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Alsoszatai-Petheo argued that the history of the rejection of the Folsom and Clovis discoveries is now being repeated as conservative archeologists of the present day staunchly reject evidence for pre-Clovis man in America. Certainly, there are now many cases of archeological excavations using modern methods that have yielded dates as great as 30,000 years for humans in America.

For example, geological, archeological, and paleontological research at El Cedral, in the state of Sinaloa, northern Mexico, revealed human artifacts along with bones of extinct animals in “undisturbed stratified deposits on horizons radiocarbon-dated at 33,000 b.p., 31,850 b.p., 21,960±540 b.p., and older than 15,000 b.p.” (Lorenzo and Mirambell 1986, p. 107). The date of 31,850 b.p. corresponds to a hearth found in situ and consisting of “a circle of proboscidean tarsal bones surrounding a zone of charcoal about 30 cm [a foot] in diameter and 2 cm [almost an inch] thick” (Lorenzo and Mirambell 1986, p. 111). Proboscideans are elephants of various kinds. Tarsal bones come from the ankle region.

Another case involves a fire pit found on California’s Santa Rosa Island, off Santa Barbara, and investigated by archeologist Rainer Berger of UCLA. Laboratory testing showed that charcoal samples taken from the pit contained no measurable carbon 14. They are thus older than the 40,000-year limit imposed by the conventional radiocarbon dating method. The find is significant, since the fire pit contained crude chopping tools along with the bones of a bull-sized species of mammoth (Science News 1977a, p. 196).

Yet another interesting excavation took place in northeastern Brazil. At the rock-shelter of Boquierão do Sitio da Pedra Furada, a joint French-Brazilian team of archeologists dug through a stratified 3-meter [10-foot] deposit of sediment that was found to contain human occupational debris at all levels. The lowest levels included big circular hearths with large quantities of charcoal and ash. There were pebble tools, denticulates, burins, retouched flakes, and double-edged flakes, all made from local quartz and quartzite. There were also painted fragments of rock spalled or broken from the cave walls, which suggests that the tradition of rock painting well known in this part of Brazil may have existed during the earliest occupational period (Guidon and Delibrias 1986, pp. 769–771).

Charcoal from the lowest hearth in the deposit yielded carbon 14 dates of 31,700±830 years and 32,160±1,000 years. In addition, carbon 14 dates were obtained at a series of levels running throughout the entire deposit. These dates formed the following consistent series in years b.p.: 6,160, 7,750, 7,640, 8,050, 8,450, 11,000, 17,000, 21,400, 23,500, 25,000, 25,000, 25,200, 26,300, 26,400, 27,000, 29,860, 31,700, and 32,160 (Guidon and Delibrias 1986).

This excavation is of particular interest because it involved a controlled study of stratified cave deposits yielding hearths, artifacts, and a series of radiocarbon dates. These are some of the criteria often insisted upon by defenders of orthodox archeological theories. However, one can always point to flaws in unwanted evidence, and thereby adopt a double standard.

Of course, a small but increasing number of archeologists are now accepting that humans may have been living in South America as long as 30,000 years ago. It might therefore be argued that the resistance to new findings exhibited by successive schools of archeologists is simply a healthy and unavoidable part of the scientific process. By applying the braking action of skepticism, science can make slow but steady progress, while avoiding wild, speculative excesses.

One answer to this is that by sticking to conservative viewpoints in anthropology one certainly does not avoid extreme speculation. The theory that Clovis hunters marched from northern Canada to the Tierra del Fuego in a few centuries is certainly speculative. And the sweeping denial of certain possibilities—such as the