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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