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held convictions. The discovery was made by a team headed by a famous French scientist, respected in his field. The site was systematically excavated according to strict principles. The implements were discovered in situ, in a defined stratigraphic context. They were clearly intentionally manufactured. They were found in conjunction with a typical Middle Pleistocene fauna, with many extinct species. The researchers admitted that it was not possible to assign a direct age to the cave on the basis of the biostratigraphic evidence (the Middle Pleistocene goes from about 100,000 to 1,000,000 years ago), but multiple uranium series tests gave ages of between 204,000 and 295,000 years. Of course, the uranium series dates could be wrong. But if these are wrong, then every uranium series date, including the ones used to buttress more acceptable finds, could also be wrong. Altogether, it is hard to see what more one could desire in the way of empirical evidence that would confirm the presence of intelligent toolmaking beings in the Americas in the Middle Pleistocene. Yet the consensus that humans entered the Americas fairly recently remains intact.

3.8.5 Alabama Pebble Tools

The crude stone tools of Bed I in Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania, are also paralleled, interestingly enough, by pebble tools from Alabama, U.S.A. that are almost identical in form (Figure 3.31, p. 208). These stone tools, reported by archeologist Daniel Josselyn (1966), can be found in great numbers in certain surface sites, where they are mixed in with artifacts from a variety of native American cultures.

Pebble tools are usually associated with very primitive levels of culture not thought to have ever existed in America. Thus, when Josselyn tried to acquaint other American archeologists with his finds, he did not receive an encouraging reaction. “Rather,” as he put it, “to my horror, I learned that Pavlov could have studied ‘conditioned reflexes’ about as well in archaeologists as in dogs. Please, please, believe that I say this with no critical rancor” (Josselyn 1966, p. 25). It was apparently “known” by some that no pebble tools were made in the New World.

Figure 3.31. Pebble chopper, from Alabama, U.S.A., undated (Josselyn 1966). Such tools usually imply very primitive cultures not thought to have existed in America.

Josselyn said that since theAlabama tools were not from stratified sites, they could not be dated, and he had no suggestion about their age. They could thus be quite recent, posing no threat to dominant views about the arrival of humans in the Americas. The problem here seems to be a fixation on the questionable idea that pebble tools must have been made by protohumans such as Homo habilis or Homo erectus. But human beings have used pebble tools in Asia and Africa in historic times.

3.8.6 Monte Verde, Chile (Late Pleistocene)

Another archeological site that has bearing on the evaluation of crude stone tools is the Monte Verde site in south central Chile. According to a report in Mammoth Trumpet (1984), this site was first surveyed by archeologist Tom Dillehay in 1976. Although the date of 12,500 to 13,500 years b.p. for the site is not highly anomalous, the archeological finds uncovered there challenge the standard Clovis hunter theory. The culture of the Monte Verde people was completely distinct from that of the Clovis hunters. Although these people made some bifacial implements, their lithic technology was based mainly on minimally modified pebble tools. Indeed, to a large extent, they obtained stone tools by selecting naturally occurring split pebbles. Some of these show signs of nothing more than usage; others show signs of deliberate retouching of a working edge. This is strongly reminiscent of the descriptions of the European eoliths.

In this case, the vexing question of artifacts versus geofacts was resolved by a fortunate circumstance: the site is located in a boggy area in which perishable plant and animal matter has been almost indefinitely preserved. Thus two pebble tools were found hafted to wooden handles. Twelve