Forbidden Archeology_ The Full Unabridged Edition - Michael A. Cremo [251]
Finding a Clovis point in a layer 38,000 years old was disturbing, because orthodox anthropologists date the first Clovis points at 12,000 years, marking the entry of humans into North America. Some critics responded to the Lewisville find by alleging that the Clovis point had been planted as a hoax.
After mentioning a number of similar cases of ignored or derided discoveries, Alexander (1978, p. 22) recalled a suggestion that “in order to decide issues of early man, we may soon require attorneys for advocacy.” This may not be a bad idea in a field of science like archeology, where opinions determine the status of facts, and facts resolve into networks of interpretation. Attorneys and courts may aid archeologists in arriving more smoothly at the consensus among scholars that passes for the scientific truth in this field. But Alexander noted that a court system requires a jury, and the first question asked of a prospective juror is, “Have you made up your mind on the case?” Very few archeologists have not made up their minds on the date humans first entered North America.
5.4.3 Timlin, New York (Late Pleistocene)
The idea that Clovis-type projectile points represent the earliest tools in the New World is challenged by an excavation at the Timlin site in the Catskill mountains of New York State. In the mid-1970s, tools closely resembling the Upper Acheulean tools of Europe were found there. In the Old World, Acheulean tools are routinely attributed to Homo erectus . But such attribution is uncertain because skeletal remains are usually absent at tool sites. The Catskill tools have been dated to some 70,000 years b.p. on the basis of glacial geology. An interesting feature of the Timlin site is that investigators have been able to trace sequences of stone tool cultures from the “Upper Acheulean” level up to the recent Archaic period (Raemsch and Vernon 1977).
5.4.4 Hueyatlaco, Mexico (Middle Pleistocene)
In the 1960s, highly sophisticated stone tools (Figure 5.10) rivaling the best work of Cro-magnon man in Europe were unearthed by Juan Armenta Camacho and Cynthia Irwin-Williams at Hueyatlaco, near Valsequillo, 75 miles southeast of Mexico City. Stone tools of a somewhat cruder nature were found at the nearby site of El Horno. At both the Hueyatlaco and El Horno sites, the stratigraphic location of the implements does not seem to be in doubt. However, these artifacts do have a very controversial feature: a team of geologists, some working for the U.S. Geological Survey, gave them dates of about 250,000 years b.p. This team, working under a grant from the National Science Foundation,
Figure 5.10. Stone tools found at Hueyatlaco, Mexico, a site dated at about 250,000 years by a team from the United States Geological Survey.
consisted of Harold Malde and Virginia Steen-McIntyre, both of the U.S. Geological Survey, and the late Roald Fryxell of Washington State University.
These geologists said four different dating methods independently yielded an anomalously great age for the artifacts found near Valsequillo (Steen-McIntyre et al. 1981). The dating methods used were (1) uranium series dating, (2) fission track dating, (3) tephra hydration dating, and (4) study of mineral weathering. The carbon 14 and potassium-argon methods were not applicable at the Hueyatlaco and El Horno sites, and paleomagnetic measurements did not provide any useful information.
As might be imagined, the date of about 250,000 years obtained for Hueyatlaco by the U.S. Geological Survey team provoked a great deal of controversy. If accepted, it would have revolutionized not only New World anthropology but the whole picture of human origins. Human beings capable of making the sophisticated tools found at Hueyatlaco are not thought to have come into existence until about 100,000 years ago in Africa.
Of course, it is possible to dispute the dates reported by the U.S. Geological Survey team. But something more than a legitimate scientific disagreement over dating techniques appears to have been involved in the treatment of Hueyatlaco,