mostly of dolorite, and also a few of blue shales." Weidenreich mentions that the oldest balls were Acheulean, from Kenya, reported by Leakey, who found them "in many cases in groups of three strongly indicating the use of the bolas, still used as a hunting weapon in South." Weidenreich suggests that although their purpose is unknown they were either sling stones or bolas.

According to Bartstra (1983), cited in van Heteren & de Vos, 2012 describes tools and remains found at the Ngebung site in Java, belonging to H. erectus there are three levels, the deepest (lowest) has tools that are absent in the upper ones of Upper Pleistocene age: "elongated choppers, spherical balls (so called sling stones or bolas) and crude axes, all made of andesite. The larger stone tools, like the bolas are considered to be Upper Pleistocene/Lower Holocene of age." No explanation given for assigning a more recent age to the bolas.

Acheulean bolas in Israel

My own research into these primitive bolas has revealed other sources, for instance, outside of Africa, made by Homo erectus in Ubeidiya, Israel, with an age of 1.4 million yearws, as reported by Muller et al., 2023 with a clear spherical shape. The paper suggests that they were deliberately fashioned that way, to resemble speheres and its title echoes that suggestion: The limestone spheroids of ‘Ubeidiya: intentionalimposition of symmetric geometry by early hominins? Some of the stone balls studied in this paper are pictured below:

This article points out that their shape has bewildered archaeologists, as they can't understand what was their use. Furthermore, they have been used for millions of years, starting with the crude Oldowan stones industry, and into the Acheulean, and Mousterian, their use in Southern South America persisted until the late 1800s. Their widespread geographic dispersion, from Africa, to Asia, Europe, and America is notable.

There are two schools of though about these balls: (1) that they were the byproduct of a flake producing technique that left spheroids as waste, a totally unintentional production of stone balls. (2) That the hominins that made them selected a nodule and then deliberately fashioned it into a polyhedron, and gradually into a spheroid or bola. The balls found in Israel, according to the authors , "are a complex formal technology that represent a manifestation of the complex cognitive and skilful capacities of Early Acheulean hominins. If similar intentional shaping can be demonstrated on Oldowan spheroids, this would likely represent the earliest evidence of hominins imposing a desired symmetrical geometry on their tools." In other words, Homo habilis and Homo erectus were much smarter than we imagined.

Ancient or Modern?

S. J. de Laet mentions stone balls in the History of Humanity Volume I (see p. 454) in line with what I have mentioned further, up, but he questions their antiquity in Indonesia, suggesting a modern Homo sapiens origin:

"round stone balls (resembling small stone cannon-balls) that are allegedly found in terrace sediments along the Solo. They are made of andesite, are not polished and measure on average 10 cm in diameter. They are associated with Homo soloensis(on account of their assumed stratigraphical position), and they are regarded as a primitive hunting weapon, which is why these stone balls are oftenreferred to as bolas or sling-stones. Von Koenigswald even saw in them evidence for theNeanderthal character of the Solo hominids: similar stone balls do occur at such famousNeanderthal sites as La Quina (France) and Teshik-Tash (Uzbekistan) (von Koenigswald,1951). In Sangiran too these stone balls are found (and they are displayed in the local museum); but around the hill of Ngebung it can be demonstrated that they certainly do not lie buried in high-terrace sediments. In Ngebung the stone balls can be associated with young, post-Pleistocene alluvial deposits (Bartstra, 1985). The question therefore ariseswhether the stone balls found along the Solo do not in fact originate also from recent sediments, and reflect the activities of Holocene hunters rather than those of ancient Homo soloensis"

Spheres with symbolic purposes

There are some intriguing rounded stone ballls that were discovered in a site known as El Guettar, in Tunisia, first explored by Gruet in 1954) (S. J. de Laet, see p. 352). The stones were found, accomodated in the shape of a cairn!

"El Guettar did yield the best evidence for symbolic behaviour in the constructed heap of stone balls (Gruet,1954, pp. 67–77). The site had some 7 m [23 ft.]of Middle Palaeolithic deposits around a spring, and the stone heap was found near the base of the sequence, built on a flat surface by the edge of the spring pool. The heap was conical, with a basal diameter of about 130 cm [4.2 ft] and a height of about 70 cm [2.3 ft.], and was built of about sixty balls, almost all of them oflimestone, which were graded from large (18 cm in diameter [3.1 in]), rather roughly shaped one sat the base to small (4.5 cm in diameter [1.8 in]), perfectly shaped ones at the top. The interior of the cone was filled with a mass of bones and flaked stone artefacts (approximately 2,000 ofthe latter, including a typical tanged point). The bones and artefacts seemed to have been simply gathered up from the surrounding surface (they do not differ overall from those found elsewhere in the excavation), but some care was taken to reserve the finest artefacts for the upper part of the fill. At the base of the interior of the heap were two thin plaques of a non-local limestone.The detectable method and consistency in the construction of the heap suggest that it was built on one occasion, rather than over a period of time. That the heap stood undisturbed thereafter until it became buried indicates that it was not just a convenient way of storing stone balls. The excavator believed that it represented an offering to the genius loci of the spring. Practical explanations have not been forthcoming and we too are brought to conclude that its purpose must have been symbolic."

I must add that Gruet believed the site was of people with a Mousterian culture, i.e. Neanderthals, however other scholars, like Clark, consider it to be later, belonging to the more recent Aterian culture, of modern Homo sapiens and about 40 ky old.

Below is a picture of the stone cairn at El Guettar

Cairn found at Guettar. Source

Hammers?

A recent article by Assaf, Preysler, and Bruner, 2023 analyzes the shape, size and flaking used to fashion them and concludes that "Based on the current data available, we link the development of SSBs [shaped stone balls] with an increased consumption and extraction of fat of large-medium sized herbivores in the Lower Paleolithic period. Indeed, SSBs may also have been used as percussion tools for processing vegetal material, perhaps similarly to handaxes, which were primarily used for butchering, but were occasionally used for woodworking. However, current functional and experimental data associate these items with marrow extraction activities, as well as some contextual data linking these items with faunal remains. We thus argue that these are designated tools shaped in a complex procedure—a technological solution invented during the LP in order to respond to the growing need for fat consumption."

Closing Comments

The use of stone balls is ancient, dating back to the first stone tools used by our ancestors in Africa. They survived across species (H. erectus, Neanderthals, and modern humans), and vast distances. They ended up in America where they were used for tens of thousands of years in the Pampas and Patagonia.

Were they introduced into the New World by H. erectus? and if so, is their great antiquity (as suggested by Ameghino at Miramar) could be an indication of that origin.

Finally, the Patagonian myth of Tachwull, them proto-human maker of bolas may be a memory of the presence of erectus in America.

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

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 © 

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 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 © 

Denisovans in America... I found an article about this possibility

My search for scholarly articles about an early peopling of America struck gold today. I came across a post on a blog that was structured like a research paper, which is a nice detail. It was written by Riley Rogerson, and its title is Multi-Level Hominin Migration and Denisovan Presence in the Americas posted on 2025/07/09. It even includes bibliographic references. Well done!

You can read the post at Rogerson's blog, the white letters against a black background make it hard on the eyes (by the way, I also dislike the beige background I chose for my blog, but now it is too late to change it!). Below I summarize the main points and include links to any post I may have written about a specific item.

Abstract: "This theory proposes that Denisovans, an archaic hominin group closely related to Neanderthals, may have been the earliest hominin migrants to the Americas. A 130,000-year-old archaeological site in California suggests hominin activity long before anatomically modern humans are known to have left Africa. During this period, Denisovans inhabited Siberia and may have crossed the Beringia land bridge, establishing ephemeral populations in North America. These groups likely died out without descendants but left behind physical traces. Later, modern humans who interbred with Denisovans in Eurasia crossed into the Americas in intermittent migration waves taking place possibly as early as 37,000 years ago. Genetic findings in a 1,500-year-old skeleton from Uruguay confirm persistent Denisovan ancestry in Indigenous populations, supporting the idea of earlier, layered migrations. This model complicates the standard peopling narrative and opens new avenues for understanding pre-Clovis human history in the Americas."

The article looks into Monte Verde site in Chile (clearly Pre-Clovis, despite current arguments that it is much more recent), the 130 ky old mastodon bones from the Cerutti site in California, the Hartley site (37 ky) in New Mexico, and the 23 ky old footsteps from White Sands.

It correctly argues in favor of an Older Land Bridge between Asia and America: "During periods of low sea level, including Marine Isotope Stage 5e (~130,000 years ago), the Bering land bridge connected northeastern Asia to Alaska, providing a viable (though harsh) migration route for Pleistocene megafauna and, potentially, archaic hominins such as the Denisovans."

I found the comment of admixture within America (Denisovans and modern humans) extremely interesting; it explains the "...elevated Denisovan signature. First, it might indicate a major admixture event occurring in ancestral populations prior to entry into the Americas, resulting in sustained higher levels of Denisovan ancestry in certain lineages. It could alternatively reflect more complex regional population dynamics, such as secondary admixture events occurring within the Americas, potentially involving remnant populations carrying substantial Denisovan ancestry from earlier migrations. This hypothesis implies that Denisovan genetic influence in the Americas may not have been uniformly diluted over time but instead persisted regionally or was periodically refreshed by contacts with isolated groups."

The author argues that "Recent archaeological findings further complicate the picture. Several controversial sites in eastern Beringia, including Old Crow Basin, Chandalar River, and the deeper strata of Bluefish Caves, have produced lithic tools and faunal remains that some researchers interpret as evidence of hominin activity dating from approximately 80,000 to 100,000 years ago. These dates precede the known arrival of anatomically modern humans in northeast Asia, raising the possibility that these occupations reflect short-lived incursions by Denisovan groups during glacial periods when the Bering Land Bridge was exposed. While the artifact status of some materials is debated, the timing and geography align with what is known about Denisovan range and climate-accessible corridors."

The paper suggests some potential avenues for further research, including genetics: "high-resolution mapping of archaic DNA segments in Indigenous populations, may help distinguish between Denisovan ancestry acquired in Asia and ancestry potentially inherited from archaic populations present in the Americas. Third, paleoenvironmental reconstructions of Beringia during MIS 5e and related periods can refine our understanding of when and how migrations might have occurred."

The article is well structured and presents the evidence in a straightforward manner. No controversy, just facts. Well done!

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

Siberia to America 400 kya? Very Possible

In my last two posts, I mentioned two Siberina sites that are over 400,000 years old, one is Diring Yuirakh, the other is Karama, both had been originally dated at over 1.5 million years (My), an age that was later revised to a more recent 400 to 800 kya.

These people were not modern humans, our lineage originated 300,000 years ago. They were either Denisovans (who lived in East Asia), Neanderthals on their easternmost reaches, or the predecessor of both groups, Homo heidelbergensis, the tools discovered at both sites are primitive cobble sytle stone tools, older than the Acheulean used by Homo erectus and the Mousterian of the Neanderthals (We don't have tools used by Denisonvans), these Siberian tools resemble the Oldowan industry used in Africa over 2 My ago. These sites could also have belonged to H. erectus, who arrived in Eurasia around 2 My ago.

The sites, located in Siberia, in a cold and harsh region suggest that those who lived there were well adapted to the tough climate. They must have mastered fire, used warm clothes, built decent shelters, and had a good knowledge of their environment. They could have survived futher east and north, all the way to Bering Strait, and beyond.

Could they have advanced and reached America?

In my post on Diring Yuriakh and its age, I mentioned the work of John D. Janssen et al., 2024 (Redrawing early human dispersal patterns with cosmogenic nuclide, EGU24-4168, updated on 08 Mar 2024. https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu24-4168 EGU General Assembly 2024) which dated the site using a method known as cosmogenic dating. It found its was ancient: "417 ± 82 ka, which is at least 300 kyr earlier than the previously documented earliest human presence north of 60 degrees."

Unsurprisingly, John Janssen is well aware of the implications of this finding regarding the occupation of Siberia at an early date, and the possibility that these people reached Beringia, crossed Bering Strait, and populated America 400,000 years ago. Janssen considers it feasible, and mentions it, as you can see in this video (starting at 21:50 min), where he presentatst the paper at the EGU 2024 conference. The following image is a still from the Video, and its text is "DIRING YURIKAH, Arctic Siberia, •61°N, limits of homo erectus? •early entry to North America?"

Video still, J. Janssen presentation. Notice the text! which reads: "Early entry to North America?"

In this video, Janssen describes his work on dating ancient sites in Eurasia using the cosmogenic method (that measures the concentrations of rare isotopes that are produced when cosmic rays hit rocks on the surface of the soil. The longer they are exposed, the higher the concentration, which serves as an indicator of its age).

But, at 25:27, the video gets interesting, when discussing the Siberian sites, so close to the Arctic, and America, Janssen states that:

"at the second site Diring we find humans very far north very much earlier than previously thought now nothing older than about 45,000 years ago has been reported from a range of Arctic sites closer to the Arctic Ocean and we see two dimensions to this. Firstly once Out of Africa around about 2.5 million years, say, humans moved Eastward remarkably quickly people were already at Shang Shen as you can see there in the map on the L Plateau by around 2.1 million and they reached Java in the tropical southeast Asia by around 1.5 million years ago now by this time humans were colonizing vast areas of mid to low latitude Eurasia and exploiting habitats as diverses temperate grasslands and tropical rainforests but then it took another million years or more quite a bit more for people to move as far north... and the other point to note here is that while of course there was still around 2,000 km from the Bering Strait it remains possible that people crossed in into North America well before the earliest widely accepted timing which at this point is still around about four 14,000 years ago now I should add there's there's not yet any genomic support for this early colonization idea so it seems that if any very early groups did cross uh into North America they failed to leave a genetic Trace in other words they they must have gone extinct. So what could have motivated these intrepid people to migrate into the chilly Arctic around 400,000 years ago here's one explanation of course earth's climate is always fluctuating and we think humans exploited a time of extraordinary warmth in the Arctic during what we call Super interglacial stage 11 that's this gray band shown in the plot there 9 and as shown by the green spike in the biological productivity in the Arctic there was really no better time in the past 1 million years to do so and this timing is also very interesting for another reason 400,000 years ago coincides with the suggested split in the neander and denisovan lineages. Denisovans are another yet another kind of archaic human and it's been shown by others that there probably exists a super archaic species known not from fossils but from DNA found in the sediments at the basal sediments of the Denisova cave in in the Altai. So I said before that we don't really know, uh, who these people were but there is an intriguing possibility that the Diring migrants were actually a group of archaic humans, uh, predating the Denisovans whose ancestry we only know thanks to work on the denisovan genome."

I am thrilled that a mainstream scholar suggested that Homo erectus people moved across Bering and entered America around 400,000 years ago. The lack of genetic imprint in the current Amerindians may not mean that they went extinct. Perhaps they left their admixed genes in the Native Americans but the "Great Dying" wiped this signal away when over 90% of the natives died following the contact with Europeans after 1492.

Other Scholars Who Have Suggested an Early Peopling of America

My research into Siberian sites led me to discovering some Russian academics and archaeologists mostly unknown to Western mainstream media. Sure, Western specialists in this field must know them, but I haven't seen them cited in the papers I have read about the subject, so maybe they are dismissed.

One of these scientists is Yuri A. Mochanov. I came across a review of his book Archaeology, the Paleolithic of Northeast Asia, a Non-Tropical Origin for Humanity, and the Earliest Stages of the Settlement of America, that he coauthored with Svetlana A. Fedoseeva, Richard L. Bland, and Roy L. Carlson. The review can be accessed in the Canadian Journal of Archaeology (Reviews, Vol. 32, No. 2 (2008), pp. 285-288. https://www.jstor.org/stable/41103634). The reviewer, Christy G. Turner II, mentions that "In 2001, I was much impressed, but not convinced, by Mochanov's arguments for a much earlier colonization of the New World than Clovis-era people. This discussion lasted long into the night in an Irkutsk hotel room, with Olga Pav- lova translating and Svetlana Fedoseeva, Mochanov's wife, offering frequent comments... Mochanov and Fedoseeva's work at Diring was the first to demonstrate that hominids were in Siberia long before Neandertals and modern humans arrived. Various dates for Diring and the chopper-chopping tool nature of the Diring artifacts hint at groups of East Asian Homo erectus roaming far north of those whose remains were found at the Lower Cave of Zhoukoudian near Beijing, China (about 40° N latitude)."

Feidel S., 2000 cites Mochanvov and then elaborates on his hypothesis of an early peopling of America:

"Yuri Mochanov, have been regarded skeptically, but thermoluminescence dates now suggest an age between 260,000 and 370,000 B.P.for this site, at 61°N latitude (Waters et al., 1997). If Middle Pleistocene hominids were capable of survival so far north, what would have prevented them from crossing Beringia and entering the Americas at a comparably early date (Butzer, 1991, p. 140)? Perhaps Homo erectus did get into the New World, but there is no acceptable archaeological evidence of a mid-Pleistocene human presence. However, Bryan (1978) photographed and described a poorly provenienced H. erectus-like cranium that subsequently disappeared from the Brazilian museum, where it had been stored. [see my post on this skull and also an article by Bryan, 1984, with pictures of the skull] Also in Brazil, a few alleged pebble tools have been reported from Level IV of Esperança Cave, associated with fossil bones dated to ca. 295,000 B.P. by the uranium–thorium method (de Lumley et al., 1988; see Lynch, 1990, for a skeptical assessment). If 250,000-year-old human occupation sites exist in the Americas, they should be as recognizable and recoverable as Old World sites of this age... there has been little controversy about Australian sites with relatively crude toolkits dating earlier than 30,000 years ago, Beaton (1991, p.213)..."

Regarding this final comment, I must point out that archaeologists in America are skeptical about ancient sites, they don't look for them, and ignore them or consider the tools geofacts or made by monkeys (see Coutouly, 2021 as an example). This has been pointed out by archaeologists like Boëda, 2014 who notes that "All sites predating 13,000 years ago are rejected, including by the discoverers themselves. This rejection applies equally to sites in North and South America, with arguments that the artifacts are not of human origin and/or that the stratigraphy is inconsistent and/or that the dating is insufficient, etc. The paradigm is all-powerful. Perhaps most surprising is that the scientific criteria required to validate the oldest remains are far from being as systematically applied to more recent sites. Similarly, upon reading these criticisms, it appears that some of them stem more from a principled opposition to the dominant model than from a scientific discussion presenting arguments and counter-arguments." (I have already posted about the opposition by Clovis-first supporters against older sites and an early peopling of America).

Regarding the remark by Beaton, 1991, his work compares the peopling of Australia and America, the attitudes of archaeologists in both regions, and discusses the different populating strategise. He is an inmpartial observer, not influenced by the Clovis notions, he is critical in his observations, and remarks that "The idea of truly Early Man in the Americas is an exciting one, as it would imply immigration of pre-sapiens Homo and the very strong likelihood of failed colonization and the first evidence for the extinction of Homo on a continental-sized land mass. For the uncommitted observer, however, as interesting as such biogeographic phenomena might be, they do not in themselves make a case for Early Man in America, and the presentation of evidence in support of Early Man is itself not convincing." I agree, strict methodology, and structuring the evidence is critical in supporting and building the case for a very early peopling of America. Borrero, 2015 admits that "Sadly, information for South America is still not always efficiently produced. Ambiguous but ambitious claims from places like Arroyo Vizcaíno, in Uruguay, or Vale da Pedra Furada in Brazil, are still prominen."

Beaton also puts forward an intelligent question that is thought provoking: "Australia and the Americas... were the recipients of the last continental colonizations. This occurred at roughly the same time in human history, and the source for the colonists was roughly the same. Yet, in the space of 40 (or so) thousand years, these continents became the stages for the playing out of very different cultural evolutionary trajectories. It is not a trivial question to ask how this came about.
In the Americas, archaeologists appear to take cultural differentiation at face value and do not question how it might be that in the space of a few hundred miles Great Basin hunters remained so apparently distant in cultural morphology from the fishers of the northwest coast. While the answer might seem terribly obvious that living in a high desert is quite a different matter from living on a very wet coast, Australianists could point to equally wet-dry environment zones, of equal nearness, where no such cultural differentiation occurred. Australianists might view their prehistoric record as indicating distinctive regional cultural differences, but the scale of these differences is intracontinental and takes on a very different coloration when compared with complexities in cultural morphologies in the Americas. One research problem that would appear to benefit greatly from an intercontinental perspective is that of colonization. Questions relating to foraging patterns, colonizing strategy, population history, and cultural evolution may be better phrased, and ultimately understood, for each continent with consideration of the other."

Beaton points out the incongruences: "Australianists will be equally impressed by the lack of credible pre-13,000-15,000 B.P. sites in the Americas. But if claims for sites of such an age are to be preferred by the "Early Man" and "pre Clovis" schools, then does this imply Homo erectus in the New World and extinctions of some early colonists? And how can it possibly be that so many of the claims for early dates come from sites in South America? Australianists might also be interested to hear from the American conservative school on the subject of how it is that in the space of only 13,000-15, 000 years the Americas, at the continental scale, have witnessed such extraordinarily high degrees of cultural experimentation and differentiation. What factors might account for this? Population, environment, unrestrained social vitalism?"

This criticsm prods both Clovis-firsters and those supporting a pre-Clovis peopling of America to up their game, improve their methods, strategies, and review or revamp their hypothesis.

The diversity of languages is a great point (See my posts on this matter), how did America develop such a variety in such a short span of time?

Regarding pre-sapiens presence, almost all genetic studies are below par. They usually include proxies for genuine Amerindians with people of mixed origins like a Peruvian from Lima (PEL), Colombian from Medellin (CLM), Mexican from Los Angeles (MXL), or a Puertorican (PUR) which also carry European and African admixture. Some studies ignore America altogether considering it recently populated. Neanderthal and Denisovan introgression is assumed to have been brought from Asia. The alternative, that Neanderthals or Denisovans reached America and admixed there with modern humans is not even considered. Conclusions are therefore based on limited data, tainted data, or prejudiced hypothesis. Every paper about Amerindians, their genetics, and diseases always points out their recent origin and European and African admixture. I doubt that any scientist has tried to identify markers that could have introgressed into genuine Amerindians before the European discovery of 1492, and the slave trade from Africa that began shortly after. If we can pinpoint bases in our DNA strands inherited 30,000 years ago from Denisovans, that in turn added some bases they got from mating with H. erectus, how can't we distinguish between recent and ancient European or African admixture?

And when it comes to the sites themselves, just one look at the scale of excavations undertaken in Siberia at the Diring Yuirakh site, moving several meters of topsoil, or the deep bit dug at Karama, I insist, once again, that nobody digs deep enough to find Early Pleistocene sites in America.

Mental blocks and prejudice also damage the cause of an early peopling of America. For instance, take the folliwng comment by Borrero, 1991: "ancient Korean industries have been invoked to justify the morphology of the material recovered in northeastern Brazil. The argument maintains that "The cobble industries that persisted in East Asia for more than a million years reflect original technological solutions" (Boéda et al. 2013: 446) and that the case of Boqueirão in Brazil is similar. One problem with this argument is that it was not Homo sapiens who produced the cobble industries throughout that period, which implies a completely different reality (Dennell 2009; Rabett 2012). Ultimately, the comparison with Korea is irrelevant." As you can appreciate Borrero does not admit that cobble-making non-sapiens people could have reached America and used this lithic industry in Brazil. So, yes, the comparison with Korea is relevant.

Returning to Butzer, 1984 he admits that it was "techincally" feasible for humans to have moved "from Asia into more productive regions of the New World for tens of millennia prior to 30,000 B.P." so the idea itself is acceptable. The problem is the evidence: "But the coeval record of prehistoric settlement in eastern and northern Asia is poor (Aigner 1981, 1984; Wu and Olsen 1985; Ikawa-Smith 1978; Aikens and Higuchi 1982; Larichev et al. 1987), and there still is no convincing record of such antiquity in Canada or the United States." He goes on, accepting the possibility of a Mid-Wisconsinan (~50-25 kya) entry into America "Human groups, physically less advanced than modem Homo sapiens peoples and with an unsophisticated middle Paleolithic (Mousterian) technology, settled the European tundra to within close proximity of the ice fronts in both western and eastern Europe (e.g., Butzer 1986; Hoffecker 1987). Several late Acheulian sites were already located in tundra environments. Sites of such age have been found in caves, in the former floodplains of small streams, as well as in valley-margin deposits of colluvial loess. Unless we are unwilling to ascribe similar mental and cultural capacities to East and North Asian peoples during early and mid-Wisconsinan time, it is possible, even plausible, that they did penetrate the New World under harsh climatic conditions."

Butzer offers many interesting tips on locating older sites, and calculates how scarece they are. It is an interesting paper that is worth reading.

Closing comments

It is encouraging to see that the tide is changing. An early presence of humans (Denisovans or even Homo erectus) in Siberia half a million years ago shows that they were capable of living in the harsh and freezing conditions of the northeastern limits of Eurasia. At that time, America and Asia were linked (during the successive ice ages) by viable land bridges with fauna that would have enabled them to walk across it and, leaving Asia, enter America.

The high prevalence of a Denisovan genetic imprint in Amerindians may be a sign of their survival over hundreds of thousands of years in the New World, and their intermingling, within the Americas, with the Homo sapiens latecomers.

My next post will look into this possibility

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